Read More Great Literature in 2009

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!

A great book about Great Books

Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam recently published a popular book on the great books movement in 20th-century America entitled A Great Idea at the Time.

Beam entertainingly traces the movement's story its two-fold guise as both a college-curriculum reform and an adult self-education initiative. The book begins with accounts of the efforts of some early European advocates of the sustained study of the classics: Frederic William Farrar, Auguste Comte, John Lubbock. Lubbock published a list in a popular magazine of the 100 greatest books ever written, and was the forebear of subsequent efforts to delimit "best of the best" that have continued to this day. Beam also profiles leading exponents in the United States: Charles Eliot, John Erskine, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and Mortimer Adler.

The heart of A Great Idea at the Time concerns the heyday of the Great Books in America in the 1950s and 60s that coincided with the publication by the University of Chicago and the Encyclopaedia Britannica of the multivolume Great Books of the Western World. A key figure during this period was William Benton, the Chicago ad man who brought his business acumen to the project. The set sold like gangbusters, though Beam considers the biggest selling point of the set -- which included not only great works of literature, philosophy, and history, but also key texts in science and medicine such as Ptolemy's Almagest and Harvey's On the Circulation of the Blood -- to have been anxiety among middle-class Americans that the growth in their intellectual stature had not kept pace with that of their material well-being.

Beam does his homework. He travels to Annapolis to visit St. John's College, whose "all great books, all the time" curriculum was initiated by two of Hutchins's protégés, and to Chicago, still home to the Great Books Foundation. His description of campus movements of the 1990s to overthrow the legacy of DWMs (dead-white males) forms another important chapter of the saga. At the end of the book he offers a humorous annotated bibliography of works that have made the "canon" over the years.

My one critique of A Great Idea at the Time is that it's hard to discern Beam's real point-of-view regarding the classics. The subtitle: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books is misleading in this regard, because Beam's account is by-and-large more sympathetic, but I'll refrain from spoiling the ending for you. Let's just say that Beam might identify with his hypothetical undergraduate student sitting in the library, his assigned inscrutable though undeniably "great" tome in his lap, gazing out the window onto the quad and wishing he were playing frisbee with his buddies instead. At times all we great bookies do.

Find A Great Idea at the Time in our collection by clicking here.

Next Meeting: "The Prince," by Machiavelli, Monday, January 26th 7 p.m.

The group's next meeting takes place on Monday, January 26th, 2009, in the Main Library Auditorium. The reading will be selections from The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli, which some commentators consider the most misunderstood book ever written. Please note there is no meeting in December (winter break!!!).

Questions for "The Beast in the Jungle" Discussion, Monday, November 24th

Interpretive Questions

If you were asked to describe the relationship between John Marcher and May Bartram, and were limited to one word or a short phrase, what would that word or phrase be?

Could John have had a normal life if he had not met Meg again after an interval of ten years? (John could not remember a lot of details of their first meeting -- it was May who reminded John of the "secret" he confided in her).

Had John, in his own mind at least, had a meaningful life with May (p. 192, top of page, "The state of mind ...")?

The description of John's life is deliberately vague -- government job, some friends, work in his garden. May's life is somewhat more significant in its details: a relation who must have engendered some affection as "the old Lady" arranged in her will to provide for her so that she could have some financial independence. Has James done this deliberately?

What are May's initial intentions toward John? Have they changed by the end of the story?

The relationship between May and John is devoid of any physical intimacy. Is this a relationship that one or the other wants to make "sterile" or feels must remain so? Is the author trying to say something about this state?

When did May perceive that she knew what John's "beast" was? Was her perception correct?

Can you define that "beast" (p. 196, 2d paragraph and p. 197, line 4 -- "the man to whom nothing on earth was to happen"). Could John have changed that? Could he have done so because of or in spite of May's help?

Read the description of May during John's second-to-last visit before she died (p. 176). By her appearance and the almost stage-like setting of her house what is she meant to symbolize?

Is this a story written in hyperbole to demonstrate the neurotic relationships between two people? A passionate love story encased in refined prose?

Taming "The Beast in the Jungle"

Gentle Reader,

We meet on Monday the 24th to talk about "The Beast in the Jungle," by Henry James. As I've wrestled with the Beast, a few suggestions spring to mind to help ease your way to understanding this densely thicketed product of James's mature phase:

1. Try reading the work as a fable, a story with a moral.
2. "X-ray" (survey the structure of) the story, and you will notice that the narrator's omniscient observations occupy upwards of 90 percent of the text. The rest consists of conversations between the only two characters, John Marcher and May Bartram. Do a quick read of the entire story by paying your sole attention to their conversations. It's sometimes hard to keep track of who is speaking, so pencil in your own notation of "he said:" and "she said:".
3. Note that the estate where the opening encounter between Marcher and May takes place is called "Weatherend." Note also: both their names contain months of the year.
4. Pay attention to James's scheme as to time and space. After the opening encounter, James takes you back in time to another place (Italy). He later "fast forwards" to their lives in London.
5. Think about how the work is divided into six numbered parts. What is James's design in doing this? Does the "deep" narrative divide neatly into six parts? Three parts? Two parts?
6. Take a look at the electronic version of the text by clicking here. Do a search on the word "beast" to find the contexts for this key symbol.
7. Finally, train yourself to take in enough oxygen during those s-o-o-o long narrator paragraphs (by my estimation some paragraphs number 500 words in length). If you keep at it, you will build up stamina and James's prose will yield its subtle meanings.

"The Beast in the Jungle," by Henry James: November 24th

Our next meeting takes place Monday, November 24th at 7 p.m. We will discuss "The Beast in the Jungle," Henry James's fable-like work of short fiction.

Questions for "Agamemnon" discussion, Monday, Oct. 27th, 7:00 p.m., Huntington Public Library

Interpretive questions

What is the significance of the tapestries, why does Agamemnon step on them, and why does that act seal his fate? (cf. p. 14: "Come to me now, my dearest/Down from the car of war, but never set the foot/That stamped out Troy on earth again, my great one.")

By convincing Agamemnon to go "trampling royal crimson," is she also showing her defiance of the gods to whom she was forced to give up her daughter" (p. 117, third paragraph : "There is the sea ... to bring that dear life back.")

Why is Cassandra also killed?

Why does Clytemnestra commit the killings, not Aegisthus?

Interpret Clytemnestra's line (p. 137): "By the Child's Rights, by Ruin and Fury -- the three gods to whom I sacrificed this man"?

Was Iphigenia's death a "sacrifice" or a "murder"? Agamemnon's?

Compare the roles of the watchman (pp. 83-85) and the herald (pp. 100-103, 105-107)

Why in the concluding dialog between Aegisthus and and the chorus leader does the leader question Aegithus's right to become the ruler of Argos? (pp. 143-145).

Textual analysis:

Read and interpret these two choral passages:

pp. 96-99: From "The sky stroke of god!" to "rumors voiced by women come to nothing."

pp. 107-109: From "Who -- what power named the name that drove your fate?" to "She steers all things towards their destined end."

Read and interpret the Agamemnon-Clytemnestra dialog on
pp. 110-118, from "First, with justice I salute my Argos and my gods," to "Speed our rites to their fulfillment once for all!"

Evaluative question

How does the play manifest the biblical notion (Exodus 20) of "the iniquity of the fathers being visited upon the sons"? Does this happen in real life? If it does, are we stuck or can we break free from this mold?

Tragedy and Democracy

This month's reading, "Agamemnon," by Aeschylus, dates from fifth century B.C. Athens. The play was first performed as part of a festival known as the Great or City Dionysia held in honor of Dionysus, god of fertility, vegetation, ritual dance, and mysticism (big portfolio!). "Agamemnon" is the first part of the great Oresteia trilogy, the only surviving Aeschylean trilogy.

To the citizens of fifth century Athens, "Agamemnon" was a well-known tale from the legendary past. The Greek leader Agamemnon's returns in victory to his home in Argos from the Trojan war. Upon his arrival, Agamemnon and his captive, the Trojan princess Cassandra, are murdered by Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra and her paramour Aegisthus (who also happened to be Agamemnon's cousin).

In the second play of the trilogy, "Libation Bearers," Agamemnon's son Orestes avenges his father's murder by killing his mother Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, and in the third and final play, "Eumenides," Orestes is tried for his act.

Simon Goldhill asks in his book Aeschylus: The Oresteia (Cambridge University Press, 2004) : "How does tragedy as a genre and the festival in which tragedy was performed relate to democracy? Is there a necessary link between democracy and tragedy?"

I'll take a stab (no pun intended) at a response with the not-so-original observation that human relations can be messy, and those of our prominent leaders even more so. In Greek tragedy, actors wore buskins, or cothurni (lace-up boots) that raised them higher than members of the chorus. By means of such a device, the audience perceived these central players to stand larger than the hoi polloi, the masses.

Tragedy staged in a public venue in effect helped free citizens to find mechanisms to adjudicate conflicts that arose in society.

In their classic How to Read a Book (Touchstone, 1972), Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, both leading proponents of continuing adult education in the classic texts of Western civilization, comment that the reading of play scripts allows you to become, in effect, the director of the the play in your mind. In so "directing" a tragedy such as "Agamemnon," your imagined audience are also citizens of an imagined polity : fifth century Athens, the twenty-first century United States, etc.

"Agamemnon," by Aeschylus: Monday October 27th

Our next discussion will be held on Monday, October 27th at 7 p.m. The featured selection will be "Agamemenon," by Aeschylus (ca. 525 B.C. to ca. 456 B.C.), the first play in the celebrated Oresteia trilogy. This drama recounts the return of Agamemnon, co-leader of the Trojan invasion, to his native Argos and what happens in lieu of the expected victory celebration.

Questions for Canterbury Tales Discussion, September 22d

Our questions this month concern the women's issues raised by the two tales under examination, "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and "The Clerk's Tale."

Interpretive Questions

1. What common, timeless themes reflecting life and reality appear in both the "Wife of Bath's Tale" and "The Clerk's Tale"?

2. Does Chaucer's portrayal of the Wife of Bath (in the "Wife of Bath's Prologue") reflect a perceptive view of women (cf. pp. 17, 23, 31)?

a. The Wife of Bath and Griselda, at least on the surface, seem to have very different ways of relating to men and the power structure. Which does Chaucer seem to favor (p.40, 80)?

3. What is Chaucer's attitude towards the clergy? Towards religion in general (p.65)?

4. Is Griselda's submission to the king a metaphor for the submission of God's creatures to God (p.62)?

Evaluative questions

1. Can it be said in general that Chaucer liked women? People in general?

2 Do you agree with the moral of the Wife of Bath's Tale, i.e., what women want most is "sovereignty"?

Johnny's Fireside Book

In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, part of this month’s selection from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, “Alisoun,” relates the following about her fifth and latest husband, Johnny:

He had a book, he kept it on his shelf,
And day and night he read it to himself
And laughed aloud, although he was quite serious
He called it Theophrastus and Valerius. (Coghill, trans.)

Johnny’s book was a collection of stories from classical and biblical sources about “wicked wives” (which, by the way, contained the story of Agamemnon’s death at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour, a story told in next month’s reading, Aeschylus’s drama "Agamemnon").

Johnny enjoyed the narrative of wicked wives, until his wife sets him straight.

And when I saw that he would never stop
Reading this cursed book, all night no doubt
I suddenly grabbed and tore three pages out
Where he was reading, at the very place
And fisted such a buffet [punch] in his face
That backwards down into the fire he fell

Johnny then hits his wife on the head and knocks her unconscious. When she comes to, he promises never to lay hands on her again. He gives her full authority over their house and land. Alisoun makes Johnny “burn that book upon the spot.”

Who published Johnny’s book? It was no doubt self-published in Chaucer’s imagination. Insofar as it confirmed Johnny’s preconceived notions about the “wickeness of women,” Chaucer tells us it provided fine fireside reading for Johnny. Then life (er, wife) intruded.

Professor Mark Edmundson writes in his book Why Read? that one function of education is “to use major works of art and intellect to influence one’s Final Narrative, one’s outermost circle of commitments.” Johnny enjoyed the narrative of his book. His wife didn’t. She revised Johnny’s narrative for him in a book discussion of unusual physicality.

Group to Discuss "The Canterbury Tales" on Monday, September 22d

Our next meeting will take place on Monday, September 22d, in the Village Library Meeting Room, at 7 p.m. We'll discuss several of the "Canterbury Tales," by Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1340-1400), the towering figure of English literature before Shakespeare. By turns pious, romantic, and bawdy, these tales reward readers with their humor and insight. Our selection this month includes the "Wife of Bath's Tale" (and its famous prologue in which she discourses on her five marriages) and the "Clerk's Tale."

Questions for "Principles of Government," by Montesquieu.

This book discussion will take place on Monday, August 25th at 7 p.m. at the Huntington Public Library, 338 Main Street, Huntington, New York.

Interpretive Questions

Montesquieu writes (p. 254) that laws "should be in relation to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives, whether husbandmen, huntsmen, or shepherds ..." Does this mean that every nation needs to have different laws.?

What is the distinction M. draws (p.255) between the "nature" and the "principle" of government?

What does M. mean when he writes, in the section entitled "That Virtue is Not the Principle of a Monarchical Government" (p. 260), that "I am not ignorant that virtuous princes are so very rare; but I venture to affirm, that in a monarchy it is extremely difficult for people to be virtuous"?

Why does honor take the place of virtue in a monarchical government (p. 261)?

Why is honor not a principle of a despotic government (p. 262)? Indeed, why does M. state that if would be extremely dangerous (p. 263?)

What does M. mean when he writes (p. 264), "History informs us that the horrid cruelties of Domitian struck such a terror into the governors, that the people recovered themselves a little during his reign. Thus a torrent overflows one side of a country, and on the other leaves fields untouched, where the eye is refreshed by the prospect of fine meadows"?

M. writes (p. 266): Such are the principles of the three sorts of government [democratic, monarchical, despotic] : which does not imply that in a particular republic they actually are, but that they ought to be, virtuous; nor does it prove that in a particular monarchy they are actuated by honor, or in a particular despotic government by fear; but that they ought to be directed by these principles, otherwise the government is imperfect." Does this mean these governments are destined to be guided by these principles?

Is M. correct in stating that extreme equality is as great a threat to the principle of democracy as lack of equality (p. 266)?

M. states (p. 269): "The natural place of virtue is near to liberty, but it is not nearer to excessive liberty than to servitude." Agree or disagree?

Is one of the three forms of government more susceptible to corruption than another (p. 266 ff)?

M.'s final words in this selection (p. 274) are "There are very few laws which are not good, while the state retains its principles." Though the title of his book is The Spirit of the Laws, does he imply here that good government depends not on good laws, but on good people?

Evaluative Questions

M. writes (p. 256), "There is no great share of probity necessary to support a monarchical or despotic government. The force of laws in one, and the prince's arm in the other, are sufficient to maintain and direct the whole. But in a popular state, one spring more is necessary, namely, virtue." Do you agree or disagree that virtue is more important in a democracy than in a monarchy or a tyranny?

Do you agree with Hobbes or Montesquieu that "man is naturally in a state of war (p. 252)"?

Can you summarize M.'s political philosophy by the statement: "No government or country can be great unless those in charge have the will to make it great"?

Could it be said of the United States today that we are closer to Greece at its height or Greece at its steepest decline? (p. 257-58; 269) If we are headed for a decline, to what could it be attributed? Too much material success, too much freedom, lack of personal discipline (cf. p. 269).

Engaging with Great Books Redounds to Your Benefit

I think of The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu’s magnum opus from which this month’s selection, “Principles of Government,” is taken, as a work of political philosophy. Montesquieu’s arguments, however, are often based on examples from history. In his chapter “Of the Principle of Democracy,” he cites examples from classical antiquity and seventeenth-century England.

Montesquieu writes of ancient Rome: “When Sylla thought of restoring Rome to her liberty, this unhappy city was incapable of receiving that blessing. She had only the feeble remains of virtue, which were continually diminishing. Instead of being roused from her lethargy by Caesar, Tiberius, Caius Claudius, Nero, and Domitian, she riveted every day her chains; if she struck some blows, her aim was at the tyrant, not at the tyranny.” (Nugent, trans.)

This paragraph had me running to Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans to fill in gaps in my knowledge about Rome. Reading one great book often leads you to other great books.

Robert Maynard Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago and a leading light of the post-World War II movement for continuing adult liberal education that led to the establishment of the Great Books Foundation, wrote in his book The Great Conversation that great books “enlarge our fund of ideas.” In my reading of Montesquieu as a philosophical book supported by historical examples, I’ve also picked up some useful history on the way.

"Principles of Government," by Montesquieu

Our next discussion takes place Monday, August 28th, at 7 p.m. in the Village Library Meeting Room. The reading is an excerpt from the Spirit of the Laws by the great Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu (1689-1755). Here Montesquieu compares and contrasts republican, aristocratic, monarchical, and despotic governments. With the presidential campaign heating up, why not take pause to ponder and discuss what this French philosopher had to say about good and bad governments?

"The Iliad," by Homer

Our next meeting on Homer's "The Iliad" will be held on Monday, July 28th at 7 p.m. in the Village Meeting Room. Here are some of the questions we'll discuss (page citations are from the Great Books Reading and Discussion Program, Third Series, Vol. 2.):

Interpretive questions

After giving up Chryseis to placate Chryses, Apollo’s priest, why does Agamemnon humiliate Akhilleus by making him give up his woman Briseis (Book 1) ?

What does Paris's statement (p. 112), "My own gifts are from pale-gold Aphrodítê -- do not taunt me for them. Glorious things the gods bestow are not to be despised," say about his attitude about the war?

Is Helen the victim of a male-dominated culture or is she truly the woman whose vanity "launched a thousand ships." Does she have moments when she becomes less a "sex symbol" and more a human being capable of introspection and even guilt? (pp. 116-117, 124-126, 143-144, 246)?

Why does the duel between Hektor and Aías in Book 7 not end with the death of one of the combatants but rather with an exchange of gifts (p. 160)?

Why (p.186, Book 11), does Zeus command "Strife to the beachhead" and resolve "to crowd great warriors into the undergloom."?

How and why does Hektor's attitude upon killing Patróklos (Book 16) differ from that of Akhilleus upon killing Hektor (Book 22)?

Evaluative questions

It seems obvious that the rationale for the war becomes something other than restoring Helen to Meneláos (pp. 118-24, 164), but what would that be?

What outcome do the lesser gods desire for the war? What about Zeus? Do they achieve their ends? What side does Homer favor?

Is "The Iliad" pro-war, anti-war, or neither?

What are the core values "The Iliad" espouses for humankind (or does it only espouse them for the warrior class?)

"On Evil," by Maimonides

The next discussion will take place on Monday, June 23d in the Village Library auditorium at 7 p.m. We'll discuss some of the following questions (page citations from Great Books Reading and Discussion Program, Third Series, Vol.2):

Interpretive Questions

Page 83: Based on Maimonides’s discussion of matter vs. form, do you accept or reject his statement that “All man’s acts of disobedience and sins are consequent upon his matter and not because of his form, whereas all his virtues are consequent upon his form.”

Page 87: Maimonides writes, “Matter is a strong veil preventing the apprehension of that which is separate from matter from matter as it truly is.... Hence whenever our intellect aspires to apprehend the deity or one of the intellects, there subsists this great veil interposed between the two. This is alluded to in all the books of the prophets ….” How does matter prevent our “apprehension” of pure form? Is M. speaking metaphorically, e.g, when he invokes the line from psalm 97, “Clouds and darkness are around him.”

Page 84: Is Maimonides's statement of the necessity of matter and form to coexist an argument in support of the permanent existence of evil?

Page 90: What does Maimonides mean when he writes, “All evils are privations.” Do his examples (death, illness, poverty, ignorance) support this statement?

Page 91: Maimonides states that “the prophets and the Sages” teach about the “good being in its entirety an essential act of the deity,” and goes on to quote the Talmudic saying that "Nothing that is evil descends from above," but do Maimonides’s own arguments support this belief?

Page 92: Maimonides writes, “Just as a blind man, because of absence of sight, does not cease stumbling, being wounded, and also wounding others, because he has nobody to guide him on his way, the various sects of men – every individual according to the extent of his ignorance – does to himself and to others great evils from which individuals of the species suffer. If there were knowledge, whose relation to the human form is like that of the faculty of sight to the eye, they would refrain from doing any harm to themselves and to others.” If evil comes from ignorance, does M. believe that knowledge can overcome it?

Evaluative Questions

Maimonides states there are three kinds of evil (p. 95-100) : (1) those that result from our physical imperfection ; (2) those that "men inflict on one another," and (3) those "inflicted upon any individual among us by his own action." He says the third kind is much more prevalent than the second kind. Agree? Disagree? What would be some examples of evils we perpetrate upon our own selves?

Page 86: Do you buy Maimonides's argument as to why “Thoughts about sin are worse than sin.”?