The Watcher’s Council Forum question this week was about which books have had the most influence on us. I’ve recounted this anecdote before here but this was my contribution:
That’s a subject I haven’t thought about in years. From age 7 to 20 my life was marked out in books like milestones along a road.
The book that influenced me the most was the first one I ever read–my dad’s fourth grade reader. When I completed first grade I couldn’t read a word. According to my mom that summer I took my dad’s fourth grade reader, disappeared behind the couch, and when I re-emerged at the end of the summer not only could I read, I was reading far above grade level.
It was a wonderful book! An anthology of stories, fables, poetry, and snippets from popular literature (popular at the turn of the last century that is). It was the first of many.
There is no frigate like a book, indeed.
However, I don’t recall whether I’ve ever shared the punchline to that story with you which was how my parents came to know that I could read. Later that summer we were on a family day trip and, after going into a filling station restroom with my dad, when we emerged I said “Daddy, what does ‘prophylactic’ mean?” to which he responded “It’s something to keep you clean” and that’s how they knew I could read.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
That reminds me of a remark of G. K. Chesterton’s: “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”
Possibly an idea that was kicking around. Or maybe Wittgenstein read Chesterton.
The Bible. It made me an atheist.
Well, that’s from Eliot, Little Gidding, in Four Quartets. I doubt that LW read either one of them.
I didn’t remember that at all. It’s been a long, long time since I read Four Quartets. Maybe 50 years.
ATLAS SHRUGGED. Read it and it transforms the world.
Maybe after some time, your understanding of the world passes on to something else — it’s very likely, in fact — but you’re never again going to be in the position of having political beliefs based entirely on what Mommy and Daddy and the Pastor and uncle Jimmy and the Basketball Coach told you.