A colleague in our Great Books program shared an article with me me over the recent Christmas break, and as I was buried in reading some of the Great Books and a few seasonal works, I was hard pressed to read this article. The article was published in First Things and entitled, Against Great Books Questioning Our Approach to the Western Canon. When I finally did get a chance to read it, I found several points of merit, a few points that I simply disagreed with and one common error with such arguments, but it is a major and recurring error when some address the Great Books.
The Great Books may be a source of their own undoing (inherent contradictions across the canon). On the first point of agreement (which is also ultimately the main problem in the argument), I do agree that when read together there becomes a babel-like clamoring calling for assent to a particular truth and sometimes simultaneously calling for a denial of another claiming to offer truth. This has led James Schall (of whom I have the deepest admiration) and others to warn of the danger of relativism, which is a warning that needs to be sounded especially in this foundationaless age. However, the problem of contradictions and opposing worldviews ought not to trouble us for at least three reasons. Next to my bed I usually have five to seven books I'm reading at any given time. This does not count the other three to five on my desk, and the others scattered throughout my house, university office and home office. A setting any Hobbit would relish. If I paused and attempted to bring together, in some harmonious manner, the diverse genres, ideas, worldviews, and images the sheer mental cacophony would induce an aneurysm.
Related to this is what many of us experience in our everyday lives. Unless you are blessed to live in a way that Wendell Berry lives (an author Professor Deneen seems to respect and maybe on his "humility encouraging" list) then it is likely that any given day between our internet and interstate traveling we are going to encounter this same fragmentation and conflict. Finally, Adler stated that not only would this tension happen when studying the Great Books, it is a good thing in the battle of truth claims. His assertion is found in"The Great Conversation Revisited" essay found within the skinny Great Conversation book. "It is mistakenly thought by many that the great books are recommended for reading and study because they are a repository of truth. On all the fundamental subjects and ideas with which the great books deal, some truths will be found in them, but on these very same subjects and ideas, many more errors or falsities will be found there. The authors not only contradict each other; they often are guilty of contradicting themselves. No human work rises to the perfection of being devoid of logical flaws. On any subject being considered, the relation between truth and error is that of one to many. The truth is always singular, while the errors it corrects are manifold....No truth is well understood until and unless all the errors it corrects are also understood and all the contradictions found are resolved. It is in the context of a plurality of errors to be corrected and of contradictions to be resolved that the brilliance of the truth shines out and illuminates the scene." (p. 26, 27)
Professor Deneen helpfully asserts that we should read "humble books" or "books that encourage humility." While I certainly agree that books that are humble or encourage humility should be on our reading lists, I have experienced that reading the Great Books has imposed a kind of humility on me. It is because these ideas, images, and words have changed human hearts and institutions that I am humbled by them. It is because when reading many of them my feeble mind is greatly taxed that I am humbled. It is when discussing them for the past fourteen years with children and geniuses that I am humbled by the insights of others as I grope for understanding. I completely agree with Professor Deneen that we do need to read humble books and the kinds of books that encouraged humility and I would genuinely appreciate a list from the Professor. In the meantime, I'll get back to the task of reading, and leading others through the humbling project of understanding the Great Books.
On numerous occasions, Mortimer Adler wrote about the criteria that was used to determine which books of all the books written in the West would be placed within The Great Books of the Western World collection. Contrary to confusion and many misstatements; I've read over the years, Adler says it was essentially three criteria and they are as follows:
1) Contemporary significance - Even though historically valuable, these works address “issues, problems, or facets of human life that are of major concern to us today as well as at the time in which they were written.” While the work is within the genre of science fiction and fantasy, it really explores humane themes much as traditional fiction. In other words, change the setting from Mars to Montana and it still works as a literary masterpiece.
2) Rereadability - These are books “intended for the general reader that are worth reading carefully many times or studying over and over again...indefinitely rereadable for pleasure and profit.”
As I have confessed before in blogs and lectures, I re-read a number of Bradbury's works at specific times of the year as they seem fitting to the season. While The Martian Chronicles is not one part of a seasonal rotation, I have enjoyed this work more than once. Like his other "novels," The Martian Chronicles is rich enough in content and form (think Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath) and has enough meaningful ambiguity to sustain numerous readings and a enriching conversation with another who has read the work. For fans of this work, there is near universal agreement that the ending is that wonderful Bradburian twist that is a hallmark of his writing.
3) Extensive relevance and something of significance to say about a large number of the 102 great ideas of the thinking and writing done by the authors chosen.
Of the 102 Great Ideas Adler explored, The Martian Chronicles touches upon or explores in a meaningful manner the following: Angel, Animal, Astronomy and Cosmology, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Courage, Custom and Convention, Democracy, Desire, Duty, Education, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Idea, Immortality, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Love, Man, Matter, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Progress, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny and Despotism, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Will, Wisdom, and World.
Additionally, Adler said that the list of Great Books needed to be regularly reevaluated. With this in mind, I hope that I have made the case for including this novel by Ray Bradbury and including it in the open and extended list Adler proposed.
As with other Bradbury writings, there is often an earlier life or version before the published date. While The Martian Chronicles was published in 1950 (63 years ago and still in print), many of the stories were written and published in various sources in the 1940s. Some scholars contend that The Martian Chronicles can, and actually should, be read in thematic relation with Bradbury's Illinois trilogy Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine, and Farewell Summer.
The NBC mini-series adaptation in 1979 was sadly flat despite some solid performances and a few great moments. The graphic novel published in 2011, and wonderfully illustrated by Dennis Calero, is really quite good. Additionally, there are plans underway (we know how this often goes) to remake The Martian Chronicles into a major film.
Whether read as a classic sci-fi tale or a moralistic glimpse into the human condition, this is a novel that should be clustered with the greatest of science fiction and fantasy literature. It is substantially richer in form than most of what passes for sci-fi and fantasy literature. In addition to being a masterfully crafted exploration of numerous humane themes, it is delightful, at times, but ultimately a tale about the glories and pitfalls of being human and the gift of life.
NEXT BLOG: On Reading Philip Rieff or How Tough Sociology Can Help Us Understand Us
