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

Subject:  Fourth Area of Involvement Kerfoot’s constructive and critical orientation:  Searching for Relationships of Meaning between the Internal World of the Reader and the External World of the Author

This is the fifth blog entry on reviewing How to Read, by J. B. Kerfoot.  It will consider the fourth area of involvement in Kerfoot’s constructive and critical orientation to learning how to read, looking at how the reader compares their understanding of what they are reading to the author’s presentation.

The blog entry of September 26, 2023 considered the third area of involvement of the driving impulses for reading and the direction reading should take.  The blog entry of September 22, 2023 considered the second area of involvement of handling word meanings.  The blog entry of September 20, 2023 considered the first area of involvement of reading as producing a mental movie.  And, the blog entry of September 15, 20223 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. 

Fourth Area of Involvement:  Searching for Relationships of Meaning between the Internal World of the Reader and the External World of the Author

This area of involvement is considered in chapter six, “The World Outside Us and the World Within,” of J. B. Kerfoot’s book, How to Read.

Kerfoot believes the ends of the reading impulses are seeking out truths (truths with a small t). Searching for truths is the searching out of discoverable relationships of meaning between the life within us and the life outside us.  This is approach to living is used by Scientists, Historians, Philosophers in seeking out the truth.  However, it is not a specialized activity for professionals only; it is equally important and done by everyone in understanding everyday life and truth.  The mode of this relationship building between the reader and the author will be examined.

Reading is an enactment of one’s self from the two reading impulses and the mediating reading impulse.  When one is reading this is being done in relationship to another person, the author.  One is seeking a relationship with another person, the author, to be able to experience and explain the world using the reader’s understandings and the author’s understandings.

This is where Kerfoot’s concept of “synthesis” becomes important.  One has built through one’s reading, as well as living, various syntheses of thought to understand life, each synthesis formed by bringing together strands thoughts and feelings into a single thought pattern in order to understand life.  When reading one is comparing their syntheses of understanding of living with the author’s syntheses of understanding of living.  The author may reaffirm one’s syntheses in the reading undertaken (a novel or an expository book) or may pose a new synthesis of ideas, concepts, feelings for one’s consideration and for adopting into one’s own self as a synthesis of ideas.

Kerfoot contends that people do this because they are built this way; that seeking out of relationships is a natural appetite-the equivalent to an appetite for food- and therefore also craving, a craving driven by curiosity:  “…just as we are guided to the seeking of food by hunger, so we are guided to the seeking out of relationships by curiosity.”[i]  Further, to quote Kerfoot, curiosity “… is  the only conscious stimulus we have to begin with; and it continues to be, throughout whatever reading development may come to us, the underlying motive-power back of all our seekings, all our findings, and all our passings-on.  And…gradually learning to regard as an appetite all curiosity or keenness that impels us toward reading, and to regard all reading that we do as in some sort a satisfying of an appetite.”[ii]

Curiosity must be managed, balanced, and coordinated as a constructive force so as not to be overwhelming and as not to be disregarded in evaluating and forming relationships between the two worlds.  To do this is to recognize curiosities are always occurring when reading.  Kerfoot would term these curiosities, “subsidiary curiosities,” which are spontaneous and natural promptings of inquiry occurring about meanings that are floating across the reader’s attention about the where, what, why, how, and when questions one has when reading, as well as about the likes and dislikes the reader has.

“Subsidiary curiosities” are largely handled unconsciously by the action of one’s mind making the appropriate adjustments while reading, thus one’s attention is not diverted from the flow of reading.  But if a “subsidiary curiosity” lingers in the mind, then that is evidence of it needing conscious attention, and one should deliberately and consciously take a moment to pursue looking into what is compelling about it.  This is a conscious critical and self-querying pursuit of “subsidiary curiosities,” natural promptings of curiosities, which are very likely to be the ones that are purposeful to the reader to inquire into.  Further, pursuing such inquiries creates more remunerative reading by bringing up why this is happening and by the reader breaking down and examining what it is in these “subsidiary curiosities” that will help build a relationship of meaning with an author.

Kerfoot cautions against two matters when handling “subsidiary curiosities” that are consciously pursued.  First the outright ignoring, denying or shrugging off  “subsidiary curiosities.”  Doing so is dismissing an opportunity to learn something.

The second is when consciously considering “subsidiary curiosities,” one should not favor acting upon those that one identifies with (those that favor the one’s predilections) and discounting or dismissing those that one does not identify with (those that the reader finds uncomfortable or repugnant).  Why this caution?  One is more likely to favor his or her likings for examination, finding this more satisfying and positive in building a relationship with the author.  One will less readily consider what one finds repugnant.  This avoidance may well block one’s realization of an understanding needed to be formed and will instead put in its place prejudices or cant phrases of disregard.   Kerfoot notes that “…sooner or later, any road of reading we may elect to follow will be blocked for us by unrealized relationships if we have not dealt recognizingly and inquiringly with earlier and underlying relationships as these relationships present themselves.”[iii]

The next blog entry will consider the fifth area of involvement, The Intellectual Digestion of What is Read, which is the process by which one retains in memory what one has read.

FOOTNOTES

[i]  How to Read, 1916, 174-175

[ii] Ibid, 177-178

[iii] Ibid, 189