A Question, Half a Response, and Another Question

 Should House of Danger stay on the syllabus?

I think, for this blog post, it might be necessary to first establish my personal bias. I was a kid who loved reading Choose Your Own Adventure books. I always had about three or four I would go through on a regular basis, despite the fact that I had discovered all the endings long ago. Maybe I thought they would change if I read them enough.

For this blog post, though, the question doesn't seem to rest on my particular enjoyment of the book. It's a question of the suitability and usefulness of House of Danger within the context of our class. And so yes, I loved the nostalgic feeling of picking up an old CYOA book, going through all the cheesy, strangely written, and wildly detached plots. I also liked that it was short, and took practically no time to read. But I don't think that (apart from simple practicality), the length or even personal enjoyment of a text has much bearing at all on suitability within a course (that being said, I do believe that reading books you like is certainly more educationally accessible than reading books you have no interest in).

As we have discussed in class, it's not so much the plot or narrative that is of any particular interest to us as a student within a class entitled "Truth, Lies, and Literature", so much as the structure and strictures that the book  utilizes. In addition, we have seen a slow collapse between reader and subject, and in that sense House of Danger also builds off of the previous texts that we have discussed. In this way, any CYOA book would be just about as good as another, which makes the use of House of Danger an arbitrary choice, but not necessarily a bad one.

The real question is whether or not their is a more relevant text that could express the same concepts that we extracted from reading House of Danger. And I'm not sure. On the one hand, I don't know if there is another type of fiction writing that better maximizes the "faux choice" shown in CYOA books. But this raises a potentially more important question. If what we arrive at through House of Danger is nothing more than a continuation of the thematic issues that we've dealt with all semester long, doesn't that make it somewhat redundant? It is similar to writing an essay - the last part of any analytical writing shouldn't just be a rephrasing of your thesis and proof, regardless of how interesting and enjoyable you can make it. It has to move beyond the analysis, and make a larger point. My question is: does House of Danger do that, in the context of this class?