Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books

by Kathryn Kramer

An intellectual autobiography in the tradition of educational chronicles that runs the gamut from St. Augustine’s Confessions to Alice Kaplan’s French Lessons. Yet instead of tracing her progress from a state of sin to a state of grace, Kathryn Kramer revisits her school years to figure out how she was indoctrinated into thinking that she should embark upon this classic journey. Kathryn Kramer is the author of the novels A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space, Rattlesnake Farming, and Sweet Water, and co-author of a language textbook, Welcome to English for Working and Living. She lives in Vermont and teaches at Middlebury College.

214 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this short memoir, the author shares some of her thoughts about education and her memories of growing up as a faculty daughter at the small liberal arts college (St. John’s College) where her father taught. The book’s “hook” is its intermittent critique of the St. John’s Great Books program, but the unacknowledged focus seems to be the author’s sometimes troubled relationship with her father and his work as a teacher. I was interested in reading this book because I attended St John’s, but in the end I felt the author’s critiques of education were too limited by her tangential, childhood perspective. The book is strongest when the author is writing about her own childhood experiences/education with remembered details and humor.

[Declan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certain Intellect

Kramer captures the uncertainty of an intellectual life spent in the presence of real thinkers. The humility and uncertainty she expresses explains to me how we get from new criticism to post modernism in terms of the very personal story of her own biographical details.