A Great Idea at the Time

by Alex Beam

I met Hannah Gray at a Great Books conference at Yale in 2006.

  Adler writes about his early years in the first of his two autobiographies, A Philosopher at Large.

  John Erskine also wrote several books about himself, including The Memory of Certain Persons and My Life as a Teacher, in which he mentions his attempts to launch General Honors at Columbia. Two Columbia books, Ashbel Green’s 2004 My Columbia: Reminiscences of University Life and Living Legacies at Columbia, edited in 2006 by William Theodore de Bary, have lots of information about the Erskine seminar. Joan Shelley Rubin devotes a chapter to Erskine in her 1992 book, The Making of Middlebrow Culture. I also spent some time at the modest John Erskine archive at Columbia’s Butler Library.

  Hugh Moorhead’s dissertation has a useful account of the People’s Institute. I found Adler’s class notes at the Institute archive in the New York Public Library.

  TWO: THE ODD COUPLE

  There is a wealth of material on Hutchins and Adler. Hutchins has had several biographers, and Adler lived so long that he wrote two autobiographies. My favorite Hutchins biography is William McNeill’s concise and stylish Hutchins’ University: A Memoir of the University of Chicago 1929-1950. Harry Ashmore’s 1989 Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins is also invaluable, and Milton Mayer’s energetic and opinionated Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir is required reading. Mary Ann Dzuback’s 1991 book about Hutchins, Robert M. Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator, is helpful, thorough, and accurate.

  Chicago dean John Boyer has published the definitive histories of the turbulent Hutchins era, in a series of monographs that are part of the University of Chicago’s Occasional Papers on Higher Education.

  My knowledge of John Dewey comes from Jay Martin’s 2002 biography, The Education of John Dewy, and from Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, of 2001.

  The note from Rhoda Pritzker was a personal communication. The Adler and Hutchins notes reproduced here are from the University of Chicago’s presidential archive.

  THREE: THE GREAT BOOKS IN THE GRAY CITY

  Donald Miller’s City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America provides a useful overview of the founding of the University of Chicago, and helped me distinguish the “White City” from the “Gray City” on the shores of Lake Michigan.

  Katharine (“Kay”) Graham recalled her Chicago undergraduate experience in her 1997 memoir, Personal History. The Susan Sontag quotations come from Molly McQuade’s excellent An Unsentimental Education: Writers and Chicago, published in 1995. Joseph Epstein reminisced about Adler in “The Great Bookie,” published in the Weekly Standard in 2001. Sydney Hyman’s comments are based on our talks. George McElroy reminisced about the Adler-Hutchins Great Book course in the University of Chicago alumni magazine of August 2002.

  The Saul Bellow quotations are from James Atlas’s 2002 Bellow: A Biography, and from a lengthy 1984 interview in TriQuarterly magazine. The three above-mentioned dissertations all cover the issues in this chapter.

  Time first put Robert Hutchins on its cover on June 24, 1935.

  FOUR: GREAT BOOKS GOOD FOR YOU!

  The three above-mentioned dissertations all cover the issues in this chapter, and the Great Books Foundation dug out back copies of its newsletter for me to peruse. Benjamin McArthur’s long essay on the Great Books appeared in American Heritage magazine in 1989. Paul Mellon described his experiences with the Great Books in his 1992 memoir, Reflections in a Silver Spoon.

  Joan Shelley Rubin’s The Making of Middlebrow Culture is the definitive work on American “middlebrow.”

  James Sloan Allen tells the story of Walter Paepcke and the Aspen Institute in his excellent 1983 book, The Romance of Commerce and Culture.

  The Liebling quote is from his 1952 New Yorker articles, “The Second City,” reprinted as a paperback in 2004. I interviewed Julie Adams in 2008.

  Timothy Cross’s An Oasis of Order: The Core Curriculum at Columbia College, published in 1995 by the Office of the Dean, Columbia College, can be read on the Columbia University website.

  FIVE: THE MAKING OF THE BOOKS

  The biographical details about William Benton come from Sidney Hyman’s 1969 biography, The Lives of William Benton, and from Joseph Epstein’s 5,000-word review of Hyman’s book, “Just Plain Bill,” published in the New York Review of Books in 1970. Epstein also wrote a memorable, biting reminiscence of Hutchins, “The Sad Story of the Boy Wonder,” in Commentary in 1990.

  There are many sources for the memos that circulated during the Great Books selection process. I read the originals in the Adler and Hutchins archives. Hugh Moorhead and Tim Lacy quote extensively from the documents, and even the Great Books Foundation squirreled away their own set, which I also read. The Saul Bellow quote is from James Atlas’s biography. Marshall McLuhan wrote about the Syntopicon in 1951, in The Mechanical Bride. Likewise, Joan Shelley Rubin casts a gimlet eye on the Syntopicon in The Making of Middlebrow Culture.

  I have a copy of Hutchins and Adler’s promotional film for the Great Books set, which I bought from Max Weismann’s Center for the Study of The Great Ideas.

  SIX: FASTER, PUSSYCAT! SELL! SELL!

  Adler wrote extensively about his sales efforts in his first autobiography, and his Chicago archive is full of wild memos about sales strategies, etc. The deceptive sales techniques are detailed in two lengthy Federal Trade Commission documents, “In the Matter of Encyclopedia Britannica” Docket 7137, and the same title, Docket 8908. The Marplan report is in the Chicago archives, and Tim Lacy writes about it in his dissertation. Lacy also documents the many Great Books brand extensions.

  I interviewed brothers Charles and John Van Doren, and exchanged e-mails with Michael Dirda, author of An Open Book: Chapters from a Reader’s Life, 2004.

  The New York Times covered Adler’s Hickory Hill appearance, and my wife’s cousin Eric Tomb sent me the wonderful Second City Great Books parody, which he preserved from his youth.

  SEVEN: SECOND VERSE NOT THE SAME AS THE FIRST

  Harry Ashmore’s biography is the definitive source for the second half of Robert Hutchins’s life. Hutchins appeared on Time’s cover for the second time on November 21, 1949.

  The George Dell oral history interviews with both Adler and Hutchins are in the Regenstein Library, as are some of the Britannica marketing materials for the 1990 relaunch. Adler hailed the 1990 GBWW edition in his second autobiography, and the Library of Congress described the publication ceremony in its Information Bulletin.

  EIGHT: THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

  Great Books aficionado Ralph Whitehead and I had many talks and e-mail exchanges while I was writing this book.

  Max Weismann was extremely generous with his time and sold me many of the materials I used to research this book. For instance, his Center for the Study of The Great Ideas has video recordings of every Mortimer Adler appearance on William F. Buckley’s TV show Firing Line and copies of almost every article that Adler ever wrote. The Liebling quote is from his above-mentioned New Yorker articles.

  Karen Hyland Pizarro and her brother Tom helped me enormously in assembling the story of their father’s devotion to Great Books. They loaned me many different accounts of his World War II flying heroics, and other personal effects.

  David Call was kind enough to spend time speaking with me on the telephone, and granted me permission to quote from his letters to Adler.

  NINE: EPICTETUS AT THE CASH REGISTER

  Most of the nation’s major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times, covered the Chicago “core wars,” often reworking stories that first appeared in the university’s student newspaper, the Maroon. Dean John Boyer and Humanities professor James Chandler granted me interviews, as did several Chicago students. Chandler’s article on the core controversy appeared in the February 2001 issue of University of Chicago Magazine.

  Columbia magazine editor Michael Shavelson provided me with invaluable background material about the university’s cor
e curricula, including magazine articles and the aforementioned books about the university.

  Serendipitously, I learned that my friend Michael Holquist was teaching the core, and several teachers and students were also happy to discuss the program, including Jonathon Kahn, Roosevelt Montas, Jon Battat, Rebecca Lee, Christopher Beam, and others. The best-written modern account of the core is David Denby’s Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World, published in 1997. For facts and chronology, I relied on Timothy Cross’s official history of the core.

  TEN: HARD CORE

  Amy Apfel Kass’s PhD dissertation, cited above, has a valuable chapter on St. John’s. Also helpful to me were Charles Nelson’s “Radical Visions: Stringfellow Barr, Scott Buchanan, and Their Efforts on Behalf of Education and Politics in the Twentieth Century” (2001) and Nelson’s “Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work” (1997).

  A dated but very insightful appreciation of St. John’s appeared in the 1978 book, The Perpetual Dream: Reform and Experiment in the American College, by Gerald Grant and David Riesman. I borrowed some of my historical background from that book. Eva Brann, Michael Dink, and Rosemary Harty were generous with their hospitality during my campus visit, allowing me to sit in on classes and meet students. Howard Zeiderman and Emily Rena-Dozier also talked to me about the colleges.

  ELEVEN: AMONG THE BOOKIES

  Daniel Born, Don Whitfield, and George Schueppert helped me get to know the Great Books Foundation. Born has written several perceptive essays on the history of the movement. Ruth Greene in Newton helped me join my local Great Books group, for which I am grateful.

  TWELVE: DEAD BOOKS WALKING

  The Allan Bloom quote comes from “The Closing of the American Mind,” published in 1987, and Harold Bloom’s remarks come from The Western Canon, which appeared in 1995. I interviewed Stephen Fallon, Howard Zeiderman, and Jane Levin.

  INDEX

  Adams, Julie(photo)

  Adler, Mark

  Adler, Mortimer J.(photo) 19 (photo) (photo)

  affirmative action and

  agitprop on

  citizen-readers and

  classics and

  criticism of

  curriculum and

  death of

  Gateway/Great Ideas Today and

  General Honors and

  Great Books and

  Great Conversation and

  Great Ideas and

  Harvard Classics and

  Hutchins and

  marriages of

  New Plan and

  People’s Institute and

  personal files of

  pitch letter by

  reforms by

  report by

  rumors about

  selection committee and

  speech by

  teaching by

  unpopularity of

  vocational education and

  writing of

  youth of

  Advertising(fig.)

  Advertising Research Analyst group

  Aeneid, The (Virgil)

  Aeschylus

  Agresto, John

  Albee, Edward

  Albert, Eddie

  Alcibiades

  Alexander the Great

  Algonquin Club, Round Table of

  Allen, James Sloan

  Allied Stores, Great Books and

  Allison, Samuel

  Almagest, The (Ptolemy)

  American Association for the Advancement of Science

  American Expeditionary Force

  American Golf Association

  American Palace Theater

  Amos Alonzo Stagg Field

  “Analytical Theory of Heat” (Fourier)

  Anderson, Sherwood

  Andromache

  Angell, James

  Angelou, Maya

  Animal Farm (Orwell)

  Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

  Annals, The (Tacitus)

  “Antigone,” 63 (photo)

  Antigone (Sophocles)

  Apollonius of Perga

  Apology, The (Plato)

  Aquinas, St. Thomas

  Great Books and

  sexuality and

  Archimedes

  Arendt, Hannah

  Ariosto, Ludovico

  Aristophanes

  Aristotle

  Ashmore, Harry

  Aspen Institute(photo)

  Atlantic magazine

  Attica prison, Great Books at

  Austen, Jane

  Autobiography (Mill)

  “Autobiography of an Uneducated Man, The” (Hutchins)

  Bacon, Sir Francis

  Balch, Stephen: on core curriculum

  Baldwin, James

  Balzac, Honoré

  Barr, Stringfellow “Winkie,” 41

  St. John’s and

  selection committee and

  Barrenechea, Francisco

  Barrymore, Ethel

  Barth, Karl

  Barzun, Jacques

  Basic Program (Graham School)

  Battat, Jon

  Beam, Carol

  Beam, Christopher

  Bean, Orson

  Beast in the Jungle, The ( James)

  Beaune

  Beckett, Samuel

  Beethoven, Ludwig van

  Beginner’s Greek (Collins)

  Bellow, Saul(photo)

  on Adler

  Great Ideas and

  on Hutchins

  Benton, William

  Adler and

  Bush and

  Crest toothpaste and

  criticism of

  death of

  Fat Men seminars and

  Great Books and

  Great Ideas and

  Hutchins and

  pitch letter and

  sales and

  Benton & Bowles

  Bergson, Henri

  Berkeley, George

  Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche)

  Bible

  Bill of Rights

  Billington, James

  Birds, The (Aristophanes)

  Bishop, Elizabeth

  Blades, John: on Adler

  Bloom, Allan

  Adler and

  classics and

  criticism of

  cultural capital and

  on Great Books

  Hutchins and

  Strauss and

  Bloom, Harold

  Boccaccio, Giovanni

  Bohr, Niels

  Book of Job

  “Book-of-the-Millennium Club, The” (MacDonald)

  Book of the Month Club

  Books of Lemmas, on the Sphere and Cylinder (Archimedes)

  Born, Dan

  Boston Globe

  Boswell, James

  “Bowling for Columbine,” 159

  Boyer, John

  Bradley Foundation, St. John’s and

  Brann, Eva

  Braun, Norman

  Brecht, Bertolt

  Britannica

  Adler and

  advertising by

  Benton and

  Erskine and

  FTC and

  Great Books and

  publications by

  sales by

  University of Chicago and

  Van Doren and

  Brooke, Rupert

  Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevsky)

  Browning, Robert

  Bryant, Walter

  Buchanan, Scott

  Hutchins and

  New Progress and

  St. John’s and

  selection committee and

  University of Chicago and

  Buckle, Henry Thomas

  Buckley, William F.

  Bulwer-Lytton, Edward

  Bunyan, John

  Burnett, Leo: advertisement by

  Burnham, Daniel

  Burns, Robert

  “Burnt Njal” (Icelandic saga)

  Bush, George W.

&nb
sp; Bush, Prescott

  Byron, Lord

  Call, David

  Calvin, John

  Candide (Voltaire)

  Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer)

  Capital (Marx)

  Capone, Al

  Carnegie Corporation

  Carnochan, W. B.

  Carroll, Mrs. C. E.

  Cather, Willa

  Cavanaugh, John

  Cayley, Arthur

  Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

  Center for the Study of Great Ideas

  Cervantes

  Chambers, Whittaker

  Chandler, James

  Charles R. Walgreen Foundation for the Study of American Institutions

  Chaucer, Geoffrey

  Chekhov, Anton

  Chesterton, G. K.

  Chicago Daily News

  Chicago Historical Society

  Chicago Tribune

  Chicago Way, The (Harvey)

  “Choose Something Like a Star” (Frost)

  Christian Science Monitor, on Great Books Foundation

  Christie, Agatha

  Cicero

  Citizen Kane

  City of God, The (St. Augustine)

  Classical Civilization (Columbia)

  Close, Chuck

  Closing of the American Mind, The (Bloom)

  Cohen, Bernard

  Colby College

  Great Books week at

  Collier, P. F.

  Collier’s, on Hutchins

  Collins, James

  Collins, Wilkie

  Colloquium on Important Books (Columbia)

  Columbia Law School

  Columbia University

  Adler at

  core curriculum at

  cultural tradition and

  student takeover at

  Committee on Instruction (Columbia)

  Committee on Social Thought (Chicago)

  Committee on the Liberal Arts (Chicago)

  Committee to Frame a World Constitution

  Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels)

  Compton, Arthur Holly

  Comte, Auguste

  Concerned Friends of the University of Chicago

  Condensed Books

  Confessions, The (St. Augustine)

  Conrad, Joseph

  Constitution, The