Two books that I have memorized as icons of my college reading and ideas are House of Intellect by Jacques Barzun and Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Because my friend reminded me of Abebooks*, one of many sources of used books, I now have a copy and I have been looking it over. I am very aware that with many books I have read on the Kindle reader, I could look at the highlights I might have made while reading the book. I would usually take that collection of very brief excerpts to be my take of the book.
Note that I am not, not, not asserting that I have memorized either book. It is just that I take those two books to be anchors of my reading at that time, whatever a reading anchor may be.
I am surprised at how little I remember of the Barzun book, how hard it is to understand, how this man, born into an upper class Parisian family in 1907 and lived to be 102 years old, throws around stunningly broad generalities. My own personality and my experiences have built a Me that automatically doubts and asks for evidence. He was a specialist in ideas and their history and a very intelligent one. Still, when he writes that the French this and the Americans that, I can instantly supply counterexamples.
In my senior year of college, I read printed books to a Johns Hopkins professor who was blind. When that man learned of my interest in and respect for Barzun, he strongly pooh-poohed the man. The professor accused him of writing on far too broad a range of subjects, so broad that Barzun could not really know them well.
I have looked over the book and found interesting and useful ideas but I didn't remember any of them from my reading sixty years ago.
Literacy, the actual, factual ability to read, used to be a much more basic divider of society than it is now.
It was basic in feudal times, to know the local lord and respect his power. Some of the perhaps basic primate and biological habits and emotions of respect are still with us today.
Whether reading or playing cards or biking together, it is natural for us humans to develop respect and admiration for those who become familiar, especially those with power, money and position.
I don't have any memories of reading the book, even though I have often mentioned it as a basic component of my own reading in college. I do know that carrying books that struck others as advanced or high-level impressed some young women enough for me to be of interest to them.
Jacques Barzun was a dean of humanities at Columbia U. I am impressed with a French-speaking man becoming a dean at an important American university.
*The House of Intellect was published in1959
