Paul Vitols's Blog, page 38

know thy genre—if you can

One of my ongoing avenues of research and thought is the topic of genre.

I got into this topic as a result of reading Robert McKee's book Story, in which he stresses the need for a writer to know the genre of the story he's writing. That got me thinking about what genre my own work in progress, The Mission, belongs in. Reviewing McKee's list of movie genres, along with some other lists, I decided that my novel—and my whole novel series, The Age of Pisces—belongs to the epic genre. Ah good: now that I knew my genre, I could learn its conventions and apply them to my work, giving my story more focus, purpose, and integrity.

But I ran into a problem: when I searched for the conventions of the epic genre, I could not find anything definite, only a few contradictory clues. As a starting-point I looked at McKee's definition of epic (he gives only the category modern epic): "the individual versus the state". Beyond that he gives only a few representative movies: Spartacus, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Viva Zapata!, 1984, and The People vs. Larry Flint. Hmm. This wasn't very close to what I was doing.

I began looking for material about literary epics, which eventually, in November 2007, led me to an excellent book called The Epic Cosmos, edited by Larry Allums. Here was news I could use. A group of scholars connected with The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, under the leadership of Louise Cowan, had contributed essays to a book that took a fresh and deeper look at the ancient genre of epic in an effort to discover its true nature. Fantastic! Highlighter in hand, I immersed myself in the book, and was in no way disappointed (I'll say more about it in the future—maybe in a book review).

But the conflicting notions of the concept of literary genre that I had been meeting led me also to inquire more generally into genre itself: what exactly is a genre? What are the true genres, or is there any such thing as an authoritative list?

The first extant discussion of genre occurs in Aristotle's Poetics, where he distinguishes four types of poetry:

epic
tragedy
comedy
dithyramb (basically what we would call lyric)

According to Northrop Frye, very little research has been done on genre since Aristotle, and such as has been done tends to be idiosyncratic and arbitrary. Genre remains a relatively ignored section of literary criticism, with literary genres being defined pragmatically by publishers and booksellers, who have to organize books in stores for sale. For genre, it remains a Wild West out there.

I've done some research and thinking on this topic. I came to realize that I needed to distinguish between literary genre—things such as novel vs. play vs. short story vs. poem—and story genre— things such as epic, Western, romance, and so on. I was interested in story genres. Within these, what distinguishes one from another? What are the defining characteristics of each type of story? Is there such a thing as a Tree of Life for stories as there is for living things, that would allow them to be classified scientifically?

These questions have led me deep into an investigation that is still under way and maybe always will be. I'd like to publish a "position paper" to offer the fruit of my results thus far—another thing on my "to do" list. As a teaser, I'll just say that I've been working at breaking down stories into their skeletal elements, using an approach similar to that used by the Russian researcher Vladimir Propp in his 1927 book, Morphology of the Folktale. Dissatisfied with the efforts that had been used up to that time to classify folktales (fairy tales), Propp started breaking stories into units based on function. How does each character and each event in a story contribute to its overall structure? He found that both characters and situations can be classified into a few basic types, and the stories themselves (which were all Russian fairy tales) also into a few basic types.

Are all stories really fairy tales underneath? If not, what other basic kinds of stories are there?

These are some of my questions, on which I have lots more to say. Stay tuned.

sketchbook: Saturday 9 July 2011

ca. 12:45 LYNN VALLEY CENTRE

I'm on a taffy-colored bench of shade-cooled steel; a white-coated Save-On worker sits next to me on a smoke-break, combing her flyaway shoulder-length hair. We face the parking lot from between 2 massive square pillars clad in assorted flat bricks up to 1.2 meters, then stuccoed up to the projecting soffit. Now the Save-On worker has left, her cigarette trailing strong smoke in the gusts of breeze.

It's a sunny day. A lone little puff of cumulus floats in the blue sky above, over a pair of pale-brushstroke contrails. There is the rattle & growl & sigh of motors passing by, lumbering over the yellow crosswalk that is also a shallow speed-bump. Young maple-trees stand at intervals over the parked cars: a mixture of hatchbacks & sedans in my field of view. A white Suzuki sits nearest me, then a black Kia (perhaps). A silver Mercedes prowls by, waiting for a woman pushing a green shopping-cart. Now a smoke-colored Corolla. Now a black Kia hatchback (or mini-stationwagon).

There's the electronic cuckoo of the crossing-signal at Lynn Valley Road. People pass by, not too many: young good-looking Asian couple; heavy weary blonde girl in long sleeves & long pants; grandmother & little granddaughter; a stout woman with a puppy on a leash. An old guy leaning on a steel cane, wearing a midnight-blue vest over his plaid shirt.

The parked Suzuki backs out, its motor rattling tinnily. A refreshing breeze blows through, cleansing & cooling the air. A great baby-blue convertible, ca. 1965, rumbles by, with mom & dad in front, daughter in back.

archetypes r us

Yesterday in my post reviewing Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss I said that I had much more to say on the topic. Maybe I'll try to make a start now.

Something I didn't mention in my review was that for some years I was put off reading Sacred Contracts precisely because it listed so many archetypes. Used to Jung's short list of psychological archetypes based on his long experience, penetrating insight, and deep learning, I felt that Myss's "brainstormed"-feeling list was too arbitrary and lightweight. She even suggests that readers can add their own archetypes to the list! How can that be anything but an idle pastime?

Eventually I was able to relax my prejudice and take a chance with the book. Presumably her list of archetypes referred to some different phenomenon than Jung's list, existing in a different place and functioning in a different way. The big step for me was simply being able to read the book on its own merits.

Also, I had been subjected to other influences, other writers, in the meantime. I'm speaking of the literary critic Northrop Frye and the economist Ludwig von Mises, both of whom make mention of archetypes in connection with literature. Frye regards an archetype as a "communicable symbol", something that helps one have a cohesive understanding of literature as a whole instead of as a mere jumble of individual works. We can't read about Moby Dick without being reminded of and affected by whatever we've also read about "leviathans and dragons from the deep". Von Mises makes the point in Human Action that it's impossible to write history without making use of archetypes, or, as he calls them, "ideal types". In his own words:

Even when the historian deals with an individual person or with a single event, he cannot avoid referring to ideal types. If he speaks of Napoleon, he must refer to such ideal types as commander, dictator, revolutionary leader; if he deals with the French Revolution he must refer to revolution, disintegration of an established regime, anarchy. All historical events are described and interpreted by means of ideal types.

What he's saying, in effect, is that every individual thing is a member of a class, or of many classes, and that to make meaningful, coherent statements about it, such as to tell its history, one must choose and connect those different classes in a meaningful way.

As I see it, Aristotle's logic applies here. The relationship of an individual to its class or its ideal type or its archetype is like the relationship of species to genus. According to Aristotle, the definition of the genus applies to each species (individual member) within it. Thus maple is a species of tree, and everything that's true of tree as such is true of maple as well. A maple has all the qualities and traits that a tree—the archetypal tree—has.

Back to Myss's archetypes in Sacred Contracts. What does it mean to say that we individual human beings represent archetypes or have energy relationships with archetypes that exist, in some way, above us (literally, according to Myss, since she says that the archetypes reside in the 8th chakra, which floats about an arm's length above our heads)? What does it mean to say that I partake of, say, the Artist archetype?

It means that the traits of the archetypal Artist are my traits. The aims, behaviors, interests, and abilities of the archetypal Artist are my aims, behaviors, interests, and abilities—in some degree at least. And what are those traits—:what is the definition of this "genus"? From the book:

The Artist embodies the passion to express a dimension of life that is just beyond the five senses in physical forms. The signature of artists is not in what they do but in how intense their motivation is to manifest the extraordinary. Doing what you do in such a way that you create an emotional field that inspires others also indicates the Artist energy at work, as does the emotional and psychological need to express yourself so much that your wellbeing is wrapped up in this energy.

Is this the ultimate definition of what an artist is? No. But it's perceptive and well said, in my opinion, and gives you plenty to start on in trying to decide whether you embody this archetype in any significant degree. Speaking for myself, I think I do.

Contrast this with another archetype from the book, such as that of, say, Athlete (one that I think applies to my mother, among others). Here's part of the description of that:

This archetype represents the strength of the human spirit as represented in the power and magnificence of the human body. A code of ethics and morality is associated with the archetype. A person dedicated to transcending the limits of a physical handicap qualifies as much as the professional or artistic athlete.

Even though I have a good, vigorous body and my paternal grandfather was a serious athlete back in Latvia, I don't have the outlook of an athlete; the Athlete is not one of my archetypes. It was one of his though.

All this by way of saying that I think there's something to this archetype business from Sacred Contracts—more than something, even. A key point is that we don't embody only a single archetype, but, according to Myss, at least 12 different ones each. I feel pretty sure that Teacher and Student are both archetypes of mine as well, for example. This means that each of us is a highly specialized cocktail of "ideal types", with a unique suite of interests, aims, traits, and abilities. According to Caroline Myss, these traits form the toolkit with which we were born in order to fulfill our "sacred contract".

I have more to say about archetypes and how they connect with storytelling, but that's for another time.

Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss

Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential by Caroline Myss

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you want to make your life more meaningful and more fulfilled, this book gives you a powerful and specific means to do it.

I was introduced to the concept of archetypes by reading Jung back in the late 1970s and early 80s. I found the idea powerful and provocative, like all of Jung's ideas, and much more attractive than what I could understand of other psychological theories, which all seemed depressingly reductionistic. (One of the reasons I avoided studying psychology at the University of B.C. was that its psychology department appeared to be, at that time, focused on behaviorism.) Jung faced the spiritual dimension of life as an important, indeed the most important, psychological reality, not as a mere neurotic compensation for repressed sexual urges, or whatever.

In this book Caroline Myss, although she does not base her approach on Jung's ideas, does make use of the concept of archetypes, introducing a much larger menu of them as a way of recognizing aspects of ourselves. Sacred Contracts pushes further in the direction opened in Myss's earlier books, Anatomy of the Spirit and Why People Don't Heal and How They Can, moving from the issue of healing ourselves of chronic illness to the broader task of healing our lives by discovering and living the purpose for which we were born.

For this is the key idea behind Sacred Contracts: Each of us was born for a purpose, a specific purpose that is connected with our unique traits and circumstances, and if we wish to be fulfilled in life, then we need to be pursuing that purpose. This is our "sacred contract," and like any contract it implies commitments that we are not really free to neglect. In the words of Robert Service, "a promise made is a debt unpaid," and, according to this book, we've all made a promise to God to undertake certain things, and our feelings of malaise, anxiety, and unfulfillment arise because we're shirking this work, for which we have only a limited time.

But how do we find out what we're supposed to be doing? Sacred Contracts tells us exactly how. In broad terms, it involves understanding and accepting what a sacred contract is, then getting to know ourselves much more deeply by investigating our archetypal makeup. Myss makes the bold statement that there are four archetypes that form part of the makeup of each of us, which she calls, somewhat provocatively, the Child, the Victim, the Prostitute, and the Saboteur. Like all the archetypes, each of these is capable of positive or negative expression. When we work the energy of our archetypes in a positive way we experience life as energizing and fulfilling; when we work them negatively, our experience becomes draining, depressing, and eventually our very bodies become ill. Our task is to recognize the functioning of these archetypes in our own lives, and in so doing, to gain more mastery of ourselves and start to make choices that will genuinely benefit ourselves and others, and advance us in the fulfillment of our sacred contract.

But do we all really have, say, an inner Prostitute? Well, have you ever thought, while considering a possible venture or fulfilling activity: "But how will I make a living at it?" If so, your Prostitute has been present and on the job. How have we "sold out" in life? It happens in small ways and in large, at work, at home, and with our creative projects. The thinking is so seductive and so logical-sounding that we don't question it. "But I have to eat!" "I don't want to be broke when I'm old!" "I'm not a real artist anyway—there's no point in my suffering for art!" Et cetera.

The point, of course, is not that you're guaranteed success if you throw caution to the wind and pursue your dream. The point is that selling out has a cost, and it's not a light one: ask Judas Iscariot. We always face the consequences of our choices, and those consequences relate to our real motives, whether we're aware of those or not. When we sell out, we exchange our birthright for a mess of pottage, and it's fundamentally not a good deal—the very thing it was supposed to be in our minds when we made it.

The Prostitute sounds negative, but Myss gives each of these key archetypes an alternative name as well. The Prostitute, she says, is also the Guardian of Faith. Faith has to do with our relationship with the spirit, and our confidence in that. As she says, "If you have faith, no one can buy you." Someone who cannot be bought is very powerful; that person has unshakable spiritual power rather than tenuous worldly power. It's the Prostitute who knows that man does not live by bread alone, and it's the function of the Prostitute to continually test our conviction on that point. Again and again in life we're tempted to sell out; how do we respond? What values do we affirm through our choices?

This is a superficial look at only one archetype. Myss expands on this more, plus covers the other three major archetypes, and then introduces a list of about 70 others, things like Addict, Artist, Athlete, Judge, Mystic, Student, Warrior. Each has its own traits and behaviors, and positive and negative modes of expression. The program set out in the book has us examining these archetypes to discover which are most applicable to our life, finding the 12 that are strongest in us, and then arranging these on a wheel like a horoscope. This wheel tells us the actual areas of life in which we find each archetype most active, such as Ego & Personality, Life Values, Self-Expression & Siblings, and so on. It's a lot of work, and I'm not just saying that, because I've already put quite a few hours into the program and I'm still early on.

But I feel like I've already achieved a lot with it. I've already seen my life in new, deeper, more honest ways. Nonetheless, I find the work so hard that I leave off doing it for months at a time. It gets you looking at things you're afraid to look at. But those are things we should be looking at. What is our life worth to us, after all? Soon it will be over; how will we feel about it when we're done?

There's so much more I wanted to touch on in this review: the question of the reality of the archetypes, Myss's innovative use of the Indian chakra system to describe the energy relationship of spirit and body, and her unconventional use of astrology. I'll have to address those later. For now I'll just say that I think the most important aspect of this book and Myss's work as a whole is her conviction in the fundamentally spiritual nature of our existence, and her nonsectarian approach to dealing with that.

We have it on good authority that the truth shall set us free. In Sacred Contracts we have a path to the truth about ourselves and our lives, and therefore a path to enjoying the freedom with which we chose our sacred contract.

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we're doomed—and here's why

Today we have a society in which all men are destined to be free—just as free as the Greek citizens and the Roman patricians, with more free time, more comfort, more power, more convenience, with as much political power. What is the educational consequence of this? What demand does it make upon education? It means giving every child of normal intelligence a liberal schooling through the bachelor of arts degree, without any vocational training whatsoever, and seeing that every adult after his liberal schooling continues with liberal learning for a lifetime. If this is not done, the free time, the power, and the lack of training in how to use them will result in the most morally degraded and corrupt society imaginable, one that will be destroyed more completely than any atomic bomb could possibly destroy it.

The above extract is from a text called "Foundations of a Philosophy of Education" by Mortimer J. Adler. The final sentence sounds like hyperbole, and yet hyperbole was not part of Adler's usual toolkit; I have no doubt that he meant the statement literally. He's looking out on the Western world and seeing a wasteland in the making.

He's saying, in effect, that idle hands are the devil's playthings, and when everyone has idle hands, the devil has a lot of playthings, and he'll use them.

The idle hands he means refer not to unemployment in the usual sense, for people in the West are still, for the most part, employed, indeed busy and overworked. No: the idleness is the lack of constructive purpose in life, and most importantly the confusion of leisure with play.

We all need to have a living. Throughout history and up to this day in most of the world, most people have struggled to make a living. When you're struggling to make a living—to secure basic food and shelter for yourself—you don't have time for anything else. You lack leisure.

But the Western world is one in which that problem has, for most people, been largely solved. Political and intellectual freedom have provided the basis for an enormous increase in wealth for Westerners, and with it an increase in the amount of potentially free time in their lives—potential leisure. In the ancient world, the free man was exactly one who had leisure: he had the time to engage in the pursuits worthy of a free man, namely the improvement of himself and the improvement of his society. Thus a free man would use his time for such things as education, art, philosophy, politics, and religion. He would of course also spend some time on play and recreation, but only as much as he needed to keep himself healthy and rested. Play was a break from his life, not the purpose of it.

We're different today. We enjoy even more personal freedom than the free men of the ancient world, but we conceive the aim of our free time to be play. Not content with making a living, we seek to become as affluent as possible, and are willing to work long hours to get there. In our time away from work we seek to rest and amuse ourselves. The activities of genuine leisure—the purpose of freedom in the ancient world—we have no use for, no "time" for.

Adler is saying that the result of this will be the disintegration of our society. Little by little it is degenerating into what Thomas Hobbes would have called the state of nature, a condition of the continuous war of all against all, each one striving for his own benefit with no real concern for the good of his society. This was the world in which Hobbes described life as being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

In the Western tradition there is only a single escape-hatch from this condition: liberal education. It is a deep and painful irony that liberal education is generally seen as an antiquated, impractical, elitist, and useless relic of a bygone era, instead of the only source of fresh water in the desert of our lives.

Maybe we're not doomed—no one knows what the future will bring. For my part, I'm now, in middle age, pursuing a liberal education as best I can. I want to be part of a world that arrives at decisions by mutual agreement, not by violence; that won't happen if I'm spending all my available time on cruises, golf, and video games. We need to crack a book not just to make a buck, but to make a difference.

sick it is, then

I'm pleased to announce that Technology Review magazine has published my letter to the editor. In edited form, under the title "Leaking Secrets", it appears thus on page 7 of their August 2011 issue:

I found your editorial and review on WikiLeaks ("Is WikiLeaks a Good Thing?" and "Transparency and Secrets," March/April 2011) thought-provoking. I think of a saying in psychology: You're only as sick as your secrets. The words "privacy" and "secrecy" are often used interchangeably, but they are actually distinct concepts. Privacy is a matter of mutual respect, while secrecy is more conspiratorial: keeping something hidden in the anticipation that others will try to discover it. The very proliferation of leaks means there are far too many secrets being kept. In a free society, official secrets should be at an absolute minimum. How can people make informed choices when information is being hidden from them? I'm glad that WikiLeaks exists, and I hope it's a Hydra that never runs out of heads.

If you've ever wondered how much material gets edited out of a letter to the editor of a major publication, here's a glimpse. I'll copy the full text of my e-mail message to Jason Pontin, editor of Technology Review. (The magazine did contact me to check whether I was OK with their edited version, and offered to let me change it, as long as I kept the word-count the same. I was fine with it as they'd done it.)

Hello Mr. Pontin. I'm responding to your March/April issue and here it is May, but your invitation to write has no stated time limit.

I found your editorial and feature on WikiLeaks very interesting and thought-provoking. I think of a saying they have in psychology: You're only as sick as your secrets. One of my own thoughts is that often the words privacy and secrecy are used interchangeably, when they are actually distinct concepts. Privacy, according to my Webster's, is "freedom from unauthorized intrusion," while secrecy is "the condition of being hidden or concealed." (There is a list of synonyms under the entry for secret, and private is not one.) While I have a duty to respect my neighbor's privacy, I have no such duty to help him keep his secrets. I have a duty not to open his mail, but not to help him conceal a crime he's committed, say. Privacy is a matter of mutual respect, while secrecy is more conspiratorial; it is the keeping of something hidden in the anticipation that others will try to discover it. How successful you are is up to you and fortune.

The issue of secrecy and governments moves the question to another level. Jane Jacobs, in her book Systems of Survival, distinguishes two "moral syndromes" that have always existed between those involved in commerce (the "Commercial Syndrome") and those involved in government (the "Guardian Syndrome", named after the Guardian class of Plato's Republic). Today we would call them the private sector and the public sector. Jacobs developed a list of 15 moral rules that govern each of these syndromes, and these rules are entirely opposite to each other. For example, two of the rules in the Commercial Syndrome are "Shun force" and "Be honest". That is, these are moral rules that are followed by good businessmen. By contrast, two rules in the Guardian Syndrome are "Shun trading" and "Deceive for the sake of the task". These rules would be observed by, say, good soldiers.

The book is devoted to why these two different moral regimes exist, and why they both seem to be essential to human society. But Jacobs takes some time to show also the toxic effects when the two regimes contaminate each other—when businesses start using deception and force, and when governments try to produce things and make money. My thought is that while secrecy is a normal and necessary part of military culture, it has a much smaller place in the rest of any government that is intended to be democratic and accountable. The progressive militarization of the U.S. government, as measured by, say, budget expenditures or the number of personnel, has led to an increasing culture of secrecy and obscurantism. More and more of the business of government is conducted under the cloak of secrecy for the ostensible purpose of "national security."

The intrusion of the state into more and more parts of society, such as in the bailouts and purchases of commercial enterprises, leads to the further pervasion of Guardian Syndrome rules into all walks of life. The whole problem is that from the Guardian perspective, secrets are moral.

The very proliferation of leaks means there are far too many secrets being kept. In a free society, official secrets should be at an absolute minimum. For how can people make informed choices when information is being hidden from them from their supposed peers, the ones they have temporarily entrusted with the levers of power?

I suppose what I'm saying is: by all means, let's respect each other's privacy, but if you want to keep secrets, you're on your own. Your best defense is to have as few of them as possible. For my part, I'm glad that WikiLeaks exists, and I hope it's a Hydra that never runs out of heads.

Keep those thoughtful editorials coming.

Paul Vitols

As you can no doubt tell, this topic is one that lies close to my heart. The operation of an ever greater proportion of the state's business behind the cloak of secrecy, including, increasingly, policing and justice, is a sign of encroaching tyranny. Only an educated, vigilant, and active public can stop its course—and such a public does not now exist.

The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World by Mortimer J. Adler

The Great Ideas A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World: I (Great Books of the Western World, #2) by Mortimer J. Adler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The 2-volume "Syntopicon" of Britannica's Great Books of the Western World, providing a survey and a concordance of the Great Ideas treated in the remaining 51 volumes of the set, is itself one of the most important works of the 20th century.

One of the criticisms I've read of the Great Books series is that it is little more than a "reading list" of important works of literature. That criticism might have some justification, if it were not for the Syntopicon, which orients the reader to the content of the Great Books, breaking down the entire set into its 102 component "Great Ideas"—the key topics addressed by Western literature as a whole since its inception.

As Robert Maynard Hutchins was editor in chief of the Great Books series as a whole, Mortimer J. Adler was editor in chief of The Great Ideas, the 2-volume Syntopicon. During the preparation of the series, Adler worked with a staff of up to 72 people, combing through the Great Books to identify and locate the main ideas contained in them, and distilling the result into a final list of Great Ideas, listed alphabetically from Angel to World.

Each of the Great Ideas forms a chapter of the 2-volume Syntopicon, and each chapter is structured identically: it begins with an introductory essay by Adler, providing an overview of how that idea has been understood and discussed in the tradition of the Great Books, followed by an outline of topics, which breaks down the discussion into its component aspects. For example, in Chapter 10, "Change", some of the topics are: "1. The nature and reality of change or motion"; "2. The unchanging principle of change", which is broken further into the subtopics "2a. The constituents of the changing thing" and "2b. The factor of opposites or contraries in change". Altogether, "Change" is broken into 15 topics, 9 of which are broken down further into subtopics.

Next, each chapter contains the crucial References section, which lists the topics again, but now each followed by the specific references within the Great Books where the discussion may be found. In that same chapter on "Change", the references run to 14 pages. The first set of references, under the first topic of "The nature and reality of change or motion", is from Volume 7 of the set, Plato, and contains specific page references from 12 of Plato's works, such as Cratylus, Phaedrus, and so on. Then there's a set of references from Volume 8, Aristotle; Volume 9, Aristotle; Volume 10, Galen; Volume 11, Nicomachus; and so on up to Volume 53, James. Then references to the next topic are listed.

After the References in each chapter come the Cross-References: pointers to where aspects of the Idea are given additional treatment in other chapters of the Syntopicon. Finally there is a section of Additional Readings, listing other works in the Western tradition that also treat the Idea in question. These works are broken down into those by authors who are part of the Great Books series, and those by other authors. Many of these additional readings also include chapter references of their own, to help the reader find the material.

In addition, the Syntopicon contains detailed essays explaining exactly how the Great Books set and its Syntopicon were developed. The processes by which the books were chosen and the Great Ideas identified are explained in detail. (The editor in chief Hutchins also explains, in Volume 1, why it is a set of "Western" books, not Eastern or "World".)

In my opinion, the Syntopicon, along with the Great Books, is an unparalleled gift to humanity. In terms of the project's vision, its importance, and the quantity and quality of effort it represents, it is a stupendous achievement, and cheap at any price.

The Syntopicon provides what amounts to a survey course of the Great Ideas of the Western tradition. The Great Books themselves then provide the detailed courses. A "syntopical" reading is just this: a reading by topic. And this is the unique strength of the Britannica Great Books series.

The main thing I have learned from reading the Syntopicon is that I am not educated. Whatever I've learned up until now, at age 52, does not constitute a true liberal education. Now, thanks to the efforts of these people, I am getting one, and I warmly encourage you to take advantage of the remainder of your life to do the same.

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The Great Conversation by Robert M. Hutchins

The Great Conversation: The Substance Of A Liberal Education by Robert Maynard Hutchins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This slim opening volume of the Britannica Great Books of the Western World contends that liberal education, an unquestioned necessity for the civilized Westerner until the 19th century, though now all but dead, is not only worth reviving but is indispensable for every free citizen of our shrunken, technologized, and heavily armed world.

Robert M. Hutchins, editor of the Britannica Great Books, delivers the keynote address in this essay, called The Great Conversation. In it he seeks to fight off the various criticisms of liberal education and establish why its disappearance in the wake of other, more "modern" educational ideas is a near-disaster for humanity, certainly for the West, even if an invisible and slow-motion one.

A liberal education boils down to studying and contemplating the Great Ideas contained in the Great Books of this series. "We think that these books show the origins of many of our most serious difficulties," he says. "We think that the spirit they represent and the habit of mind they teach are more necessary today than ever before."

He makes the case that these books, far from containing fusty, outmoded ideas fit only for the deliberation of academic specialists, actually set forth, in the most cogent way yet developed, the most important and controversial problems that beset humanity. With few exceptions the Great Books were written not for specialists, but for the interested and intelligent lay reader.

Hutchins deplores the descent of 20th-century education into academic specialization, physical science, and vocational training. According to him, such training in no way prepares us to deal with the deepest problems of modern life: how to coexist nonviolently, even when we cannot agree on things.

As far as I can tell, all the criticisms that have been leveled against the Britannica Great Books series—that it is elitist, patriarchal, Western-biased—are answered in this essay, and answered well. Ideas don't care who has them or who talks about them. Our biggest danger is that we don't talk about them, don't think about them, and are mostly unaware of them. We can certainly debate whether these particular books are exactly the right set for such a series, but if not, they're pretty close, and they make a great place to start.

I myself have no university education, and have been skeptical of the value of the old-fashioned "liberal education". Having read Ludwig von Mises' Human Action, I've been persuaded that state education can only mean indoctrination, since, in Mises' view, no government will fund a curriculum that it perceives as being counter to its interests. Hutchins here delivers a powerful counterstroke to that thought, siding with Thomas Jefferson in the belief that the only way to preserve a free society is through universal education. I have to admit that for myself, the jury is back out. It's no coincidence, Hutchins would say: Education is one of the 102 Great Ideas discussed in the Great Books.

This book challenged my beliefs and assumptions, made me think deeply, and did so in a very short space. What more recommendation can I give?

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The Mystery of Mar Saba by James H. Hunter

The Mystery of Mar Saba by James H. Hunter

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This Christian pre-World War II spy melodrama provides both action and (mainly unintentional) chuckles as it tells the story of how a forged ancient text is used as a geopolitical weapon.

My attention was drawn to this 1940 novel when I read an article in Biblical Archaeology Review about the historian Morton Smith, who became a controversial figure after he claimed to have discovered, in 1958, a missing fragment of the Gospel of Mark in an old book at the monastery of Mar Saba just east of Jerusalem. One interpretation of this fragment implied that Jesus may have had a homosexual relationship. Smith was accused of having forged the document, and apparently some thought that Hunter's novel may have provided the inspiration, since it is about a New Testament-era text that is "discovered" at Mar Saba.

The controversy around Smith drags on posthumously (he died in 1991). As for James H. Hunter, he was, according to Wikipedia, editor of the Toronto-based Evangelical Christian magazine, and he wrote a number of "Christian thrillers."

In terms of its prose, plotting, and characterization, this book is not much above a Nancy Drew mystery or Hardy Boys adventure. Picture a Hardy Boys book in which the protagonists are all intrepid, beautiful, fervent Christians, and the bad guys are callous, sneering, atheistic Germans and cowardly, bloodthirsty Arabs. The hero, Medhurst, is a wealthy American playboy who saw action in Palestine in World War I, picking up commando skills and flawless Arabic while he was there. He's summoned by his old British C.O. who is now a police chief in Jerusalem to help deal with a network of Arab terrorists who are threatening to destabilize the region (plus ça change). En route he meets a ravishingly beautiful Christian girl, Natalie, who is in the power of a cruel etc. German archaeologist named Heimworth, and thus becomes involved with a fiendish German plot to damage the morale of Britain as a preliminary to an invasion.

Despite its obvious deficiencies, the novel did appeal to me in some ways. For one thing, Medhurst begins as a flabby agnostic and, surrounded by fervently Christian friends and colleagues, undergoes a conversion experience in Jerusalem. I myself traveled to Jerusalem back in 1981 in search of some such experience, and while I didn't have it, I did have a number of powerful experiences in locales associated with the Bible. Also, I liked the strong faith of the characters, which made for a refreshing change from the smart-ass, materialistic characters that have dominated literature since then.

In sum, you're most likely to enjoy this book if you:

are a passionate evangelical Christian
love reading Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys books
are capable of believing that worldwide mass hysteria could occur over the contents of an apocryphal ancient letter

As I read I wondered whether this book could possibly have been in the genealogy of Raiders of the Lost Ark. . . .

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reading just the right amount

"You read too much, my friend."

The gravelly, hoarse voice belonged to the diminutive proprietor of the cafe in Athens where I had indeed been hanging around a while, reading (possibly my first pass through James Joyce's Ulysses). It was November 1981 in the Plaka district below the Acropolis, and, like most people who use the phrase "my friend," the cafe owner was not my friend: the place was busy and he wanted to get rid of me.

The moment has stuck with me. Can one read too much? How about too little? Is there a "right" amount of reading to do? What exactly is reading, anyway? Why do we do it?

There are two basic reasons to read:

for amusement
to learn

These are not mutually exclusive, for, as Aristotle observed, man is an animal that by nature likes to learn. According to him, for us humans learning is amusement.

But we're all familiar with the distinction between "beach novels" or "escapist reading" and the more obligatory material that we have to read for school or work, and which we find to be a chore. Ought we to do more of this chore reading?

I believe that what makes reading a chore is when it is reading that someone else tells us to do, whether a teacher or a boss or some other authority. Reading we choose for ourselves can never be a chore in the same sense, no matter how difficult it might be. For people undertake difficult things all the time, and do so voluntarily and even with gusto, like running marathons or losing 50 pounds or learning to speak Russian. So then it's a question of whether a "hard" book, a "learning" book, fits with one's goals and aspirations. And that maybe is a more ticklish question, and the real reason that we don't decide more often to tackle challenging books. We may not see the point, or we may associate such reading with the coercive structure of our formal schooling and have an aversion to any more it it. We may not have a clear idea of what our goals and aspirations are.

My own goal is to learn what's really going on around me and in me. To me it seems clear that this is the path to making wiser decisions, becoming a better citizen of my community and the world, and living with fewer regrets. I have become persuaded that a truly liberal education, in the ancient sense, is the means to these ends, and so I take it up willingly and with gusto, regardless of how difficult I find it. Like a marathon, it's a difficulty I choose, and so it is not a chore.

I expect to have much more to say about Education, which is one of the Great Ideas, in this blog. But for now I'll just mention that I've come to believe that a proper education, a liberal education, as opposed to the technical and specialist training that our current institutions provide us with, is the key to making our society and our world a better place in every way. Every intractable problem that we face, from endless war to ethnic hatred to global warming, is due, I believe, to our lack of education.

Such being my belief, you can expect me, over time, to do what I can to promote liberal education for everyone from this, my little corner of the world.