The first rule of
analytical reading is that you must know what kind of book you are
reading.
Are you reading a
novel, a play, or is it some sort of expository work – a book that
conveys knowledge?
This sounds simple
but it’s not. For example, is Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint
a work of fiction or a psychoanalytical study? Is Gone with the Wind
a romance or history of the south?
Any book that
consists primarily of opinions, theories, hypotheses, or
speculations, for which the claim is made more or less explicitly
that they are true in some sense, conveys knowledge in this meaning
of knowledge and is an expository work.
The goal is more
nuanced than distinguishing fiction from nonfiction, because there
are various kinds of expository books.
It is not merely a
question of knowing which books are primarily instructive, but also
which are instructive in a particular way. The kinds of information
or enlightenment that a history and a philosophical work afford are
not the same. The problems dealt with by a book on physics and one on
morals are not the same, nor are the methods the writers employ in
solving such different problems.
The best way to do
this is through inspectional reading.
| Microsoft Surface Book 2 HNQ-00001 Detachable 2-IN-1 Business Laptop |
Practical vs. Theoretical Books
One of the things we
need to focus on is the distinction between practical and theoretical
works. While we all use these words not all of us understand the
meaning.
The practical has to
do with what works in some way, at once or in the long run. The
theoretical concerns something to be seen or understood. If we polish
the rough truth that is here being grasped, we come to the
distinction between knowledge and action as the two ends a writer may
have in mind.
But, you may say, in
dealing with expository books, are we not dealing with books that
convey knowledge? How does action come into it? The answer, of
course, is that intelligent action depends on knowledge.
Books only
interested in conveying knowledge itself limit themselves to one type
of communication and leave the rest to others. Others, it can be
said, have an interest beyond knowledge for the sake of knowledge and
concern themselves with problems that knowledge can solve.
Making knowledge
useful involves the transformation of knowing that and knowing how.
Theoretical books
teach you that something is the case. Practical books teach you how
to do something you want to do or think you should do.
Practical books will
tell you how something should be done along with an argument for the
right way of doing something. A theoretical book, in contrast, will
argue that something “is” true.
Blueprints
Every book has
structure. This leads us to the second and third rules for analytical
reading.
The second rule of
analytical reading is state the unity of the whole book in a single
sentence, or at most a few sentences (a short paragraph).
This means that you
must say what the whole book is about as briefly as possible.
The third rule is to
set forth the major parts of the book, and show how these are
organized into a whole, by being ordered to one another and to the
unity of the whole.
The reason for this
rule should be obvious. If a work of art were absolutely simple, it
would, of course, have no parts. But that is never the case. None of
the sensible, physical things man knows is simple in this absolute
way, nor is any human production. They are all complex unities. You
have not grasped a complex unity if all you know about it is how it
is one. You must also know how it is many, not a many that consists
of a lot of separate things, but an organized many.
There is a
difference between a heap of bricks, on the one hand, and the single
house they can constitute, on the other. There is a difference
between a single house and a collection of houses. A book is like a
single house. It is a mansion having many rooms, rooms on different
levels, of different sizes and shapes, with different outlooks, with
different uses. The rooms are independent, in part. Each has its own
structure and interior decoration. But they are not absolutely
independent and separate. They are connected by doors and arches, by
corridors and stairways, by what architects call a “traffic
pattern.” Because they are connected, the partial function that
each performs contributes its share to the usefulness of the whole
house. Otherwise the house would not be livable.
The analogy is
almost perfect. A good book, like a good house, is an orderly
arrangement of parts. Each major part has a certain amount of
independence. … As houses are more or less livable, so books are
more or less readable.
The best books,
Adler argues, are those that have the most intelligible structure.
Though they are
usually more complex than poorer books, their greater complexity is
also a greater simplicity, because their parts are better organized,
more unified.
How important is it
to determine the structure of a book?
We think very
important. Another way of saying this is to say that Rule 2— the
requirement that you state the unity of a book— cannot be
effectively followed without obeying Rule 3— the requirement that
you state the parts that make up that unity.
A very simple
example will show what we mean. A two-year-old child, just having
begun to talk, might say that “two plus two is four.”
Objectively, this is a true statement; but we would be wrong to
conclude from it that the child knew much mathematics. In fact, the
child probably would not know what the statement meant, and so,
although the statement by itself was adequate, we would have to say
that the child still needed training in the subject. Similarly, you
might be right in your guess about a book’s main theme or point,
but you still need to go through the exercise of showing how and why
you stated it as you did.
If these rules seem
like they could also apply to writing, they can. “Writing and
reading are reciprocal, as are teaching and being taught.” While
the rules can work for both, the roles are not the same. Readers try
to uncover the skeleton of the book. The author starts with the
skeleton and covers it up, say, by putting meat around the bones.
The fourth rule of
analytical reading is to find out what the authors problems were.
The author of a book
starts with a question or a set of questions. The book ostensibly
contains the answer or answers. The writer may or may not tell you
what the questions were as well as give you the answers that are the
fruits of his work. Whether he does or does not, and especially if he
does not, it is your task as a reader to formulate the questions as
precisely as you can. You should be able to state the main question
that the book tries to answer, and you should be able to state the
subordinate questions if the main question is complex and has many
parts.
This doesn’t mean
you need to go into what the critics call, the intentional fallacy.
That is, thinking that you can discover what the author was thinking
as he wrote the book. Commonly this applies to literary works. An
example of this would be trying to psychoanalyze Shakespeare from
Hamlet. There is a big difference between trying to figure out what
questions the author set out to answer and trying to determine what
they were thinking at the time of writing.
How do you Find What
a Book is About?
1. Classify the
book according to kind and subject matter.
2. State what
the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
3. Enumerate its
major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as
you have outlined the whole.
4. Define the
problem or problems the author is trying to solve.