SMU wants incoming students to know How To Be Good

by John P. Meyer

A friend once touted this novel to me because she said it accurately reflected the course of her own life. (She's not a doctor.)

Now, SMU is offering up How To Be Good as the summer selection for their Common Reading Experience, geared toward first-year arriving students. As the first novel to be chosen for this purpose, that says something about the level of relevance to most people's lives that the program administrators decided it possessed.

Thematically, the novel centers on the lives of Dr. Katie Carr, her husband David and their children, who are going through some fairly trying times: Katie's fooling around with another man because she finds her husband's behavior and attitudes to be self-defeating and isolating - plus, she just doesn't love him anymore. And suddenly David claims to have gone through a spiritual transformation which changes him from a professional grouchy-fart columnist to a spiritually-awakened do-gooder who's sharing his (and his family's) house with a homeless kid. What the...?

Common Reading coordinator Diana Grumbles (a lecturer in English at SMU), who has read the book, says: "We wanted to choose a book that students actually enjoy reading." She found herself laughing during portions of the story (although she states the book is not a comedy), and finds the undercurrent of humor to be "a very positive element."

Those who read the book prior to showing up for the Rotunda Passage and Opening Convocation (an SMU new student tradition) will be in a position to engage in group discussions about the novel's themes, such as whether doing good is irrevocably tied to being good; and whether doing good in one part of one's life can make up for doing not so good in another.

Discussions of the novel's themes and the questions they raise will constitute a part of the curriculum encountered by freshmen during the 2007-2008 academic year.

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