Total Experience
Jacques Barzun’s third contribution to the May 1926 (Commencement) issue of The Columbia Varsity rounds out the critical views of “Obiter Dicta” and the fiction of “Fantastique”: “A Total Experience” may be a straightforward review of Richard Kane Looks at Life: A Philosophy for Youth (Houghton Mifflin, 1926) by Irwin Edman, but it held real importance for Jacques.
Irwin Edman
Remembering from “Irrelevant Maturity” that JB was not shy about tangling with Columbia faculty, his praise for Professor Edman’s fiction shouldn’t be suspected as sycophancy. Barzun describes Edman as “an admirable teacher” in a 1993 letter, recalling his course in modern philosophy that introduced Jacques to the thought of William James.
The significance of Edman’s Richard Kane and Barzun quotations from the review appear on the page linked below:
“A Total Experience”, review of Richard Kane Looks at Life: A Philosophy for Youth by Irwin Edman, The Columbia Varsity, volume 7, number 2 (May 1926), pages 15,25.
[This post adds categories and tags for this bibliography item since those can’t be assigned to pages.]
