The Easiest Post to Write
I am sitting in Heathrow Airport in London, on a 30 hour return trip home from South Africa. There is a hustle and bustle around me as travelers hurry to their flights, do some shopping, sleep on the benches, or talk on their phones. My laptop is perched precariously on my lap, as I sit down to write.
In some ways, this is not the “ideal” location for writing, as there are so many distractions and things going on around me. But in another way, it is just the place to reflect on all that I have experienced over the past few weeks. To me, this is the easiest blog post to write, because the book “How to Read a Book” is a companion to approaching and interpreting many kinds of complex situations, such as the ones we encountered in South Africa.
On the first level, this book offers a neat parallel and compliment to Jason Clarke’s lecture during our Cape Town Advance, which could aptly be titled “How to Read a Book, by Jason Clarke”. The ideas laid out by Dr. Clarke in the advance are clearly articulated and expanded throughout this book. It talks about how to x-ray a book, to inspect a book, to read the table of contents, the index, to notice and note what is said about this book elsewhere, including in reviews. All of this helps to quickly discover the “information” that is provided and available.
But in reflecting on the time spent in Cape Town, South Africa, it is clear that this is not the point at all. Reading this book simply for the data that is on offer, is to miss the larger point, which is about formation and ongoing development as a reader, thinker and person.
This is where the connection to the South Africa Advance begins. The trip and the time together was not simply about “information” or head-knowledge about the place or people, the history or culture. The Advance was an opportunity to examine and x-ray the place. To get to know it more intimately and to look at the table of contents, the index and the sources that were cited. As one person on the advance put it, “we couldn’t have learned in a book what we learned by being here in person and having these conversations.”[1]
I came into this Advance with some knowledge of South Africa and the situation there, but the big difference during this advance, was having critical conversations with local people, stakeholders, and a variety of viewpoints that led to much deeper understanding.
As Adler and Van Doren write, “Getting more information is learning, and so is coming to understand what you did not understand before. But there is an important difference between these two kinds of learning.”[2] This book, along with the Advance itself, is interested in the latter form of learning. It isn’t about “getting more information”, although that can be important. It is really a matter of coming to understand, to know how and why disparate facts and realities fit together.
A good example of this from the book is the chapter entitled, “How to Read History”. The main point of this chapter is summed up in this way: “it is necessary to read more than one account of the history of an event or period if we want to understand it. Indeed, this is the first rule of reading history… we cannot hope to understand it if we look at it through the eyes of only one man, or one side, or one faction of modern academic historians.”[3]
I confess that I thought I understood South Africa better than I actually do. I have read a number of books on the country and its history, I follow the news regularly, and I have traveled there before. But during this Advance, by hearing from so many different voices, I came to understand it in a new and more complex way. This is the point of “How to Read a Book”, and it is also the point of learning how to read a culture or context or situation.
The neat and tidy narrative that most North Americans have about the end of Apartheid and the new “Rainbow Nation” that emerged peacefully and happily from its demise, was totally undermined by the conversations we had. Exploring the real situation in South Africa was the equivalent of moving past Adler and Van Doren’s lower two levels of reading (“elementary” and “inspectional”), and toward the higher two levels, (“analytical” and “syntopical”). The lower two can be accomplished by arriving in South Africa, visiting the Waterfront, going to various touristic sites, drinking wine and driving on main roads in a large tour-bus. This gives some idea of the country, but only on a cursory and surface level.
Reading South Africa analytically involves critical conversations across the spectrum of experience with the young and old, the black and white, the rich and poor. Those who think “everything is fine”[4] and those who know that it is not[5].
But to move to the final and highest level of reading a book, or a culture, it involves a further step. Syntopical reading has to do with synthesizing the information and experiences and putting them into conversation with my own history, context and self-understanding.
In her presentation during the Advance, Mary Pandiani offered some spiritual direction tools to help our group consider what we were seeing. She described the way that “sometimes you read a book, and sometimes, the book reads you”. And that is exactly how I would describe the experience in Cape Town. A dynamic interplay between what I learned, heard and saw in South Africa, and how it applied directly to the North American context.
This is one of my biggest takeaways from this experience. To see how the challenges and realities of South Africa are explicitly linked to those in the United States. As I heard white South Africans come to terms with their history and try to take active steps toward real dialogue and change, I was personally challenged to take this burden on as my own as well. This will be my ongoing project as I return home again.
In the end, this is what “How to Read a Book” is all about. It isn’t just a technical guide to particular skills for reading and absorbing information. It is a book that pushes you to develop critical thinking, to seek understanding and to grow as a person. It felt the same way with the Cape Town Advance.
[1] My paraphrase of Jean Ollis
[2] Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, “How To Read A Book”, 11
[3] Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, “How To Read A Book”, 233-234
[4] This was the sentiment shared by a large number of Afrikaaner people that I met
[5] This was the dominant view of the people of color who I talked with or heard from
About the Author
Dave Watermulder
6 responses to “The Easiest Post to Write”
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Thanks Dave. Your jet-lagged airport distracted mind made a lot of sense. I kept thinking this wasn’t a great book to read after our Cape town time. I was wanting to read a more exciting book. I appreciated your perspective on relating this book to our experience. The digging deeper and being challenged to be in conversation with an event as well as a book has me thinking differently about this choice of reading. Even now I am in Nairobi somewhat challenged by overseas workers that were in South Africa before Mandela’s presidency and hearing their perspective of the trouble maker that got in office. It was another reminder that most of us were introduced to South Africa by Bono (U2). We did not live through those times and history has been interpreted for us. I know we will have a greater opportunity to dialogue and discuss the ongoing thoughts we all are having.
Thanks for the comment, Greg. Yea, I’m with you on the seeming disconnect between this book and what we saw and heard in South Africa. I was thinking we would read something “informational” about the place to keep those conversations going, but in the end, this book was really helpful beyond just the info. It sounds like you had a rich time in Kenya as well. I’ll look forward to hearing some more about it!
Hey Dave- Thanks for your post. Hope your time with Lisa and your journey home was good, and that you are recovering from jet lag. I appreciated how you used Jason’s lecture and Adler’s book as a metaphorical lens through which we can process our experience in South Africa. It strikes me that if we were to study South Africa in a classroom in the U.S. for two weeks, using both print and digital materials to “gain information,” we would not have nearly the depth of awareness of the historical and present complexity of the nation’s life and internal relationships. I feel that I did not just learn about South Africa, I developed a feeling of a relationship with the country – both the people and it’s land. As you said, it was both formational and informational. Like you, I can’t not bring that experience to bear on my context here in the U.S.. Thanks again for the reflection and welcome back!
Thanks, Chris!
Dave,
I appreciated your comparing of Adler’s four stages of reading with the way we experienced South Africa on the Advance. It reminded me of a challenging urban ministry certificate course that Karen and I did together following our MDivs.
The course was located in Toronto, and we were urged to “exegete the city”. Just as we had once learned to exegete Scripture, we were to do the same with our urban environment. We probed deeply into the realities of poverty, housing, immigration, urban infrastructure, transportation, employment, family dynamics, etc. We visited 30+ churches, temples, and mosques to understand better how spirituality fit into the lives of the people. Though more comprehensive, it was actually quite a similar experience to our Advance.
Great heartfelt post Dave! I too wrote my blog post in the Dubai airport at 3am local time…very interesting. I loved how you applied the principles in the book to the experience in Cape Town, and I so agree with you about the need to develop the skill of “reading” the culture of a place and not just skimming the surface. I also resonate with the wise Jean and you in that our experience of South Africa was far greater than anything we could read, and good thing you properly footnoted her :-). I truly enjoyed my time with you in Cape Town and feel like I have many new lifelong friends.