Not so very long after beginning my university studies some many years ago, I became aware of a significant hole in my education. Despite being an “A” student all through my primary and secondary school years, I seemed to have graduated high school without ever having read much in the way of books that would be considered “of consequence.” Thanks to a copy of his complete works given to me by my parents as an eleventh birthday present I had struggled through a handful of Shakespeare’s plays, and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was required as part of a Writing 121 class from the local community college that I took my twelfth grade year; however other than that, I was largely ignorant of most of what would be considered the Great Books. Not only weren’t they required to be read in the course of my mediocre education, for the most part they were never even mentioned.
Thus once at university, I began to find myself all-to-frequently being wholly unfamiliar with books mentioned during both lectures as well as in the course of conversations with my classmates. It was embarrassing. Not that any of my professors or fellow students ever ridiculed my lack of knowledge; they were always more than helpful in their answers to my questions. Nevertheless, I increasingly came to feel that I was a fraud, an unworthy impostor, for being at university with so many others who already knew so much of what I didn’t.
I vowed to correct this intellectual insufficiency by reading as much as I possibly could. There were only two problems. First, I had never been much of a reader. Although I possessed an inexplicably large vocabulary (something usually only acquired from extensive reading) I had not previously read many books – either for my studies or for pleasure. The very act of reading itself was somewhat tedious to me. Second, I had absolutely no idea where to begin. No matter what book I chose, there was always another that it seemed to be important to have previously read before beginning. Needless to say, slog on though I did, I spent quite a lot of time and effort working my way through books that were rather tangential – at best – to the Western Canon.
Although I eventually graduated with a degree in English literature, I still couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. My studies there seemed upon reflection to have been somewhat disjointed – as I have since come to learn that many courses of study are in colleges all across the United States. They lacked a unifying theme. I had satisfied all the necessary stated requirements for my degree – taken all the courses, read the required books, etc. – yet the more I thought about the matter, the more I came to think that I had not read many of the works one holding such a degree should have read. Part of this was due to the fact that my undergraduate studies took place at the height of the so-called “culture wars” during which the works of the notorious “dead white male” writers were laid aside in favor of those written by others who were not at least one of those descriptors – and all-too-often as a result were also not nearly as well known, not as historically or intellectually significant, and quite often not as well written as those canonical works overlooked to make space in the syllabi for them. However part of it also was due to the lack of any widespread agreement among the American professorial class as to just what constituted a body of knowledge that should be expected to be known by someone considering himself well educated. Thus I continued to read.
Now, some decades since my undergraduate years, I have subsequently acquired two graduate degrees – a master’s degree in education (of which the less said, the better) and an M.B.A. Both were pursued and earned out of the desire somehow to earn the living my bachelor’s degree in English literature could not provide. Both were also extremely disheartening to one who had come to love the liberal arts. (To be fair, the coursework for the M.B.A. was technically very demanding; it simply failed to repay, intellectually or spiritually, the expended mental energy it took to complete.) Although I am now considered by most who know me as someone who is at least somewhat well-read and knowledgeable in a variety of subjects, I still feel like an impostor. Despite all the books I have read, I feel that my (now largely auto-didactic) education lacks coherence. Moreover, I have recently become aware of how inferior it is to that of many of the writers whose works I would like to read.
Both Beauvoir and Sartre, for example, were graduates of the École Normale Supérieure. Susan Sontag held degrees from both The University of Chicago and Harvard. Tony Judt was a Cambridge alumnus as well as, like Beauvoir and Sartre, a student at the École Normale Supérieure. The education they received from these institutions at the time they studied there required them to have read the writings of some of the most brilliant thinkers the world has ever known – writers now all-too-often entirely left out of the curriculum at even the best of schools. And while it is entirely possible to read the works of Beauvoir, Sartre, Sontag, Judt, and many others of similarly expansive intellects without knowing what they themselves knew, I can’t help but feel unworthy to do so without at least trying to improve the foundation of my own knowledge out of respect for the work to which they dedicated their respective lives.
Thus, in an effort to fortify my own intellectual foundation so that I may at least approach the works of many significant Twentieth Century writers with something at least approaching the level of education they themselves had, I have determined to pursue a plan of reading that follows the best outline of a general course of study across the humanities of which I know: the St. John’s College Academic Program Reading List. While I believe, in comparing this “master” reading list to those published for the college’s two respective campuses, that the full program reading list is not entirely read by all students graduating from the college, it is my intention to read it in its entirety to in some manner compensate for what I will not be able to gain through the participation in the college’s actual program of lectures and seminars.
It is, to be a sure, a thoroughly mad idea. Nevertheless, it is one I hope to be able to complete in six or seven years. Needless to say, I expect no gain from this admittedly quixotic quest – save of course the expansion of my own mind and the enrichment of my soul. However as I hope that perhaps one or two equally mad souls somewhere in the world may be inspired by my actions, it is also my intention to chronicle my progress here for the edification of my friends as well as perhaps the amusement of my enemies. Indeed, if for nothing else, it will – I sincerely hope – stand as a testimony of one man that the liberal arts are still something that can and should be taken seriously by those wholly outside of academia if for no other reason than as a quixotic rebellion against a culture that too-often elevates ephemeral fame and worldly wealth over the eternal truths and wisdom to be found in the written record of the thoughts of history’s greatest minds.
