As a counterbalance to my last post (on the often cynical new book Great Idea at the Time), I would like to share with you a gleaning from the little book A Key to Culture : Introductory Reading from the Great Books Course, by one Francis Neilson. I came across this book during a recent visit to the library at my son's college in Ohio.
A Key to Culture was published in 1948 by the C. C. Nelson Company of Appleton, Wisconsin. Neilson intended it as a bibliography of readings to help his audience to learn more about the historical backdrop of the Great Books.
"Over a period of half a century, much of my time has been given to the classics and I still want many more years to satisfy my hunger for them," he writes. He advises his readers to become adept at the "art of making time" for the Great Books, and recommends a rigorous discipline of devoting two hours a day, three days a week to their study.
Neilson considers his book an adjunct to "the Hutchins Project." There's an ingenuousness to Neilson's book, long out of print I'm sure, that I've found nowhere else in my own reading about this cultural movement.
Happy New Year!
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