The Risk of Bringing a Story You Love
Chris reflects on how a mutual distaste for a piece of writing can spark some of the most interesting conversations...
Facilitating a shared reading group is equally challenging and rewarding. Each week, you bring a story to a group of people with diverse tastes, backgrounds, beliefs, and opinions. You hope that the writing you select offers something most people can connect to — or at least feel something about.
Of course, it is preferable if participants enjoy the story, or at least see its merit. But it isn’t essential. Some of the most interesting conversations are founded on a mutual distaste for a piece of writing.
Sometimes it’s more revealing to explore the reasons for a negative reaction than a positive one.
I didn’t understand this in my early years of facilitating. Back then, I often selected texts that I personally loved and tried to make participants see in them what I saw.
A Story I Thought Everyone Would Appreciate
I remember choosing The Remarkable Rocket by Oscar Wilde for one group. It is one of Wilde’s children’s stories, but like many of them, it is beautifully written and contains themes that adults can explore. I thought the story had value because it is about ego, pomposity, and self-importance.
I expected people would relate to the rocket’s anticipation of his great “going off.” I imagined participants would reflect on moments in their own lives when they had hoped for something wonderful, only for it not to go to plan.
I was hoping, in some organic way, that the discussion might even touch on a Buddhist teaching: that it is our expectations — our attachment to a particular outcome — that causes much of our misery.
What Actually Happened
What happened instead was much simpler. The participants could not get past the idea of fireworks that talked.
It felt too silly a conceit, regardless of what the fireworks were discussing. The deeper themes I had seen were inaccessible because the surface premise was too strange.
At university, you are trained to respond to figurative elements in literature. You learn to talk about what things represent rather than what they literally are. You become comfortable with metaphor.
But this is not always the case in a shared reading session.
Often, participants want something tangible first — something grounded, something they can imaginatively get their teeth into. A slice of life.
If the story had been about a group of actors discussing becoming stars, rather than a firework talking about his upcoming explosion, it might have made more sense to them.
But I loved the story. I had read and reread it many times throughout my life. I found joy in Wilde’s creativity and I loved his language.
I thought everybody would — or should — appreciate it.
When Love Becomes a Battle
Because of my attitude going into the session, it became a battle.
I thought my job was to make participants admire the writing. I defended and argued for Wilde, even when it was clear the story had left the group cold.
I said things like:
“You must have met people like the rocket before.”
“Don’t you love the writing?”
I was desperate for them to take something from it.
What I didn’t understand at the time was how much of my own identity I had invested in that story. Their critiques felt like important aspects of myself were being criticised.
Whenever we share the art we love, we expose ourselves in surprisingly vulnerable ways. We offer some sliver of our inner selves — and when we do that, there is always the possibility that others will turn away.
That can be painful.
And so we become defensive.
At least, I did.
The Core of Shared Reading
I couldn’t deal with the idea that something I loved had fallen flat in the group. I blamed the participants. I felt a sense of injustice. I set myself at odds with them.
And in doing so, I momentarily lost what should always be at the core of shared reading:
the participants’ experience.
I know now that if I select a piece of writing that is meaningful to me, I need to prepare myself for it to be ruthlessly examined.
People are different. They have different tastes, different histories, different ideas about what matters. Every group is a completely unique experience, and as facilitators we have to remain open to the feedback we receive.
It is sometimes of extreme importance that people are free to dislike stories.
Protecting the Freedom to Form an Opinion
Jane Davis, the founder of The Reader Organisation in the UK, once told a story I have never forgotten.
She spoke of working with a woman who had spent years in a domestic violence situation. Whenever the facilitator read something and asked for an opinion, the woman’s response was always:
“I don’t know.”
She had been so controlled in her relationship that she had not learned to form opinions for herself. How vital it is, then, for people like her to find spaces where they can begin to explore what they think and feel — without fear of negative consequences for honesty.
Shared reading can be such a space.
But only if facilitators do the inner work required to cultivate it.
Holding Stories Lightly
As facilitators, we need to be able to honour each response to a text — even when it feels like it desecrates something precious to us.
Or we need the self-awareness to recognise how personally important a piece of writing is, and decide not to use it in a group.
One of my favourite quotes comes from George Bernard Shaw:
“Do not do unto others as you would have done unto yourself, for they might have different tastes.”
You can read 'The Remarkable Rocket' by Oscar Wilde online on here:
For more information and inspiration from Shared Reading and our Life, the Universe & Stories blog,
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