A New Study Guide? Let's Check Its Homework. (2024)

I was duly chagrined when my editor approached with a suggestion to write about these cheeky new book notes, just in print this spring after Barnes & Noble purchased them in March 2001. SparkNotes is now the store's exclusive study guide series. My immediate thought: Barnes & Noble probably paid a whole lot of cash for SparkNotes. Those guys across the hall were serious.

The book-selling chain no longer carries the CliffsNotes series, the old standby that has been published since 1958 and whose bumblebee stripes are an American icon. Another traditional series, Monarch Notes, is no longer available at stores -- it was licensed by Barnes & Noble, which purchased SparkNotes when the Monarch license ran out, according to Kitt Allan, director of consumer and general interest marketing for J.W. Wiley, which owns both CliffsNotes and Monarch Notes.

Now that there are only two print competitors in the book notes arena (several Web sites offer online notes), I set out to compare them. Accepting the fact that some students will buy literary guides to use as shortcuts to actual in-depth reading, would they be better off with $4.99 SparkNotes or $5.99 CliffsNotes?

The new SparkNotes print editions proclaim on every cover: "Smarter Better Faster." A redesigned Cliffs counters with: "Fast Trusted Proven." And "The Best Just Got Better." And "Over 300 titles available and 100 million sold!" Despite the claims, the series are not put together very differently: Both contain summaries of each chapter or scene, followed by detailed analysis. They discuss themes, characters and important quotations in separate sections.

CliffsNotes are written by grad students or professors; SparkNotes are written by students or recent graduates.

SparkNotes editorial director Justin Kestler says 50 titles are on shelves now, and a hundred more should be released this summer. On its Web site, Spark has more than 800 volumes -- including guides to science, math, history and test preparation. "I think they're better than anything out there," Kestler says. "We've produced all these guides from scratch -- by people who know how these books are being taught or read."

That's not convincing to Allan, the J.W. Wiley spokeswoman. "I think that's kind of a shocking claim," she says. "Cliffs are being written by teachers. I find it hard to believe that students know more than teachers, people who have experience teaching the title." Allan also says the content of the top 75 CliffsNotes titles was "refreshed" about two years ago. There are about 740 CliffNotes titles, with about 300 literature guides available both in print and for Internet download.

With nothing settled, I turned to the guides themselves, choosing two of my favorite works for the comparison: Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

Here's a litmus test: If a PowerPoint-style "character map" is important to you, go with Cliffs. If you can figure out on your own that Romeo and Juliet are in "love" while Capulet and Montague are "feuding," perhaps you'll be all right with SparkNotes, which do without that particular page. But a plague on those who presume to rely on the "character map" for literary comprehension; the two I looked at don't seem necessary additions to the guides' character summaries and essays on main characters.

There are other purely structural differences between the two series: Spark is definitely faster -- 66 pages compared with Cliffs' 110 for "Romeo and Juliet." In the added space, Cliffs has a glossary for each chapter and two "critical essays." A glossary for reading Shakespeare is certainly useful; of course, many students will already be reading an annotated copy. For those who aren't reading the book simultaneously with the guide, the glossaries are useless. The essays are good examples of what students are required to write for tests, but the one on Baz Luhrmann's film version of "Romeo and Juliet" doesn't exactly help explain the text.

The other major structural difference is that Spark sets its themes and character analyses in separate sections preceding the summary and analyses of the text, while Cliffs marks these elements within the text analyses with icons in the margin. I prefer the Spark method: After reading about a given theme three times, you're likely to remember it.

The best thing about SparkNotes' "Romeo and Juliet" is the author's obvious enthrallment with the text: "One must ascribe Romeo's development at least in part to Juliet; her level-headed observations, such as the one about Romeo's kissing, seem just the thing to snap Romeo from his superficial idea of love, and to inspire him to begin to speak some of the most beautiful and intense love poetry ever written." If I were a student who hadn't read the play yet, the SparkNotes might inspire me to do so.

The Spark version speaks with a wittier voice than the Cliffs for "Romeo and Juliet": "Romeo's deep capacity for love is merely a part of his larger capacity for intense feeling of all kind. Put another way, it is possible to describe Romeo as lacking capacity for moderation."

Perhaps, as a newer guide, Spark is less worked over. Take as an example the guides' descriptions of Mercutio. First, Cliffs:

His name comes from the word mercury, the element which indicates his quick temper. Mercutio is bawdy, talkative, and tries to tease Romeo out of his melancholy frame of mind. He accepts Tybalt's challenge to defend Romeo's honor and is killed, thus precipitating Romeo's enraged reaction during which Romeo kills Tybalt.

How dry. The emphasis is on the plot, vs. Spark, which emphasizes themes:

Mercutio overflows with imagination, wit, and, at times, a strange, biting satire and brooding fervor. Mercutio loves wordplay, especially sexual double entendres. He can be quite hotheaded, and hates those who are fashionable and polite for social acceptance. He finds Romeo's romanticized ideas about love tiresome.

But the SparkNotes writers do come off as a little too pleased with themselves: "Though he is capable of the most intense love, Romeo is no mere pretty-boy: he proves himself to be a fine swordsman in the course of the play." Whoever wrote that just wanted to use the phrase "pretty-boy"; the swordsmanship is irrelevant to the play.

But the most crucial difference between the two "Romeo and Juliet" guides is interpretation. They describe two different Lady Capulets, for example. "A woman who herself married young . . . she is eager to see her daughter marry Paris. She is an ineffectual mother, relying on the Nurse for moral and pragmatic support." That was SparkNotes; here's Cliffs: "Lady Capulet is vengeful and she demands Romeo's death for killing Tybalt. In her relationship with Juliet, she is cold and distant, expecting Juliet to obey her father and marry Paris." So, is she ineffectual or cold? I turned to the play, which indeed proved subject to interpretation.

What, then, is the responsibility of a scholar writing a study guide for wide release? I think it's to present a wide range of credible interpretations, rather than arguing for just one. For "Romeo and Juliet," the Cliffs author seems to be advancing just one interpretation -- economic, with Juliet as chattel traded by her parents for greater wealth and power. I prefer Spark's approach -- offering a menu of theories and not allowing one to dominate.

The "Romeo and Juliet" CliffsNotes also hammer you over the head with interesting, but unessential, facts. An example: "Romeo woefully bemoans his plight as an unrequited, Petrarchan lover." It sounds like the character Romeo is actually aware he's a "Petrarchan lover," but that is purely a scholarly observation. Cliffs explains this connection twice within 11 pages, raising the question of why students struggling to grasp the meaning of a play, or even its basic outline, should care about Petrarch. They presumably bought the study guide to avoid such confusing asides.

The Spark asides, on the other hand, explain concepts that are quite important to understanding the verse. The definition of the word "pun" in the context of Mercutio's Queen Mab speech is a good example: "A pun represents a slippage, or twist, in the meaning of a word. That word, which previously meant one thing, now suddenly is revealed to have additional interpretations, and therefore becomes ambiguous." That sort of explanation could help a student give an informed answer to a question about puns on a test or use the word properly during classroom discussion.

Moving on to "Pride and Prejudice," I was surprised to find the qualities of the series had traded places -- the CliffsNotes version helps readers perform a close reading of the text, with analysis of Austen's dialogue and language. It also includes an excellent explanation of what irony is and how Austen uses it. The section analysis is insightful and repetitive in terms of the themes of the novel, thus a helpful learning tool.

The SparkNotes version is comparatively less useful. It omits the level of interpretative detail included in the CliffsNotes. Take the two guides' explanations of Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley's marriage.

First, the SparkNotes: "Jane and Bingley exhibit to the reader true love unhampered by either pride or prejudice, though in their simple goodness, they also demonstrate that such a love is mildly dull."

But it's not as simple as a dull marriage, according to the CliffsNotes: "Their relationship, while pleasant, is not marked by the range of emotions that Elizabeth and Darcy feel for one another. Her marriage, then, is favorable because she and Bingley married for love and are compatible, but it is not quite the ideal because it lacks the depth found in Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage."

I could continue to nitpick about these guides. Each had significant flaws, and they present the best reason yet for students to read the book. Students could read both guides, just in case, and would then be very well prepared for class. The SparkNotes guides probably work well for more advanced students, as they gloss over details and tend to be written in a more sophisticated style, while CliffsNotes probably are better for younger students who need more repetitive detail.

Either way, a crutch, a crutch. You'll be fortune's fool to rely on these! Beware.

CliffsNotes has been saving students since 1958. Now SparkNotes is making waves.