Chapter 9 Chapter 7 Perspective on a Book

Every book has its own set of skeletons under its cover.As an analytical reader, it is your responsibility to find this skeleton. When a book appears in front of you, the muscles are wrapped around the bones, and the clothes are wrapped around the muscles, which can be said to come in full dress.You don't have to undress it, or tear off its muscles, to get the skeleton under the soft skin.But you must look at this book with a pair of X-ray perspective eyes, because that is the basis for you to understand a book and grasp its skeleton. Knowing that mastering the structure of a book is absolutely necessary leads you to discover the second and third rules of reading any book.We said "any book".These rules apply to books of poetry as well as to books of science, or any kind of expository work.Of course, these rules apply differently depending on the book.A novel and a book of political discourse have a different overall structure, different chapters, and a different order.However, any book worth reading will have an overall and organizational structure.Otherwise the book will appear cluttered and unreadable at all.And that's what bad books are.

We will describe these two rules as simply as possible.Then we will illustrate and explain. The second rule of analytical reading is: Use a single sentence, or at most a few sentences (a small block of text), to describe the entire book. This means that you try to state briefly what the whole book is about.Saying what the whole book is doing is not the same as saying what genre the book is (as explained in Rule 1). The word "what" can be misleading.In a way, every book has a theme of "what to do", and the whole book is developed on this theme.If you know, you understand what kind of book this is.But "what to do" has another level of meaning, which is a more colloquial meaning.We ask what a person does, what he wants to do, etc.Therefore, we can also guess what an author wants to do and what he wants to do.To find out what a book is about is to discover its theme or focus.

A book is a work of art. (Again, we remind you not to think of "art" too narrowly. We don't want to, and we're not just emphasizing, "pure art." A book is the finished product of a man of special skill who creates books, and we are benefiting from one of them here.) From the standpoint that a book is a work of art, in addition to the exquisite appearance of the book, correspondingly, it should have a more perfect and permeable quality. of the overall content.This principle applies to music or art, novels or plays, and books that convey knowledge are no exception.

For the matter of "overall content", it is not enough to just have a vague understanding, you must have a clear and clear understanding.There is only one way to know if you are successful.You must be able to tell yourself, or someone else, what this whole book is about in a few sentences. (If you have to say too much, it means that you have not seen the whole content clearly, but only saw the variety content.) Don't be satisfied with the "feeling whole", but you can't say it yourself.If a reader says, "I know what this book is about, but I can't say it," he probably won't be able to fool himself.

The third rule can be said to be: List the important chapters in the book and explain how they form an overall structure in order. The reason for this rule is obvious.If a work of art were absolutely simple, it would certainly have no components.But that never could have existed.There is no substance known to man, or any product of man, that is absolutely simple.Everything is a complex composition.When you look at a complex thing composed of a whole, if you only see the appearance of "how to present one", then you have not grasped the essence. You must also understand the appearance of "how to present multiple"—but not separate , the "pluralities" that are not related to each other, but the "plurality" that fuse with each other to form an organism.If there is no organic connection between the various parts of the composition, it will certainly not form a whole.Strictly speaking, there is no whole at all, just a collection.

It's like a pile of bricks, and it's different from a house built of bricks.And a single house is not the same as a whole group of houses.A book is like a single house.It was a mansion, with many rooms, and rooms on each floor, with different sizes and shapes, different appearances, and different uses.The rooms are independent and detached.Each room has its own architecture and decoration design, but it is not completely independent and separated.The rooms are linked together by doors, arches, corridors, and stairs in what the architects call a "traffic pattern."Because these structures are interconnected, each part contributes its own strength to the overall usability.Otherwise, the house is uninhabitable.

This analogy is almost perfect.A good book is like a good house, every part must be arranged in an orderly manner.Each important part should have some independence.As we can see, each single part has its own interior structure, and the way of decoration may be different from other parts.But it must be connected with other parts - this is related to function - otherwise this part will not be able to make any contribution to the overall intelligent architecture. Just as a house can be more or less lived in, so a book can be more or less read.The most readable work is the author who has achieved the most architecturally complete overall structure.The best books have the wisest structures.Though they are often more complex than lesser books, their complexity is also a simplicity, for their parts are better organized and more unified.

This is one of the reasons why the best books are also the most readable books.For relatively inferior works, there will really be more troubles when reading.But to read these books well—as well as they are worth—you have to find out in them their plan, and these books might have been better if the authors themselves had made the plan clearer.But as long as it is generally acceptable, as long as the content is not only a collection, but also a certain degree of overall combination, then there must be an architectural plan, and you must find it out. ※ Structure and planning: describe the general idea of ​​the whole book

Let's go back to the second rule, which requires you to state the gist of the entire book.A little more explanation of the application of this rule may help you to actually use this technique. Let's start with one of the most famous examples!You probably heard Homer's Odyssey in school.If not, you must have heard the story of Odyssey—or Ulysses, as the Romans called him.It took a decade for the man to return home after the siege of Troy, only to find his devoted wife, Penelope, surrounded by suitors.As Homer said, it is an exquisite and complex story, full of exciting sea and land adventures, with various episodes and complex plots.But the whole story is still a whole, a major plot that holds everything together.

Aristotle, in his Poetics, insists that this is a very good example of a story, novel or play.In support of his point, he says he can sum up the best of the Odyssey in a few sentences: A certain man has been away from home for many years.The sea god was jealous of him and made him feel lonely and sad all the way.At the same time, his hometown is also in danger.His wealth was squandered against his son by those who tried to get his hands on his wife.At last, in the storm, he came back, and he made himself recognized by a few, and attacked the wicked with his own hand, and after destroying them, it was all back to him again.

"This," said Aristotle, "is the real backbone of the plot, and the rest are episodes." After you understand a story in this way, you can put the different plot parts in the correct position through the narrative with a unified overall tone.You may find this a good exercise to revisit novels you've read before.Find some good books to read, like Fielding's Tom Jones, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or Joyce (Joyce), the modern version of "Ulysses" (Ulysses) and so on.The plot of Tom Jones, for example, can be reduced to a familiar formula: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again.It really is the plot of every romance.To recognize this is to understand why all the plots of the story are just a few truths.With the same basic plot, whether an author writes a good story or a bad story depends on how he decorates the skeleton. You don't have to discover the plot of the story on your own.Authors usually help you.Sometimes, the title alone is enough.In the 18th century, it was customary for authors to give detailed titles to tell readers what the whole book was about.Jeremy Collier, an English clergyman, used such a title to attack Revival drama as obscene—perhaps we should say pornographic—The Immorality and Obscenity of English Drama. A Glimpse—A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, together with the Sense of Antiquity upon this Argument.Compared with the habitual reaction of many people today, his attacks are really well-educated.As you can imagine from the title, Collier must have cited many examples of notorious immorality in the book, and found many examples from the debates of the ancients to support his views.For example, Plato said that the stage corrupts the young, or the priests in the early church said that theater is the temptation of the flesh and the devil. Sometimes the author explains the design of his overall content in the foreword.In this respect, expository books differ from novels.A scientific or philosophical author has no reason to leave you scratching your head.In fact, the less doubt he can make in you, the more willing you will be to keep trying to read his mind.Like a news report in a newspaper, an expository book begins with the main point in the first paragraph. If the author offers help, don't be too proud to say no.However, don't rely entirely on what he says in the foreword either.An author's best plans, as often as those of man or mouse, often go awry.You can read with the author's guidance on content prompts, but always remember that it is the reader's responsibility to find a structure in the end, just as it is the author's responsibility to set a structure himself in the first place.Only when you have read the entire book can you honestly let go of this responsibility. In the "History" written by Herodotus about the war between the Greek nation and the Persian nation, there is an introduction, which can be said to be a rather quintessential summary: This book is a study by Herodotus.He published it as a reminder of what had been done before, lest the great deeds of the Greeks and Babylonians lose their due glory, and also to record their territorial status in these feuds. For a reader, it's a great start, telling you briefly what the whole book is about. But you better not stop there.After you have read Herodotus's nine-part history, you will likely find that this exposition needs a bit more to convey the spirit of the book as a whole.You may want to mention again the Persian kings—Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, those Greek heroes represented by Themistocles, and many Breathtaking events, such as the crossing of the Hellespont, and battles like Thermopylae and Salamis. All the other wonderful details are prepared for you by Herodotus to highlight his climax, and can be deleted from your structure outline.Note that here, the entire history is the main thread running through the whole, which is a bit similar to a novel.Since we are concerned with the overall problem, when we read history as novels, the rules of reading are exploring the same answers. A few more clarifications to add.Let's take a practical book as an example.Aristotle's Ethics can be summarized as follows: This book explores the nature of human happiness, analyzes the conditions under which human beings gain or lose happiness, and explains how to behave and think in order to become happy or avoid misfortune.While other good things are recognized as necessary for happiness, such as wealth, health, friendship, and living in a just society, the emphasis is on cultivating moral and intellectual goodness in principle. Another practical work is Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.At the outset, the author writes a "plan for this book" statement to help the reader.But this article is several pages long.Overall, it can be shortened to the following length: This book is about the sources of national wealth.Any economic system based on the division of labor must take into account the payment of wages, the recovery of capital profits, and the rent owed to the landlord. These are the basic factors of the price of goods.This book discusses how to effectively use capital in a more diversified way, from the origin and use of money, to the accumulation and use of capital.This book discusses the benefits of free trade by examining the prosperity of different countries under different conditions, comparing different political and economic systems. If a reader can grasp the point of The Wealth of Nations in this way, and make the same observation about Marx's Capital, he will easily see that the two most influential books of the past two centuries What is the relationship between the books. Darwin's is another good example that helps us see the totality of theoretical works in science.The book has this to say: This book is about the changes that have taken place in living things over countless generations, and how new kinds of animals or plants have evolved from them.This book discusses the changes of animals in the domesticated state, and also discusses the changes of animals in the natural state, and then explains how the principles of "natural selection, survival of the fittest" form and maintain each group.In addition, this book also argues that species are not fixed and eternal populations, but change from relatively small to more obvious and fixed characteristics in the alternation of generations.There are extinct animals in some formations, and comparative evidence of embryology and anatomy, to support these arguments. This statement may seem difficult to digest, but for many nineteenth-century readers, the book itself was even more difficult to digest—in part, because they were too lazy to find out what it really meant. Finally, let us take Locke's "On Human Understanding" as an example of a theoretical work in philosophy.You may recall that we talked about Locke himself saying that his work "explores the origins, truths, and limits of human knowledge, and at the same time discusses the positions and degrees of belief, opinion, and approval."Of course, we will not argue with the author who has explained so well the plan of his work, but we would like to add two incidental remarks in order to express the spirit of the first and third parts of this paper. .We will add a paragraph like this: This book shows that human beings have no innate ideas, and that all human knowledge comes from experience.The book also discusses language as a medium for the transmission of ideas—both its proper use and its most frequent abuses are evidenced in this book. Before we go any further, we want to remind you of two things.First, an author, especially a good one, will often want to help you sort out the main points of his book.Even so, when you ask readers to choose the main point of a book, most of them will look blank.One reason is that people today generally cannot express themselves in concise language, and the other reason is that they ignore the rule of reading.Of course, this also shows that too many readers do not pay attention to the author's preface or the title of the book at all, and this is the result. Next, be careful not to take the summaries of the highlights of the books that we give you as their absolute and only description.The overall spirit of a book can be interpreted in various ways, and no one is necessarily right.Of course, some interpretations are better than others because they are concise, precise, and easy to understand.However, there are also some interpretations that are completely different from each other, either they are equally brilliant, or they are equally bad. The overall focus of some of the books we're talking about here is quite different from the author's interpretation, but I don't feel the need to apologize.Your abstract can also be very different from ours.After all, although it is the same book, it is different for each reader.It would not be surprising if this difference was expressed through the reader's interpretation.However, this does not mean that you can say whatever you like.Although the readers are different, the book itself is still the same. No matter who makes the abstract, there is still an objective standard to test its correctness and authenticity. ※ Navigating Complexity: Tips for Outlining a Book Now we come to another rule of structure, which requires us to enumerate the most important parts of a book in order and relationship.This is the third rule, closely related to the second rule.A clearly stated summary will identify the most important components of the book.If you can't see these components clearly, you won't be able to understand the whole book.Likewise, you cannot understand the book unless you can grasp the organization of its parts. So why two rules instead of one?Mainly for convenience.It is much easier to master a complex, undivided architecture in two steps than in one.The second rule directs your attention to the unity of a book, and the third emphasizes the complexity of a book.There is another reason for this distinction.When you grasp the whole of a book, you will immediately grasp some important parts of it.But each of these parts is usually very complicated, and each has its own internal structure that requires you to see through.So the third rule is not just about arranging the parts, but making an outline of the parts as if they were a whole in their own right, each with its own wholeness and complexity. According to the third rule, there can be a set of formulas to apply.This formula is universal.According to the second rule, we can say that the content of the book is such and such.After doing this, we can follow the third rule and arrange the content outline as follows: (1) The author divides the book into five parts, what is the first part about, what is the second part about, and what is the third part It's about something else, part four is another point of view, part five is something else. (2) The first main part is divided into three paragraphs, the first paragraph is X, the second paragraph is Y, and the third paragraph is Z. (3) In the first stage of the first part, the author has four key points, the first key point is A, the second key point is B, the third key point is C, the fourth key point is D and so on. You may object to such an outline.Wouldn't it take a lifetime to read a book like this?Of course, this is just a formula.This rule seems to require you to do an impossible thing.But in fact, a good reader does it habitually, and with ease.He may not write it all out, nor verbalize it when he reads.But if you ask him about the overall structure of the book, he'll come up with something, and it's kind of like the formula we're talking about. The word "probably" can relieve your anxiety.A good rule will always describe the most perfect performance.But one can be an artist without being an ideal artist.If he can probably follow this rule, he will be a good practitioner.The rules we have described are an ideal standard.If you can produce a draft similar to what is required here, you should be satisfied. Even if you're already proficient at reading, you don't necessarily have to use the same amount of effort to read every book.You will find it a waste to use these techniques on some books.Even the best readers will only choose a few relevant books, and make an approximate outline according to the requirements of this rule.In most cases, they are satisfied with a cursory understanding of a book's structure.The degree to which the outline and rules you make will vary with the nature of the book you want to read.But despite the protean changes, the rules themselves have not changed.Whether you follow it exactly, or just master one form, you need to know how to follow the rules. You have to understand that the factors that affect the degree to which you implement this rule are not only time and effort.Your life is limited and you are mortal.A book has a finite life, and even if it does not die, it is as imperfect as all man-made things.Since no book is perfect, it's not worth writing a perfect compendium for any.You just do your best.After all, the rule doesn't ask you to put in what the author didn't put in.Your outline is an outline of the work itself, not the subject of the book.Perhaps an outline of a topic could go on indefinitely, but that's not the outline you'd write for this book—the outline you'd write is more or less prescriptive on the subject.However, don't feel like we're encouraging you to be lazy.Because even if you really want to follow this rule, it is still impossible to fight to the end. It is very difficult to use a formula to sort out the order and relationship of various parts of a book.It may be easier to illustrate with a few examples, but it is still much more difficult to illustrate this rule than to illustrate another rule that grabs the key abstract.After all, the key points of a book can be summed up in a sentence or two, or a few paragraphs.But for a long and difficult book, it is necessary to write a careful and appropriate outline, subdividing each part, and the different paragraphs in each part, and the different subsections in each paragraph, all the way down to the smallest structural unit. Clear, but a job that takes several sheets of paper to complete. In theory, this outline could be longer than the original.Some annotations to Aristotle's works in the Middle Ages were longer than the original works.Of course, they contain more than an outline, since they explain the author's ideas sentence by sentence.The same is true of some modern commentaries, like some on Kant for example.The same is true of Shakespeare's annotated plays, which contain exhaustive outlines and other expositions, and are often many times—perhaps ten—times as long as the original.If you want to see how detailed you can go with this rule, look for some of these comments.When Aquinas was annotating Aristotle's books, each annotation began with a beautiful outline aimed at a certain point expressed by Aristotle in his works, and then took the trouble Explain how this emphasis fits into the whole of Aristotle's work, and how closely this emphasis is related to the context. Let's find some examples that are a little simpler than Aristotle's argument.Aristotle's articles are the most compact and concise. It is bound to be time-consuming and difficult to draw an outline of his works.In order to give a proper example, let us all agree on one point: even if we have a long page at our disposal, let us give up the idea of ​​taking this example to perfection. The U.S. Federal Constitution is an interesting and useful document, as well as a neatly organized text.If you examine it, it's easy to spot the important parts.These important parts are already clearly marked, but you still have to work hard to make some generalizations.The following is a suggested way to write this outline: First: Preamble, stating the purpose of the constitution.Second: Article 1 concerns the legislative branch of the government.Third: Article 2, concerning the administrative department of the government.Fourth: Article 3, on the issue of the judicial department of the government.Fifth: Article IV, on the relationship between the state government and the federal government.Sixth: Articles 5, 6, and 7, regarding the issue of constitutional amendments, the constitution has a status that transcends all laws and provides recognition.Seventh: The first ten articles of the Constitutional Amendment constitute the Declaration of Human Rights.Eighth: Other amendments that continue to accumulate to this day. These are the main generalizations.Now take the second item, which is the first article of the constitution, as an example, and make some outlines.Just like other articles, this article (Article) is also divided into several sections (Section).Here's how we suggest writing an outline: Two one: the first paragraph, to establish the legislative power of the United States Congress, Congress is divided into two parts, the Senate and the House of Representatives. 2 bis: Paragraphs 2 and 3 respectively explain the constitution and conditions of the Senate and the House of Representatives.In addition, only the House of Representatives has the power to impeach, and only the Senate has the power to try impeachment. Two and three: Sections 4 and 5, regarding the election of the two houses of Congress, internal organization and affairs. Two of four: Section 6, which regulates the allowances and salaries of all members of the two chambers, and sets restrictions on the use of citizenship by members. 2 of 5: Section 7, which sets the relationship between the legislative and executive branches of the government, and explains the president's veto power. 2-6: Paragraph 8, which explains the powers of the National Assembly. Two of Seven: Paragraph 9, which explains the limitations of the powers of the National Assembly in Paragraph 8. Two eighth: Clause 10, stating the limits of the powers of the states, and the circumstances under which they must commit certain powers to Congress. We can then write similar outlines for the other key items.When you're done, go back and write an outline for each small paragraph.Some of these small paragraphs, like the eighth paragraph of the first article, need to be confirmed by many different themes and sub-themes. Of course, this is only one way.There are many other ways to outline.For example, the first three items can be combined into one topic, or instead of dividing the constitutional amendment into two items, we can divide the amendment into more items according to the nature of the problem to be dealt with.We suggest that you do it yourself and use your views to divide the constitution into several main parts and outline it.You can do it in more detail than ours, and distinguish the small points from the small ones.You may have read the Constitution many times, but you may not have used this method to read it before. Now you will find that if you use this method to read a document, you will see many things that you did not see before. Next is another example, also a very short one.Now that we have made a key summary of Aristotle's Ethics, let us try for the first time to give an approximate account of the structure of the book.The whole book can be divided into the following important parts: First, treat happiness as the ultimate goal of life, and discuss the relationship between happiness and other good deeds.Second, discuss the relationship between innate and natural behaviors and the formation of good and bad habits.Third, discuss the different kinds of good and evil in ethics and intellect.Fourth, discuss the moral state of neither good nor evil.Five, discuss friendship.Sixth, and the last one, discusses joy and completes the theme of human happiness discussed at the beginning. This outline obviously does not exactly correspond to the ten volumes of Ethics.Because the first part is what was talked about in the first volume.The second part contains the contents of the second volume and the first half of the third volume.The third part extends from the second half of the third volume to the sixth volume.The last section, dealing with pleasure, covers the end of Book Seven and the beginning of Book Ten. We want to give this example to let you understand that you don't need to follow the chapters that appear in the book to summarize the structure of a book.Of course, the original structure may be better than the outline you differentiated, but it is also likely not as good as your outline.In any case, you'll have to draw up your own outline.The author draws up the outline to make a good book.And you have to draw up your outline in order to read it clearly.If he is a perfect writer and you are a perfect reader, the outlines should be the same for both of you.If either of you strays from your striving towards perfection, many failures will inevitably result. This is not to say that you can ignore the chapter and paragraph headings set by the author. We did not ignore these things when we made the outline of the US Constitution, but we did not follow blindly.Those chapters are meant to help you, just like the title and the foreword.However, you should use these headings as a guide for your own activities rather than relying entirely passively on them.There are very few authors who can perfectly execute the outline they set out.But in a good book, there are often many author's plans that you can't see at a glance.Appearances can be deceiving.You have to go deep inside to discover the real structure. How important is it to find out the real architecture?We think it's very important.To put it another way, unless you follow Rule Three—which requires you to describe the parts that make up a whole—you cannot effectively use Rule Two—which requires you to summarize key points of the whole book.You might be able to take a cursory glance at a book and say a summary of the whole thing in a sentence or two, with decent tact.But you can't really know where the decency is.Another person who has read the book more carefully than you has probably known what tact is, and will therefore think highly of your statement.But for you, it can only be regarded as your guess is right, good luck.Therefore, to complete the second rule, the third rule is absolutely necessary. We'll show you what we think with a simple example.A two-year-old child, just beginning to speak, may say something like: "Two plus two equals four."Indeed, this statement is absolutely true, but we may mistakenly conclude that this child understands mathematics.In fact, the child may not even know what he is talking about.So while the statement is true, the child needs to be trained in this area.Likewise, you may guess the key points of a book correctly, but you still need to discipline yourself to justify the "how" and "why" of what you said.Therefore, asking you to outline the important parts of the book and explain how these parts confirm and develop the theme of the whole book will help you grasp the key summary of the whole book. ※ Reciprocal skills in reading and writing At first glance, the two reading rules we discussed earlier look like the writing rules. Sample.Indeed.Writing and reading are two sides of the same coin, just like teaching and being taught. If the author and the teacher cannot sort out the structure of what they want to convey, they cannot integrate the Without the order in which the parts are presented, they cannot guide readers and students to their main points, nor can they discover the overall structure of the book. Although these rules are two sides of the same coin, they are not the same in practice.The reader is to "discover" the skeleton hidden in the book.The author started by making the skeleton, but tried to "hide" the skeleton.His purpose is to hide the skeleton in an artistic way, or in other words, to add flesh and blood to the skeleton.If he is a good author, he will not bury a stunted skeleton in a pile of fat, and likewise, he will not be so skinny that people can see through it at a glance.If the flesh and blood are well-proportioned and there is no loose flesh, then the joints can be seen, and the words revealed in the movements of the various parts of the body can be seen. Why do you say that?Why can't an expository book, a book that intends to convey a kind of knowledge in an orderly manner, just give a clear outline of the subject?The reason is that not only are most people unable to read a synopsis, but to a self-respecting reader, he does not like such a book, he will think that he can do his job, and the author should also Do his own thing.There are many more reasons.The flesh and blood are as important to a book as the skeleton.Books are really just like people or animals. —Flesh and blood, is the further detailed explanation for the outline, or what we sometimes call "read out".Flesh and blood adds necessary space and depth to the book.For animals, flesh and blood is the addition of life.Thus, writing a book from an outline, however detailed that outline may be, gives the book a life that it would not otherwise have. We can use an old saying to summarize all the above concepts, that is, a work should have a sense of unity, clarity and coherence.这确实是优秀写作的基本准则。我们在本章所讨论的两个规则，都是跟随这个写作准则而来的。如果这本书有整体的精神，那我们就一定要找出来。如果全书是清楚明白又前后一贯的，我们就要找出其间的纲要区隔，与重点的秩序来当作回报。所谓文章的清楚明白，就是跟纲要的区隔是否清楚有关，所谓文章的前后一贯，就是能把不同的重点条理有序地排列出来。 这两个规则可以帮助我们区分好的作品与坏的作品。如果你运用得已经成熟了，却不论花了多少努力来了解一本书的重点，还是没法分辨出其间的重点，也找不出彼此之间的关系，那么不管这本书多有名，应该还是一本坏书。不过你不该太快下这样的结论，或许错误出在你身上，而不是书的本身。无论如何，千万不要在读不出头绪的时候，就总以为是自己的问题。事实上，无论你身为一个读者的感受如何，通常问题还是出在书的本身。因为大多数的书—绝大多数—的作者，都没有依照这些规则来写作，因而就这一点来说，都可以说是很糟。 我们要再强调的是，这两个规则不但可以用来阅读一整本论说性的书，也可以用来阅读其中某个特别重要的部分。如果书中某个部分是一个相当独立又复杂的整体，那么就要分辨出这部分的整体性与复杂性，才能读得明白。传达知识的书，与文学作品、戏剧、小说之间，有很大的差异。前者的各个部分可以是独立的，后者却不能。如果一个人说他把那本小说已经“读到够多，能掌握主题了”，那他一定根本不知道自己在说些什么。这句话一定不通，因为一本小说无论好坏都是一个整体，所有的概念都是一个整体的概念，不可能只读了一部分就说懂得了整体的概念。但是你读亚里士多德的《伦理学》或达尔文的，却可以光是仔细地阅读某一个部分，就能得到整体的概念。不过，在这种情况下，你就做不到规则三所说的了。 ※ 发现作者的意图 在这一章，我们还想再讨论另一条阅读规则。这个规则可以说得简短一点，只需要一点解释，不需要举例。如果你已经在运用规则二跟规则三了的话，那这一条规则就不过是换种说法而已。但是重复说明这个规则很有帮助，你可以借此用另一个角度来了解全书与各个重要部分。 这第四个规则可以说是：找出作者要问的问题。一本书的作者在开始写作时，都是有一个问题或一连串的问题，而这本书的内容就是一个答案，或许多答案。 作者可能会，也可能不会告诉你他的问题是什么，就像他可能会，也可能不会给你他工作的果实，也就是答案。不论他会不会这么做—尤其是不会的情况—身为读者，你都有责任尽可能精确地找出这些问题来。你应该有办法说出整本书想要解答的问题是什么。如果主要的问题很复杂，又分成很多部分，你还要能说出次要的问题是什么。你应该不只是有办法完全掌握住所有相关的问题，还要能明智地将这些问题整合出顺序来。哪一个是主要的，哪个是次要的？哪个问题要先回答，哪些是后来才要回答的？ 从某方面来说，你可以看出这个规则是在重复一些事情，这些事情在你掌握一本书的整体精神和重要部分的时候已经做过了。然而，这个规则的确可以帮你做好这些事。换句话说，遵守规则四，能让你和遵守前两条规则产生前后呼应的效果。 虽然你对这个规则还不像其他两个规则一样熟悉，但这个规则确实能帮助你应对一些很困难的书。但我们要强调一点：我们不希望你落入批评家所认为的“意图谬误"(intentional fallacy)。这种谬误就是你认为自己可以从作者所写的作品中看透他的内心。这样的状况特别会出现在文学作品中。譬如，想从《哈姆雷特》来分析莎士比亚的心理，就是一个严重的错误。然而，就真是一本诗集，这个规则也能极有助于你说出作者想要表达的是什么。对论说性的书来说，这个规则的好处当然就更明显。但是，大多数读者不论其他技巧有多熟练，还是会忽略这个规则。结果，他们对一本书的主题或重点就可能很不清楚，当然，所列出的架构也是一团混乱。他们看不清一本书的整体精神，因为他们根本不知道整本书为什么要有这样的整体精神。他们所理解的整本书的骨架，也欠缺这个骨架最后想说明的目的。 如果你能知道每个人都会问的一些问题，你就懂得如何找出作者的问题。这个可以列出简短的公式：某件事存在吗？是什么样的事？发生的原因是什么？或是在什么样的情况下存在？或为什么会有这件事的存在？这件事的目的是什么？造成的影响是什么？特性及特征是、什么？与其他类似事件，或不相同事件的关联是什么？这件事是如何进行的？以上这些都是理论性的问题。有哪些结果可以选择？应该采取什么样的手段才能获得某种结果？要达到某个目的，应该采取哪些行动？以什么顺序？在这些条件下，什么事是对的，或怎样才会更好，而不是更糟？在什么样的条件下，这样做会比那样做好一些？以上这些都是实用的问题。 这些问题还不够详尽，但是不论阅读理论性还是实用性的书，这些都是经常会出现的典型问题。这会帮助你发现一本书想要解决的问题。在阅读富有想像力的文学作品时，这些问题要稍作调整，但还是非常有用。 ※ 分析阅读的第一个阶段 我们已经说明也解释了阅读的前四个规则。这些是分析阅读的规则。如果在运用之前能先做好检视阅读，会更能帮助你运用这些规则。 最重要的是，要知道这前四个规则是有整体性，有同一个目标的。这四个规则在一起，能提供读者对一本书架构的认识。当你运用这四个规则来阅读一本书，或任何又长又难读的书时，你就完成了分析阅读的第一个阶段。 除非你是刚开始练习使用分析阅读，否则你不该将“阶段”一词当作一个前后顺序的概念。因为你没有必要为了要运用前四个规则，而将一本书读完，然后为了要运用其他的规则，再重新一遍又一遍地读。真正实际的读者是一次就完成所有的阶段。不过，你要了解的是，在分析阅读中，要明白一本书的架构是有阶段性的进展的。 换一种说法是，运用这前四个规则，能帮助你回答关于一本书的一些基本问题。你会想起第一个问题是：整本书谈的是什么？你也会想起，我们说这是要找出整本书的主题，以及作者是如何运用一些根本性的次要主题或议题，按部就班来发展这个主题。很明显的，运用这前四个阅读规则，能提供你可以回答这个问题的大部分内容—不过这里要指出一点，等你可以运用其他规则来回答其他问题的时候，你回答这个问题的精确度会提高许多。 既然我们已经说明了分析阅读的第一个阶段，让我们暂停一下，将这四个规则按照适当的标题，顺序说明一下：分析阅读的第一阶段，或，找出一本书在谈些什么的四个规则： (1) 依照书本的种类与主题作分类。 (2) 用最简短的句子说出整本书在谈些什么。 (3) 按照顺序与关系，列出全书的重要部分。将全书的纲要拟出来之后，再将各个部分的纲要也一一列出。 (4)找出作者在问的问题，或作者想要解决的问题。