An ingrate is someone who bites the hand that feeds him then complains of indigestion. (Tục ngữ Anh quốc)

Trước kia, tôi thường hăng hái nhảy vào các cuộc tranh luận vì cảm thấy thú vị trước sự đối chiếu và bổ sung nhau giữa các ý tưởng dị biệt, và đồng thời qua đó được nhìn thấy rõ hơn trình độ và các khuynh hướng của văn giới Việt Nam nói chung. Gần đây, cuộc tranh luận văn học trên Talawas có vẻ đang vào hồi sôi nổi; nhưng tôi không có ý định nhảy vào cuộc, bởi tôi đang quá bận rộn, và các đề tài đang được bàn cãi không có gì quá hấp dẫn đến độ tôi phải bỏ công việc mà "tham chiến".

Tuy nhiên, hôm nay, sau khi đọc xong bài viết "Hội chứng Babylone" của Phạm Xuân Nguyên, tôi quyết định để ra một chút thì giờ để nói lên vài ba điều cần nói, bởi trong bài viết của ông có chỗ nhắc đến tạp chí Việt (là tạp chí tôi giữ vai trò phụ tá chủ bút), và cá nhân tôi.

Về tạp chí Việt, Phạm Xuân Nguyên viết:

"Với tư cách người đọc, tôi rất tiếc, và buồn, khi Việt đã không ra tiếp được. Với tư cách người phê bình, tôi muốn được hiểu vì sao Việt bị dừng lại, ngoài lý do tài chính (hình như không phải), hay lý do người đọc (hình như phải và không phải), có lẽ là lý do văn chương chăng."

Tôi hết sức ngạc nhiên khi đọc đoạn văn trên. Công việc chính của một nhà phê bình là tìm hiểu chủ trương, giá trị và đóng góp của một tạp chí trong dòng sinh mệnh của văn học chứ đâu phải là tọc mạch vào chuyện in ấn, lời lỗ, xuất bản và đình bản của nó. Những chi tiết như vậy liệu có liên quan gì đến việc đánh giá một hiện tượng văn học? "Nhà phê bình văn học" Phạm Xuân Nguyên không những tọc mạch mà còn đoán già đoán non với những "hình như phải" với "hình như không phải". Ði theo con đường đó, tôi e hậu vận "nhà phê bình" Phạm Xuân Nguyên chắc sẽ không khá hơn những kẻ ngồi lê đôi mách chuyên môn đoán mò rồi xỏ xiên người khác bao nhiêu.

Còn về cuốn sách của tôi, cuốn Văn Học Hiện Ðại và Hậu Hiện Ðại qua Thực Tiễn Sáng Tác và Góc Nhìn Lý Thuyết (California: Văn Nghệ, tháng 4/2002), Phạm Xuân Nguyên viết như sau:

"cuốn sách vừa ra của Hoàng Ngọc Tuấn […] có ích ở chỗ tổng hợp giới thiệu một số lý thuyết văn học mới cho số đông, nhất là cho những ai không đọc được ngoại ngữ".

Thật ra, nếu làm được một công việc tổng hợp và giới thiệu một số lý thuyết văn học mới cho số đông người Việt Nam thì tôi cũng đã mừng lắm rồi. Nhất là khi những lý thuyết ấy chưa bao giờ được tìm hiểu cặn kẽ ở Việt Nam. Tuy nhiên, người đọc dễ thấy rõ thâm ý của Phạm Xuân Nguyên: ông cho đó chỉ là một cuốn sách thuộc loại phổ thông, chỉ dành cho những người không đọc được ngoại ngữ. Ðiều đó có nghĩa là với riêng ông, thì ông hoàn toàn không cần cuốn sách ấy.

Sự thực thế nào?

Cách đây vài tháng, một người bạn trong nước gửi cho tôi một cuốn sách có nhan đề Một Góc Nhìn của Trí Thức, tập II (do nhà xuất bản Trẻ và tạp chí Tia Sáng thực hiện tại TP.HCM, tháng 7, 2002). Khi giở sách ra xem, tôi thấy có "Lời Nói Ðầu" do ông Phạm Xuân Nguyên viết. Ðọc "Lời Nói Ðầu", tôi giật mình vì thấy có đoạn văn sau đây:

(tôi xin gạch dưới một số chữ và câu, để độc giả dễ theo dõi)

"Trí thức là người có học vấn sâu và rộng về một lĩnh vực nào đấy, cố nhiên. Nhưng đó chỉ mới là điều kiện cần. Theo định nghĩa của giáo sư người Mỹ James V. Schall, để trở thành trí thức còn phải có điều kiện đủ là khuynh hướng muốn biết. Triển khai ý này trong bài viết của mình, một tác giả viết: "Trí thức là kẻ có khuynh hướng muốn biết, tức là khuynh hướng muốn nghiên cứu và giải thích những gì chưa từng biết, muốn tiếp tục đào xới những gì tưởng chừng đã kết thúc, muốn liên tục đặt câu hỏi về những gì tưởng chừng đã rốt ráo. Trí thức phải là người luôn luôn sống với những dấu hỏi, những sự thắc mắc, những sự hoài nghi. Họ luôn luôn có thái độ thách thức trước những giá trị tưởng chừng đã ổn định. Họ luôn luôn đi tìm một giả thuyết khác cho những vấn đề trong cuộc sống." Tia Sáng chính là một góc nhìn của trí thức trên tinh thần đó. Và một góc nhìn của trí thức trên những trang sách này, bắt đầu từ năm 2000 và sẽ ra hàng năm, chính là góc nhìn từ giới trí thức về hiện trạng cuộc sống trên mọi mặt của xã hội Việt Nam vắt ngang qua hai thế kỷ và hai thiên niên kỷ. Một góc nhìn muốn biết."

Ðọc đoạn văn trên, người đọc có thể tự hỏi: "một tác giả" mà Phạm Xuân Nguyên trích ấy là ai? Là Tây hay Tàu? Xin thưa: "tác giả" mà Phạm Xuân Nguyên trích ở trên không ai khác hơn là tôi, Hoàng Ngọc-Tuấn. Ðoạn văn trên lấy từ bài tiểu luận "Trí Thức và Phản Trí Thức: Vấn Ðề Trước Mắt của Chúng Ta", đã in lại trong cuốn Văn Học Hiện Ðại và Hậu Hiện Ðại qua Thực Tiễn Sáng Tác và Góc Nhìn Lý Thuyết , và trước kia đã đăng trên Hợp Lưu số 52, tháng 4&5, năm 2000 (trang 16-48), và). Nguyên văn của tôi như sau:

Mới đây, trong bài diễn văn tại đại hội John Carroll Scholars, ở Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., ngày 19 tháng Giêng năm 1999, nhà trí thức Hoa Kỳ đương đại, Giáo Sư James V. Schall, nhận định:


Như thế, người trí thức không chỉ là người chuyên học hỏi để biết rất sâu và rộng những gì "sẵn có", vì dù rằng sự hiểu biết đó cũng cần cho cuộc sống, nhưng sự hiểu biết đó khó có thể giúp con người đương đầu với những biến cố mới lạ đang và sẽ không ngừng xảy ra, hay giúp con người tiếp tục cải thiện cuộc sống. Học vấn sâu và rộng về những kiến thức "sẵn có" là điều kiện cần thiết, nhưng chưa đủ để làm nên một người trí thức. Người trí thức phải là kẻ có "khuynh hướng muốn biết", tức là khuynh hướng muốn nghiên cứu và giải thích những gì chưa từng biết, muốn tiếp tục đào xới những gì tưởng chừng đã kết thúc, muốn liên tục đặt câu hỏi về những gì tưởng chừng đã rốt ráo. Người trí thức phải là người luôn luôn sống với những dấu hỏi, những sự thắc mắc, những sự hoài nghi. Y luôn luôn có thái độ thách thức trước những giá trị tưởng chừng đã ổn định. Y luôn luôn đi tìm một giả thuyết khác cho những vấn đề trong cuộc sống.

Khi trích, Phạm Xuân Nguyên đã tự tiện thay đổi chữ "người trí thức" thành "trí thức"; các đại từ "y" thành ra "họ". Một việc làm như thế đứng về phương diện học thuật hoàn toàn sai. Tuy nhiên, vấn đề khác lớn hơn: tại sao Phạm Xuân Nguyên trích văn tôi mà lại làm ra vẻ bí ẩn, chỉ viết bâng quơ "một tác giả" nào đó? Chắc ông sẽ phân bua: việc cắt bỏ đó là của các biên tập viên hẹp hòi ở trong nước. Nhưng tôi không tin điều đó bởi vì thỉnh thoảng trên các tờ báo trong nước, người ta vẫn viết về tôi, hoặc nhắc đến tôi với tư cách một nhà văn hoặc với tư cách một nhạc sĩ, và thỉnh thoảng họ vẫn đăng tải những bài viết của tôi. Thật ra, ngay trong cuốn sách Một Góc Nhìn của Trí Thức mà Phạm Xuân Nguyên viết "Lời Nói Ðầu" có đăng một bài viết của tôi với tên tôi là tác giả được in chính xác và rõ ràng. (Ban biên tập Tia Sáng đã tự ý đăng không hề xin phép tôi, tự ý cắt bỏ đến 90% nguyên tác, tự ý xáo trộn và sửa chữa chữ nghĩa, tự ý đặt nhan đề khác, và tự ý vất đi tất cả những chú thích và ghi chú về tư liệu. Ðó là một hành động cực kỳ sai trái và phản trí thức xảy ra ngay trong một cuốn sách về "trí thức". Tuy nhiên, tôi sẽ bàn về vấn đề này cặn kẽ hơn trong một bài khác.)

Vậy thì tại sao Phạm Xuân Nguyên lại không dám nhắc đến tên của người ông đang trích dẫn? Rõ ràng ông muốn tạo ấn tượng cho người đọc đó là một tác giả ngoại quốc mà chỉ có những người biết ngoại ngữ như ông mới đọc được. Về phương diện đạo đức trí thức, tôi không thể cho việc làm đó là lương thiện được.

Tuy nhiên, tính chất thiếu lương thiện về phương diện trí thức của Phạm Xuân Nguyên thể hiện rõ hơn trong mấy câu đầu tiên của đoạn văn trích ở trên.

Phạm Xuân Nguyên viết: "Trí thức là người có học vấn sâu và rộng về một lĩnh vực nào đấy, cố nhiên. Nhưng đó chỉ mới là điều kiện cần. Theo định nghĩa của giáo sư người Mỹ James V. Schall, để trở thành trí thức còn phải có điều kiện đủ là khuynh hướng muốn biết."

Những ý tưởng như "học vấn sâu và rộng" chỉ là "điều kiện cần thiết" nhưng "chưa đủ" làm nên người trí thức là những ý tưởng tôi nẩy ra khi đọc James V. Schall, chứ không phải là ý tưởng của Phạm Xuân Nguyên. Ông đã lấy một phần ý tưởng và chữ nghĩa của tôi làm của ông ("học vấn sâu và rộng" chỉ là "điều kiện cần thiết"). Rồi ông lấy phần còn lại ghép với ý tưởng của James V. Schall (khuynh hướng muốn biết) để bịa ra một "định nghĩa" của James V. Schall về "trí thức".

Thật ra, James V. Schall không hề đưa ra "định nghĩa" như vậy bao giờ cả. Ðoạn tôi trích từ James V. Schall để làm chất liệu cho bài viết của tôi có nguyên văn như sau: "But just having lots of books is not enough. Fools can own libraries. The devil was one of the most intelligent of the angels. We know what happened to him. Knowledge alone won't save us, though we need that too. The essential thing is the "inclination to know," something that cannot be purchased or borrowed." (tôi tô đậm)

Tạm dịch: "Nhưng chỉ có nhiều sách thì không đủ. Những tên đần độn có thể làm chủ những thư viện. Quỷ sứ là một trong những kẻ thông minh nhất giữa những thiên thần. Chúng ta hẳn biết cái gì đã xảy đến cho y. Kiến thức đơn thuần sẽ không thể cứu được chúng ta, dù chúng ta cũng cần nó. Điều trọng yếu là "khuynh hướng muốn biết", đó là một điều không thể mua được hay vay mượn được".

Ðiều này chứng tỏ là Phạm Xuân Nguyên chưa hề đọc nguyên tác bài diễn văn của James V. Schall. Xin nhấn mạnh một lần nữa: trong bài diễn văn của James V. Schall không hề có bất cứ "định nghĩa" nào về "trí thức" cả. Toàn bài diễn văn chỉ nói về vai trò của sách trong đời sống trí thức. (Xin xem nguyên tác Anh ngữ bài diễn văn của James V. Schall ở phần phụ lục của bài viết này).

Trong bài "Hội chứng Babylone", ông cho rằng cuốn sách của tôi chỉ có ích "cho số đông, nhất là cho những ai không đọc được ngoại ngữ…", nhưng để viết "Lời Nói Ðầu" cho cuốn sách của nhóm Tia Sáng, ông lại lén lút vay mượn văn của tôi và những điều tôi tìm thấy trong nghiên cứu để làm định hướng cho tinh thần "trí thức" của ông và nhóm Tia Sáng. Thật vậy, ông dựa hẳn vào đoạn văn lén lút vay mượn ấy để làm ý tưởng chủ đạo của "Lời Nói Ðầu" ngắn ngủi của ông (một bài viết chỉ có 6 đoạn văn); và ngay sau đoạn văn gian lận đó, ông đã khẳng định giá trị của ý nghĩa của nó như sau:"Tia Sáng chính là một góc nhìn của trí thức trên tinh thần đó. Và một góc nhìn của trí thức trên những trang sách này, bắt đầu từ năm 2000 và sẽ ra hàng năm, chính là góc nhìn từ giới trí thức về hiện trạng cuộc sống trên mọi mặt của xã hội Việt Nam vắt ngang qua hai thế kỷ và hai thiên niên kỷ. Một góc nhìn muốn biết."

Qua cách viết lách như vậy của Phạm Xuân Nguyên, chúng ta thấy điều gì?

Phạm Xuân Nguyên không đọc James V. Schall mà lại làm ra vẻ như đã trực tiếp đọc James V. Schall. Ðứng về phương diện đạo đức nghề nghiệp, đó không phải là một sự gian lận hay sao?
Phạm Xuân Nguyên lén lút vay mượn các ý của tôi và của James V. Schall từ tôi, nhưng cố tình lờ đi việc ghi xuất xứ tài liệu của tôi, nhằm gây cho độc giả cái ấn tượng "một tác giả" nào đó cũng là một người ngoại quốc, để chứng tỏ là mình uyên bác. Ðứng về phương diện đạo đức nghề nghiệp, đó không phải là một sự gian lận hay sao?
Phạm Xuân Nguyên lén lút vay mượn tư liệu và ý tưởng trong sách của tôi để viết một cách khệnh khạng và đầy thẩm quyền về đề tài "trí thức" trên sách báo trong nước, nhưng ở nơi khác, lại dè bỉu sách của tôi chỉ dành cho "số đông", cho "những ai không đọc được ngoại ngữ". Ðứng về phương diện đạo đức nghề nghiệp, đó không phải là một sự gian lận hay sao?

Một kẻ, khi cầm bút, có thói gian lận như vậy thì khi chê hay khen văn chương của ai cũng khó tránh khỏi gian lận. Tính chất gian lận ấy có thể thấy rõ qua cách thức ông chằm chặp bênh vực cho Thuỵ Khuê ngay cả ở những chỗ Thuỵ Khuê sai rành rành. Tuy nhiên, điều này liên quan đến những cái sai của Thuỵ Khuê mà những cái sai ấy lại quá nhiều cho nên tôi xin để dành cho một bài viết khác dài hơn sau này.

Ðiều cuối cùng tôi xin nhấn mạnh trong bài này là khi nói đến tính chất gian lận của Phạm Xuân Nguyên, tôi luôn luôn chỉ dừng lại trong phạm vi đạo đức nghề nghiệp của người cầm bút mà thôi chứ không hề đề cập đến góc độ đạo đức cá nhân của ông ngoài xã hội.

Sydney, 05/02/2003
© 2003 talawas


^[1] James V. Schall, "Books and the Intellectual Life: We Are Capable of Knowing All Things", Vital Speeches 65.10 (01 March 1999):316.

---

Phụ lục: Bài diễn văn của James V. Schall

Vital Speeches, March 1, 1999 v65 i10 p316(5)
Books and the intellectual life: we are capable of knowing all things. (Transcript)

Abstract: James Schall, professor at the Dept. of Government of Georgetown University, believes that books are essential to knowledge and a person's intellectual life. Books not only influence the direction and depth of one's learning, they also anchor information and can incite the desire to learn more.

Full Text:

COPYRIGHT 1999 City News Publishing Company, Inc.
Address by JAMES V. SCHALL, Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University. Delivered to the John Carroll Scholars, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., January 19, 1999.

Several years ago, in 1979, when I first began teaching here at Georgetown, I happened to read in class one day some thing from Samuel Johnson, the great English lexicographer and philosopher. I no longer recall quite what I read that day, though I am habitually prepared to read something from Johnson at the drop of a hat. Most days, I try to read for myself something from his unfailing wisdom. Several months later, after Christmas vacation the year in which I read Johnson in class, I received in the mail, from Florida, a package, that contained a 1931 reprint of a book, originally printed in the year, MDCCXCIX - which date I will not transpose into arabic numbers since you should all know Roman dates when you hear them.

The book was James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. This two volume-in-one book was found by a student, in that 1979 class, in some used book store - used book stores, I am going to insist here, are places to be haunted by young students as almost the equivalent of Stevenson's Treasure Island, for they are indeed usually full of unexpected treasures, if you know what to look for. The particular book I had been sent, as a blue-inked stamp on its title page informs us, once was housed in St. Paul's High School Library, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Surely any high school or university library that gets rid of such a marvelous book deserves to lose, if not its accreditation, certainly its reputation! I think of this incident each year when I notice what basic books students sell back to the book store as used, books which, on being gotten rid of, are almost sure signs of intellectual failure on the part of the students selling them back. I would add that worthless books should be sold back. The trick is, isn't it, to know the difference.

Since you are members of a group known on campus as "The John Carroll Scholars," let me devote some reflections on books, on acquiring them, on keeping them, on reading them, yes, on rereading them. Never forget C. S. Lewis's perceptive remark that if you have only read a great book once, you have not read it at all, though I like to add, you must read it once, to be able to read it again. Of course, I want to begin these remarks with something that this same Samuel Johnson said about books, a passage on which I often reflect. In this immensely insightful book - one that you all should possess in some ancient or modern edition - Boswell recalls several observations about books that Johnson, on Monday, September 22, 1777, made to him, Boswell, then still a precocious, relatively young man. "Dr. Johnson advised me today," Boswell begins, to have as many books about me as I could; that I might read upon any subject upon which I had a desire for instruction at the time. "What you read then, (said he,) you will remember, but if you have not a book immediately ready, and the subject moulds in your mind, it is a chance if you again have a desire to study it." He added, "if a man never has an eager desire for instruction, he should prescribe a task for himself. But it is better when a man reads from immediate inclination" (II, 148).

I call your attention to what Johnson advises here. Do not let things "mould," that is, grow stale and inert in your minds so you never think of them again. Johnson suggests that we keep ready about us plenty of books on many a subject matter; that is, we need our own basic library, one that we own because we have ourselves found and purchased the books in it.

But just having lots of books is not enough. Fools can own libraries. The devil was one of the most intelligent of the angels. We know what happened to him. Knowledge alone won't save us, though we need that too. The essential thing is the "inclination to know," something that cannot be purchased or borrowed. Johnson suggests that we can, to some extent, prod ourselves to know; as he puts it, we can ascribe "task for ourselves." We can, for instance, say to ourselves, "I will read The Brothers Karamazov during Christmas vacation" and then do it. But it is best to have an "eager desire for instruction," something that flows from our own inner resources, not just from external duty. If you read the first paragraph of The Brothers Karamazov and have any soul at all, you will not rest till you finish it.

I can hardly emphasize enough that ultimately you have to discover in your own soul this longing to know. It constitutes the very heart of what you are as a rational being, distinct in the universe precisely because you can know. In the last analysis, you have to wake up to knowledge, and you cannot do that till you reach a certain age or maturity, and yes, level of self-discipline. An experienced teacher can almost tell by the light in his eyes, the day a student first wakes up and begins to want to know. No one can really find a substitute for your own attraction to the truth itself. If this desire is not there, no one can give it to you from outside yourself. And if it is not there, it is undoubtedly because you have not ordered yourself or put your interests aside long enough to wonder about things, about things "for their own sakes," as Aristotle put it.

Let me remind you, furthermore, that no limit can be assigned to what we can know. It is a mistake to think that when we learn something, it is at the expense of something else. Knowledge is not a zero-sum game. It is, indeed, the greatest of the riches of the universe. Our soul is not a material, finite receptacle; it operates with a properly spiritual power. It is true that we need to apportion our time and efforts, that some things are more fascinating than others, but in principle, all things, no matter how insignificant, are worth knowing. I am fond of citing Chesterton's remark that there is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only uninterested people. If you are bored, it is not because there are no interesting things about you to know. Our minds have what the ancients called a "capax omnium." They have a capacity to know all things. It is through knowing that what is not ourselves, that what is in itself, becomes ours, becomes a proper addition to what we are.

Indeed, it is through knowing what is not ourselves that we can come to realize, reflexively, our own selves, our own very existence and activity. We become luminous to ourselves only when we know what is not ourselves, when we are active in knowing what is not ourselves. In a sense, the whole world is offered to us before we can know ourselves. We are the one thing in the varigated universe that we cannot directly know. The universe ultimately gives us to ourselves. But to know, we do need time, discipline, and an order of knowing, as St. Thomas told us in the beginning of the great Summa. The adventure of knowing is our avenue to the adventure of being, to the being of all things.
To give you a rather amusing example of how many odd things we can know, let me ask you, what is a "virologist"? Or better, what is "vitolphilia"? If we know our Greek suffixes; we know that "philia" means the love of something. At its highest meaning, as Aristotle tells us, it means the love of our friend; better it means the mutual love of one another. But in this context, vitolphilia means the love of what? Well, I would never have heard of this obscure word had it not been for the fact that someone gave me for Christmas one of those daily throw-away calendars dedicated to, of all things, cigars. I assure you, I never smoke cigars without turning green in the process. This puzzling word was, as Johnson told Boswell, just sitting around on my desk waiting for the right calendar day to show up, in this case, Wednesday, January 13, 1999, when I would be incited to learn what vitolphilia meant because it was on the cigar calendar for that day.

The word vitolphilia refers to the art work on cigar boxes or on the bands around cigars, "vitolas," as the latter are called. In fact, in Havana, there is a big museum that displays all the intricate art work from the eighteenth century on that is devoted to adorning a cigar band or box. The world's leading virologist is a man by the name of Dr. Orlando Arteaga, president of the Cuban Vitolphilic Association. "Is this," someone might ask, "the most useful piece of information Schall ever learned?" Well, of course not, but if I ever happen to meet Fidel Castro, or even that cigar afficionado, Rush Limbaugh, I will have something to talk about. And I have seen cigar bands and boxes. It puts a new light on the cigar to realize that such intricate work goes into decorating the band and box.

For a while, as a kid, I used to do something equally useless as pursuing vitolas; namely, I collected match boxes and folders. The same principle of curiosity involved. I recall learning a lot about geography from them. Most match boxes give the address and city of whatever they are advertising. From someplace, I lived in Iowa as a boy, I once obtained a black match box from the Palmer House in Chicago, which was supposed to be, at the time, a pretty classy place and a rare match box. In later years, I even went to a conference at the Palmer House, so I sort of felt at home in the place because of the match box. The point here is that you can learn all about violas and all about match boxes. It won't hurt your brain a bit. In general, it is a good thing just to have a hobby that enables you to learn all about something, be it tabby cats, the batting averages of the Chicago Cubs, or the number of minnows in an average bass lake.

In the beginning, however, I want to tell you something of my own early experience, not with match boxes or with vitolas, but with books and reading them. I am going to assume that books will always remain, even in our paperless world, the basis our learning and remembering. I do not intend to downplay the value and scope of Internet or on-line materials, I know you can find all the dialogues of Plato on some web site, probably more than one, not to mention on CD's. However, reading a book, rereading a book, possessing a book, surrounding oneself with books, it seems to me, will remain fundamental to in-depth learning, particularly of the highest things. A book you have read just remains there for you to pick up again. It is yours; no one else has read it as you have.

I recently heard a TV interview with Shelby Foote, the great Civil War historian. In it, he told of how he can only work within the surroundings of his own books, in his own home. When considering any future home you may rent, build, or buy, or any place in which you work, you should, I would think, be sure to provide adequate space for books, your books, books you yourself have obtained, read, marked, taken notes from, put comments in.

Nothing is more disconcerting, it seems to me, than to enter a home or apartment in which there are no books and no place for books, no sign a book had ever been there. It always seems like a kind of desecration to me, even though I am perfectly aware that bookless people can also save their souls and can have much practical wisdom, something Aristotle himself recognized. I know there are libraries about from which we can borrow for a time a book we may not own. We are blessed to live in a time of relatively cheap books. Ultimately, no doubt, the important thing is what is in our head, not what is on a printed page. Nor do we have to replicate the New York City Public Library in our own homes. I have long run out of space in my own room for more books. But we need a basis, at least a couple of hundred books, probably more, that surround us. I am sure that by judicious use of sales and used-book stores, anyone can gather together a very respectable basic library, probably for less than a thousand dollars. When stretched out over time and compared say, to the price of smoking, or a vacation flight to Paris, this price is not really very much.

Remember, the important thing about a book is to know what it says; it is a living path to an author who is not here, who may in fact have lived centuries before you did but who can still teach you. I once wrote an essay in Modern Age entitled "On the Mystery of Teachers I Have Never Met," an account of the extraordinary fact that authors and thinkers long dead are still alive when we read them, are still able to teach us. Books, as Plato said, are never as good as conversation, as direct encounter with actual men. But the very structure of our lives in time does not deprive us of knowledge of those who live before or away from us. So read intelligently. St. Paul says to "pray ceaselessly." I think we can also read constantly. Reading, indeed, can itself be a form of prayer.

I have an old cartoon of Johnny Hart's "The Wizard of Id" (April 16, 1969). In it, its hero, the little king, is sitting on his elegantly draped throne. Beside him is an official armored page. The king commands him to "post this proclamation in the village square." In the next scene, the dutiful page is seen in the square pounding the nails to hang up the proclamation, which ominously decrees: ... Henceforth, reading will be considered a crime against the state, "Signed, King." In the third panel, a rather pedestrian-looking citizen is seen hunched-up reading the sign, while over his shoulder the page is watching, even testing him. The page inquires of the citizen, "What do you think of the King's proclamation?" In the final scene, the citizen faces about to the page, to answer in all shrewdness, "What proclamation?" That is to say, the important thing is not to read, but to understand.

The first books I remember reading were probably from junior high days, though I may well have read books of some sort earlier. I was not much read to or exposed to books, classical children's books, for example, some of which I have read as an adult, a most worthy enterprise, in fact. This neglect of books is probably due in part to the fact that my own mother had died when I was nine. Her death, I am sure, is the reason that I never learned much about music, as she played the piano well and sent me to piano lessons in kindergarten. The point I make here is not to lament what I did not read, but to emphasize the idea of Johnson, that is, the "eager desire for instruction," the desire simply to know. This desire, after all, is very Aristotelian - not that he "invented" it, but he just pointed it out. For it was Aristotle who told us, in the beginning of his great Metaphysics, another book you should know about, possess, and read, that what incites us to know, to exercise this "eager desire for instruction," is simply "wonder," not fear, not pleasure, not lack of something. We just want to know. When we have all else, we will still want to know. This is the truth about us.

It makes no earthly sense, for example, for me to know what "Vitol philia" means, and yet, I am glad to know it. I am delighted that I had something on my desk, just sitting around, that could tell me its meaning. Without it, as Johnson implied, I probably never would have bothered to look it up. The word is not, in fact, in my Random House College Dictionary. I also checked that huge and famous work, the Oxford English Dictionary, but in that miniaturized two volume edition that you have to read with a magnifying glass. The word, vitolphilia, was not there, much to my surprise. But it is a Spanish word. Vitola is in the Spanish dictionary I consulted.

I was in high school during World War II. I do not remember much of what I read at that time, but I distinctly recall one day finding in the local public library a book written by none other than the infamous Josef Stalin himself. So I decided to read it. It was a heavy tome, needless to say. I can remember the English editor of the book had put in footnotes something about the number of Russians in concentration camps. But this warning made little impact on me at the time; I was evidently rather vain about the fact that I had managed to read such a book at all. I remember, much to her horror, praising this book to the mother of a young lady I was seeing at the time. Stalin, at that period, was in fact considered an ally. In the book, he made what seemed to me to be almost a poetic case for his system - the only kind, I see now, that could possibly have been made for it. At the time, I really had little experience to know how properly to weigh what Stalin was saying. In retrospect, this was a good lesson, one confirmed by Aristotle himself who warned that the young are not particularly adept students of political things.

Two other things I remember about the time before I was twenty and entered the Order which allowed a lot of time for catching up on my neglected reading. The first recollection was that my father had several novels of the English writer, Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson. These were, as I recall, rather apocalyptic tales, not unlike those that are currently being written by the Canadian novelist Michael O'Brien - Father Elijah, Strangers and Sojourners, The Plague Journal, parts of a series of six novels O'Brien collectively entitles "Children of the Last Days." One of Benson's titles was The Shadow on the Earth. I must have read it during high school. I recall being quite frightened by it, though Benson was on the side of the Gods. In retrospect, I think the most frightening book I ever read was the third of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, but The Shadow on the Earth was frightening in the same way, the unflinching recognition of the power of evil in the world, something probably worth being aware of, even in high school.

The other experience that I recall with regard to books came from the time I was in the army. I vividly remember being stationed at the Engineer School at Fort Belvoir, down the Potomac in Virginia, or maybe it was up in Camp Kilmer, in New Jersey, probably both. World War II was just over, so there was no real pressure on troops. We had time to go to the post library. I can still recall this post library - I should go down to Belvoir some day to see it again. I gazed perplexed at the stacks and stacks of books. By that time, I had had a semester of college at the University of Santa Clara and was familiar with the Varsi Library there. But what sticks in my mind about the army libraries was the awareness that I did not know what to read, what to look for, what was worth reading. Piles and stacks of books are nothing if you have no idea how to choose from them. I suppose someone could go into a library and start with the first shelf and read to the end, A to Z in the Library of Congress system. But that is both impossible and impractical. You would never, in a lifetime, get beyond section "Ae" in any good sized library.

At the time, I do remember reading a novel of Aldous Huxley. I think it was called Chrome Yellow, or something like that. It was unfortunately not Brave New World, a book that might have served to put Josef Stalin in some context. In fact, Brave New World, as my friend Professor Jerome Hanus at American University has told me, is an extremely good book for students today to read as it is rather accurate in its depiction of what would happen to our culture if we embraced certain modern principles, which we evidently did. But my point here is to emphasize this vivid sense of wanting to read but having no guidance, no clue about what is worth reading or how one would go about finding it. This graphic experience, I think, lies at the origin of that tendency that I always have, for those of you who know me or have read my Another Sort of Learning, of giving students good, brief bibliography lists of what to read. "Schall's Twenty Books to Keep Sane By," in my little booklet, A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning," is merely the most recent manifestation of this tendency.

It is my experience that many of the most wonderful books are not read simply because the average student will never have heard of them. Several years ago, I was teaching a class in St. Thomas. Among the books assigned for the course was Chesterton's St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most remarkable books ever written. After the semester, after we had read the book in class, a student told me that he had the book sitting on his desk after he had purchased it. Now and again, he would, out of curiosity, read a page or two from it. He could not believe what a wonderful book it was. He wanted to know why no one had ever told him of Chesterton. I did not bother to point out that someone did.

I do think, in retrospect, however, that reading almost anything, as Johnson said elsewhere, gets us started. There is a very useful autobiography of the western novelist Louis L'Amour called The Education of a Wayfaring Man. In it, he recounts how he began to read and collect books, gradually began to specialize, on his own mostly, acquiring books about western America and all aspects of its settlement. In this book, L'Amour simply lists year by year the books that he read, along with a guide about how to find the time to read. The fact is, he makes clear, plenty of reading time exists if we will just look to our own self-discipline, and more especially, at our seeking to know.

This brings me to another book to which I want to call your attention. It is a book written in about 1920 by the great French Dominican, A.D. Sertillanges, a book entitled simply The Intellectual Life, the kind of life we are gathered here primarily to talk about. The book has been through many editions in many languages; the first English edition was in 1934. The Catholic University of America Press has just reissued a paper back edition of this book with a new Introduction written by none other than yours truly, The importance of the Sertillanges book is that it addresses head on, in my view, the issue that will confront each of you for the rest of his life, namely, how to let the desire to know, to know "the truth of all things," to use Josef Pieper's happy expression, flourish in your souls? One of the most important things that you must realize while still in the university is that you have to acquire the tools of knowing, what the great English lady, Dorothy Sayers, once calls "the lost tools of learning," beginning indeed, as she says, with simple logic. You do not waste your time learning a couple of languages, hopefully a classical one. You do not dither your time away knowing accurately the fine points of English grammar and usage, a field today unfortunately fraught with ideology. You need to learn to speak well, to write well. These are not themselves properly speaking knowing. Indeed, as Socrates tells us, they may be mere sophistical talents, the claim to teach, with little concern about the truth of what is taught, But truth and knowledge ought to be, as such, well spoken.

Sertillanges was quite aware of the ease that university students, once in a work or professional world, can lose or fail to develop their minds. Remember that Plato and Aristotle both reminded us that we do not reach intellectual maturity until an age long after college, or even graduate school. Sertillanges was also aware of the drama of forming bad habits and embracing dubious character traits that could deflect us from any continued pursuit of the truth. His ambition was to suggest how it might be possible to have a genuine intellectual life even while living what might be called a normal life. His book suggests how to read, organize one's day, take notes, publish, remember. He wrote at a time when even the typewriter was a primitive and rare tool, but most of his suggestions can be easily translated into computer usage. Using the computer with its access to vast amounts of information, after all, is not as such "thinking." Knowing where to find things is well enough, but it is not judging them, evaluating them. But the fact is, we have to read, learn, argue, reconsider constantly. That there is an intimate connection between books and the intellectual life seems obvious. However, there comes a point when books are not just objects in used book stores or in libraries, but things that have come alive because we have known and read them.

We will have heard something of what are called "great books," or the canon of books that we "ought" - or according to some, ought not - to read. The first thing we need to realize is that a great number of the best writers that we need to read have long been dead. Some of the best have been dead for centuries and millennia. Do not think that something is good merely because it is new or faddish. You will also find that what are called the "great thinkers" contradict each other, so it is easy, perhaps inevitable, that studying the great books, without a valid intellectual formation, will lead one into relativism or skepticism. Few of the really great thinkers were themselves skeptics. Indeed, the intellectual refutation of skepticism is almost the first serious step anyone needs to take to test the validity of his own mind and thinking powers. "Is it true that there is no truth?" remains the first test of mind, the first inkling we have that the principle of contradiction, the very basic intellectual tool, is operative even when we try to deny it.

Thus, we need to surround ourselves with books. But these books are there because we are and ought to be curious about reality, about what is. The universe is not of our own making. Yet it is all right for us to be what we are. This is because this universe, of which we are conscious that we ourselves are but individual members looking out at it, wondering what it is, wondering who we are, is potentially ours through our knowledge. In knowing, we become the other, become what we are not, as Aquinas taught. But in doing so, in coming to know, we do not change what we know. We change ourselves. Our very intellectual being is intended to become what we are not in the beginning. This is the drama of our intellectual life. We should spend our time on the highest things, Aristotle tells us, even though we may be able to grasp only a bit of them, even though it takes our whole lifetime.

In Mel Lazarus' cartoon "Miss Peach," (1-7-68), we are situated in miss Peach's kindergarten with Francine and Ira at their little desks. Francine is rather uppity to the slower Ira. She is, to recall Johnson's point, surrounded by books, in fact. Leafing through a book, she complains, "I read this book before." "I have read them all." We next see that she is sitting behind Ira who is reading his own book. Francine continues to elaborate, "(Sigh!) Sometimes I get the feeling that everything in the world has been said." Ira continues to endure her ongoing monologue, "All the philosophy, all the historical reflections, all the statements and observations have been made," Ira finally turns back to look at her over his shoulder, "All the comments about society, life, the future, science, love, religion ... At this point, Francine becomes rather scolding to Ira who merely raises his eyebrows. She charges with considerable eloquence, "All the words have been spoken, all the lines read, all the thoughts thought, all the ideas voiced, all the questions asked, all the remarks remarked, all the words worded, etc. etc ... "Finally Francine asks a bleary-eyed, verbally shell-shocked Ira, "Do you feel that everything in the world has been said?" At last, Ira speaks for the first time to reply to this specific question, "Yes, this afternoon, by you."

We cannot, of course, help but being amused by such a scene. We are aware of the passage in the Old Testament that tells us that indeed "there is nothing new under the sun." And we are also aware that for each of us, everything is new. We begin our intellectual lives with minds that we did not give ourselves, with minds that have nothing in them until me begin to wonder, begin to know. Ira's witty reply about all things being said this afternoon by Francine reminds us of the limits of our pretensions to know, of the danger of pride that faces us constantly that tells us that we already know enough, when we know that we do not know all things that can be known, including the highest things.
When we buy our books and have them around us, to conclude, one of the books that we must have is that written by Augustine, his Confessions, a book that, almost better than any other, accounts for the restlessness we cannot help but feeling in our own souls concerning why we are here and what we are about. We are not only to wonder about the highest things, but we are restless until we find them. As a young man of eighteen or nineteen, a very gifted but undisciplined young man, Augustine tells us that he came across a dialogue, now lost, called the "Hortensius," a dialogue of Cicero written half a millennium earlier. He read this dialogue and it changed his life. He decided first to be a philosopher. He woke up. But it still took Augustine a long time to figure things out. He is a young man that is still greatly attractive to us because he literally tried everything. But he was finally an honest young man. He admitted the errors of various philosophies he followed for a time.

What the young Augustine still teaches us, something that is found in another way in Plato and Aristotle, is that our restless hearts lead us to seek, lead us indeed to find, but require us to place things in order so that we do not call what is true or what is good what is not so. Having around us Augustine and Plato, Aquinas and Aristotle, Samuel Johnson, Dorothy Sayers, and Chesterton, I think, will most surely and most quickly lead us to those things for which we have books in the first place, not to the books themselves, but to what is true, to what, as I like to say, makes sense, makes ultimate sense. In the end, be careful when you read Stalin at fifteen or Cicero's "Hortensius" at nineteen. Though not all the "remarks are remarked," nor all "the words are worded," we still wonder and have restless hearts, Vitolphilia may not be a disease, but we can know what it is if we wonder and have restless hearts. Vitolphilia may not be a disease, but we can know what it is if we have the right books surrounding us.

Tell me what you read and I will tell you what you are. In any intellectual life, books, the books we have around us, do not just indicate where we started and where we end, but how we get there and why we did not go somewhere else. They ground and provoke our inclination to know. Books and the intellectual life go together, provided we always remember that it is the books that are for the intellectual life and not the other way around. Books themselves can remain unread and unknown even when we own them. This is why Sertillanges and Louis L'Amour, indeed, why Augustine and Aquinas, Johnson and Josef Pieper tell us that what comes first is the knowing. It is a terrible thing, to remind you again of my own experience, to go into a library and have no idea what to read. And it is a great thing one morning to wake up and know that we want to know, know almost anything, for we are, by nature, as the medieval writers said, capax omnium, capable of knowing all things.

Article A54259898