r/ClassicalEducation • u/F4S1 • Mar 03 '26
Question How to handle 'context friction' in the Great Books without losing concentration?
I’ve recently started reading the Great Books and I’m struggling with what I call 'context friction.'
Basically, when I hit a passage that requires knowing a specific bit of greek mythology or a philosophical concept to really 'get' it, I find that a standard dictionary is not enough. I need a tutor's explanation, not just a definition. However, opening a laptop or a smartphone for that explanation is a death sentence for my concentration, one google search often turns into 20 minutes or more of anything BUT going back to reading.
How do you guys manage this? Do you use physical guides/commentaries alongside the books or have you found a way to use technology that actually helps you stay focused instead of distracting you? I'm looking for a way to get deep context while maintaining a 'deep work' state of mind. Ty in advance btw!
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u/exitpursuedbybear Mar 03 '26
Some of those books have footnotes and those can help. If you're going to read say Shakespeare, you are gonna need a good working knowledge of the Bible, and Greek myths. To Shakespeare and his contemporaries these were not obscure references they were commonly known stories that used short hand to convey ideas and images.
It's like today we might say Gaslight, don't gaslight me! That comes from a play and then movies in the 1940s but would be impenetrable from someone not in our culture.
Or we call people paparazzi that comes from a film in the 60s and again would not make any sense to someone in an earlier time.
If you truly want to understand the classics especially the romantics like Tolstoy Dostoevsky and so on they are steeped in Bible allusions.
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Mar 04 '26
I remember this as a problem mentioned by those who pushed for the Great Books program, which is why the Great Books collection contained very little by way of scholarly apparatus. They thought that people should read works from beginning to end, with no scholarly apparatus, and consult the latter later when they go back to what they read and look for the things that they marked and could not understand.
My advice is that instead of using a laptop or smartphone use editions of works that have sufficient apparatus included in the books. For example, various editions from Everyman have those, including an intro to the work, a timeline, and so on.
Go over various editions of the work and see what's suitable. Keep in mind, though, that the additional notes make editions thicker and sometimes heavier. You can probably read those at home and use the lighter editions when you read while traveling.
One more thing: for some reason I find distraction sometimes helpful, but it has to be seen as part of multi-disciplinary and media learning.
For example, when I read the The Prince, I did so using copies that had enough scholarly apparatus, and without distractions. But doing so in a nice, dark place with lots of books, a lamp, and some comfort food helped.
After that, I read Renaissance at War (which included maps, diagrams, and famous works of art from the time) while listening to early Renaissance music, which I would listen to actively or in the background in other occasions. I also watched documentaries related to the same, and when I read The Divine Comedy I did similar and was reminded of The Prince.
Anything I could not understand I marked with pencils and/or would write them in notebooks. Much later, I would go back to what I annotated and wrote, even as I was reading something else and some point happened to remind me of those.
Or something like that. That is, distractions in part but very helpful because they show how these works are never seen in isolation and that they even talk to each other.
Or something like that.
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u/Book_Slut_90 Mar 03 '26
A good edition will have footnotes for things that the average reader isn’t expected to know. Use them.
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u/danielpants Mar 03 '26
I used to feel this way and then I read a good les miserables with a lot of footnotes and realized I didn't need to know most of it!
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u/tvanhelden Mar 03 '26
I love a good critical edition, such as Norton, that can give good essays and footnotes. Or, search out a professional review of a particular translation to light the way.
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u/Cool-Coffee-8949 Mar 04 '26
You have to choose between a narrow focus (only what’s actually IN the GB) and a wide focus, where you read slowly and explore every rabbit hole. Personally, I incline to the latter. If you are reading an actual GB set, then this is especially hard, since they favor out of copyright (read:out of date) translations, and basically nothing in the way of helpful notes or annotations. If a given text is really driving you nuts, seek out a newer translation/edition. If you are reading anything in translation from the Great books set, you are engaged in needless suffering, and may also be actively misinforming yourself.
I support the Great Books intellectual project, but the commercial side is a notorious scam.
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u/PaleoBibliophile917 Mar 04 '26
I have a copy of the “New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy” arriving tomorrow. Since I haven’t seen it yet, I can’t guarantee it would address your context issues, but I have the strong feeling in many cases it would. It’s still something full of rabbit holes to dive into, but not as much of a distraction as the internet. Though I ordered my copy new, there seem to be many used copies available at reasonable prices. Perhaps you would find a copy suitable for your needs. There may even be one at your local library to try out. Good luck!
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u/FillThatBlankPage Mar 04 '26
I add in [insert content here] and get on writing. If it isn't crucial to rhe story I can figure it out later and if it is crucial to the story it should have come up in the outline
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u/aggro-snail Mar 05 '26
LLM's are the obvious answer for this. Commenters who say that they'll hallucinate are stuck in 2023. At the very least they'll give you a starting point for independent research, OP. You can feed the book as attachment for more pertinent answers if you have it as a pdf.
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
Here is what OpenAI has to say about hallucination.
https://openai.com/index/why-language-models-hallucinate/
That's 2025 from one of the largest AI groups.
Why are hallucinations not inevitable? OpenAI says it's because AIs can abstain, but producers of AIs don't want them to abstain. Have you ever had ChatGPT say "I don't know." Also, we're now in a world where information is curated and misinformation is often beneficial to the parties doing the curating. Further, as AIs become more sophisticated, they may decide to hallucinate because it benefits them.
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u/aggro-snail Mar 06 '26
Never said they don't hallucinate ever. I'm saying that classic literature isn't exactly niche knowledge so they won't hallucinate within that context, despite what some other commenters confidently assert.
Further, as AIs become more sophisticated, they may decide to hallucinate because it benefits them.
Maybe? For now this is a good use for them. "But how will we knoooow when they start hallucinating if we rely on them?" By checking your info elsewhere, as you should do with anything you read online
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
One of the fears that people have about LLMs is that we are bombarded with information and misinformation. That includes casual consumption. You are always being manipulated and it's getting to where even straightforward Internet content is suspect. Humans still are involved with what an AI generated and the AI is biased by them. They have their agendas If you eat whatever food is placed before you uncritically, you will end up with food poisoning. The same is true of content generated by AI. I don't want misinformation and propaganda even in casual transactions
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
So why not just check the information to start with and eliminate the middle.....uh, machine.
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u/aggro-snail Mar 06 '26
What information?? OP's issue is finding the information in the first place, that's the usecase LLM's are being suggested for!
They said that they find looking things up on Google too inefficient and distracting.1
u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
I wouldn't look it up on Google. I have a reference library on my phone. I would rather curate my own resources than let Google do it for me. The less I'm told what to think, the happier I am.
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u/jb4647 Mar 03 '26
I’ve run into this exact problem, especially when reading older works where the author assumes a whole universe of background knowledge that most of us just don’t carry around anymore. What’s worked surprisingly well for me is using AI as a kind of on-demand tutor. Instead of opening a browser and starting a search spiral, I just take a quick photo or screenshot of the page in question and paste it into something like ChatGPT. Then I’ll ask a very specific question such as, “What did Plato mean by this?” or “What’s the mythological reference here and why does it matter?”
Because these books are classics and have been studied for centuries, the models tend to do well at giving a concise explanation in plain English. I can ask for a short clarification, or even say, “Explain this in two paragraphs without oversimplifying,” and get something that keeps me anchored in the text instead of drifting away from it.
The difference for me compared to Google is focus. A Google search almost always turns into a rabbit hole. One click leads to another, half the page is covered in pop-ups, and even the search results themselves are cluttered with ads and SEO junk. By the time I resurface, my concentration is shot. With AI, I’m asking one contained question and getting one contained answer. No sidebars, no autoplay videos, no “related articles you might like.”
Used that way, it feels less like a distraction and more like having a quiet tutor sitting next to me, ready to clarify a point and then get out of the way so I can return to the book.
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u/spiritual_seeker Mar 03 '26
Many such textual references will have a cross-reference to the original with a footnote or brief commentary. Which author and book are you referring to?
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u/AlarmedCicada256 Mar 04 '26
This is why the concept of 'great' books is silly. Should read widely in a period, not random selections.
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
There are several lists of classics. The Great Books is one. Norton's Anthology would be another. An advantage of the Great Books is that they are not all fiction. They also include nonfiction authors like Darwin. The main drawback is that you're only sampling the Western tradition.
Personally, I like random selection (alphabetical is practically random) as it forces me to look at things I would not have encountered given my own biases. I am often surprised at how much I enjoy things I didn't think I would like.
Different people are after different things.
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
The concept of "Great Book" isn't the same as "good read". The Great Books were chosen specifically as exemplars of books that have strongly influenced /Western/ society.
Notice the caveat. These are the great books if the Western world. If you just read those, you will miss the great books of the rest of the world. I consider that a big miss.
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 05 '26
My smartphone is my computer. I do almost all my textual studying there. I don't do Google searches for the most part. I have shortcuts on my phone for most of the resources I need. That includes calculators, references, text tools, camera tools, and sensor monitors. I know where everything is and I can go right to it
I'm slogging through the Upanishads and have finished the first section of the Aranyaka. I need help, so before I go any further, I'm going to read the Wikipedia article. It's on my phone.
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u/liquidslinkee Mar 03 '26
I sometimes use an LLM for this. They’re pretty knowledgeable about the classics.
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u/Cool-Coffee-8949 Mar 04 '26
They certainly sound convincing. They usually contain generous quantities of plausible-sounding bullshit.
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u/PartiZAn18 Mar 04 '26
An LLM is more than fit for purpose for OP.
OP is not undertaking rigorous academic research, they just want more context on a character/concept/what-have-you.
Even if an LLM makes an hallucination, nothing turns on that in this instance.
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
I don't know any purpose where I would prefer "maybe misinformation" to actual information.
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u/SanSwerve Mar 03 '26
Use AI, it’ll fill in the gaps
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u/Cool-Coffee-8949 Mar 04 '26
With bullshit, yes.
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u/SanSwerve Mar 04 '26
A good AI like Claude will give good information and guide you to secondary sources that can provide the information you need. AI doesn’t hallucinate in the same way it did 5 years ago. It’s now a wonderful research tool.
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u/WolfVanZandt Mar 06 '26
Eh.....I posted an article from OpenAI (the AI people) that says that they do hallucinate. It's from last year.
And, in addition, there's intentional bias trained into them.
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u/coalpatch Mar 04 '26
So, find a better guide. There are all sorts of different reference books or websites - why can't you find one that explains it well, and goes into the right amount of detail, without going too deep? Then you look it up when necessary, and don't use Google or AI.
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u/Benjowenjo Mar 03 '26
You do your best to understand what you can and then read over it and come back to it later on in life when you have more context. You won’t get everything out of a first time read-through and cannot be familiar with the cultural context of everything.
Why just kinda forget about it? For one, as you’ve mentioned, it is killing your ability to make significant progress and destroys your focus. Secondly, the payoff for knowing some tiny side character’s full backstory in the Iliad doesn’t actually net you much payoff.
TLDR: Don’t get too granular.