Reading comp PrepTest 150 · Section 1 · Question 17

Topic: Humanities

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Borges's "special type of reader" in detective fiction
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Definition of the "special type of reader":
    • Confronts literature with suspicions, reads any piece of literature like a detective novel (second sentence)
  • Author's attitude: "insight into the general nature of literature" (last sentence)

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Borges: The way books are read determines a book's genre
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Comparisons, according to Borges:
    • The reader's participation in the "aesthetic event" of literature is not external to the literature but instead central to it (second sentence)
    • Readers read books of the same genre in the same way (last sentence)
    • Genre is determined by how readers approach the literary work rather than the work's formal elements (last sentence)

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Author: Classifying genres based on the works' themes is difficult, so a better classification system is based on "reading protocols"
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Comparison, according to the author:
    • Classifying genres based on thematic similarities leads to so many "borderline cases," so a more fruitful way to define genres is based on "reading protocols" (first through third sentences)
  • Definition of "reading protocols":
    • The way we read, respond to sentences, and make sense of the text (third sentence)
  • Point of intersection with passage A:
    • The discussion of "reading protocols" recalls passage A's discussion of detective novels' "special kind of reader," the description of the "aesthetic event" between reader and text, and the passage's conclusion
  • Author's attitude: "taxonomic difficulties of such an approach are notorious" (first sentence); "arises so often" (second sentence); "fails to demarcate genres entirely" (second sentence); "more fruitful" (third sentence); "particularly rich" (last sentence)

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Author: Need to determine how literary works promote reading protocols; examples of reading protocols
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Examples of reading protocols, according to the author:
    • When reading poetry, we pay more attention to the sound of words (second sentence)
    • When reading science fiction, we pay special attention to the differences between our world and the "world of the story" (fourth and last sentences)
  • Author's attitude: "Our major critical effort must therefore be" (first sentence); "particular attention" (last sentence)

Passage A: Borges argues that the detective novel highlights how a literary work's genre is determined by how readers approach the work, not by the work's formal characteristics.

Passage B: It's better to classify literary genres based on the "reading protocols" the genre promotes, so critics should explore how genres create and encourage these protocols.

Passage A:

Paragraph 2, Sentence 3 (P2, S3) - Author's conclusion

Passage B:

P1, S3 - Author's subsidiary conclusion

P2, S1 - Author's main conclusion

Meta-Structure? Relationship Between Passages?

Relationship - Similar Viewpoints: The authors of these two passages have very similar views. The authors share the belief that literary genres are primarily defined by how readers interact with the literary works. The author of passage A, parroting Borges, refers to this interaction as an "aesthetic event" that the reader creates when engaging with literature (PA, P2, S1). On the other hand, passage B's author refers to the interaction between reader and text as "reading protocols." Still, both authors believe that readers will interact with different genres' works in different ways. Passage A provides an example of the suspicion a detective-story reader will bring to the text (PA, P1, S2), while passage B provides examples of how poetry and science-fiction readers will confront texts in those genres (PB, P2, S2-5). Because these authors' views are very similar, we should expect several questions that ask us to identify similarities between the passages and the authors' beliefs.

The questions on comparative passages frequently ask about the authors' positions, so it's critical that we have a firm understanding of each author's beliefs. It's not difficult to discern the opinions of passage B's author. However, many test-takers have trouble unpacking whether passage A's author expresses any beliefs. After all, the argument in passage A is mostly attributed to Borges.

However, a few clues help us determine that the author of passage A agrees with Borges. First, the author expresses a little attitude at the end of the first paragraph. The author says Borges's interest in the detective novel "draws our attention to an insight into the general nature of literature" (PA, P1, S3). By characterizing Borges's claims with a positive term like "insight," the author suggests that they agree with Borges's argument. When the author elaborates on this "insight into the general nature of literature" in the second paragraph, we can infer that the author agrees with these claims. Moreover, even if the author mostly attributes claims made in the second paragraph to Borges, the author drops this attribution in the last sentence: "Thus, what unites works belonging to the same genre is the way those works are read, rather than, say, a set of formal elements found within the works" (PA, P2, S3). By not crediting Borges in this sentence, the author subtly lets us know that they agree with this conclusion.