Joseph Epstein makes the case for a Literary Education in this 2008
lecture (approx 40 min):
http://www.isi.org/lectures/lectures.aspx?SBy=search&SSub=title&SFor=A%20Literary%20Education
He believes a Literary Education teaches a number of things including
'how astonishing reality' is and also 'the limits of the intellect'.
Given the number of literary refererences in his argument you may get
the best out of this if you already have a Literary Education which
makes it a little self-serving IMHO. I guess it works for novelists.
Bio from the website:
Joseph Epstein was born in 1937 in Chicago, and attended the public
schools there and, later, the University of Chicago. He is the
author of, among other books, Fabulous Small Jews, Snobbery,
Friendship, Narcissus Leaves the Pool, and In a Cardboard Belt! His
most recent book, Fred Astaire, will be published in September by
Yale University Press as part of its American Icons series. Mr.
Epstein taught in the Department of English at Northwestern
University for thirty years. He was the editor of The American
Scholar, the intellectual quarterly of Phi Beta Kappa, between 1974
and 1997. His essays and short stories have appeared in The New
Yorker, Commentary, The Atlantic, The Weekly Standard, The Hudson
Review, and other magazines. His work has been translated into
French, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese. He is
currently working on a book Houghton Mifflin on the subject of Gossip.
It doesn't seem that a Ph.D was required, btw, and none of his works
were recommended for our 10 Best... However, that the intellect may be
limited is a good reason to want to make a selection in life, be it
one's Bucket List or one's reading list.
What's curious is that he believes we get a better feel for reality and
human nature by reading novels ( = made up stuff). I definitely
wouldn't want to draw conclusions too strongly about life, the intellect
or the mind that is based on the fictional behavior of fictional characters.
Thanks
Robert C
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