Austin Hall Library

Digging in Our Ruins

One can't help feeling the chill these days. I awoke this morning to thoughts of Malcolm Muggeridge's unsettling quote in Chronicles of Wasted Time: An Autobiography: 

It has long seemed abundantly clear to me that I was born into a dying, if not already dead, civilisation, whose literature was part of the general decomposition; a heap of rubble scavenged by scrawny Eng. Lit. vultures, and echoing with the hyena cries of Freudians looking for their Marx and Marxists looking for their Freud . . . At the beginning of a civilisation, the role of the artist is priestly; at the end, harlequinade. From St. Augustine to St. Ezra Pound, from Plainsong to the Rolling Stones, from El Greco to Picasso, from Chartres to the Empire State Building, from Benvenuto Cellini to Henry Miller, from Pascal's Pensee's  to Robinson's Honest to God. A Gadarene descent down which we all must slide, finishing up in the same slough.

I then recalled John Senior's memorable but disturbing analysis of modern culture in his little known The Restoration of Christian Culture, where he stated:

Archaeologists rate a culture by the quality of its ordinary pots and bottles, not just its "serious" art but the everyday utensils preserved by the unprejudiced democracy of its dumping grounds. An ancient utensil is to us a priceless Grecian urn; the greatest artist in the world today can't make a thousandth of an ordinary Greek pot. Even a Victorian chamber pot is a work of art compared to the vulgar kitsch of a Picasso ceramic. No one will even bother to sift us out but dig right down through the sordid strata we have deposited to the richer people here before us who, primitive as they were, at least made beaded necklaces of seashells and jade. A silly slogan like "the medium is the message" tickles our complacency; and pop art, the indecent exposure of our souls, is the expression of our highest aspiration. Means, means, everything is means--machines and plastic pipes and contraceptives. The poet chanted of the Grecian urn, "Thou still unravished bride of quietness . . . ." For us there is neither quiet nor bride; our girls are rendered unravishable by sex education in the elementary schools. If future generations exist and think of us at all, they will say, digging in our ruins, "This was a people who lived unconsummated lives."

 

On the Nightstand

Extensive time in airports recently helped me catch up a bit, but I remain well behind in serious reading. Nonetheless, I have managed to start several new books of interest. While strolling through a bookstore in Houston, Texas, I could not pass up Kenneth R. Craycraft's The American Myth of Religious Freedom, where the author argues that "there is no such thing as religious freedom. The reason that such an assertion sounds so shocking to us is that we have been so completely formed by the American myth." While I am quite unpersuaded so far of the author's central thesis, he is clearly a thoughtful and serious writer who deserves a careful reading. On the same bookstore stroll, I looked for a historical read and picked up Islam at the Gates: How Christianity Defeated the Ottoman Turks by Diane Moczar. I picked this book because it focuses on the Ottoman Empire during the critical thirteenth through seventeenth centuries. Written from a solidly Catholic perspective, the author does a good job of debunking the modern perception that Islamic radicalism is a relatively new and limited phenomenon. I have been developing for some time a small but excellent section of my library on the subject of asceticism. And, in that subject area, I am greatly enjoying, in a penitential sort of way, Lorenzo Scupoli's sixteenth century masterpiece, Spiritual Combat: How to Win Your Spiritual Battles and Attain Peace. Although the title may appear somewhat so, this is definitely not a self help book in any modern sense. It is the book that most powerfully contributed to the spiritual formation of St. Francis de Sales and John Henry Cardinal Newman, neither of whom were intellectual or spiritual lightweights. St. Francis carried a pocket copy of the book with him at all times and read it through in its entirety once a month. The simple style of the book belies its profound depth and practical value. Jonathan Robinson's, Spiritual Combat Revisited, is an excellent modern companion to Scupoli's work, to be read as an immediate follow-up, or a kind of handbook to Scupoli.

For the Reader Who Has (Almost) Everything

There are probably new book-related websites added daily to the Internet. I recently had called to my attention, however, a website different from others I have seen. It is The Well Dressed Reader, a site that offers custom jewelry and bookmarks for readers. And, it is a reading-themed business with an altruistic component--offering ten percent of the profits from its sales to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

I have also recently come across Chesterton and Friends, a interesting blog about G.K. Chesterton and the writers who influenced his thought. Included on the site is a significant list of other Chesterton-related blogs and websites.

 

Building the Library You Always Wanted

I have been collecting books for quite some time, and there was a time when I read each book as I added it to my library. Those days are over. I am now almost hopelessly behind, due to multiple purchases at a time, less time to read and, perhaps, a shortened attention span.

But, through the years, I have developed a more refined and more discriminating approach to building a library. And, I have improved my will power when it comes to purging my library of books no longer consistent with a more refined and more discriminating approach. Listed below are several tips I have found very helpful in building a good library in key subject categories without filling rooms with books I will never read again or recommend to anyone.

Develop Your Written List. This may seem simplistic, but it is often an overlooked step in building a good library. I suspect most people collect books rather indiscriminately--the result of fleeting interest, random recommendations, or what catches the eye in a local bookstore. There is nothing wrong with such practices, but it leads to a somewhat haphazard library filled with books of disparate quality. So, develop a written "wish" list of the best books available in the subject areas you want to develop in your library. The Internet has made this an easy task these days. It was much more difficult when I first began to formulate my list. It is primarily from this list that I have built my library through the years. And it is from my library that I have created another important list--the 100 Most Influential Books on My Life. I rigidly restrict the list to 100 entries and I cannot add a new book without removing an existing entry. It helps to understand what ideas have been most influential in forming the way one thinks and acts.

Follow the "Footnote Trail" in Creating Your Written List. I am not certain, but I believe it was from my good friend, George Grant, that I first heard the phrase "follow the footnote trail," but it was a practice I had followed for years. It simply means that you should trace back the sources of the ideas that capture your attention when reading by obtaining and reading the books cited by the authors of ideas that catch your attention. The footnotes cited by good authors are an outstanding and fertile source of other good books and ideas. It is this approach that has been most helpful in narrowing down my list to the best books available on topics that interest me.

Systematically Purchase Books from Your List, Instead of "Toys". It is amazing what kind of library can be built over the years, even on a modest budget, if one wisely uses their resources on books instead of the latest automobile, the biggest boat, the fastest motorcycle, a country club membership, or the most technologically advanced home entertainment system. Establish your priorities, withstand the urge to invest in things that have no lasting value, and be patient. It takes some time to identify and invest in the best books available in the subjects you wish to emphasize. A standing rule that you will read each book as you purchase it will help with the patience you need. It is a rule I followed when my book buying budget was quite limited. 

Buy Gently Used Hardback Books When Possible. Used books are better on the budget and hardbacks are better in the hands and on the library shelf. If necessary, hardback books can be rebound. I have purchased books on the secondary market from all over America, Canada, England, Wales, Scotland, Italy, The Netherlands, Germany, and other countries.

Don't be Afraid to Purge. I cannot overstate the importance of this tip. Filling one's house with books of questionable quality that do not come immediately to mind when someone needs a recommendation is imprudent at best. Through the years, I have purged my library twice of approximately 1600 volumes each time. On many other occasions I have eliminated from 20 to 300 books at a time. I kept many of the books for years, through several purges, but eventually I was able to admit that the books were not among the "best" I could acquire in the subject areas that interested me. So, I gave them away or traded them for credit at a bookstore in a city where I lived years ago. Each time I did this, I clarified my thoughts of where I could go for the ideas that influenced me most in the quest for truth. The purpose of a good library, beyond the pleasure of reading itself, is to capture and retain sources of truth in subjects of interest. If one cannot readily identify and recommend those sources, or return to them when memory begins to fade, then they are of uncertain value. My memory began to fade some time ago, but I can still walk past the shelves of my library and readily extract the best books I could find on virtually any subject of interest to me.

Thinking with Bernard Lonergan

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) is known as one of the most significant philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century. Although noted for his intellectual work during his lifetime, his reputation has flourished since his death. The Lonergan Institute at Boston College, where Lonergan taught, focuses on providing resources for the study of his thought. And resources are needed.

Lonergan was the author/architect of what he called the "generalized empirical method"--the generalized idea that the notion of data includes the data of consciousness as well as the data of sense. From that compound data, one may ascend through hypothesis to verification of the operations by which humans deal with what is meaningful and what is valuable. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). In short, Lonergan researched and wrote about the theory of human understanding--the intellectual process by which humans come to know anything. And, though his work is difficult to understand, his most significant contribution may be in helping us learn to think about thinking. 

Lonergan's most well-known book, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, explores the process of intelligently inquiring into whatever an object of inquiry might be. It is really a book about the reader--the inquirer--and how he gains insight. It is a magisterial effort by a Thomistic philosopher to explain the process of the human mind to the modern age. Unless one is a classically trained philosopher, I would not recommend tackling Insight without a guide. One of the best I have seen is Terry J. Tekippe's What is Lonergan Up to in Insight: A Primer, which is a fine introduction to Lonergan's thought.

Another of Lonergan's best known works is Method in Theology. It is definitely to be undertaken as graduate-level philosophical and theological reading, but there are jewels to be mined there.

While following the footnote trail, I recently happened upon Richard M. Liddy's Transforming Light: Intellectual Conversion in the Early Lonergan, and I am enjoying it. It is an insightful analysis of what Lonergan called the "startling" event of intellectual conversion. I was attracted to the book's title because of what I have sensed in my own life was a sort of "intellectual conversion" that occurred in the late 1990s. In any event, I have found Liddy's book and John Henry Newman's detailing of his own thought in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent to be helpful in understanding this interesting notion of intellectual conversion--a process so illuminating that "conversion" can be the only appropriate term to describe it.