Making Sense of Reading

the Russian Novel Phenomenon
This book is intended to be practical, despite its range over a variety of theoretical disciplines. So perhaps I might conclude this first chapter with a couple of practical hints for the reader concerning the rest of the book. 
First, relax. Anxiety about being able to comprehend and remember can make any reader functionally blind. You may not realize that anxiety has this effect, but the more you are concerned about reading this book the less you are likely to comprehend it. Try to enjoy the boot, put it aside for a while if you are bored or confused, and leave your brain to take care of the rest.
And my second helpful hint is that you should not try to memorize anything you read in this book. The effort to memorize is completely destructive of comprehension. On the other hand, with comprehension the memorization will take care of itself. Your brain has had longer experience than you can recall in making sense of a complex world and in remembering what is important.
My two words of advice are exemplified in what I call the Russian Novel Phenomenon. Every reader must have experienced that depressing moment about fifty pages into a Russian novel when we realize that we have lost track of all the characters, the variety of names by which they are known, their family relationships and relative ranks in the civil service. At this point we can give in to our anxiety, and start again to read more carefully, trying to memorize all the details on the off chance that some may prove to be important. If such a course is followed, the second reading is almost certain to be more incomprehensible than the first. The probable result: one Russian novel lost forever. But there is another alternative: to read faster, to push ahead, to make sense of what we can and to enjoy whatever we make sense of. And suddenly the book becomes readable, the story makes sense and we find that we can remember all the important characters and events simply because we know what is important. Any re reading we then have to do is bound to make sense, because at least we comprehend what is going on and what we are looking.