Enduring Interest

Fred Bauer on Norman Podhoretz’s Making It

This month we discuss Norman Podhoretz’s memoir Making It. The book was first published in 1967 and then was reissued in 2017 by the New York Review of Books. Making It was controversial upon publication—friends like Jason Epstein even warned Podhoretz against publishing it. Making It chronicles Podhoretz’s rise from Jewish Brooklyn, to Columbia University, on to Cambridge University, and then to joining the exclusive community of New York Intellectuals. He frames his story with the themes of success, American identity, and the intellectual life. Our conversation here takes up all of these themes and a few more. We discuss why the book proved controversial initially, Podhoretz’s reflections on the question of success, his judgments about the role of the critic, and his understanding of the immigrant bargain as success becomes a real possibility.

Our guest is Fred Bauer. Fred has written for a number of publications, including National Review, City Journal, The Weekly Standard, The American Conservative, Genealogies of Modernity, and elsewhere. His interests include contemporary American politics, accounts of identity, and the role of social and ethical commitments for liberty.

Elizabeth Amato on William Alexander Percy’s Lanterns on the Levee: Reflections of a Planter’s Son

This month we discuss William Alexander Percy’s memoir, Lanterns on the Levee, first published in 1941. Percy lived a full and extraordinary life, beautifully captured in this book. A native of Greenville, Mississippi, Percy writes as a witness of the “disintegration of that moral cohesion of the South.” He was by turns a teacher, lawyer, poet, soldier, planter and adoptive father. We discuss Percy’s portrait of the class dynamics of the south, race relations, the emergence of populist political currents, his experiences in the first World War, and his peculiar aristocratic stoicism. We conclude with some reflections on how Will Percy might have influenced his more famous cousin and adoptive son, the novelist Walker Percy.

Our guest is Elizabeth Amato. Elizabeth is an associate professor of political science at Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina. She earned her bachelor's degree at Berry College and her doctorate at Baylor University. Her first book is The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime where she discusses the writings of Tom Wolfe, Walker Percy, Edith Wharton, and Walker Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her scholarly interests include politics, literature, film, happiness, moral education, and American political thought. She has written on Walker Percy and his critique of the alienating character of the American pursuit of happiness. 

Matt Dinan on Aristotle’s social virtues

With this episode Enduring Interest inaugurates a new occasional series on chapters or parts of great books which tend to be ignored or not much talked about. Matt Dinan is back to discuss a series of brief and fascinating chapters in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics on the social virtues: gentleness, friendliness, truthfulness and wittiness. Check out Matt’s essay “Be Nice,” first published in the Fall 2018 issue of The Hedgehog Review, where he touches on some of these virtues.

Matt is an associate professor in the great books program at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He does research on classical, Christian, and contemporary political philosophy, and is currently writing a book called Kierkegaard's Socratic Political Philosophy. His essays and reviews have appeared in Perspectives on Political Science and The Review of Politics. Matt is also a contributing writer to The Hedgehog Review. Matt also has a Substack called PREFACES.

 

Matt discussed Kierkegaard’s Two Ages with us about a year ago. When I conceived of the idea for this occasional series on underappreciated parts of great books, I thought each of these episodes would be quite short—brief, quick hitting chats about something very particular. Well, as you’ll hear, Matt gets rolling on social virtues—as advertised—but our conversation covers lots of ground! Matt talks about what makes the Ethics such a rich book, Aristotle’s distinction between moral and intellectual virtue, and the place of these nameless virtues in his full list of moral virtues. But that’s not all. We also hit on the niceness of Atlantic Canadians, the importance of laughter to freedom and community, toddler humor, Norm Macdonald, Shakespearean humor, and a theory of Larry David. No micro-episode can contain Matt—plus I’m much too nice to cut him off. So here’s a very nice, normal sized episode, full of wit and wisdom.

Greg Thomas on Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place

Our subject for this episode is Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place. Part memoir, part travelogue, part dialogue with a range of interlocutors, this book is remarkable for both its variety and depth. Murray travels from Harlem to New Haven and then down south to Tuskegee and Mobile and beyond. Murray chats with the likes of Robert Penn Warren and Walker Percy and meditates on the themes of home, history, place, and myth. Our guest and I discuss Murray’s life and the peculiar nature of this wonderful book. We explore Murray’s critique of social science and his respect for folk wisdom.

Our guest is Greg Thomas. Greg is CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project, a private company that uses the principles and practices of jazz music to enhance leadership success and team excellence. Along with his wife and partner Jewel, the Jazz Leadership Project works with notable firms such as JPMorgan Chase, Verizon, TD Bank, and Google. Their leadership blog, TuneIntoLeadership.com, features both of their writings. 

Greg has been a professional journalist for over 25 years. He is currently a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Evolution. As an educator, Greg recently taught a course on Cultural Intelligence, and co-facilitated a six-month class, which ended this past March, titled, “Stepping Up: Wrestling with America’s Past, Reimagining Its Future, Healing Together.”

As a social entrepreneur, Greg co-produced a two-day broadcast, "Combating Racism and Antisemitism Together: Shaping an Omni-American Future" in October 2021. In September 2022, he co-facilitated a one-day conference, "Resolving the Race-ism Dilemma." He also serves on the advisory boards of The Consilience Project, and FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. 

Jennifer Delton on George S. Schuyler’s Black No More

In 1931 George S. Schuyler (1895-1977) published his novel Black No More: Being an account of the strange and wonderful workings of science in the land of the free, A.D. 1933-1940. It’s a satirical romp that takes up the race obsessions of various constituencies in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. The book is deeply funny and the humor is meant to provoke some serious thought about the costs and consequences of the racialist thinking that Schuyler thought infected all corners of social and political thought in the United States. Before taking up the novel, we discuss Schuyler’s career as a journalist, novelist and social commentator. Our conversation highlights many of Schuyler’s satirical targets and we consider the novel’s particular relevance to today’s discourse on race. As Schuyler once wrote in a column for the Pittsburgh Courier: “Personally, I am only interested in getting our folks thinking all around the problems confronting them rather than following blindly our two-by-four leaders. Get people to thinking and they will work out their own salvation.”

Our guest is Jennifer Delton, Professor of History at Skidmore College. She holds a PhD in History from Princeton University and teaches courses in United States history since the Civil War.  Her work focuses on liberalism, race and ethnicity, civil rights, and business in twentieth century. She is the author of four books, including, most recently, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism (Princeton UP, 2020).

Marc Conner and Lucas Morel on Ralph Ellison’s “The Little Man at Chehaw Station” and “What America Would be Like Without Blacks”

Ralph Ellison wrote one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Invisible Man. He was also a gifted essayist and in this episode we discuss two essays in particular: “The Little Man at Chehaw Station” and “What America Would be Like Without Blacks.” The former was first published in The American Scholar in the Winter 1977/78 issue. In my view it’s one of the finest meditations on American identity ever written. That latter first appeared in Time magazine in April of 1970. They both appeared in a collection called Going to the Territory in 1986 and can also be found in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison published by Modern Library.

 

We discuss the problem of aesthetic communication in American democracy, why the American condition is a “state of unease,” and the centrality of writing and our founding documents to American identity. Ellison loved both the traditional and the vernacular and was deeply attuned to how the interaction of these elements produced a complex cultural pluralism. Although written over 40 years ago, these essays seem quite timely. Consider this (from the “Little Man” essay): “In many ways, then, the call for a new social order based upon the glorification of ancestral blood and ethnic background acts as a call to cultural and aesthetic chaos. Yet while this latest farcical phase in the drama of American social hierarchy unfolds, the irrepressible movement of American culture toward the integration of its diverse elements continues, confounding the circumlocutions of its staunchest opponents.”

 

Our guests are Marc C. Conner and Lucas Morel.

Marc Conner is President of Skidmore College (and Professor of English). Prior to coming to Skidmore in summer 2020, Marc was Provost and the Ballengee Professor of English at Washington and Lee University. His primary area of scholarship and teaching is literary modernism, both narrative and poetry, including Irish modernism, the modern American novel and African-American literature. He has authored and edited eight books, primarily about the work of Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, and James Joyce, including The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison, named one of the 100 notable books of the year by The New York Times.

Lucas Morel is the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics and Head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University. He is the author of Lincoln and the American Founding and Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government. He’s also edited two books on Ralph Ellison: Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to “Invisible Man” and more recently, The New Territory: Ralph Ellison and the Twenty-First Century (which he co-edited with Marc Conner). Dr. Morel conducts high school teacher workshops for the Ashbrook Center, Jack Miller Center, Gilder-Lehrman Institute, Bill of Rights Institute, and Liberty Fund.

Roundtable on the Work of Arendt, Oakeshott, and Strauss on Liberal Education

This episode concludes our series on liberal education. We have three of our previous guests in the series back to discuss some common themes in the work of Leo Strauss, Michael Oakeshott and Hannah Arendt. We have Michael and Catherine Zuckert, Rita Koganzon, and Elizabeth Corey all returning to the podcast for the discussion. Topics include the place of reverence and tradition in liberal education, the authority of the teacher, and the purpose or purposes of liberal education. See our previous episodes for the bios of these guests.

 

 

Henry Bugbee, “Education and the Style of our Lives” with Joseph M. Keegin

In this episode we discuss a short essay by the philosopher Henry Bugbee, “Education and the Style of our Lives.” Bugbee taught for a number of years at the University of Montana. This short, beautiful and thought-provoking essay was occasioned by a report that a commission presented to the Montana legislature. In just over nine pages, Bugbee lays out the core of education as seen from the standpoint of both teacher and student. He seeks the revitalization of a dialogue that brings text and world together—experience is illuminated and meaning is discovered. The piece was published in Profiles, the magazine of the University of Montana in May of 1974.

Our guest is Joseph M. Keegin. Joseph talks about Bugbee’s insistence that both teacher and student must be capable of self-risk. We discuss Bugbee’s reflections on the relationship between liberal learning and experience and how Bugbee’s appeal to experience is quite different from the way people appeal to “lived experience” today. We end by thinking about Bugbee’s appeal to the duty to bring the past to bear on the present. Joseph makes a plea for people to find a copy of Bugbee’s only published book, The Inward Morning, which is a “philosophical exercise conducted through fifteen months of journal entries.”

You can find Joseph’s essay on Bugbee here and his blog is www.fxxfy.net. Joseph is an editor at Athwart and The Point, and a PhD student in philosophy at Tulane University. He has also written articles for Plough, First Things, Tablet, and The New Atlantis.

Zena Hitz, Jonathan Marks, and Roosevelt Montás on Liberal Education

This month we are pleased to bring you a special episode that departs from our normal path. For the past several months, we’ve been looking at forgotten or neglected books and essays on liberal education. We’re very excited to bring you this conversation with three authors who’ve all written recently published books on liberal education.

We have Zena Hitz, author of LOST IN THOUGHT: THE HIDDEN PLEASURES OF AN INTELLECTUAL LIFE;

Jonathan Marks, author of LET’S BE REASONABLE: A CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR LIBERAL EDUCATION;

and Roosevelt Montás, author of RESCUING SOCRATES: HOW THE GREAT BOOKS CHANGED MY LIFE AND WHY THEY MATTER FOR A NEW GENERATION.

All three books provide a defense of liberal education rooted in the great books, but they do so in strikingly different ways.

We discuss desire, shame, and the how the encounter with great authors can shape your soul. Each author talks about the importance and difficulties of the teacher-student relationship. And we discuss the various threats and challenges to liberal education today.

Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John’s College and the founder of the Catherine Project. Jonathan Marks in Professor of Politics and chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Ursinus College. Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. He is the Director of the American Studies’ Freedom and Citizenship Program.

Here are some links to reviews:

Zena on Jonathan

Jonathan on Zena

Jonathan on Roosevelt

Roosevelt on Zena

Flagg on Zena

Elizabeth Corey on Michael Oakeshott’s ”A Place of Learning” and ”Learning and Teaching”

This month our subject is Michael Oakeshott. We discuss two essays in particular: “A Place of Learning” and “Learning and Teaching.” Both essays can be found in the volume The Voice of Liberal Learning. Our guest is Elizabeth Corey of Baylor University. Elizabeth begins by providing a brief intellectual biography of Oakeshott. The bulk of our conversation takes up Oakeshott’s conception of liberal learning. He argues it is neither the acquisition of cultural knowledge or information nor the improvement of the mind. It is rather “learning to recognize some specific invitations to encounter particular adventures in human self-understanding.” Elizabeth and I discuss the distinctiveness of Oakeshott’s vision as well as his understanding of the primary challenges to liberal learning. We unpack Oakeshott’s meditation of the teacher-student relationship and end with a discussion of Oakeshott’s conservatism.

Elizabeth is an associate professor of Political Science at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas. Her writing has appeared in a variety of popular and scholarly journals, including First Things, National Affairs and The Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She received a bachelor’s in Classics from Oberlin College, and master’s and doctoral degrees in Art History and Political Science from Louisiana State University. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, publisher of First Things. She is also an American Enterprise Faith and Public Life Visiting Professor during the year 2022.