How to read a book – Part III

Click here for Part 1 Click here for Part 2

By now you can be reasonably sure you have understood the book. However a complete understanding of a book requires the final work of criticism, the work of judging. Till now you have been following the author, keeping your eyes and mind open and your mouth shut. From now onwards you are going to present yourself and argue with the author in the third and final state of reading of which the rules are as follows.

Rule 1: You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, “I understand”, before you can say “I agree” or “I disagree” or “I suspend judgment”. To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent. Passing judgments without understanding is by far the worst disease in our intellectual circles. In fact what can be said with a fair degree of certainty is that we tend to disagree or criticize what we do not understand.

Rule 2: When you disagree, do so reasonably and not disputatiously or contentiously. There is no point in winning an argument if you know or suspect you are wrong. He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only be disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong. You have to realize that you win only by gaining knowledge, not by knocking the other fellow down. The fact of the matter is that the relatively ignorant often wrongly disagree with the relatively learned about matters exceeding their knowledge.

Rule 3: Respect the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinions by giving reasons for any critical judgment you make. Knowledge consists of opinions that can be defended, opinions for which there is evidence of one kind or the other. These three rules form the general maxims of intellectual etiquette.

If you wish to go ahead with criticism, begin with showing wherein the author is uninformed, misinformed or illogical. You can suspend your judgment if you are able to show that the author’s analysis is incomplete.

Marking, note making and writing on a book form an important part of analytical reading. It helps in keeping you awake and by writing your own reaction you remember the author’s thoughts. Reading has to be like a conversation. Your comments are what you say in the conversation between you and the author. This can be done in the following ways:

1. Underlining of major points or circling.
2. Vertical lines at the margins to emphasize statements already underlined.
3. Star, * or any other doodle, even folding corner of a page.
4. Numbers in a margin to indicate sequence of points in a developing argument.
5. Cross referencing.
6. Writing on the margins of the books, the questions you asked and the answers you got.

Many a times external help is sought to understand a book. This should only be done when some parts are unintelligible to you and that you tried your best to understand with the help of all aids within the book. The first aid to reading is the experience relevant to the book, which would include common experience which is shared by many people (relevant in reading fiction, philosophy etc.) or special experience (more relevant in understanding scientific works). One sure way of knowing whether you are putting your experience to right use is by seeing whether you can give a concrete example of a point you feel you understand. You can also take help from other books; it is usually found that reading an earlier writer helps understand newer writers.

In religious studies it is often seen that commentaries are preferred. These should be used sparingly because they need not give you correct interpretation every time and that they may also limit your understanding. More importantly, you shouldn’t read a commentary unless you have read the book itself. If you read a commentary before actually having read the book, the commentary is likely to distort your understanding. You are at the complete mercy of the commentator if you read him before reading the book.

At the highest level of reading is the idea of seeking enlightenment through reading. This is to answer the final question (of the four mentioned earlier), “What of it?” This brings us to the highest level of reading and comprehension and involves reading more than one book. This is Syntopical Reading. The first requirement is to know that more than one book is relevant to a particular question and the second requirement is to know which books are relevant, that is to make a bibliography. The first thing to do when you have amassed your bibliography is to inspect all the books on your list. You should not read any of them analytically before inspecting all of them. This will give you an idea of your subject and also help you judge which books are irrelevant, hence downsizing your bibliography. Syntopical Reading involves the following rules:

Rule 1: Find the relevant passages

In syntopical reading, it is you and your concerns that are primarily to be served, therefore read the books quickly with the sole purpose of finding the relevant passages. This can at times be done with the inspectional reading described above. However, this should be avoided as the purpose of both the readings is different (to find relevant books and to find relevant passages respectively). After reading first few books, this can definitely be done for the later books, as basic ideas would have already developed.

Rule 2: Bring the authors to terms

It is you who must establish the terms and bring authors to them rather than you coming in terms with the author. You have to impose a common language on the authors. This will help in understanding all authors.

Rule 3: Get the question clear

Frame a set of questions that shed light on your problem and to which the authors give answers. The questions must be stated in such a way and in such an order that they help you to solve the problem you started with. They are also to be framed in such a way that all the authors appear to answer them.

Rule 4: Define the issues

If the authors answer the problem in the same way, the issue has been solved through consensus. However if the authors answer in different ways the issue has been defined. The opposing answers must be ordered in relation to one another.

Rule 5: Analyze the discussion

Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject. More general issues should precede the less general ones and relations among issues should be clearly indicated.

We have completed our discussion on how to read a book. You may now purchase the original book and test your skills on it. I have summarized what exists in over 400 pages to some 12 pages and I am well aware of the injustice I have done to the book. The idea here to help those who are struggling with the topic and find a 400-page read intimidating, as it was to be when I began. The book also has discussions on approaches to different kinds of reading matter which include separate discussions on Practical Books, Imaginative Literature, Stories, Plays and Poems, History, Science and Mathematics, Philosophy and Social Science. Of these I wish to include in this paper the approaches to studying History and Current Affairs and Events, as I believe these two be most relevant in these days and times.

Most of the commentary and articles commenting on current events, the op-eds or the news debates, are filled with propaganda and are often misleading. To any such material you should ask the following five questions:

1. What does the author want to prove?
2. Whom does he want to convince?
3. What special knowledge does he assume?
4. What special knowledge does he have?
5. Does he really know what he is talking about?

If you ask these simple questions you would be able to close the doors of your brain to all propaganda and open it to genuine knowledge.

As for History, if it were placed between fiction and science, it would fall near fiction. That is not to say that a Historian makes up his facts, a good historian surely wouldn’t, but that is to say that he invariably has to add something. He must either find a general pattern in, or impose one on, events; or he must suppose that he knows why the persons in his story did the things they did. The things (intentions etc.) he supplies largely depend on his own persona; hence it is essential to recognize which way he is operating. The only way the author won’t take a position is by assuming that men don’t do things with a purpose, or the purpose if it exists, is undiscoverable – in other words, that there is no pattern in history. It is therefore very important to read as many accounts of history as one can to formulate his opinion. This forms our first rule.

History may at times be an account of things that are truly irrelevant to us. There are happenings in history of which nothing remains but a sole account by some author, e.g. Thucydides’ account of Peloponnessian War. Even then we can learn a lot of things from it. For starters we can know from it, why the things that happened after it happened the way they did. In fact, Thucydides himself says that he was writing so that men of future would not repeat the same mistakes. Thus emerges rule two, read history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.