How to Read Readings in the Ball & Dagger Reader

It often happens in my life, as it surely does in yours, that I have to master a reading from the Ball & Dagger reader in a great hurry.  I need to read it completely, but I am nevertheless under time pressure and have to work very efficiently.  How do I do that?  How can you do that too?  Here is the method I use, laid out step by step.  I will use as an example the reading by Mussolini on fascism ("The Doctrine of Fascism", pp.304-311).  [The page numberings here refer to the 5th edition of the reader;  if you have a different edition, revise the numbering accordingly.]

1. Find a quiet space where you won't be distracted.  Make sure you have pens, notepaper, and a dictionary available.  Oh, yeah — don't forget to have the Reader!  (Having the text too is useful.)  Try to be neither ravenously hungry nor extremely well fed, because in either case you will find it hard to stay awake and concentrate.  Keep a small snack nearby for emergencies.  And it should go without saying that studying and alcohol don't mix.  Drink water.
   
2. Don't panic.  Let your mind quiet.  Center your attention on the task in front of you.
   
3. Without looking at the Reader yet, recall what general information you already possess on the author, the topic, the time period.  Free associate.  Put down some words on the paper.  Shown below is what I might put down.  Notice that they aren't the most profound thoughts.  They may not even turn out to be particularly relevant.  However, the point is to wake up this part of my brain, not to solve everything at once.
   • fascism;  fasces — Roman symbol — Italian heritage
   • World War I, worldwide depression, World War II
   • Mussolini — hanged.  Snotty-looking.  Thuggish.
     
4. Read the Introduction to the particular Part in the Reader.  In this case, it would be the introduction to "Part Seven:  Fascism", which appears on pp.295-296.  The Introduction may not add much, particularly if you have already read the relevant chapter in the Ball & Dagger text.  In this case, it doesn't add much, but that's o.k.;  often it will be very helpful.  Just keep reading.
   
5. Look at the sequence of readings in the Part, partly to help yourself focus on the material, and partly to see what Ball & Dagger are trying to accomplish.  In this case, the outline looks like this:
   • Reading 46:  de Gobineau on race;  47:  Mussolini on Fascism;  48:  Rocco on Fascism;   49:  Hitler on race (judging from the title given this passage by the editors)
   • From these titles I gather that there are two main themes:  race and Fascism.  The text has told me they are different, so it doesn't make sense to me that the readings are in the order of race-Fascism-Fascism-race, but at any rate I do see the two themes.  I also see that the assigned reading is part of the "Fascism" theme, not the "race" theme.
     
6. Now start into the article itself.  My first object is to get the main point of the article.  Knowing the main point makes the article a lot easier to read and understand, because I know what the author is trying to prove or say.  So to figure out the main point, here's how I do it:
   • I first read the editors' introduction to the specific reading (p.304) and try to figure out what the author was trying to accomplish.   Why was this document written?   What kind of document is it — propaganda?  expository?  argumentative?  In the case of the Mussolini article, I immediately find out from the introduction the very important point that this is an encyclopedia article, not a regular article.  This is important because encyclopedia articles aren't trying to prove any point;  they're just laying out something.  That's too bad, because that means I'll have to dig farther to find what the main point is, assuming there is one.  The introduction also tells me that this isn't Mussolini's own work;  rather, it was ghost-written for him.  I can't see how that helps me understand it, but oh well.  We're just accumulating an idea of the material.
   • I next page through the material just looking at the major section headings, trying to get a sense of how the article is laid out.  This reading has just two section headings:  "Fundamental Ideas" and "Political and Social Doctrine".  Now I know that I'll be reading about the general philosophy of Fascism and only then applying it to actual public policy.  This knowledge isn't jaw-droppingly helpful to me, but it still helps.  I haven't found any main point yet, but I have a general idea what the reading is about.
   • Now I'm ready to read the material itself.  The first thing I look for is an Abstract.  Many academic articles have abstracts, and if they do, you should read it carefully, because it will give the main point explicitly.  As it happens, the Mussolini reading doesn't have an abstract (nor would I expect one in an encyclopedia entry).
   • If there isn't an abstract I'll read the first few paragraphs of the text.  If there's a section entitled "Introduction", I'll read that.
   • I then flip to the end of the article to read the "Conclusion", if there is one, or the last few paragraphs otherwise.
   • This is a personal peculiarity, but I find it useful:  I'll often look at the endnotes just to see if anything catches my eye.  For example, in the Mussolini reading I find a note on the "Gordian knot", and since I'm interested in knots — my father having been in the navy — I turn to see what that's about.  A stupid reason, you'll agree (and the passage in the reading turns out to be uninteresting), but it helps me connect with the article — eases me into it.
   • Well, this was an encyclopedia article, so I didn't get much from the previous three points.  There's no abstract, no real introduction, and no real conclusion.  I did get the theme that humans get meaning from their membership in a larger enterprise (the State).  I guess there's nothing to do but read the reading now.

It may seem silly to go through all this effort just to wind up with, "I guess there's nothing to do but read the reading now."  But I want you to notice three things.

• The preliminary steps take almost no time — certainly no time in comparison to just plunging in and doing the reading cold.  When you first try this framework they might take you a while, but that's just because you aren't used to them.
• I am now able to do the reading far, far faster than I would have been if I had just plunged in.
• I understand and retain the material much better than I would otherwise — very useful to a student at quiz and exam time!

A final note:  key to understanding a reading is to understand what problem the author was trying to solve.  What was the challenge of the time and place?  What sense of meaning was gone or threatened, and what sense of meaning does the author propose as a replacement?  Don't condemn the author or criticize the argument until you've done these things.

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