Austin 1962-66

Austin, 1962-66

This period is best approached through the courses I took. Had little time for reading anything else, though must have in the summer. Early on, first summer, I do remember reading Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and The Little Prince.  And at some point Ellison's The Invisible Man.  On the whole I think I did a pretty good job of introducing myself to the major writers and great books and at least knew when it was over what I hadn't read.  Part was good choices, part luck and part having some excellent teachers:  Roger Shattuck, William Goetzmann (history), a German guy there just to teach the existentialism course, Chet Loeb for a couple of philosophy courses.  Not to mention Dwight MacDonald for a film course.  A great overview of the classics:  Citizen Kane, Buster Keaton, Renoir, Children of Paradise, Birth of a Nation, Bicycle Thief.  All I can think of for now.  

British Novels Course

Cary, Horse’s Mouth. A very British and popular at the time kind of comic hero. Was Donleavy’s Ginger Man cut from the same cloth? And what about Barth? And Tom Jones?

Greene, The Heart of the Matter.  Thought this dull at the time.

Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. I did a paper on this that won a contest. Same kind of comic hero?

Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread. Classic yearning for exotic. Loved it.

Lawrence.  The Rainbow

Durrell, Justine.  Thought this the best novel I'd ever read after the first page.

Edwardian Course

Butler, The Way of All Flesh

Galsworthy, The Man of Property

Gissing, George.  

American Lit Survey.  I know we had a survey book and read Whitman and some colonial writers from it.  Also know we covered the usual suspects as listed below, but what we read I'm not sure. 

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Irving, Washington,

Whitman, Leaves of Grass

James, Portrait of a Lady

Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Dickinson, E.A. Robinson, Frost, Sandburg.  

Modern American Poetry

Eliot, The Wasteland, Prufrock

e.e. cummings.

William Carlos Williams

Robert Penn Warren

Marianne Moore

Wallace Stevens

 John Crowe Ransom

Shattuck’s French Lit in translation course.

Proust, Swann’s Way. Liking this is the same as liking James. You have to assume the credibility, or importance, of a certain level of society and the minutiae that forms it, and you have to buy the idea that those details actually do add up. Not so sure. Not that they add up to anything all that important.

Rousseau, Confessions. Took to this like a fish to water, but probably linked it more to Forster, Angels, Durrell, Justine, Galsworthy, Man of P, etc., than to political philosphy. Persona of sensitive romantic artist losing himself in the exotic. In re to roots, more Hemingway than Saroyan. Whitmanesque, I suppose, but not very Kerouac.

Montaigne, Essays.

History

Cash, The Mind of the South.

Philosophy

Intro to Philosophy

Tillich, Paul, Faith

James, William, The Will to Believe

Pearce?

History of Philosophy to Descartes

Plato, The Republic

Oriental Philosophy

Tao

Intro to Ethics

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Hume

Mill,

Intro to Logic

Plato?

Leibniz?

Existentialism Course

Sarte, Being and Nothingness. Never really approached this.

Heidegger, Being and Time. I actually plowed through this and had a kind of epiphany at some point, thought I knew what he was talking about. Probably didn’t though. Who knows what it was.

Kierkegaard, Either/Or. Loved the aesthetic man, especially that little prelude, Desiderata, about the Trojan Horse. Agony of men inside; music coming out of the horse’s mouth.

Plato, Republic. The sane side. Apollo. Bright and reasonable, even to the point of being suspicious of poetry. But of course you can’t help but feel clean after reading Plato. It’s refreshing.

Montgomery’s Elizabethan Poetry and Prose Course

Shakespeare, Sonnets. Like Plato and Montaigne, the other side. The sane side. Apollonian. The case for balance, for sowing your wild oats but never forgetting your duty.

Donne.

Sir Philip Sydney.

Thomas More

English Lit Survey

Henry IV, part 2,

For a course, read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Comments on:  Galsworthy, The Man of Property. Clear now that this is too pedestrian. Middle-brow. James is a good foil.

James, Portrait of a Lady. Not my style, though I see the point. Sort of. And there is a way that the real/artificial thing is fascinating.  At some point, maybe a year or two after college, I got into James in a big way.  Enjoyed the difference between The American and the The Ambassadors.  Basically the same book but latter is a refinement of his style.  Rather pretentiously, I read part of The Ambassadors in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel.    

Durrell, Alexandrian Quartet. Might just have read Justine for class. Tried to re-read lately and I was extremely disappointed that I no longer respond well to the “mannered prose.” When I read this in college I thought it was the best thing I’d ever read. I decided that during the first page.

Percy, The Moviegoer. I liked this better than Catcher in the Rye. Probably should read it again. Haven’t been able to get into other Percy books.