[tar-ancalime]

Thanks for your last post, Iarwain. You've told us something really personal and I know that isn't always easy to do.

I also think you've written a more illuminating post on another level--by giving specific examples from Plato, Kant, and Dostoevsky like you did, you made crystal-clear what it is you're getting at. But I think that what I said before holds--you can't give anyone the insight you got from Mr. Mortimer J. Adler (am I the only one hearing "J. Evans Pritchard" there?) any more than you would have let anyone tell you those things before you were ready to hear them.

And Fea, despite your rather vehement rejection of Adler's methods, isn't his main point--to live with, and in, a piece of literature until you've got a solid grasp of what the author was getting at, or at least until you're quite sure you don't care to find out--what you do yourself as a reader, albeit without the visual aids? It strikes me, at least the way Iarwain is presenting it (and I certainly haven't read it, so I'm speaking with absolutely no authority here), as an exhortation to read attentively and closely, and not to put books aside merely because they're difficult. Not bad advice--and really, no one is standing over you ready to rap your knuckles with a ruler if you don't complete your lists of definitions or whatnot.

(Oh, and nobody asked, but since we seem to be sharing literary taste, I'm racing through the complete oeuvres of Amitav Ghosh and Connie Willis at present, having finally moved to a city with a decent library. I'm not sure yet if either of them are going to occupy places in my heart like the ones for Tolkien, Yeats, Wallace Stevens, and some others, but they're definitely the flavors of the month.)