SLPAD 8 - literary landscape

[Michael Bailey]

Yes! Mortimer Adler!

Great Books promulgated nationally, incl in Pittsburgh, where young Andy
Warhol & Mark Kohut, et al, were benignly Influenced? University of
Michigan also, where I enjoyed 2 wonderful “Great Books” courses.

Mortimer Adler Shallow Dive (a type of thing which he himself wouldn’t have
done, having refused to take a required swimming test, for which refusal he
was denied a bachelor’s degree. But he hung on & got a doctorate anyway,
finally receiving an honorary BA from Columbia in 1983)

- lived from 1902 to 2001
- the scholars in Chicago philosophy dept wouldn’t hire him, but their Law
School hired him to teach philosophy of law
- scored bestsellers, incl  _How to Read a Book_
- converted from Judaism to Episcopalian in 1984
- and to Catholicism in 1999





On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 4:46 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> ….Mortimer Adler was one of the founders of the whole Great Books Program,
> I believe and working
> at the Great Books operation was something the young Saul Bellow did. The
> program reached the whole nation, even
> Pittsburgh.
>





> On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 2:31 AM Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Chicago School of lit-crit (thank goodness it’s not their Economics, which
>> leaves a bad taste to some extent) - Richard McKeon is the name I
>> remember…
>>
>> https://literariness.org/2016/03/18/chicago-school-neo-aristotelians/amp/
>>
>> & wasn’t there also some magisterial & well-liked Chicago pundit who made
>> lists of great books?
>>
>>
>> Chicago Review - official organ of Humanities Dept at U Chic - founded
>> 1946
>> & published only student & faculty work till 1953.
>>
>> The big shake-up to which Mr Pynchon refers took place in 1959, around a
>> controversial plan for an issue to contain 30 pages from William
>> Burroughs’s _Naked Lunch_, as well as a Kerouac piece,
>>
>> and something by William Dahlberg, 1900-1977, a rather thrillingly
>> accomplished face in the Lost Generation writer cohort, who lost an eye in
>> WWI, wrote anti-Nazi stuff for The NY Times *from Germany* in the 1930s,
>> taught at Boston University & Black Mountain, studied hard - which
>> furthered changes in his writing style - wrote from Denmark, espoused &
>> furthered social justice, married 3 times, spent the 60s in Dublin,
>> attracted a Guggenheim in 1976, & passed away in Santa Barbara. (Mental
>> note to respect, and maybe look for his autobiography)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The imposition of censorship inspired all but one of the editorial staff
>> to
>> quit & found their own magazine, “Big Table”
>>
>> Some details
>> https://www.chicagoreview.org/big-table-web-feature/
>>
>> A little more about “Big Table”
>> https://fromasecretlocation.com/big-table/
>>
>> Jack Kerouac told them what to name it.
>>
>> It lasted 5 issues, then published books.
>>
>>
>> Then there’s adjective-free mention of Norman Mailer’s essay, “The White
>> Negro” in a list of “centrifugal lures” away from establishment thinking:
>>
>> “… Against the undeniable power of tradition, we were attracted by such
>> centrifugal lures as Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro,”
>>
>> And a succinct but rave review for Jack Kerouac’s _On the Road_
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>