Saturday, February 24, 2024

A philosopher's reading habits

 A recent note discussed an old interview with the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who’d just joined the faculty at Notre Dame. It was an introduction.

When the interviewer asked what he thought a good education would consist of, and MacIntyre said: “What every child needs … ”

It struck me that you can learn a lot about a person by asking about his views on education.

The last question was about the books that MacIntyre read outside his field.

It hit me again: You can learn a lot about a person by asking about his reading habits.

Here’s how MacIntyre responded:

• Tough calls about whether it’s philosophy or some other kind of literature: Dante, Jane Austen, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Borges.

• Books read every 20 years or so: RedgauntletWomen in LoveTo the Lighthouse.

• Books read more often: UlyssesFinnegan’s Wake, Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Too-Birds.

• Short stories: Flannery O’Connor, Peter Taylor and Máritín O’Cadhain.

• Books that helped him survive the past 20 years: Saichi Maruya’s Singular Rebellion, Randal Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, Robertson Davie’s Rebel Angels, Patrick McGinley’s Bogmail.

• Books he hoped to be reading in the next 20 years: The Táin Bó Cúailnge, Eileen O’Connell’s “The Lament for Art O’Leary,” Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero,” the poetry of George Campbell Hay, Sorley MacLean, Iain Crichton Smith and Máritín O’Direáin.

• The “perpetual low-life diet”: Raymond Chandler, Philip K. Dick, etc.

Interesting list. Interesting organization.

• Source: “In Interview with Alasdair MacIntyre,” Cogito, Summer 1991. For the  original note, see “What every child needs,” Feb. 18, 2024.

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