HOW TO READ A BOOK

by Mortimer J Adler

  Here I must stop. The problem of reading the Holy Book—if you have faith that it is the Word of God—is the most difficult problem in the whole field of reading. There have been more books written about how to read Scripture than about all other aspects of the art of reading together. The Word of God is obviously the most difficult writing men can read. The effort of the faithful has been duly proportionate to the difficulty of the task. I think it would be true to say that, in the European tradition at least, the Bible is the book in more senses than one. It has been not only the most widely read but the most carefully.

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  Let me close this chapter with a brief summary of the extrinsic aids to reading. What lies beyond the book you are reading? Three things, it seems to me, which are especially relevant: experience—common or special; other books; and live discussion. The role of experience as an extrinsic factor is, I think, sufficiently clear. Other books may be of various sorts. They may be reference books, secondary books, and commentaries, or other great books, dealing with the same or with related matters.

  Following all the rules of intrinsic reading is seldom sufficient to read any book well, either interpretatively or critically. Experience and other books are indispensable extrinsic aids. In reading books with students, I am as frequently impressed by the fact that they do not employ these aids as that they do not know how to read the book by itself.

  Under the elective system, a student takes a course as if it were something quite apart.

  One course has no connec tion with another, and no course seems to have any connection with his ordinary affairs, his vital problems, his daily experience. Students who take courses this way read books in the same way. They make no effort to connect one book with another, even when they are most obviously related, or to refer what the author is saying to,.their own experience. They read about Fascism and Communism in the newspapers. They hear defenses of democracy over the radio. But it never seems to occur to most of them that the great political treatise they may be reading deals with the same problems, though the language it speaks is a little more elegant.

  Only last year Mr. Hutchins and I read a series of political works with some students. At first, they tended to read each book as if it existed in a vacuum. Despite the fact that the various authors were plainly arguing about the same thing, they did not seem to think that it was worth while to mention one book in discussing another. But the good students could make all these connections when called upon to do so. We had one of our most exciting class hours after Mr. Hutchins had asked whether Hobbes would have defended Hitler for keeping Pastor Niemoller in a concentration camp. Would Spinoza have tried to get him out? What would Locke have done, and John Stuart Mill?

  The problems of free speech and free conscience found dead authors talking about living issues. The students took sides on the Niemoller question, and so did the books-Mill against Hobbes, and Locke against Spinoza. Even if the students could not help Pastor Niemoller, his case had helped them focus the opposition of political principles in the light of their practical consequences. Students who before had seen nothing wrong with Hobbes and Spinoza now began to doubt their prior judgments.

  The utility of extrinsic reading is simply an extension of the value of context in reading a book by itself. We have seen how the context must be used to interpret words and sentences to find terms and propositions. Just as the whole book is a context for any of its parts, so related books provide an even larger context that helps you interpret the one you are reading.

  I like to think of the great books as involved in a prolonged conversation about the basic problems of mankind. The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read. As readers, they carried on a conversation with other authors, just as each of us carries on a conversation with the books we read, though we may not write other books.

  To get into this conversation, we must read the great books in relation to one another, and in an order that somehow respects chronology. The conversation of the books takes place in time. Time is of the essence here and should not be disregarded. The books can be read from the present into the past or from the past into the present., Though I think the order from past to present has certain advantages, through being more natural, the fact of chronology can be observed in either way.

  The conversational aspect of reading (the authors conversing with one another, and any reader conversing with his author) explains the third extrinsic factor I mentioned above, namely, live discussion. By live discussion, I mean no more than the actual conversation you and I may have together about a book we have read in common.

  While this is not an indispensable aid to reading, it is certainly a great help. That is why Mr. Hutchins and I conduct our course in reading books by meeting with the students to discuss them. The reader who learns to discuss a book well with other readers may come thereby to have better conversations with the author when he has him alone in his study. He may even come to appreciate better the conversation which the authors had with one another.

  PART III .

  THE REST OF THE READER'S LIFE

  [ The Other half] [ The Great Books] [ Free Minds and Free Men]

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Other half

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  this is only half a book on reading, or perhaps I should say that so far it has been concerned with only halt the reading that most people do. Even that might be too liberal an estimate. I am not so naive as to suppose that most of the reader's life will be spent in reading the great books. Probably the greater part of anybody's reading time is spent on newspapers and magazines. And so far as books are concerned, most of us read more fiction than nonfiction. True, the best-seller lists are usually divided in half: fiction and nonfiction. But although the nonfiction books often reach large audiences, their total audience is somewhat less than the audience of fiction, good and bad. Of the nonfiction books, the most popular are frequently those which, like the newspapers and magazines, deal with matters of contemporary interest.

  I have not deceived you about the rules set forth in preceding chapters. In Chapter Seven, before undertaking a detailed discussion of the rules, I explained that we wo"ld have to limit ourselves to the business of reading serious I' nonfiction books. To expound the rules for reading imaginative and expository literature at the same time would be confusing, and an adequate treatment of the reading of fiction or poetry could not be managed in less space than it took to discuss the nonfiction rules. I seemed to be faced with the choice of writing a much longer book, perhaps even another one, or ignoring half the reading people do. For the sake of clarity, I took the second alternative while writing the preceding part of this book. But now, when I consider the rest of the reader's life, I cannot ignore the other types of reading any longer. I shall try to make up for these deficiencies, even though I know that a single chapter devoted to all other kinds of reading must be inadequate.

  I would be far from frank if I let you think that lack of space was my only shortcoming.

  I must confess that I have much less competence for the task this chapter undertakes, though I might add, in extenuation, that the problem of knowing how to read imaginative literature is inherently much more difficult. Nevertheless, you may think that the need to formulate rules for reading fiction is less urgent, because more people seem to know how to read fiction and get something out of it than nonfiction.

  Observe the paradox here. On the one hand, I say that skill in reading fiction is more difficult to analyze; on the other, it seems to be a fact that such skill is more widely possessed than the art of reading science and philosophy, politics, economics, and history. It may be, of course, that people deceive themselves about their ability to read novels intelligently. If that is not the case, I think I can explain the paradox another way.

  Imaginative literature delights primarily rather than instructs. It is much easier to be delighted than instructed, but much harder to know why one is de
lighted. Beauty is more elusive, analytically, than truth.

  From my teaching experience, I know how tongue-tied people become when asked to say what they liked about a novel. That they enjoyed it is perfectly clear to them, but they cannot give much account of their enjoyment or tell what the book contained which caused them pleasure. This indicates, you may say, that people can be good readers of fiction without being good critics. I suspect this is, at best, a half-truth. A critical reading of anything depends upon the fullness of one's apprehension. Those who cannot say what they like about a novel probably have not read it below its most obvious surfaces.

  To make this last point clear would require an explicit formulation of all the rules for reading imaginative literature. Lacking both space and competence to do that, I shall offer you two short cuts. The first proceeds by the way of negation, stating the obvious

  "don'ts" instead of the constructive rules. The second proceeds by the way of analogy, briefly translating the rules for reading nonfiction into their equivalents for reading fiction. I shall use the word "fiction" to name all of imaginative literature, including lyric poetry as well as novels and plays. Lyric poetry really deserves a separate and elaborate discussion. In fact, just as in the case of expository books, where the general rules must be particularized for history, science, and philosophy, so here an adequate treatment would have to consider the special problems involved in reading the novel, the drama, and the lyric. But we shall have to be satisfied with much less.

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  In order to proceed by the way of negation, it is first of all necessary to grasp the basic differences between expository and imaginative literature. These differences will explain why we cannot read a novel as if it were a philosophical argument, or a lyric as if it were a mathematical demonstration.

  The most obvious difference, already mentioned, relates to the purposes of the two kinds of writing. Expository books aim primarily to instruct, imaginative ones to delight. The former try to convey knowledge—knowledge about experiences which the reader either has or could have. The latter try to communicate an experience itself— one which the reader can get only by reading—and if they succeed they give the reader something to be enjoyed. Because of their diverse intentions, the two sorts of work appeal differently to the intellect and the imagination.

  We experience things through the exercise of our senses and imagination. To know anything we must use our powers of judgment and reasoning, which are intellectual. I do not mean that we can think without using our imagination, or that sense experience is ever divorced from some rational reflection. The point is only one of emphasis. Fiction appeals primarily to the imagination. That is the reason tor calling it imaginative literature, in contrast to science and philosophy which are intellectual.

  We have been considering reading as an activity by which we receive communication from others. If we look a little more deeply now, we shall see that expository books do communicate what is eminently and essentially communicable—abi(rac( knowledge; whereas imaginative books try to communicate what is essentially and profoundly incommunicable—concrete experience. There is something mysterious about this. If concrete experience is really incommunicable, by what magic does the poet or novelist hope to convey to you for your enjoyment an experience which he has enjoyed?

  Before I answer this question, I must be sure that you fully realize the incommunicability of concrete experience.

  Everyone has gone through some intense emotional crisis— the quick wave of anger, prolonged anxiety about an impending disaster, the cycle of hope and despair in love.

  Have you ever tried to tell your friends about it? You can tell them all the facts without much trouble, because the outward and observable facts are matters of ordinary knowledge and can be easily communicated. But can you give them the experience itself, in all its concrete inwardness— the experience which you find difficult even to remember in its fullness and intensity? If your own memory of it is pale and fragmentary, how much more so must be the impression you are conveying by your words. As you watch the faces of your listeners, you can tell that they are not having the experience you are talking about. And you may realize then that it takes more narrative art than you possess—an art which is the distinctive possession of the great imaginative writers.

  In one sense, of course, even the greatest writer cannot communicate his own experiences. They are uniquely his through all eternity. A man can share his knowledge with Others, but he cannot share the actual pulsations of his life. Since unique and concrete experience cannot be communicated, the artist does the next best thing. He creates in the reader what he cannot convey. He uses words to produce an experience for the reader to enjoy, an experience which the reader lives through in a manner similar and proportionate to the writer's own. His language so works upon the emotions and imagination of each reader that each in turn suffers an experience he has never had before, even though memories may be evoked in the process. These new experiences, different for each reader according to his own individual nature and memories, are nevertheless alike, because they are all created according to the same model—the incommunicable experiences on which the writer draws. We are like so many instruments for him to play upon, each with its .special overtones and resonances, but the music that he plays so differently on each of us follows one and the same score. That score is written into the novel or poem. As we read it, it seems to communicate, but it really creates, an experience. That is the magic of good fiction, which creates imaginatively the similitude of an actual experience.

  I cannot substantiate what I have said by quoting a whole novel or play. I can only ask the reader to remember and dwell upon what happened to him while he was reading some fiction which moved him deeply. Did he learn facts about the world? Did he follow arguments and proofs? Or did he suffer a novel experience actually created in hi»

  imagination during the process of reading?

  I can, however, quote a few short and simple lyrics, widely familiar. The first is by Robert Herrick:

  Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

  Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

  That liquefaction of her clothes.

  Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see

  That brave vibration, each way free,

  0, how that glittering taketh me!

  The second is by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

  Music, when soft voices die,

  Vibrates in the memory-

  Odors, when sweet violets sicken,

  Live within the sense they quicken.

  Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

  Are heaped for the beloved's bed;

  And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

  Love itself shall slumber on.

  The third is by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

  Glory be to God for dappled things—

  For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow;

  For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

  All things counter, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

  With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

  He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

  Praise him.

  Different in their objects and in the complexity of the emotions told about, these lyrics work upon us in the same way. They play upon our senses directly by the music of their words, but more than that, they evoke imaginations and memories which blend into a single whole of significant experience. Each word is counted on to do its part, not only musically in the pattern of sounds but also as a command to remember or imagine. The poet has so directed our faculties that, without being aware of how it happened, we have enjoyed an experience, not of our making but of his. We have not received something from him, as we re" ceive knowledge from a scientific writer. Rather
we have suffered ourselves to be the medium of his creation. He has used words to get into our hearts and fancies and move them to an experience that reflects his own as one dream might resemble another. In fact, by some strange manner of effluence, the poet's dream is dreamed differently by each of us.

  The basic difference between expository and imaginative literature—that one instructs by communicating, whereas the other delights by recreating what cannot be communicated—leads to another difference. Because of their radically diverse aims, these two kinds of writing necessarily use language differently. The imaginative writer tries to maximize the latent ambiguities of words, thereby to gain all the richness and force that is inherent in their multiple meanings. He uses metaphors as the units of his construction just as the logical writer uses words sharpened to a single meaning. What Dante says of The Divine Comedy, that it must be read as having four distinct though related meanings, generally applies to poetry and fiction. The logic of expository writing aims at an ideal of unambiguous explicit-ness. Nothing should be left between the lines. Everything that is relevant and statable should be said as explicitly and clearly as possible. In contrast, imaginative writing relies upon what is implied rather than upon what is said. The multiplication of metaphors puts more content between the lines than in the words which compose them. The whole poem or novel says something which none of its words say or can say: it speaks the incommunicable experience it has recreated for the reader.

  Taking lyric poetry and mathematics as the ideals, or perhaps I should say the two extreme forms of imaginative and expository writing, we can see another and consequent difference between the poetical and logical dimensions of grammar. A mathematical statement is indefinitely translatable into other statements expressing the same truth. The great French scientist Poincare once said that mathematics was the art of saying the same thing in as many different ways as possible. Anyone who has watched an equation undergo the countless transformations to which it is subject will understand this. At each stage, the actual symbols may be different or in a different order, but the same mathematical relationship is being expressed. In contrast, a poetic statement is absolutely untranslatable, not only from one language to another, but within the same language from one set of words to another. You cannot say what is said by