Jeffrey Eugenides, the essayist and short story writer, described his stab at an education: “I arrived at college keen to develop a life philosophy. The idea was to begin with the Greeks and stop somewhere around Nietzsche. By reading the canonical works, I thought I could bring an order to my mind that would manifest itself in my behavior and decisions. Now, thirty years later, I look back and have to admit it didn’t happen.” (The quotation comes from By the Book, ed. by Pamela Paul, Henry Holt & Co., 2014, p. 83.)
When I went to college, I had an even more modest goal: I wanted to develop a philosophy of art. I wanted to order my mind so that I could write efficiently, worthily, perhaps even beautifully.
Like a good American consumer and with all the wisdom of a man of 17, I wanted to pay my tuition and have someone hand this philosophy to me.
Almost 50 years later, I am knocking on the same door.
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