Of the unmaking of great books, there is no end. Such is life. Only in fiction does the plot resolve in a tidy closing of narrative threads. Life is messier. If it does not dribble to a close, it ends with banging and whimpering. The “Great Books” course, a one-stop humanities shop, was born at Columbia University in 1919. After 1968, the banging and whimpering of the culture wars sent enrollments into decades of decline. This week, the New Yorker announced that enrollment in humanities courses at Ivy League colleges is dribbling to a close.
The American century was just beginning in 1919, the young centurions of America setting out on their short march to global eminence. As the new civilization strode into the mainstream of history, the great books were a map to unknown territory, the new psychological and political terrain that comes with power. Their message was that of the slave who held a laurel crown over the head of a Roman general as he received his garlands and triumph. “Memento mori,” the slave said. “Remember, you are mortal.”
