Mortimer J Adler

Mortimer J. Adler is puffing on the thick stub of a pungent post-prandial cigar, addressing the subject of what it means to be educated in America. The 89-year-old warhorse of the "great books" battles--philosopher, classifier par excellence and author of 46 books on thought--doesn't actually discuss the matter. Rather, in hallmark curmudgeon style, he pronounces, denounces, dismisses, and, when a challenging notion seems too contemptible to consider, merely stares it down like a cur.

I read with interest and dismay the interview with Mortimer J. Adler on the "Great Books" list revision ("A Curmudgeon Stands His Ground," Dec. 3). The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is not the inclusion of books in lists, but the inclusion of culture, thought, and quality of character in people. Adler is represented in your interview as an insufferable, arrogant, bigoted pedant. If people become like him after a lifetime of reading the classics, I say let us do away with the classics.

I read with interest and dismay the interview with Mortimer J. Adler on the "Great Books" list revision ("A Curmudgeon Stands His Ground," Dec. 3). The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is not the inclusion of books in lists, but the inclusion of culture, thought, and quality of character in people. Adler is represented in your interview as an insufferable, arrogant, bigoted pedant. If people become like him after a lifetime of reading the classics, I say let us do away with the classics.

Mortimer J. Adler is puffing on the thick stub of a pungent post-prandial cigar, addressing the subject of what it means to be educated in America. The 89-year-old warhorse of the "great books" battles--philosopher, classifier par excellence and author of 46 books on thought--doesn't actually discuss the matter. Rather, in hallmark curmudgeon style, he pronounces, denounces, dismisses, and, when a challenging notion seems too contemptible to consider, merely stares it down like a cur.

Bronwen Hruska's article "They Conned America" (Aug. 28) gave us a comprehensive review of the TV quiz-show scandals of the late '50s, now being turned into a movie. But I'd like to add a personal note about one of the figures involved--the late Dan Enright, co-creator of "Twenty-One" with Jack Berry. I met Dan in later years, and we became good friends. Did you know that Dan helped start television in Israel? And let's not forget the Emmy Award he received only a few years ago for a top TV movie of the year, the beautiful Hallmark Hall of Fame special "Caroline."

THE PATCH BOYS by Jay Parini. (Owl: $8.95.) The story of an Italian boy growing up in a Pennsylvania mining town. STANLEY AND THE WOMEN by Kingsley Amis. (Perennial: $6.95.) An all out battle between the sexes, narrowly seen through the eyes of Stanley, whose confrontations are exacerbated by the burden of caring for his schizophrenic son. SERENISSIMA by Erica Jong. (Dell: $4.95.) A modern-day heroine finds herself in 16th-Century Venice, having an affair with William Shakespeare.

Louis Kelso, the maverick investment banker and self-styled economist who conceived of today's popular employee stock ownership plans, has died of a heart attack. Rutgers University business professor Joseph Blasi, probably academia's best-known link to Kelso, said the theorist who sought ways to make capitalists of workers was 77 when he died Sunday at Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center in San Francisco.

Gather into the mind Over a hundred years of a people Toiling against climate Working against prejudice Growing within an alien framework Cramped, but stretching its limbs And staring against the sun. --A.J. Seymour At last! Goshdarnit!" When Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature last fall, I greeted the news with mixed emotions, plus a little envy. But any ruefulness on my part was overshadowed by a grudging satisfaction.

List Fever continues to spread. Hot on the heels of the American Film Institute's 100 greatest American movies, the editorial board of the Modern Library, a division of Random House, has compiled its choices of the 100 finest English-language novels published in this century. Executives at Random House say they hope this latest list will stimulate discussion of great works of fiction as well as stimulate sales.

Mortimer J. Adler, the iconoclastic encyclopedist and progenitor of the "Great Books" collection of notable writers and thinkers, died Thursday at his home in San Mateo. He was 98. The former longtime chairman of the board of editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Adler co-founded the "Great Books of the Western World" series 50 years ago to make classic philosophy and writing available to the masses.

It is 7 p.m. at Thomas Aquinas College and Machiavelli holds sway in a moonlit classroom, just as he did 450 years ago in the intrigue-filled court of a Florentine prince. In this room, however, there are no critical antheologies, no lectures, no teachers. There is only Machiavelli's essay, "The Prince"; a tutor and 14 students, grappling with good and evil on a mountain meadow halfway between Ojai and Santa Paula.