Edward Shils, a sociologist at the University of Chicago who studied intellectuals, was such an interesting character he appeared in Saul Bellow’s fiction.
Joseph Epstein wrote several pieces about him, mentioning Shils’s love of walking sticks, thick soups and green ink. Shils said there were four means of getting an education:
• Classrooms.
• Newspapers and journals.
• Conversation.
• Bookstores, especially those that sell used books. Shils crammed 16,000 books into his apartment.
That remark, reported by Epstein, has me searching for one of Shils’s books.
Shils held that there’s a social role for the responsible critic, and I’d like to learn the details. Anyone who samples our attempts at conversation online might sense the absence of responsible criticism.
• Sources: Joseph Epstein’s pieces on Edward Shils include “The Bookish Life,” First Things, November 2018; the poem “Edward Shils in Heaven,” First Things, August 2018; and Edward, Remembered; The Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1997.
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