Category: Notes

About Dynamic Reading

I- Definitely, we cannot know more than the subject of a book by performing the techniques that make up so-called “dynamic reading”. I would say that this type of reading is exactly what Mortimer Adler called, in How to read a book, “inspectional reading” — the first of three readings that should be made in a book.

II- Books should be read slowly, calmly, while we annotate observations and highlight excerpts. A good book only delivers himself with effort.

III- Rodrigo Gurgel’s recommendation is worth: one should never advance in a book if something has not been understood. We should go back and reread as many times as necessary.

IV- “Dynamic reading”, however, can be used to decide whether or not a book deserves reading.

V- I read the above topics and i realize: nothing new; everything has been said and repeated exhaustive times by good readers. Why, therefore, there is still talk of “dynamic reading”?

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Ulysses, by James Joyce

I read, for these days, our Paulo Coelho saying that the whole Ulysses comes down to a tweet. It seems he made the statement in 2012. The book, to whom does not know, is almost unanimous in criticism. Our Folha de S. Paulo, for example, gave it the title of the greatest novel of the twentieth century. I confess: I am traumatized by Ulysses; a few years ago, I abandoned him on page 400. During the reading, I was tortured, from the beginning thinking of closing it; however, always granting one hundred new pages of credit to the author. Then I closed it, very angry and convinced: “this is not literature”. So I took something from Dostoevsky. It was really good years ago. And today I am rethinking: whenever I find myself convinced, I soon see myself an idiot. Ulysses is literature. I did not go back to the book, but I am sure it is, and that I just could not read it. “The book says nothing…” — says a lot. Leopold Bloom is despicable, that’s right. But how many are not? I think of Eça. Much has already been taxed the characters of Eça as frivolous. I look around. Literature is also the art of language. What about Eça and James Joyce in this regard? And I come back: what more reality looks like: frivolous or impregnated with meaning, almost bursting with meaning? Do people spend their days in banalities, dying like flies, or do they make history Monday through Friday? Do they perform useless functions or mark epoch every day? So I think of my texts: tragics, of fierce moralism. Am I not the opposite of Eça, the opposite of Joyce, and who knows, the opposite of an artist?

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Crítica e profecia: a filosofia da religião em Dostoiévski, by Luiz Felipe Pondé

I closed this work and felt, for the first time, absolutely humiliated by a book. I thought I had some intelligence deficit. And I thank God I never published a line. I, you see, were already a reader of Dostoevsky, and had read six of his books, including the main ones, except The Idiot — and I appreciate not taxing the book by comic… — I thought, among other things, the following: I am immune to nihilism. The response was clear to me in Dostoevsky’s works, and I never even questioned: “Dostoevsky spent his life talking about nihilism, wrote hundreds of lines about nihilism. Who knows the theme has no relevance?”. And Pondé, welcoming me and teaching me how to use my brain, threw me into a nihilistic abyss, where I felt existence weigh. I read his essay and saw that despite two or three thousand pages read, I knew absolutely nothing about Dostoevsky. To summarize: I had never noticed God’s manifestations in Dostoevsky, which allows me to shoot: I had no idea who Dostoevsky was. Of course, I saw God when Sonia reads Lazarus’ passage to Raskolnikov, but I never saw God in silence. And there is everything: Pondé showed me that in Dostoevsky, God is present in silence. I closed the essay decided: I urgently need to leave this thing of studying. But, after, I thanked there being a Pondé and said to me: I need to reread each of Dostoevsky’s books. Today, I think I got the choice right.

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