In May, along with others, I went to hear a lecture by the nonfiction writer Simon Winchester. It was, appropriately, at a branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library—appropriately because the lecture was a distillation of his new book Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge, From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
Very interesting post, Michael! I met Winchester when he spoke in Tucson about his book "Krakatoa" on a book tour in 2003 or 2004. I knew about him from his book on the Oxford English Dictionary and its most prolific contributor, "The Professor and the Madman" (1998), later made into a movie worth watching, in 2019, though based on a single paragraph in Elisabeth Murray’s "Caught in the Web of Words" (1979). The lecture was sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa chapter here, when I was President of the group, and faculty members among the dinner guests afterward seemed frankly shocked by the range of his interests. A sociologist wanted to discuss the Troubles in Ireland, which Winchester wrote about in "Bloody Sunday" (1974).
I found myself thinking afterward about the demise of the “man of letters” in the U.S., perhaps more than in other counties—figures like Van Wick Brooks and Edmund Wilson, along with female contemporaries like Mary McCarthy. In our generation, such people all became caught up in academia without managing to save the Liberal Arts. Writing to me in 1978, Frye lamented the "perpetual crisis" in the Liberal Arts.
I have sometimes wondered what his career would have been had he not had the support of people like Pelham Edgar and institutions like Victoria College. Would he have become a novelist of ideas, or would he always have been a cultural critic with a focus on Canada?
I was glad you mentioned Havelock Ellis, who gets overshadowed by Walter Ong and others he influenced. Again, thanks for the good posting.
Very interesting post, Michael! I met Winchester when he spoke in Tucson about his book "Krakatoa" on a book tour in 2003 or 2004. I knew about him from his book on the Oxford English Dictionary and its most prolific contributor, "The Professor and the Madman" (1998), later made into a movie worth watching, in 2019, though based on a single paragraph in Elisabeth Murray’s "Caught in the Web of Words" (1979). The lecture was sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa chapter here, when I was President of the group, and faculty members among the dinner guests afterward seemed frankly shocked by the range of his interests. A sociologist wanted to discuss the Troubles in Ireland, which Winchester wrote about in "Bloody Sunday" (1974).
I found myself thinking afterward about the demise of the “man of letters” in the U.S., perhaps more than in other counties—figures like Van Wick Brooks and Edmund Wilson, along with female contemporaries like Mary McCarthy. In our generation, such people all became caught up in academia without managing to save the Liberal Arts. Writing to me in 1978, Frye lamented the "perpetual crisis" in the Liberal Arts.
I have sometimes wondered what his career would have been had he not had the support of people like Pelham Edgar and institutions like Victoria College. Would he have become a novelist of ideas, or would he always have been a cultural critic with a focus on Canada?
I was glad you mentioned Havelock Ellis, who gets overshadowed by Walter Ong and others he influenced. Again, thanks for the good posting.