Reading and Re-reading; Please Tell Me You Don't Find This Too Terribly Dry

I took a break from George MacDonald for a few days as I got all caught up in How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. I finally got to the chapter in Adler on "How to Read Philosophy" and was disappointed to find that it wasn't one of the more encouraging chapters. Philosophy is difficult, and isn't commonly written for non-practitioners any more.

You may remember from last week that I was really happy to find that I could understand the essays in The Truth in Jesus by George MacDonald at last. There have been further developments in that area.  I have realized something. The reason I was able to understand the first four essays/sermons in the book was not because I had become accustomed to MacDonald's way of writing as I previously suspected. It was because I had read them before, without having much if any idea of what they were about. My reading of the last two weeks had all been second (and in a few cases third or fourth) readings. Since I am committed to finishing the book this time, and since I have been so pleased with the content of the first four essays, I have had to alter my reading strategy in a way that reinforces certain recommendations provided by Adler. I have to read the essay through once, without understanding it, knowing that on second reading his sentences and meanings will become clear.

This is not something I have had much patience for in the past. During my brief stint in graduate school it was something I had no time for. Admittedly, even though I read an excerpt from Foucault's The Archeology of Knowledge many, many times for the sake of a short writing assignment, and even with the help of Doctor Young, I never did get the hang of that one. Reading and re-reading doesn't always work, but when it does, it really does.

And may I say that reading and re-reading George MacDonald is totally worth the effort! Of course it might be of more use to you if I could tell you what the essays are about. All I can say is that most of them are really amazing, and I hope to take the opportunity, now that I know how amazing they are, to go back and really study them after I've done all the marking-up I've been engaging in this time through. At the very least it would be useful for me to write a little summary of each one, something I have been neglecting to do, although a brief summary could never do them justice.

A word of encouragement: in most cases I had read MacDonald years ago, and even though I had not spent very much time at all thinking about them during the lapse, the simple fact of multiple exposure is what brought them to life. Preferably you would take the time to read them once through, rinse and repeat immediately, but even if you don't you may find your initial, seemingly fruitless, effort rewarded. I hope that I will find this true of other books of a similar nature, though I'll also admit to you that I have not found it true of Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach by Michael McKeon.