We Read To Find Ourselves, More Fully

We Read, Frequently If Not Unknowingly, In Search Of A Mind More Original Than Our Own.

What Is Literary Tradition? What Is A Classic? What Is A Canonical View Of Tradition? How Are Canons Of Accepted Classics Formed,and How Are They Unformed? I Think That All These Quite Traditional Questions Can Take One Simplistic But Still Dialectical Question As Their Summing Up: Do We Choose Tradition Or Does It Choose Us, And Why Is It Necessary That A Choosing Take Place, Or A Being Chosen? What Happens If One Tries To Write, Or To Teach, Or To Think, Or Even To Read Without The Sense Of A Tradition? Why, Nothing At All Happens, Just Nothing.

We Can Be Reluctant To Recognize How Much Of Our Culture Was Literary, Particularly Now That So Many Of The Institutional Purveyors Of Literature Happily Have Joined In Proclaiming Its Death. A Substantial Number Of Americans Who Believe They Worship God Actually Worship Three Major Literary Characters: The Yahweh Of The J Writer (earliest Author Of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), The Jesus Of The Gospel Of Mark, And Allah Of The Koran.

If We Read The Western Canon In Order To Form Our Social, Political, Or Personal Moral Values, I Firmly Believe We Will Become Monsters Of Selfishness And Exploitation.

What Is Supposed To Be The Very Essence Of Judaism - Which Is The Notion That It Is By Study That You Make Yourself A Holy People - Is Nowhere Present In Hebrew Tradition Before The End Of The First Or The Beginning Of The Second Century Of The Common Era.