Eva Brann of St. John's College tells us about how the school and its Great Books program has (and hasn't) changed over the FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS she's been a tutor there. Then alum Ian Kelley talks about his experiences in the program and how they informed his decision to join the U.S. Navy.
The Virtual Memories Show
Season 3, Episode 12 - Highest Learning
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and you are listening to a podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. Now, I thought I was coming to the end of a whole run of travel for both business and pleasure. Last week, I just finished a great trip to Annapolis, Maryland, sort of this annual pilgrimage. I make now to go to my alma mater, St. John's College. And in this case, I go through a four-day seminar in one of the great books, which was Moby Dick. Last year, we did one on Flannery O'Connor, one of her novels and a bunch of stories. And I came out of that event last year with two great podcast interviews with my two tutors from the seminar, David Townsend and Tom May. This time around, I managed to get Eva Brand, who is a legendary tutor at St. John's College. This is down for an interview. She's been at the school for 57 years, I believe, which is sort of mind-blowing. So it was wonderful that I got her to sit down and talk for 40 minutes. And it was kind of funny because we'd never actually had a class together in the two years. I was at St. John's and in the subsequent visits that I've made, she was doing a seminar on Nostromo, which I would have taken at Moby Dick, not been on the menu for this time around. So like I said, I was going to be done with travel, but during that little vacation, I got an email from a work-related client imploring me to come to Shanghai in a couple of weeks. The client will be paying for this trip. I will be paying in my own way, just dealing with a four-day trip that's going to involve 15 hours of air travel each way. But I figure I've never been to China before, so it could be a pretty good experience for me. That should be the end of the major travel for quite a while, at least till October, when I've got a trade show in Frankfurt. It's been a bit of a run for the last month and a half or so, but when you get down to it, it's a lot better than being unemployed and hold up in a little apartment or something. So anyway, what I have to share with you this time is a wonderful conversation with Eva Brand, one of the great tutors of St. John's College, which I think is one of the finest educational programs in the country. And as a bonus, we have an interview with Ian Kelly, an alumni of St. John's. Ian and I attended the same time. I was in the graduate school from '93 to '95, getting my masters, while Ian was an undergrad from '93 to '97. We recorded last February here in the virtual memories library. It was in the middle of February, so if you're listening to that second interview and you hear a weird kind of whistling humming sound, that would be the incredible wind rolling up from the reservoir down the hill. And now I want you to listen to our conversation with Eva Brand, one of the great tutors of St. John's College. ♪ What I do know that I love you ♪ ♪ I love all that if you love me too ♪ Our guest on the virtual memory show today is Eva Brand, a tutor at St. John's College, where I got my Master of Arts, Liberal Arts degree. I'm very pleased to have her on the show. And I'm very glad to be here. Thank you. And I wanted to start with the question. You've been teaching at St. John's for 57? 57 years, yes. How has the college changed over that time in your estimation? It's a question difficult to answer for two reasons. One is that the assumption that everything changes is not so universally true as people think. I don't think we've changed very much. Or if we have, it's in a kind of cyclical fashion. When I came in 1957, even though the program was quite radical, the students were somewhat normal. They were friendly with their families. They were polite to their tutors. I think they didn't sleep with each other. I'm not so sure of that, but I think, in other words, they were normal, friendly American kids. Then we went through the 60s sexual revolution, all that kind of thing. Relations to families became more distant. There was some talk about the difference between the generations. Well, to me, the interesting thing is that nowadays our students are close to their families and regularly touch with them, that we tutors get a lot of friendly affectionate respect. And that human relations seem to be as good as they can be. So it's a lovely time to be a teacher. A party that may be because they are always. I don't know about that. What brought you to St. John's? I noticed you had an archeology degree. Yes, I was working in Athens as an archeologist in the American excavations of the marketplace in the center of Athens. And there was a man there called Seth Benedict. He became quite a famous classicist. Who was teaching at St. John's? Well, it didn't quite work. He wasn't really student-friendly. And if you like, I'll explain to you what not being student-friendly is. Well, our freshmen have to write essays from time to time. And he would sit at the octagonal table, which is the kind of center of the college in the coffee shop. And he would read this essay's aloud. Oh, it's right. But he was very brilliant. Maybe a little bit too brilliant to be a teacher of undergraduates. But when he was asked to leave, rather than dean, when he was friends with, he was asked if he knew someone who was more likely to be student-friendly. And he mentioned me, writing me a note to the effect that this was an act of malice on his part. But I think I, you know, they say the best revenge is to live happily. Well, I lived happily. And it was an immediate fit. I was in my glory from the beginning. And wonderful things even happened at that time. And what was it that appealed to you about the Great Book's program? Well, first of all, that you never read boring books. And even if a book is a little hard to get at or in some stretches, not what you really love, they're all good for you. The other thing is there is always something to talk about. And you're never lacking for conversation. And conversation is what drives us college. So it's wall to wall wonderful. You've never been tempted to leave or any-- Well, if, you know, tempted has two meanings. Someone tried to tempt me, yes. But I was not tempted. I was asked on various occasions if I didn't want to apply, especially for administrative posts and other colleges. And I was never in the slightest but interested. Much more interested in the books and the students? Yeah, well, I did play hooky for refreshment. And I spent a really wonderful time at Whitman College. And I spent another two years at the University of Delaware. I really enjoyed it very much. But I also enjoyed coming back. I asked a group of St. John's graduates on Facebook last night for possible questions. And I was going to save them for the end. But one of them seems particularly pertinent. The Iliad and the Odyssey are the first two books that the undergraduates read. How have they changed for you since you first read them? Well, it's easier to say what isn't so different. And I'll say what's different, right? I've never taken to the Iliad in the way that I eventually took to the Odyssey. Really? Am I permitted to be as politically incorrect as my heart moved? As much as you were. It seems to me a man's book. All the mayhem and beating people about and putting spears through their throats and so on didn't exactly appeal to me. But I have to say that though it isn't a book that is so close to my heart, as the Odyssey is, it's a book that every time I read it, we read it, seems to me immensely full of fascinating human detail. And I do reread it often because, you know, we don't choose our own classes. We are assigned. And the dean has chosen to assign me to teach freshmen now for, I think, over a decade. So I reread it every year. And I will reread it this year. At the Odyssey, it took me a while to open them. I mean, the easiest way to put it is I fell in love with Odysseus. He must be the most interesting man that was ever on Earth. And I think he was on Earth in some way. What appeals to you about him? Well, he's a great liar. And you know, I'm the only one to whom that appeals to you. Have you read the Odyssey? Oh, yes, numerous times. Of course you have, yes. Well, you will remember that his goddess, Athena, who hasn't seen hydroherophum for almost 10 years, she appears, she meets him in our own person when he gets home to Ithaca. And she kind of makes love to him. She says, "You are so wonderful. You are a great liar and swindler." And I figured that if the goddess can love him before, I can't hide. Let me ask another question that came from a listener. And it relates to your comments about the Iliad. You came to St. John's in the late '50s. And it was mainly male tutors. The student body was mainly male. And the curriculum is also largely written by men. And one of the-- and a number of the other people in the Facebook group want to hear your answer to this. How difficult was it to retain your self-confidence as a woman and femininity and to create a good role model for female students over the years here? I don't know about role model. I've never thought of myself as a role model or even example, but more as a mediator to the books. But the question about maintaining self-confidence, I know that the myth is that this is, in some way, intimidating, but considered. One woman, I think there was one other woman she didn't last very long, among a whole-- I can't remember that. I mean, a college full of males. Why should that bother me? I thought it was wonderful. And there was-- I don't recall ever meeting any anti-feminist notion. That's the wrong word. But any anti-feminist or something out there-- What this culture-- it just-- I may have actually met it. But since I didn't notice it, it went away. Is there any sense of taking female students under your wing at all, or at least that they looked up to you? This is something that has always been very interesting to me. The students, I don't remember. I moved to say crept under my wing, but it isn't quite right. Mostly a young man. And this is the way I figured it to myself-- that all well-conditioned young men love their grandmothers. And when they can talk about cunt to their grandmothers, they love them even more. That's how it worked. But on occasion, I've had women students who wanted to do things with me. But it's never been about being women together. It's always been about studying together. Interesting. Very early on, one of my very wonderful colleagues, Joan Silva, came here as a young intern. And she asked me to read Hegel with her. We spent the year reading what is probably the most difficult work in the curriculum, Hegel's phenomenology of the spirit. But I don't think it was about two women together. It was about two people studying together. It seemed from the response from some of the alumni in that group that perhaps they were looking for, that sort of thing, when they were students. I'm not sure-- again, I came in as a graduate and as a man. So it's a very different vibe. It's interesting. The dean, when you got here, was Jacob Klein. Yes, he was. There's a conference on him next week. I believe you guys here can do. So tell me about your relationship with Klein and his importance to the college. Well, he was as close to a mentor as I ever had. Yeah, I went to graduate school at Yale. I had very many-- not very many-- a number of helpful professors whom-- but I never felt close to them. They were-- they treated me well and helped me in my career. This-- we all call them Yasha. It was as close to-- well, how should I put it? Mentor isn't quite a hurt either. Because he didn't want to be a mentor. He would infuriate me because I thought he had grand secrets, which I wanted him to tell me. He wasn't going to tell me. And the way I learned the most from him was that I translated his book on the origin of algebra, which the conference next week is going to be about. It which is now published by Dover. So it's a classic. The way that came about-- are you interested in the way it came about this translation? What language was he writing in? It was in German. He had written it just before the Nazis came in. And eventually, he immigrated first to England and then to America. He had, as most of us, have no great desire to-- no great need to publish, to become permanent here. You don't need to have publications. And he in particular thought that it was much greater thing to instigate students to think than it was to scribble things yourself. So when this book was not easily available in America and was not translated, I could tell in a vague sort of way that there was something very, very deep and serious about it. So I asked him if I should translate it. And he was against it. He didn't want me to do it. He didn't think that was the way to spend my time. Well, I did it, so to speak, at midnight for a year. And when I was finished, I had a lot of questions, so I had to confess. And then he became very interested in getting it published. And once the work had been done. So what I learned from him, I learned, I think, more from studying the book. But we were close. I was in their house all the time. He had a wife, Dodo, who was the world's greatest cook. And so I spent a lot of time eating good dinners. What effect do you think he had on St. John's as an institution? A great and very interesting effect. When he came here, the program was already instituted by Barr and Buchanan. The two acknowledged founders. They had-- look, I have to say that some of the earlier people I came here when the program was already. I came in '57. The program was instituted in '37. And the program was in existence. They had done it. I always thought by pure intuition, Buchanan was a man of real brilliance, and brilliant intuition. Here is something. I'm going to say that a number of the old alumni will not agree with. He didn't know what he was doing. This is of current exaggeration. Of course, he knows doing that. Yes, he put a reason for rationale behind it. By which I mean that he showed that antiquity and modernity have a kind of chasm between them. And that in order to understand our own time, one has to bridge that gulf. And that the program, in fact, in its first two years and in its last two years, reanimates the transition and the break. So I think-- and then, of course, I learned a lot about European history and various other things. But as far as the programs, because I think I learned it mostly from translating that book. Interesting. What role do you think liberal arts studies has nowadays? It's a great discussion about it, going on in the college about it. Here's the question. It's really a question of our concern, concerning our existence. Is the reason for the present decline in the liberal arts, in which we participate in a way because it's not no longer the normal thing for students to do? Is that a permanent and continual thing, or is it mostly driven by the present economic situations? I'm convinced myself that it is mostly economics and that the liberal arts, especially-- this is interesting-- especially in the business community, continue to be valued and will be more valued as fewer people sure who have it. Because one thing that such an education is supposed to help one with is judgment. And another one with the ability to hear what others say to you. And the third thing, to be able to say what you're thinking without constant interruptions of ours and o's and maybe's and whatnots. And whatever's, which are the main of my existence. Whatever's. And I forget-- you know, they have really speech. We all have a little text there. Yeah, yeah, right, right. It reminds me of-- and I've mentioned this in past episodes. I interviewed someone who did a book on David Patreus. Yes. Soldier in general, that apparently when he'd have men interviewing to be in his command, he would ask them who their favorite poets were. Yes. And if they-- I don't read poetry. He'd be telling you better go learn some poetry because that's why we fight is because we have to have this other world that we believe in. Which I thought was a rather nice, you know, angle for him despite all the troubles he used to do. You may find this surprising, but I read his manual. You know, the one in his-- The counter-resurgency manual. Yes. No, I'll send you a copy of the book that I interviewed Fred Kaplan about the writer. The manual itself shows what an intelligent and educated view he takes of how to deal with asymmetric warfare. How much interaction do we have with the Naval Academy? Friendly interaction. More or less depending on who is there and who's interested here. But we've, in the Graduate Institute, we sometimes have offices. I myself have taught a number of people teaching on the service-connected teachers, not the civilian teachers. And I've gone over there in the summers, together with our president, Chris Nelson, to run seminars with the offices there. I find them impressive. Do you get a sense that they grasp what a resource it is to have St. John's next door? Yes. Yeah, the ones who do. I mean, and of course, there's another faction that thinks we're a little twerps. A bunch of activists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We destroy them at croquet every year, so that we've got that as well. Yeah, well, happily, we get overconfident, and then they win. Otherwise, I've been told that if we win too often, there's been rumors about not coming back. Oh, don't give them a bad name or something. The curriculum is somewhat of a work in progress. The curriculum has always got some sense of talks to it. Yeah, it's interesting. It's, on the one hand, a real structure, you might say, settled in. We tweak it. Everything is incremental. So things do change, but they change cyclically, just the way when you ask me in the beginning, how has life changed in cycles? So we, and the cycles are we swell. That is, we make students read too much. And then we shrink. And then they complain of reading bits and pieces. And then we swell again. So the cycles I've observed is of adding and subtracting, adding and subtracting. As for new works, we haven't, we've put in more novels than we used to have. We've certainly extended the science part into the later 20th century, especially with genetics. But by and large, if someone from the pounding years came back, they'd be reading very much the same things. But at the same time, something really interesting happens. This is interpretation, which means, by which I mean, there lots of people wouldn't agree with this. I think we've become more radical as we went. In the early days, the program was still somewhat divided according to subjects. And the students were told what subjects they were studying. And they were more lectures. And in general, it was a novel, but it wasn't as radical as it's now. We don't tell students what subject they're studying. They're studying a book. Example, they're studying Newton's Principia. Is it a book of theology? Is it a book of physics? What kind of physics is it? Classical physics, well, it's a dynamics. Is it kinematics? Is it a personal work or an impersonal work? No one tells them what they're reading. They read it, and then they have to tell. What effect do you think that has? What effect? They approach the work without preconditions. We're not now studying an early work in physics. And what's more-- look, I remember that this was quite a while ago, an oral examination in which the student was asked about Aristotle's physics. And it turned out in the course of the examination that he had no idea whether Aristotle came before Plato or after Plato. It doesn't make any difference. Because if he had studied the books without these preconditions, chronological preconceptions, then an interesting question arises, which one of them is conceptually earlier? And then I think an intelligent student would know without being given a date. Is there something that was dropped from the curriculum that particularly bothered you, or something you had? Yeah, in its sanctify. They dropped for a while. They dropped what I think of as the greatest plontonic dialogue, the Sophist. Yeah, and I'm told I was invited to lecture. They have been there a number of times to lecture, of course. And I prefaced my lecture by saying, I have a complaint here and I want to-- I want to arouse you. And I'm told that the dean was sitting in the back, laughing her head off. But whether I had any effect, I don't know. How spirited do the debates get over what gets dropped and what gets kept or what gets added? They come in two stages. First, the instruction committee discusses and proposes it. If it's a big change to the faculty, and then it gets very spirited. But you know, we have-- well, this isn't true of faculty meetings, but for undergraduates and graduates, we think that the discussion-- and it isn't even-- it's not a debate. It's not even a discussion. It's a conversation. Or to be so deep, so personal, so rousing in its possible consequences that we need to protect ourselves against insubility. And we do it by making students call each other. And we call them by their honorific miso misses, if they want that, whatever, or missed if they are. And I think it makes a lot of difference. It was certainly a change. It was a change for me coming into the Graduate Institute and learning that. And it's been more difficult, as I had this past weekend, having to call Mr. May Tom, and then Mr. Townsend David. It's still just-- They won't do it. The undergraduates will not do it. In these alumni get togethers, their undergraduates-- alumni in my sessions, who are now ancient men. They have gray beards. And you're still Ms. Brand to that? They cannot get themselves to call me either. What do you see from other colleges that either mirror this or things you would love to see us sort of pervade into other schools? In what way we could become helpful? Well, it starts with the faculty really. The students are generally amenable. If they think that people know what they're doing, they're willing to follow along. So it's what the faculty is willing to do. What I regularly notice is that most faculty members know that it's better to get the students to participate than to have them sit there and be flooded with words. Which, when all isn't done, as said and done, could have been handed to them on a sheet of papers. You don't even have to be here. The reason that professors-- and that's why we're not professors. We don't profess. The reason that professors can't bring themselves to do it is oddly enough from a sense of duty. They've gone to graduate school. They've learned things. They are now given a salary. And they're supposed to do their work. And their work is being authorities. And so from a sense of duty, they wreck their own teaching. That's my sense of what is wrong. And what we can do is, on occasion, do succeed in a little bit in doing it, is to show that it is not so easy to sit there and make things go without telling. But it's a good thing to be doing. And it works. A book that you would want to see on the curriculum that hasn't been there previously. Oh, I would like to see-- look, I think we could use more fiction. I would like more 20th century fiction. But it's a practical problem. The practical problem is most great fictions are very long. So when are the students going to read them? Well, we've got to put them at the end of a vacation. At the beginning of the year. And there are only two such occasions. There's September. And there is the January. And so it's not so easy. But if we'd somehow added a 25 hour time to every day. In the world. Well, I think myself-- this is, again, a personal year. I think that Paul Scott's Raj quartet is. Raj quartet, I figured that was going to be your choice. Yes, you figured. You knew that. You knew that. I mean, I said. But you know, I don't even know they have many things I would personally like. And when the series question arises, what should we do? I often find myself saying to myself, this is pedagogically not possible. And so if I give you the list of all the things I'd love to be talking about to students, they're not necessarily things that ought to be on the program. Sure. What is it about the Raj quartet that you find so valuable? You know, the Lord knows, what is India to me or the Raj to me? What is the British Raj to me or I to the British Raj? We have no relation to each other at all. So it's a little mystifying, but I'm totally enchanted by it. And I'll try to describe what enchants me. First of all, it's a tapestry that has no loose ends. Everything is woven in and eventually resolved in some way. There's no mysteries left mysterious, but I mean, except the grand mystery of a great fridge. The characters are absolutely memorable and a good many of them are lovable. And then something happens. I had occasion to see that this morning in a seminar. I have a certain criterion, I mean, a sure criterion of a great book. It works inevitably and you can't go wrong, which is if the villain has a moment of glory. In a great book, the villain has a moment. And in the Raj Gortet, this is very true Merrick, who is the great villain, has a moment of redemption, a redemptive moment. And what do you read for pleasure? Novels. And there's a kind of semi-pleasure. I religiously read The Economist. Okay. Yeah. What novels do you find appealing? I know you had John LeCarré. Oh, yeah. I like that. I love Westerns. I like, I was saying this morning to someone. Once in a while, when I'm traveling, I buy a Harlequin novel. I have a real taste for not a good author. Good bad books, I think, or well, you've got to coin that term. Yeah. That's good bad books. That's good bad books. Yeah. Good bad books. But also, bad bad books. Yeah. Yeah. So that's for when I don't want to be thinking very hard and just enjoying this. But I love British novels. And that's where I feel most at home. And some American novels. And we'll be doing later on this summer in Santa Fe. We'll be reading Robinson's works. I've read the first two novels. I haven't read a home yet. Well, a home is gilead is wonderful, but home is even better, simply glorious, yes. And I admire her and here's why I admire her because you may find this comparison strange. She's like Robert Frost in this way that she writes absolutely American English with such subtlety and perfection that it almost matches Jane Austen. If you had a desert island situation where there was only one book you could take with you that would wash up from the cruise ship that you were cast off, what would it be? It's really hard. That's one for the listeners from the alumni. Yeah. I know. I've never. Do you think it would be fiction or philosophy? That's what I can't do. You know, that's exactly what I was racing through. Mine should be fiction. It would be something you haven't read or something you have. It would be something I found it hard to deal with. I would probably be, I think it might be Hegel's logic. I might shoot myself up with room. But at least it would end the desert island towards you. But what's more important is, I mean, as a desert island, what music I'd take along. What would you take? Well, it isn't, loads of cantatas, bakantatas, yeah. As a graduate student, we didn't have the music education here. How important do you think that is for the undergraduates? I think it's central. First of all, a variety of reasons. First of all, because in the freshman year they learn, you know, when you talk, you talk face-to-face, when you sing, you stand side-by-side, and they learn that kind of communal enterprise where you both, where all of you are facing in the same direction, so to speak, and bringing something into the world. So I think just plain choral singing is a great thing. It's also important for the students to know that there are written symbols, which are other than letters. In other words, that one can make notations of other things. And the way that we feed the verbal and visual imagination, we feed the oral imagination. I have a relatively complex question from one of the people. Have you been asking me all questions from... No, most of you have in mind, only a couple, the desert island, the female roles, and the elite in Odyssey. One alumni wants to know if there is a constant, quintessential human value that defies culture or is character merely a product of socio-economic nurture. Basically, they're wondering about your opinion on what role culture plays in human character. This is something that we all think about a lot, and I certainly have, and I think that there's a mistake in making these items and separating these items. And here's what I mean. There is a common humanity, which is the same over time and space. And I think so because I read with what I think is empathy, books that were written 2500 years ago, and that wouldn't be possible if it wasn't the case that we have a common humanity. But for us to have a common humanity, it's our peculiar characteristic that we have this humanity in different shapes and forms. So it expresses itself in different customs, where we are different clothes, in different languages, in different gestures and expressions, and that's what makes... what makes... what keeps us together and makes us interesting. And that goes down to individuals. I think individuals have a common humanity. Not if they weren't different. How could love arise? Sure. Love is largely pegged on differentiations. But those differentiations would have no base if there wasn't a commonality. So my answer, it may sound like a weasel answer to whoever I ask it, my answer is that it's that the common condition requires differentiation, and differentiation certainly requires a common substrate. So there isn't a sense of one being mutually exclusive that if you believe in this universe... There's a very contrary sense that they need each other to exist. And this... you know, this isn't an anthropological or sociological answer. This is a philosophical answer, an ontological answer, an ontology beats anthropology any day. Yeah. Another one over here, Alumni asks, "Is Cicero correct in saying that the study philosophy is nothing but to prepare oneself to die? And if so, how does that influence how and what you teach, and if not, what is or what are the purposes?" I'll begin by saying that, of course, Cicero is correct because he didn't say it, Socrates said it, and Cicero's parrot, parrot, parrot, parrot. We think Socrates said it. But we don't know that Socrates said it. Well, we're told that Cicero, or rather, the Socrates of the Platonic dialogue says. And you know, to answer that, you have to have an interpretation of what he means by it. And I'll give you my interpretation of what he means by it. I think he means in preparing to die, he means that on certain occasions prepared by thinking and conversation and study, you sometimes super see walk out of the realm of ordinary daily life into a realm of permanence, of ideas. And this is what Socrates thinks of as death, where real life begins for him. So the answer is, if you understand the back weight, it's no longer a repulsive mystery. But also not a bodily death, but a ego. No, it's not a bodily death. It's a superseding of daily life. My brother, who attended the Graduate Institute, Boaz, two years before me, has several questions that are just like, what was his name? Boaz Roth. Oh, 89 tonight. I believe so. Yes, yes, of course. Which is my who wants to know. Brothers Karamazov or Anna Karenina? Which? Oh, God. Is this a question? He just wrote BH. Does the F score tall story? Or BH versus AK? And I know my question. But did he mean, does he have to go tall story? I believe so. By extension. For me, it's clear. Until last year, it was perfectly clear, a worn piece and Anna Karenina tall story. But now? Well, I had occasion to read and re-read the demons. Really? That's the... And I thought this was an unmetable novel. I don't. Here's what it is, worn piece I simply love. I can live in it. And I remember, you know, once I had to have a little operation and they gave you those, what they call them, hypo, I'm a strong pain carrier. And you're sort of, your body's gone, you know, living in my hand. And I read word piece maybe for the fifth or sixth time. It was like nothing else. I love it. The demons is a theologically deep, very artfully written book with memorable characters, but it's not lovable. It isn't a single lovable character, Anna. So when all is said and done, it's still worn piece. There's other, this is like the basketball tournament where you have the seeds, Middle March versus Bleak House? Oh, Middle March. Middle March, yes. Oh, Bleak House is a fine novel, but Middle March is... I re-read Bleak House just this year and it struck me as not as much of a world. The characters may be more compelling, I guess, in a novelistic way, but Middle March feels like an entire world. It's an entire world, and what's more, it's an entire world, the way a world can become entire in a small setting, namely Middle March here. Where do you see St. John's in 50 years? You know, I sometimes, you know, between being asleep and awake, you sometimes have these fugue-like dreams, and I see myself wandering through McDowell Hall, and people walk by me, don't recognize me, I feel like I've gone to an alien world, and I come out of that and wonder what are they actually doing. I can't imagine that they're doing something very different from what we are doing. They're probably new novels, certainly new science, either science that we haven't incorporated yet or science that hasn't been invented, discovered yet. They must look very different, I don't know what they clothes will be made of. All I know, all of them short off their hair, they may well be baldies, I mean, men. They're giant brains, but if it'll be the safe, it's still a conversation. The final question that comes from a listener is virtue acquired by teaching or by practice? And if by neither, how comes it to man in nature or some other way? Look, I think Aristotle, I so often, is in a very practical, non-to-earth way, right? Your parents habituate you, right? And habits. So it's by habit, yeah, and the habit is that when you get up, you brush your teeth, even if you don't... And when you go to bed, you brush your teeth, even if you'd rather fall into bed straight away, that's a habit, and you arrive on time and places where you have a duty, that's a habit. The teaching business is, that's where it gets complicated. No one can teach you to be good, but if being good has something to do with being thoughtful, then someone can incite you to be thoughtful, and whoever does that might be said to be a teacher of virtue, but it's a little more complicated. But then there's something else. You know, when Socrates says at the end, by inspiration from the gods, I think there are sometimes turning points when people who've done things all for a long time turn on a dime, something great happens, and they suddenly become virtuous, that happens, I think it happens. On that note, Eva Brand, thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure, thank you. And that was Eva Brand. She's the author of a number of books, including Homeric Moments, The Music of the Republic, The Logos of Heraclitus, Opens Secrets, Inward Prospects, which I'm reading now, it's a sort of book of aphorisms of her devising over the last 30 years or so, and Amage to Americans, which is a neat essay collection. Those books are all available through Paul Dry Books, they're also on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but you can get them through Paul Dry, P-A-U-L-D-R-Y books. And now, our conversation with Ian Kelly, St. John's Graduate, and All Around Great Pal. My guest today is Ian Kelly, one of my longtime friends, and a graduate of St. John's College, which is going to be the center of our conversation today. Ian, thank you for coming on The Virtual Memory Show. Pleasure to be here, Gil. And I thought as an opening question in the St. John's tradition, I would ask, what brought you to St. John's? I had not much direction in the way of concrete goals desired from college, but at that point a desire to go to college to improve my mind and also improve my credibility as a human being as I saw college graduates being taken more seriously than those without. And I didn't know what I wanted to do, but then I heard, as I think a lot of people do, I heard St. John's, I heard of the school and its program via a neighbor who had attended and thought, wow, that sounds great. What sounded so good? I thought, well, I'd like to read those books anyway in my life, and the idea of getting credit for it through an academic program sounds fantastic. And I went and observed some classes at the campus in Santa Fe and was blown away by the depth of inquiry and the intensity of the discussion. We wanted to be there and nobody was just going through the motions, and it was also really hard to keep up with, like it was just, it was taught, it was like varsity level. Around, do you remember what year the classes were? Was it freshman at that point? Were you looking at people who had been reading the great books in the program for a number of years? Those were in, yeah, in Santa Fe, they would have been the so-called febbies or January freshman. I forgot the terminology and I can't remember. I think the different campuses might start that, those mid-year commencing freshman in different months, but these were freshmen, so they had been doing it for six months. But they were already no joke. They're taking on big subjects with a lot of intensity and thoughtfulness, and that was very inspiring. It makes me wonder how many people are sold on it, think it'll be cool, and then go and say, wow, that's how I feel, that's something I want to do. So this is the place to do it, perfect. There's nothing else to think about, or who maybe don't even have any idea about it, but get there and go, oh, wow, so you're not just being lectured at. You have to be engaged and really take the reins. From your experience at St. John's, what books do you feel really were the most formative for you? You had the biggest impact on who you became. All of the books had an impact, and I think one of the things that's most valuable about the St. John's curriculum is that you have no choices, you have to, as an undergraduate, with a couple of exceptions. Everybody goes through the same thing, you don't get to hide in your strengths and avoid your weaknesses, so in that sense, even things that I got really no pleasure from reading like Kant. I don't understand what you mean. We're instructive and gave me down the line a lot of intellectual courage that even if something wasn't accessible or appealing, I could get into it and get something out of it. The things that come pleasantly to mind are Plato. In particular, dialogue? I liked all of it, I thought it was a novel way of presenting ideas and a great kicking off point as a freshman, having a dialogue about dialogues. It turns out that that's not at all precious, it's really a rich work and type of work to get into in that setting. So much of Plato's ideas are just interesting to me anyway, that that was great. Other things that stick out now many years on Hobbes, always think of Hobbes. In terms of affecting your worldview? Or the most negative worldview you could have of that in mankind? Yes, to both. Well, it's really helpful and even now, years later, it's very helpful to remember at least at base what people may be about and what humanity is at base. Similarly, wealth of nations, it's not necessarily exciting, but it is what it is and the idea of division of labor is constantly interesting to me from a process standpoint, like how do you make something more efficient or more productive or enable somebody to have to put the least amount of effort into it? Was that sort of thing of a result? Did you have that sort of interest before college at all? Did you notice that you were particularly process or systems oriented back then? No, not at all, not at all, so that was pretty cool. Shakespeare was wonderful, what else? It seemed like as time went on, I got more interested in literature and less interested in straight up expository philosophy. I don't know if that's natural, uncommon or not. I think only remember maybe one by Flannery O'Connor, Barker's back, that was great. Inspire you in any tattoo way or not? Just great storytelling, something I'd like, I would love before too long to get to reading more of her work, and then Heart of Darkness, which I wanted to write in my senior essay on. What was the topic? Again, goes back to that Hobbesian, we're animals, and we're vulnerable to doing really, really bad things, and in a sense, a validation of the idea that yes, sometimes civilization can be ugly but mostly civilization is a fantastic set of controls over our real nature and takes the potency in humanity and points it in a mostly productive and positive direction. You remember getting grilled particularly or bad reception during your senior essay? I don't remember anything negative. Yeah, you're speaking of course to the fact that we have to conduct aorals in which we get quizzed quite intensely, and I don't remember anything really negative. I do remember there were a couple tutors who had interesting, like pretty divergent views, I think from mine, or at least those are the stances that they took for the sake of the exam, but I don't remember what the actual content was. It was a very, very confidence-inspiring exercise because it was incredibly intimidating leading up to it. How am I going to do this? How am I going to defend my thesis, so to speak, and not wilt or fail under the scrutiny of people who've been doing this for decades, and I could pretty reliably count on all of them to know the book, and they know a lot about the nature of argument and the nature of ideas, and at St. John's we're given all of these opportunities to have original thoughts in the context of a curriculum that with the age of some of its titles, almost suggests that there are not necessarily a whole lot of profound original thoughts to be had, and encouraging people because we started the annual essay as freshman as the title would imply. We didn't necessarily know a lot or have a lot to offer, but we did it, and had it expected of us, and it was difficult to put the essays together, and so on, and so yeah, to get into that arena and not feel, certainly not feel like I was pure, because it's not that kind of experience like, "Oh, you've arrived, it's just an opportunity to have a civilized, very, very probing discussion of your ideas with a bunch of people who are your intellectual superiors." And there's not any attitude, but that's how that goes, and their faculty by and large are amazing people. I don't remember having a disappointing tutor during four years there. Some people had different strengths, as you would expect, but nobody was faking it. Nobody was, you know, nobody failed to live up to the task. What books do you feel you didn't give enough time to have enough time to really engage? I mean, it's a pretty extensive reading list, and as a graduate student, it was difficult enough with some things to keep up, so as an undergrad, I don't know how you'd... The things that I really cut corners on out of just poor time management or laziness include Don Quixote, Brothers Karamazov, I think War and Peace too, although that's kind of different because I don't feel too guilty about that, or I do feel guilty about the first two that I really missed out on something, and they're in the cluster of books that are meant to get read. Do you have a couple of years to return to them? Absolutely. Yeah, I feel guilty for having done them so little justice, and I am 15 years after graduation getting to the point where I want to begin to revisit some of the books. Read them again. See what they're about, see if they mean different things, given the passage of time, the accumulation of experience. That's one of the things that was always touted, I remember in particular by Eva Braun, that great books are those worth rereading because the ideas remain fresh and/or have some different impact at different times of our lives, and I look forward to that. You started St. John's a year or two after high school, so you had a gap in which you actually worked and had a real life. How important was that in terms of giving you a perspective that maybe some of the straight from high school that St. John's students didn't have? It was helpful, and for me it was necessary because by the time I graduated high school, I didn't really have any enthusiasm about going to college, and it took being out of high school a couple of years and working and trying to get ahead and not necessarily liking what I did that provided a lot of the motivation for actually applying to and then going to St. John's. I went part-time a couple semesters to University of Pennsylvania, which as a completely different kind of institution and much more lecture-based, was fine. It wasn't necessarily a turn-off. I didn't think about it too much as I was applying to St. John's, but it probably did a little bit steer me more towards the discussion and exploration method of education as opposed to the more didactic professor gets up and you take notes and tell them what they think when it comes to test time. That said, the classes at Penn were not bad, and I think there are lots of opportune like lots of situations in life where it is important to be in class and learn and take notes, and it's not discussion. I'm not sure is the most appropriate method for attacking all men of learning, and I'm incredibly grateful to my parents for providing me the opportunity to go to St. John's. It turned out, especially with my sketchy discipline as a student, which is to say I didn't have a lot. I had tended to do well in courses in high school that either were really interesting to me or really easy, but somehow I think that what St. John's required on a daily basis, which was involvement, and of a sort that it seemed like in some places you could weasel out of or avoid to some degree, certainly until you got to upper level, like junior and senior year classes, was a really good thing for me and probably kept me engaged and working in a way that had I been in lecture based classes, I might have flaked out to the point of doing very poorly and being asked to go away for a little while. Invited not to return. Stop wasting everybody's time kind of thing. So I like that a lot. I mean, it's not to say it was fun, like lots of things it was not always fun at all. And having a situation where class participation is like 80 to 90 percent of your grade is kind of big deal. Some ways I wish I had been expected to write more of the long papers that a lot of people in other undergrad situations were, so that's probably a useful skill to acquire. And how do you feel St. John's, well, influenced your post-collegiate life for the first few years and then the big career decision that we'll get to after that, what influence do you think the books and the culture of it had on you? Well, certainly St. John's fed my obsession with ethics and what doing the right thing was in life, and of course I wound up going into the Navy not too long after the end of college. And that was motivated very much by wanting to serve my country in a very basic way. I also just had not really jobs that I was interested in weren't accessible to me. The jobs that were accessible to me weren't appealing. I know I'm the first person this has happened to you. And no one else has ever had real limitations after college, exactly. But it was very, I was definitely compelled to go and serve my country in the military and that had certainly been fed by all the time spent on ethics and spent on contemplation of what a state is, what the right way to run a state is, and what obligations might be demanded of population of citizens and so on and so forth. So yeah, it definitely influenced it. And I think I've been impressed, undergrad and graduate institute, by how many people at St. John's wound up going after things that they had a very personal stake in, which I know is kind of cheesy and maybe overly idealistic and sappy to some people. Especially when you take the example of the really brilliant person who everybody believes could go make a fortune in business but doesn't do it because she or he has no passion for it. I'd go teach for essentially a subsistence situation because there's something edifying in that and there's something that is good in that. I mean, like in your case, do you think that you would have gotten into ever publishing and been as passionate about literature had you not gone to St. John's and spent all that time thinking about kind of what's right and then also kind of thinking, for me, it's often like, okay, especially having the luxury of being in a very prosperous country with lots of options and that permits incredible social mobility, like it's up to me. The choice is mine. What am I going to do? What can I give to the world and what will be satisfying? What am I supposed to do? I know a number of Johnny's from our overlapping time there. I've seen Marines, Army, Navy, I don't know any Air Force ones, but nor do I. Was there that sort of vibe, the serving ones nation, was that an almost common thread? I know your friends were the number of those guys too. Was there that sense at all during college that this is what you would end up doing or had you each sort of reached that stage as far as you know, independently and yet you find these common threads of why you chose to do what you do? I don't know about the other folks' paths exactly, but yes, I think so. I think that that was something and so college was, as I would hope it is for everybody aside from being a good time, also a reflective time where you figure out who you are, what you're about, what you want to do, and yeah, for several of us, it has meant going and serving, which is maybe really only special because of the historical dichotomy between St. John's and its neighbor, the Naval Academy. The Naval Academy, right next door, yeah, and come together for the annual croquet match every spring. And that's it. Aside from that, never the twain shall meet, although of course there were years and maybe it continues where faculty from St. John's went across to the academy to provide them a little bit of assistance with instituting discussion-based classes on ethics, in particular. Ethics-based issues during our time there also at the academy. Exactly. Exactly. You know, so it was kind of the combination of being across the street from the academy, which is different and has a different purpose, different mission indeed. And historically, like there have been points, especially during, you know, Vietnam, when there was a lot of open animosity between the campuses and St. John's was seen as being kind of unequivocally left-wing peacenik. And that vibe is not absent, or at least it wasn't absent from, you know, the college diet ten that is well. I don't know what it's been like the last ten years, I'd be curious to know how that's played out. But yeah, I think for, yeah, the several of us I can think of off the top of my head. And the curriculum and the nature of, you know, thinking about what is right and what one's obligations are certainly refined us towards going into the military. And was the proximity of the academy, sort of why you chose the navy ultimately, or was there another deciding factor? No, no, from a couple different directions, I had always heard good things about the navy's value for individual thought and innovation. And that fortunately has turned out to mostly be true. Yeah, no, it wasn't proximity at all. The naval academy, especially to another college student, I don't think really sells one on the navy. It doesn't look like much fun having your life completely, or for the most part, dictated for you. When you talk about that theoretical framework, that philosophic framework for what it means to be a nation, what it means to be a citizen, and the commitment one has to have, how well was that received by your fellow sailors, whatever you call your co-workers in the navy when you first entered? Were you a professor to them, or was there a sense of being an egghead in those terms? You know, the idea that you had this St. John's influenced notion of why you were there and what it meant really at its heart to be a member of a country's military. Do people make jokes about you? A little bit. Okay. Yeah, a little bit. And it wasn't a perfectly easy fit, but fortunately there are all different kinds of people in the military, and often that has a very positive influence on people in that it forces them to become somewhat accommodating of people different from them. So as much as I was working with guys, mostly, who were of very different backgrounds from me, you know, I was also of a different background from what they'd come from. And were you, I think you were also asking about the ideological element that didn't, I don't think that seemed ridiculous to anybody. More instinctual to them to something that you had read more explicitly in your time? Perhaps. And then, you know, and then there's the aspect of the military for a lot of folks being a stepping stone to college or to a set of skills or a set of experiences or sometimes just a way to get out of town. Whereas for me, at least the way that I thought of it, it was more of an end in itself, which didn't entirely work out because it wasn't as satisfying and perfect as I hoped it would be. But that's fine, I learned to deal with that as well. They have the books prepare you for that at all, if they did. What influence did they have once you were in? The books and the ideas definitely inform my belief system and my belief system was something I absolutely counted on. So they were helpful. Again, it's not like I was... This reminds me of rereading. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But yeah, they're useful and there was, you know, people have at times questioned the utility of a liberal arts program. I swear, I'm not being paid by St. John's to make any of these remarks today, but people, yeah, people scoff at it. Like, how do you apply that? What do you do with that? I think if you are the kind of person who tends to integrate what you know into all facets of your life, the answer is whatever I want. Like, of course I use my undergrad education because, and it was yes, it was in the classics slash great books, but that doesn't mean that it was just a silly abstract thing that made my mind really buff and nimble, but I don't actually go and use any of those things. It certainly informed my idea of what was logical, it informed my idea of what was good writing and bad writing, in some cases, and for a while I had to learn to do things that involved a lot of kind of spatial visualization, and having spent a painful year on Euclid was very helpful with that, in a very real way, like that was a skill set that I had after spending freshman year on Euclid that I didn't before it. So not a waste of time, not abstract, not a silly thing. Yeah, they're immensely helpful, and I think, I don't know that I quite got to saying this earlier, although it flashed through my mind and it's become one of my talking points, is that the program gave me a lot of intellectual courage. Being an undergrad with a decent but limited physics background, decent but limited higher math background, and then reading Einstein on relativity, and like there was nothing, it was presented to us as something that we could and should come to understand on its own terms. This sticks in my head because I think more so than calculus, and a couple of the other things that we specifically studied, I actually came to understand, I felt at least, not that I could necessarily speak competently about it now, but I felt like I got it, and I thought that was really commendable, largely on the part of the tutors, and the placement in the program, if you understand and have taken the time to really understand a lot of the ideas that came before it in science and math, then hey, by the time relativity comes along, like yes, it's revolutionary, but it is accessible, and it was just not the sort of thing that I would have thought myself capable of developing such a decent understanding of, especially in such a limited time as the program dictated, but it happened, and I hadn't previously thought of myself as a big science or math person, and I still don't really, and so it's emblematic to me of the value of being given things that you think you can't do, and then guided along through success, the self-reinforcing experience that becomes, like, well, okay, this thing that's in front of me now, here's down the road, is, at first glance, completely unintelligible, I don't know how I'm going to get through it, I can't do this, well, actually, probably can, and it's just a matter of breaking it down to elements, I mean, as much noise as there is on the internet, also just the mere accessibility of information, nowadays, I think, makes figuring things out a lot less labor than it would have been before, and just possible, if you can access knowledge and knowledge to know how to frame a question correctly. And again, if you can make your way through Kant, you know, you can make your way through a lot of less difficult prose in this world. Absolutely. Ian Kelly, I hope you have many years of great books ahead of you, and thank you so much for being a guest on the Virtual Memory Show. Pleasure to be here, thanks, Gil. And that was Ian Kelly. You've been listening to the Virtual Memory Show. I am your host Gil Roth. I will be back every other Tuesday with a new literary, cultural conversation. The next one will come out while I'm on this Shanghai trip, so I will make sure it gets posted before I leave, and you'll kind of dig that one too. It's going to be a comics-oriented conversation, but there are two very, very smart cartoonists whom I interviewed during these travels over the last few months. If you're interested in finding past episodes of the show, you can find it on iTunes by searching virtual memories show, or by going to our website, chimeraobscura.com/vm for virtual memories, or you can visit virtual memories podcast.tumbler.com or facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow. And if you do go to chimeraobscura.com/vm, you can make a little donation in our tip jar, and let me know that you actually find some monetary value to this show. And if you do that, I'll make sure to send you a copy of a short story or something else fun that I've written and not shared with a whole ton of people. I am Gil Roth, your host of the Virtual Memory Show, and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]