Highet gives good advice on authors: NUMBER #1 “…it is also valuable to push directly through the works of a good author, trying to see them as a single creation, appreciating their wholeness and their uniqueness and leaving the details for later study.” I have followed his advice with a few authors, Highet himself., Conrad, Hemingway, Orwell, Twain Cervantes, but not quite Chesterton Dickens or Shakespeare. I consider Highets’s best essays on par with anything Orwell or Chesterton wrote. Highet recommends it to his listeners/readers seeking suggestions for summer reading: Choose an “important author” and read all of his or her work. He argues that such a regimen helps readers to “escape from themselves.” NUMBER # 2 Highet, suggests reading about “one single important and interesting subject: for instance, the paintings of the cave men; or the agony of modern music; or the rebirth of calligraphy; or recent theories of the creation and duration of the universe.” Highet was not a creationist though he seemed to be at least a conventional Pale Anglican (his family was, surely Scottish Presbyterian or Scottish Episcopalian). Number #3 “…we might read a large selection of poems and prose passages selected in order to illuminate one single aspect of the world. One such volume would go into a pocket or a handbag and yet last all summer.” Ravitch’s AMERICAN READER or ENGLISH READER for example. Highet’s also says this and it shows to me how he is closer to Victorian Scotland than he is to 21st century America: “…one might decide to spend the summer with a single great or at least a single interesting man. For example, every doctor should know The Life of Sir William Osler by Harvey Cushing, and after reading that fine book he would enjoy himself if he went on to read Osler’s own writings. Osler never tired of complaining that most doctors had minds too limited and too confined to the physical symptoms which they observed in the routine of their practice. He kept trying to enlarge his own mind and spirit, and his books will therefore enlarge the mind and spirit of his readers, whether they are of the medical profession or not.” It seems to me Mr. Highet lived in a happier, more sane world in which scholars and teacher could safely assume SOME of their students, neighbor and readers. sought pleasure and “self-improvement” in the books they read, and that they would find it. RICHARD K. MUNRO
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 03:12:13 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015