I suppose I read Aristotle in college but not to know I was doing it; the same with Plato. I don’t have the kind of mind that can carry such beyond the actual reading, i.e., total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me. So I couldn’t make any judgment on the Summa, except to say this: I read it for about twenty minutes every night before I go to bed. If my mother were to come in during the process and say, "Turn off that light. It’s late," I with lifted finger and broad bland beatific expression, would reply, "On the contrary, I answer that the light, being eternal and limitless, cannot be turned off. Shut your eyes," or some such thing.”
I too am blessedly unburdened by my education. The university was no more than an intellectual match-making service, an instrument of exposure – to writers and a large library that permitted me to read them. I remember the reassuring thrill of knowing the campus library was open twenty-four hours a day. If I needed Tertullian, Hobbes or George Herbert at 3 a.m., they were a short walk away.
For the purposes of education, I found most fellow students an irritation to be endured, which I suppose taught me something. Even with several excellent teachers I remained, for good and ill, an autodidact but not always, I hope, a know-it-all. I was acutely aware of my ignorance but resented most intermediaries – critics, interpreters, systematizers – and felt only aversion for grand theories. To this day I like to meet a book on my terms, without a middle-man, because most of the best books teach me how to read them. My request is simple: Don’t tell me what to think; show me what you know.
Flannery O’Connor, born on this day in 1925, from a letter to “A.”, August 9, 1955
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