The following is an excerpt from the introductory chapter of Chad’s new book Reading Classically:
Have you ever forgotten how to read? It happened to me once. My senior year of high school I was getting ready for Wednesday night youth group after soccer practice. When I looked in the mirror, the strangest thing happened: I could recognize all of the letters on my shirt, but I could not, for the life of me, read them.
Turns out, I had a moderate concussion from practice earlier.
Have we forgotten how to read?
Usually we put reading in the same category with riding a bike, swimming, and driving. Once you learn them, they never leave you. And yet, a strange thing is happening. Books loved by centuries of humans are falling out of fashion. Our kids are entering high school, and parents can’t make heads or tails of most of the classics they bring home. We hate some of them, find others confusing, and turn to SparkNotes for the rest.
We assume the problem is that those old books have lost touch with reality. They no longer represent our modern experience. They’re not relevant. But here’s my proposal: If we hate these books, the problem is not the books. It’s us. We’ve forgotten how to read.
It’s not like we literally can’t read. We recognize the words (most of them), and perhaps even make sense of the phrases and sentences. But the overall significance, for the life of us, we just can’t read it.
Turns out, the problem is fixable. We just have to relearn how to read.
Learning to read again
Anyone who has been to school knows what it means to read the classics. Great Expectations, The Odyssey, Moby-Dick—we all remember what it felt like to first crack open these famous works. For some, it was enchanting. For many others, tortuous! Love it or hate it, we are familiar with reading the classics.
But what does it mean to read classically? As in, how do we read the way Dante, Augustine, and Chaucer read? This is probably not news to any of us, but we are not Dante or Augustine or Chaucer—nor do we live in their times. While the classics have not changed over time, we have.
Modern readers read differently than those of ages past. We have different objectives when we come to a book. People read for dozens of reasons: entertainment, information, job training, inspiration, worship, personal growth, curiosity, affirmation, or education. I wonder, why do you read?
We are becoming certain kinds of readers one book at a time—either good or bad. The questions we ask of the text, the questions we ask of ourselves, and the questions we fail to ask all together are slowly forming us. Read poorly, and books will remain sterile, grow irrelevant, and seem boring. Read well, and books will inspire us, help us become fully human, and leech into our bones.
Classical reading developed over centuries, but it was systematized by medieval readers as the Quadriga or the Fourfold Way. In summary, this method of reading
…is devoted to the text (Literal)
…delights in context (Allegorical)
…drives at the transformation of the soul (Tropological)
…directs toward the Eternal (Anagogical)
We are not talking about siphoning our reading into four tidy bins of interpretation, however. Trying to neatly separate these senses would be like trying to dissect a peach cobbler. Rather, these four categories help shape readers with certain aspirations as they read: people who read with their (1) eyes, (2) head, (3) hands, and (4) heart . . .
Alton Brown’s Peanut Butter Cookies (GLUTEN-FREE!)
Sometimes you just need a sweet fix. You don’t want to run to the grocery for fancy ingredients. You don’t want to deal with a bunch of dishes. What can you make in 10 minutes that will satisfy that little hankering without little to no effort?
Here it is. Alton Brown’s one-bowl wonder—and it’s gluten-free!
Ingredients
1 cup smooth peanut butter
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Make it
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Using a strong wooden spoon, mix together peanut butter and sugars.
Stir in rest of ingredients until completely combined.
Spoon out using a tablespoon disher onto parchment-lined pans.
Use a fork to press a cross-hatch onto the top of each cookie.
Bake for around 10 minutes, but do not let it get too brown on the edges! Let cool on the pan for 5 minutes. Enjoy!