A timely article for me. I recently read Junger's On Pain. I felt underwhelmed despite some hyping it. I skipped the supplied introduction and the translator's own separate introduction. I then read these which added historical info I was unaware of (it was written in the 1930's as Hitler had just come to power in Germany). This prompted me to seek out other views on it. I am now reading the essay for a second time with a different perspective.
So this is just to say it works with non-fiction too. If you have read some important piece and walked away baffled as to why anyone cares, perhaps getting different perspectives may help understanding and prompt a rethink.
I am currently doing this with TS Eliott's The Waste Land too.
I have a masters degree in English literature and spent many years reading synoptically. To the point it took me many many years to unlearn this and learn to find pleasure in reading. In feeling not analysing. In understanding the movement and joy of storytelling itself.
Methinks it depends on what you’re reading. I read a lot of history, national security, military affairs, and political stuff in general. When doing so, I do read syntopically.
When reading literature, I read for joy, not syntopically. For example, in English classes in high school, we went through Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, King Lear, etc. I did not enjoy them.
Later, I decided to read the classics again, and now I love them. My favorite books are The Brothers Karamazov, Dante’s Inferno, Great Expectations, and The Tempest. I have more but you get the idea.
My latest quest, among other things, is trying to read Don Quixote in its original Spanish — a work (which is really tough) in progress.
I agree. I read a lot of research in my job, and read synoptically. I think what I was saying is that when you study books academically, you are taught to read them critically. This means a very unspontaneous method of reading and after 6 years it takes a while to relearn how to read purely for pleasure. Good luck with Don Quixote!
I’ve read The Stranger by Albert Camus and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, I recently started art of war but I haven’t got the big picture yet, about two weeks after reading both books I finally got the big picture even after reading the chapter, but I’m waiting to get the picture after reading the couple chapters of art and war
I too tried and failed several times to read War and Peace. Finally I started listening to it on audible and after several hours picked up the book again and was totally absorbed.
Yes, especially a book like War and Peace. I found that I often drift into other thoughts when listening on Audible. But it is great option to get one interested in it again. Didn't think of it that way.
I had few goes and finally did it. After a while it just flows, and is often gripping. But even if sometimes you have to concentrate as with all the names, or the scene changes, it just starts to feel like something that is good for you - the scale, the details, the arcs. It's bigger than you and what you want from a book. It's fun and sometimes hard work. Also reading it starts to feel impossibly easy compared to conceiving and writing it, so it feels like we got the easy part of the deal!
I’m intrigued by the fact that apparently I can read nonfiction syntopically pretty much effortlessly (it’s pretty normal for me to string authors as far afield as Bakhtin, Polanyi and Marion together in the same discussion; my friends are very patient with me :)), but I HATE doing this kind of work on works of fiction. If I read a novel, I want to enjoy the humor, the flow of the prose, the incarnation of the characters. I guess in a novel, I want to experience something beautiful, not pick it apart with my left brain.
I have become fascinated with literacy as a mother of two littles trying to raise critical thinkers. I bought this book to help me in my journey. Hopefully this article will encourage others to not merely read this (lovely) summary, but to buy the book and tackle it accordingly :)
This sounds interesting. I just got into reading myths while also puzzling over critical thinking/subjectivity. I cant help but sense there is a connection between older simpler imperatives and our modern task of thinking, befriending enemies and not getting lazy surrounded by friends.
Funny thing about this. I've been working for a while on my novelized history of the first Russians to come to California (1806), and recently decided to tackle Война и Мир, по-русский. It's a different experience, For one thing, it's forcing me to slow down. For another, Tolstoy is even more brilliant in the original.
Syntopical reading! Yes! I do this all the time but never had a word for it before! New dimensions emerge from multiple perspectives the way depth perception appears from 3D glasses.
I also read intros and translator's prefaces. I bought a book once just because the acknowledgment section was so poignant and funny. Little surprises are often tucked into acknowledgments.
Way back when, I picked up Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut and scanned the Table of Contents. It was so bizarre, so apparently random, I felt sure it had been written during an acid trip and bore no relation to the actual book - included merely as a secret joke for those few who read Tables of Contents. Imagine my surprise when every chapter title turned out to be an accurate representation of the text therein - and it all flowed intelligibly. I would have missed that delightful surprise if I'd just plunged straight in.
“When people cannot follow arguments, they become vulnerable to slogans. When they cannot read deeply, they cannot think deeply. When they cannot think deeply, they become emotionally ruled. And when people become emotionally ruled, they become easy to control.”
This may be the most concise yet insightful indictment of where we are as a country right I've read anywhere. When huge swaths of a population start treating basic intelligence and critical thinking as “elitism", that country is ripe for authoritarian exploitation.
Nowadays, most read in order to contend. Facts are ammunition. But a book can be a companion and a friend. Increasingly, as I get older, the books I turn and return to are the ones in which I find consolation. The poems of WS Merwin are exactly that for me—words that provide solace and strength against the time of loss.
At our family home I learned how to read but by high school my reading was ablaze and one of my favorite English classes, in fact the only English class I ever enjoyed or liked, was called Understanding Man Through Literature and I couldn’t wait to go to it because it was where finally we were able to not only read our assigned books, but discuss them and not simply write a book report.
I got good at cranking those out, but talking about what we got out of what we read was superior! The teacher had style in how he led us down a path to discussions which allowed us to state understandings before prompting to delve deeper, and at times, alter course to a better realization we’d possibly missed. I still miss that class where we had a great group of students. Some I grew up with in the same neighborhood and stayed friends with most of my life. We all had a love of reading and shared this inside and out of a classroom filled with so many ideas, so many perspectives. That… to me is what philosophy was about, sharing thoughts and ideas with other deep thinkers.
For me understanding was complicated by never knowing I was born with ASD or that my brain 🧠 struggled to keep up, and I felt intelligently dumb, yet got a lot out of it all while masking confusion and secretly taming feelings. They call it high functioning, but it didn’t feel like that because ASD is slightly thought delayed. I only found out at age 69 what it was because women went undiagnosed. Kids need courses where patient intelligent teachers guide students to become critical thinkers, and it starts with reading comprehension. Remember SRA courses Los Angeles schools were using in grade schools? I attribute analyzing what I read to using their ‘at your own pace’ course. It was a large box of color coded flash cards that had you read, then state what you got out of it. Start teaching this at a young age, it truly can make a difference.
A timely article for me. I recently read Junger's On Pain. I felt underwhelmed despite some hyping it. I skipped the supplied introduction and the translator's own separate introduction. I then read these which added historical info I was unaware of (it was written in the 1930's as Hitler had just come to power in Germany). This prompted me to seek out other views on it. I am now reading the essay for a second time with a different perspective.
So this is just to say it works with non-fiction too. If you have read some important piece and walked away baffled as to why anyone cares, perhaps getting different perspectives may help understanding and prompt a rethink.
I am currently doing this with TS Eliott's The Waste Land too.
same thing also happened to me when I finally decide to read hunger games 10years++ after its released. different pov, very important 🩵🩵
Absolutely very similar lessons to the great classics like 1984.
Wow. This is enlightening. Thank you! I now have a new approach to my favorite pastime of reading.
I have a masters degree in English literature and spent many years reading synoptically. To the point it took me many many years to unlearn this and learn to find pleasure in reading. In feeling not analysing. In understanding the movement and joy of storytelling itself.
You make a great point.
Methinks it depends on what you’re reading. I read a lot of history, national security, military affairs, and political stuff in general. When doing so, I do read syntopically.
When reading literature, I read for joy, not syntopically. For example, in English classes in high school, we went through Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, King Lear, etc. I did not enjoy them.
Later, I decided to read the classics again, and now I love them. My favorite books are The Brothers Karamazov, Dante’s Inferno, Great Expectations, and The Tempest. I have more but you get the idea.
My latest quest, among other things, is trying to read Don Quixote in its original Spanish — a work (which is really tough) in progress.
I agree. I read a lot of research in my job, and read synoptically. I think what I was saying is that when you study books academically, you are taught to read them critically. This means a very unspontaneous method of reading and after 6 years it takes a while to relearn how to read purely for pleasure. Good luck with Don Quixote!
I’ve read The Stranger by Albert Camus and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, I recently started art of war but I haven’t got the big picture yet, about two weeks after reading both books I finally got the big picture even after reading the chapter, but I’m waiting to get the picture after reading the couple chapters of art and war
I too tried and failed several times to read War and Peace. Finally I started listening to it on audible and after several hours picked up the book again and was totally absorbed.
Yes, especially a book like War and Peace. I found that I often drift into other thoughts when listening on Audible. But it is great option to get one interested in it again. Didn't think of it that way.
I had few goes and finally did it. After a while it just flows, and is often gripping. But even if sometimes you have to concentrate as with all the names, or the scene changes, it just starts to feel like something that is good for you - the scale, the details, the arcs. It's bigger than you and what you want from a book. It's fun and sometimes hard work. Also reading it starts to feel impossibly easy compared to conceiving and writing it, so it feels like we got the easy part of the deal!
I’m intrigued by the fact that apparently I can read nonfiction syntopically pretty much effortlessly (it’s pretty normal for me to string authors as far afield as Bakhtin, Polanyi and Marion together in the same discussion; my friends are very patient with me :)), but I HATE doing this kind of work on works of fiction. If I read a novel, I want to enjoy the humor, the flow of the prose, the incarnation of the characters. I guess in a novel, I want to experience something beautiful, not pick it apart with my left brain.
I gotta let my hair down somewhere, I guess.
Good point. This is ideal for deep reading especially works that are making philosophical insights.
I have become fascinated with literacy as a mother of two littles trying to raise critical thinkers. I bought this book to help me in my journey. Hopefully this article will encourage others to not merely read this (lovely) summary, but to buy the book and tackle it accordingly :)
Yes. Definitely worth reading.
This sounds interesting. I just got into reading myths while also puzzling over critical thinking/subjectivity. I cant help but sense there is a connection between older simpler imperatives and our modern task of thinking, befriending enemies and not getting lazy surrounded by friends.
Funny thing about this. I've been working for a while on my novelized history of the first Russians to come to California (1806), and recently decided to tackle Война и Мир, по-русский. It's a different experience, For one thing, it's forcing me to slow down. For another, Tolstoy is even more brilliant in the original.
Excellent essay. It is disconcerting that we are getting further away from developing this skill
Thank you, the four levels of reading are very interesting, I will keep it as a Bible. Love this post.
Syntopical reading! Yes! I do this all the time but never had a word for it before! New dimensions emerge from multiple perspectives the way depth perception appears from 3D glasses.
I also read intros and translator's prefaces. I bought a book once just because the acknowledgment section was so poignant and funny. Little surprises are often tucked into acknowledgments.
Way back when, I picked up Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut and scanned the Table of Contents. It was so bizarre, so apparently random, I felt sure it had been written during an acid trip and bore no relation to the actual book - included merely as a secret joke for those few who read Tables of Contents. Imagine my surprise when every chapter title turned out to be an accurate representation of the text therein - and it all flowed intelligibly. I would have missed that delightful surprise if I'd just plunged straight in.
Agreed!
Immersion. When you enter the world of the book and are unaware that you are reading it.
I’m reading Les Miserables and I’m going to read it differently after reading this amazing post. TY so much!
Let us know how it goes.
I definitely will!
“When people cannot follow arguments, they become vulnerable to slogans. When they cannot read deeply, they cannot think deeply. When they cannot think deeply, they become emotionally ruled. And when people become emotionally ruled, they become easy to control.”
This may be the most concise yet insightful indictment of where we are as a country right I've read anywhere. When huge swaths of a population start treating basic intelligence and critical thinking as “elitism", that country is ripe for authoritarian exploitation.
Nowadays, most read in order to contend. Facts are ammunition. But a book can be a companion and a friend. Increasingly, as I get older, the books I turn and return to are the ones in which I find consolation. The poems of WS Merwin are exactly that for me—words that provide solace and strength against the time of loss.
💯
At our family home I learned how to read but by high school my reading was ablaze and one of my favorite English classes, in fact the only English class I ever enjoyed or liked, was called Understanding Man Through Literature and I couldn’t wait to go to it because it was where finally we were able to not only read our assigned books, but discuss them and not simply write a book report.
I got good at cranking those out, but talking about what we got out of what we read was superior! The teacher had style in how he led us down a path to discussions which allowed us to state understandings before prompting to delve deeper, and at times, alter course to a better realization we’d possibly missed. I still miss that class where we had a great group of students. Some I grew up with in the same neighborhood and stayed friends with most of my life. We all had a love of reading and shared this inside and out of a classroom filled with so many ideas, so many perspectives. That… to me is what philosophy was about, sharing thoughts and ideas with other deep thinkers.
For me understanding was complicated by never knowing I was born with ASD or that my brain 🧠 struggled to keep up, and I felt intelligently dumb, yet got a lot out of it all while masking confusion and secretly taming feelings. They call it high functioning, but it didn’t feel like that because ASD is slightly thought delayed. I only found out at age 69 what it was because women went undiagnosed. Kids need courses where patient intelligent teachers guide students to become critical thinkers, and it starts with reading comprehension. Remember SRA courses Los Angeles schools were using in grade schools? I attribute analyzing what I read to using their ‘at your own pace’ course. It was a large box of color coded flash cards that had you read, then state what you got out of it. Start teaching this at a young age, it truly can make a difference.
One of the best articles on this platform. And, dare I say, the same series of filters can be applied to any art form.