How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [149]
STEP 1 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: FINDING THE RELEvANT
PASSAGES. Since we are of course assuming that you know how to read analytically, we are assuming that you could read each of the relevant books thoroughly if you wanted to. But that would be to place the individual books first in the order of your priorities, and your problem second. In fact, the order is reversed. In syntopical reading, it is you and your concerns that are primarily to be served, not the books that you read.
Hence the first step at this level of reading is another inThe Fourth Level of Reading: Syntopical Reading 31 7
spection of the whole works that you have identified as relevant. Your aim is to find the passages in the books that are most germane to your needs. It is unlikely that the whole of any of the books is directly on the subject you have chosen or that is troubling you. Even if this is so, as it very rarely is, you should read the book quickly. You do not want to lose sight of the fact that you are reading it for an ulterior purposenamely, for the light it may throw on your own problem-not for its own sake.
It might seem that this step could be taken concurrently with the previously described inspection of the book, the purpose of which was to discover whether the book was at al relevant to your concerns. In many cases, that is so. But it is unwise to consider that this is always possible. Remember that one of the aims of your first inspection of the book was to zero in on the subejct matter of your syntopical reading project. We have said that an adequate understanding of the problem is not always available until you have inspected many of the books on your original list. Therefore, to try to identify the relevant passages at the same time that you identify the relevant books is often perilous. Unless you are very skillful, or already quite familiar with your subject, you had better treat the two steps as separate.
What is important here is to recognize the diHerence between the first books that you read in the course of syntopical reading, and those that you come to after you have read many others on the subject. In the case of the later books, you probably already have a fairly clear idea of your problem, and in that case the two steps can coalesce. But at the beginning, they should be kept rigorously separated. Otherwise, you are likely to make serious mistakes in identifying the relevant passages, mistakes that will have to be corrected later with a consequent waste of time and effort.
Above all, remember that your task is not so much to achieve an overall understanding of the particular book before you as to find ou! how it can be useful to you in a connection 318 HOW TO READ A BOOK
that may be very far from the authors own purpose in writing it. That does not matter at this stage of the proceedings. The author can help you to solve your own problem without having intended to. In syntopical reading, as we have noted, the books that are read serve you, not the other way around. In this sense, syntopical reading is the most active reading you can do.
Analytical reading is also active, of course. But when you read a book analytically, you put yourseH in a relation to it of disciple to master. When you read syntopically, you must be the master of the situation.
Because this is so, you must go about the business of coming to terms with your authors in a somewhat different way than before.
STEP 2 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: BRINGING THE AUTHORS TO
TERMS. In interpretive reading ( the second stage of analytical reading ) the first rule requires you to come to terms with the author, which means identifying his key words and discovering how he uses them. But now you are faced with a number of different authors, and it is unlikely that they will have all used the same words, or even the same terms. Thus it is you who must establish the terms, and bring your authors to