How to Read a Book, Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Inspectional Reading

Adler and Van Doren begin by calling this the "true level of reading". I tend to agree and I think it's even more prevalent and important than they make it. Very often, my reading of a book or article is entirely an inspection. I want to know what the author's point is, what sources are used, how the argument is organized, who the author is agreeing or disagreeing with, and why it matters. These are some of the main questions that inform a historiography, which is often about an idea or set of ideas rather than a particular author's sources, examples, and narratives.

On the other hand, I often find the particulars of a book very valuable. The names, places, and events can be extremely interesting and can suggest new lines of research for me. I often find both details and sources in texts that I inspect, that I will pursue for entirely different purposes than the author used them. This is one of the most valuable aspects of having a note-making system that allows robust linking.

The authors describe two stages of inspectional reading. The first they call "skimming" or "pre-reading", which they describe as a way to determine whether you even want to spend any time with the book. This is the type of thing you could do in a relaxed bookstore. Sit down with the book briefly and check its preface, table of contents, index (if there is one), and publisher's blurbs. They say check the title page, which I suppose could be valuable if you had a lot of confidence in particular publishers or if you wanted to know when the book came out (which could be relevant). These are all the types of things I do when I've first heard of a book (noticed it in a footnote or a bibliography, or someone mentions it in conversation). It used to be possible to "Look Inside" books on Amazon, which would often allow you to see the contents and index. If glancing at those element gives me a favorable impression, I usually ask my interlibrary loan folks to get me a copy.

When the ILL copy arrives, I typically check it a little more closely. I'll read the introduction and the conclusion quickly, and flip through the rest to see if I want to read it immediately or try to buy a used copy. Often, I buy the books that look really useful and then spend more time with them than I'm typically able to do with an ILL book I have to give back soon. On the other hand, because I have to give it back, I sometimes get through the less interesting books more quickly. But usually at a purely inspectional level. There is a point, though, where I think inspection and syntopical reading are not that far apart. I'll have more to say about that when we get to that final level.

The authors call the second stage of inspectional reading "superficial reading". They advise, "In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away." I didn't love this advice when I read it (they had even italicized the sentence I quoted). Even when I try to imagine that the types of texts they are talking about are things like the Great Books of the Western World, I am not convinced I'm the type of passive vessel waiting to be filled that they seem to be picturing. I understand and agree with their point about how unpleasant it can be to read Hamlet with a dictionary or a set of scholarly annotations distracting you after every line. But I'm not sure I'd enjoy Finnegan's Wake if I tried to just put my head down and power through it with no guide! They continue to an example about how a reader who tries to "master the fine points" of every page of The Wealth of Nations "will miss the big points that Smith makes so clearly". I'm not sure I agree, although I can see a potential issue if a book is excessively complex and goes off on a lot of tangential "side-quests" that don't support the author's main argument.

Discussing reading speeds, Adler and Van Doren suggest that a reader gets a sense of how quickly to read and that there is tremendous variation between books and even within a single volume. Some books only deserve to be skimmed, they say. And even in good, difficult books, there is plenty of "interstitial material that can be and should be read quickly". I think this point proves my previous argument that the reader's goals and interests when picking up a book are the keys to how it should be read. They then digress for a bit into an argument about (and with) the practice of speed-reading, which was a popular fad in 1972 when they revised Adler's original book. For me this was "interstitial", so I ignored it.

They give another example of the Declaration of Independence, suggesting that the "facts" Jefferson used to support his statements in the first two paragraphs aren't really important "unless, of course, you are a scholar concerned with the historical circumstances in which he wrote." Although I am such a scholar, I disagree for a slightly different reason. I think the examples Jefferson cites provide important context that allows the reader to better judge the content of the parts we're typically expected to read carefully and slowly. They seem to be saying "move along folks, nothing to see here" about elements of the Declaration that might cause us to think more deeply about the famous portion (if not actually question it). Jefferson says "all men are created equal", but he also complains of "merciless Indian Savages" inhabiting "our frontiers", whom he accuses the British of inciting to attack the colonies. That he apparently couldn't imagine the natives as actually created equal with an unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness ought to say something relevant about those lofty ideals. In this case, it's not important if the later complaints were penned by another hand, the "author" can be one or many people but the meaning of the text is the meaning of the text. I'm not so much saying Adler and Van Doren were trying to prevent readers from coming to grips with the unresolved issues of American history illustrated in this example. But I am suggesting that the idea that there's a "message" in these foundational texts and they know what it is and our job is to find out, is flawed. Too deterministic, too hierarchical, too supportive of a master narrative that needs to be challenged so truth can be appreciated in its complexity.

But to return to their theme, I agree that a book should be read as quickly or slowly as "it deserves", with the qualification that the reader's interests are also a very relevant factor. In the first page of the next chapter they will address this, so maybe I'm being a bit impatient.