Maybe you have tried reading Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson before, but put it down without finishing. Maybe you have always wanted to read it but you found it intimidating. Maybe the name alone made you question whether this was the sort of book you should be reading.
Whatever the reasons, here are some tips to help you conquer this ‘weighty and bulky tome’.
First, it’s going to take some motivation. Maybe you’re curious. Maybe you’re interested because you’ve read about the many benefits the book offers. Maybe you heard that Gurdjieff’s exposition of his teaching goes far beyond what was expounded in In Search of the Miraculous. Maybe you even have a little pride… you’ve heard that the book sorts out the wrong kinds of readers, and by golly, you’re going to prove you’re not that!
Sustaining the effort beyond intellectual curiosity, desire for knowledge, or even pride needs a plan.
1. Set a Daily Task
Beelzebub’s Tales is 1238 pages long—that is daunting.
But it is less daunting when you consider that reading 4 pages per day means you can finish it in 310 days—less than a year! So one useful plan is to set yourself a task to read 4 pages every day until you finish.
2. Find a Format
Read it in a format you are comfortable with: there are printed editions, enlarged print editions, online editions, even audio editions.
3. Read Like Any Other Book
Don’t try to understand the meaning of what you are reading at first. Just read through it casually to grasp what is written in a literal sense, like you would read any other book.
If you haven’t read it before, the book has a preface and epilogue by the author. Everything between the first and last chapters is a story about an alien who has been exiled to our solar system and the tales he tells his grandson about those peculiar three-brained beings of planet Earth. It is wickedly funny at times, infuriating at other times, evoking gratitude or pity at other times.
The first chapter is somewhat long and serves as a warning and an overture of the whole book. Then the next several chapters over a span of 50 pages serve as training wheels for the rest of the book. They are fairly easy to read. Then the training wheels come off at chapter 16. Hang in there!
Once you read through it, you will want to read through it again, because then you’re going to start making connections and understanding it.
4. Reading As Exercise
You will come across extremely long sentences that appear on the surface to be rambling. But these long sentences aren’t an affectation of the author—they are actually very long thoughts that require attention to hold them in your mind. They are developing your capacity to sustain attention and memory. For these long sentences, pause a moment and try paraphrasing to yourself what you read, not to understand the meaning, but just what the author is literally saying.
5. You Will Be Offended
You will read something in the book that will offend you—your scientific, religious, social, and other notions or sensibilities—resist the urge to throw the book against the wall.
6. Neologisms
You will read some strange words (neologisms like Heptaparaparshinokh and Triamazikamno) that are often not defined until much later in the text, if at all. This will also serve as an exercise in attention and memory.
If you are using the online edition, these neologisms are hyperlinked so that you can see at a glance all the places where the neologism is used, and that can help you also to find the definition.
7. Verification
You are not expected to believe (or disbelieve) any of what you read in the book—verification, judging what parts are literal or allegorical, and reading between the lines comes later.
8. Find Other Readers
It can help to have companions who are also taking on this difficult text, for discussion and for motivation. The school I work with offers online classes every Friday that examine Beelzebub’s Tales and sometimes other writings of Gurdjieff. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in checking it out.