"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."
W.H. Auden
A recent mention of the 18th century commonplace book prompted me to dive into Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. To come clean with you, I’ve only read Chapter 1—but in it, Bauer makes a terrific defense of the art of reading.
What if your mind is hungry, but not particularly literate?…The truth is that the study of literature requires different skills than reading for pleasure… Most of us can manage to sing "Happy Birthday"…when called for, but this doesn’t incline us to march down to the local performing arts center and try out for the lead in Aida…
That wise Bauer reminds us that historically, folks of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries didn’t take twenty-five years in school to gain a complete education (K through PhD). In the classical method of self-education, young people kept little notebooks about what they read to help them first understand, then evaluate, and then opine on literature and the ideas (from philosophical to scientific) expressed there. (Note to Word-Wonks: that three-pronged process is what old schoolmasters called the trivium).
So…whenever I read Jane Austen, or Bronte, I wonder how those pre-modern women protagonists became so darned accomplished! Apparently, it’s all about those reading diaries. Bauer cites the example of Mary Wilson Gilchrist who came back from her short term at a women’s college determined to keep learning, so she kept reading diaries and organized women’s book clubs in Civil-War era Ohio.
-J.F.