Book Review:  How to Read, by J.B. Kerfoot, 1916

Subject:  Third Area of Involvement of J. B. Kerfoot’s Constructive and Critical Orientation of Learning How to Read::  The Driving Impulses for Reading and the Direction Reading Should Take

This is the fourth blog entry out of a series of seven blog entries on reviewing How to Read, by J. B. Kerfoot.  It will consider the third area of involvement of Kerfoot’s constructive and critical orientation in learning how to read:  the Driving Impulses for Reading, and the Direction that Personal Reading Should Take.  Each will be examined.

The blog entry of September 22, 2023 considered the second area of involvement, the handling of word meanings. The blog entry of September 20, 2023 considered the first area of involvement, reading as producing a mental movie.  And, the blog entry of September 15, 2023 gave an introduction to the book and considered the meaning of the title page inscription of the book, “Reading is a form of living.”

Please note that the italicized words in the quotes taken from the book are the author’s emphasis and are not my added emphasis.

The Driving Impulses for Reading and the Direction that Personal Reading Should Take

The third area of involvement in Kerfoot’s constructive and critical approach to reading is taken from Chapter Four (“What’s the Use”) and Chapter Five (“A Sense of Direction”).

Kerfoot says the reasons for reading lie in two impulses, which are two opposite human needs.  One need is “to find one’s self”.  This is to learn more about something – getting closer to reality and putting things in order for one’s self by gaining information, ideas, and knowledge in a complex and chaotic world.  The opposite impulse is “to get away from one’s self” – to seek a respite, to get away from the chaotic and complex world.

In essence, one need is stepping into the world and the other is stepping away from the world.  Both are feeling one’s way in the world.  They are the two modes that anything is read and how Kerfoot believes people conduct their lives in general.  To quote Kerfoot:  “Not alone in our reading, but our lives, alternate between these two moods; are conducted in these two modes; are governed by these two appetites, urges-call them what you will,- this desire to do, and this desire to shrink from doing; this recurrent keenness personally to master reality, and this recurrent craving to escape from consciousness of its tyranny; this longing to ‘find ourselves,’ and this longing to ‘get away from ourselves’.”[i]

Kerfoot puts an intermediary need between the two poles of needs and that is the need to play.  Play is recreation for refreshment, which is an outlet for enacting human potential.  In adults when reading this equates to seeking out of the multiple potential selves that life has not permitted one’s self to be and satisfying the urges of these suppressed selves not allowed to emerge due to the exigencies of life.  It is a way of finding out more about oneself in roles and scenarios one will not be able to live.  To quote Kerfoot:  “We are seeking relaxation by dramatizing some side of ourselves that is not usually free to function.  We are, indeed, trying for refreshment by ‘find ourselves’ afresh.”[ii]

The reading needs are constructive modes of reading.  The critical part is to guide these needs in order to progress in learning how to read.  There two ways that can help this happen.

The first is understanding the meaning of the word, “read”.  The root meaning of the word “read,” an Anglo-Saxon word, is to “take counsel.”

The word “read” has a linguistic first cousin in the ancient word “red.” To quote Kerfoot, who links the meaning of the word “red” to the word “read” for compounded meaning,  “… ‘to red up,’ – to ‘red’ meaning to tidy, to put in order; and hence to clear up and explain.  ‘Reading,’ then is a form of ‘redding,’ – to take counsel by putting things in order.”[iii]  The reader whatever reading impulse he or she is employing should be ordering and storing personal experiences and understandings gained from reading as fodder for accessing and organizing their future reading.

The second is that reading and living are both ventures running parallel to each other throughout one’s life and should interconnect accordingly for the development of one’s self and for learning how to read.  As one grows older and matures the search for deeper reading content should be sought.  The key here that living and reading are concomitant; as one develops as a person through living one should be looking towards corresponding levels of reading reflecting this.  The reading being sought out should represent a growth in breadth and depth corresponding with the reader’s growth breadth and depth of living and maturing.  Reading should not stagnate around a limited center of materials or understandings.  The center of one’s reading is to revolve around the growth of one’s living experience matched against the chosen growth in reading experiences.

In this, Kerfoot is not discouraging any type of reading materials-all reading materials have their place. Kerfoot says the primary tests for judging what one reads are that one reads for one’s self and for what happens to one’s self when reading.  But along the path of life over time, one should graduate from certain lesser levels of reading to higher levels of reading and should make intelligent and discriminating decisions related to this.  To quote Kerfoot, “Nor does this mean we should leave the nursey rhymes behind, and love-stories, and adventure tales.  We shouldn’t.  Not any more than we should kill the ‘child’ in us, or the lover, or the sense of adventure.  We should carry these things with us and develop them as we develop.  There are nursey rhymes for every mile of the way. There are love-stories for every stage of growth.  There are adventures for every enlargement of our consciousness and our understanding.”[iv]

The next blog entry on September 29, 2023 will be on fourth area of involvement of Kerfoot’s constructive and critical approach to reading, searching for relationships of meaning between the internal world of the reader and the external world of the author.  

FOOTNOTES

[i] How to Read, 1916, 100

[ii] Ibid, 107

[iii]  Ibid, 75

[iv] Ibid, 141