Riding the Ponies

Nothing once aroused the wrath of a literature professor more than the abbreviated, handy-dandy "study guide" to the works of great writers. Teachers complained that students unblushingly used these ponies, or trots, to pass a course without reading the assigned novels and plays -- and often without bothering to attend class either. Only two years ago, Purdue's English Professor Maurice Beebe insisted: "I wouldn't allow my students to use a study guide to Judgment Day written by St. Peter himself." Since then, Beebe has written two trots, and dozens of other top scholars are now turning them out. Their reasoning seems to be that if they cannot outrun the ponies, they may as well ride them.

This turnabout in attitude stems from the ubiquity of the guides. "When I was in college, you had to hide in the toilet to read those things," recalls Jane Ferrar, wife of a Columbia English instructor, and a freelance writer of trots under the nom de plume of Jane Wexford. But students now carry them everywhere, college bookstores display them, and 15 million are sold annually. "As long as students will use study guides," argues Beebe now, "we may as well do our best to make sure that they are using good guides that are carefully prepared, accurate and thorough."

Successful Stable. The guides generally provide a synopsis of the plot and the most commonly accepted interpretations of the characters, action and meaning of the work. In effect, they are a commercialized version of the old fraternity files of crib sheets on courses, compiled by students who attended class regularly and took notes for their less conscientious brethren. Probably the most successful of the pony stables in attracting academic talent is Educational Research Associates Inc.,* a West Pittston, Pa., firm headed by former High School Teacher Paul Stark. He argues that students do need up-to-date, soundly based guides because "many teachers have not introduced a new thought in their courses from the time they received tenure."

In 1965, when Stark first solicited professors with solid reputations, he found that "I might as well have asked somebody to write a book saying Communism is good for you." Within a year, a few teachers had succumbed to his arguments, and he now has some 60 authors and editors under contract. Half of them are full professors, 14 head departments in their schools, eleven also edit scholarly journals. Among them are Dostoevsky Scholar Edward Wasiolek, head of the University of Chicago's comparative-literature program, and Milton Specialist John T. Shawcross of the University of Wisconsin.

Beyond the Teacher. Another scholarly convert to trots is Dante Expert Aldo Bernardo, humanities chairman of S.U.N.Y.'s Binghamton campus, who once considered it criminal to read The Divine Comedy in anything but the original. "If the kids have to be exposed to an interpretation of this stuff," he explains now, "it had just as well be mine." Actually, as Beebe sees it, some of the opposition has come from teachers' fear that the guides "may put into the hands of the students more information about a given work than the teacher knows himself." Since many of the new guides do that, it is easy to understand their popularity.

* Other leading firms are Monarch Press, Study Master and Cliff's Notes, which is currently being sued by Random House and the heirs of William Faulkner on the claim that summarizing his works violates copyright laws.

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