Rating: 
Summary: Development of a conscience
Review: The title of "The Education of Henry Adams" sounds like an autobiography, but the book is really about the development of a man's conscience and theory of human history, using the world events of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a backdrop and a laboratory. Henry Adams -- whose great grandfather was John Adams, the second American President, and whose grandfather obviously was John Quincy Adams, the sixth -- is more than just a presidential legacy; he reveals himself to be a great thinker and writer, the brilliance of his "Education" ensuring him a permanent place in the American canon. The book has a few attributes that distinguish it from a typical autobiography. The most noticeable is that Adams writes in the third, not first, person. He repeats the word "education" like a mantra throughout the book, referring to it in its literal, not formal, sense: the "bringing up", or development, of a person's mind, manner, and outlook. The narrative is very personal and is not, as some may expect, a rigid historical perspective, although it does offer plenty of commentary on contemporary historical and political events, from the Civil War to two presidential assassinations (Lincoln's and McKinley's, but not Garfield's) to the Industrial Revolution's impact on the American commercial landscape.
Adams writes like a novelist, and this book reads like a novel. His lyrical prose is all the more amazing because it seems like a product of the very education he finds so evasive. Growing up in Quincy, Massachussetts, he hated school; he even confesses that he got little to nothing out of his years at Harvard. Always hopeful to be educated by new experiences, he serves as a secretary to his father, an ambassador, in London during the American Civil War, where he learns about diplomacy from high-ranking British politicians. He proceeds to dabble in various arts and sciences, start a career in journalism, and become an instructor at Harvard, noting the irony of teaching while still searching for his own education. Throughout the book we get a very vivid picture of Adams as an idiosyncratic mixture of humanism, modesty, shyness, erudition, and a polite sort of cynicism. He has a rather socratic tendency to dismiss all the previous knowledge he has collected as worthless for his continuing education, resolving to start from scratch with a new source. A curious omission in the book is the twenty-year period in which his marriage ends with his wife's suicide; perhaps this event was just too painful to write about, because it's difficult to believe that this experience could not have influenced the pursuit of his education. If Adams's education can be said to have a culmination, it is in his development of a "dynamic theory of history," in which he compares physical forces (gravity, magnetism) acting on a body to historical forces, produced by the conflict of the sciences ("The Dynamo") against the arts ("The Virgin"), acting on man. With this initiative Adams embodies the nineteenth century American intellectual and political conscience: He proves in this book that he was a greatly informed man, but also that he was wise because he understood the difference between information and wisdom.
Rating: 
Summary: Very tough going, but ultimately worth it
Review: This book ultimately offers a lot, but it takes a lot of work to get there. The writing is very stilted (he refers to himself in the third person), and the perspective is decidedly upper-crusty. Other potentially off-putting aspects of his personality include his negativity, his cold-hearted rationality, and his tendency to find external excuses for his own passivity. The footnotes are also extremely long, although some of them do provide valuable factual background both on the events of the day and on Adams many historical, cultural, artistic, and literary allusions. This is important because his emphasis on the universal in the main text makes some of the historical description quite vague and rushed. Utterly untouched is his personal life, which makes the book in some ways incomplete as an autobiography (which he doesn't intend for it to be, incidentally). He is also prone to overgeneralization ("The Pennsylvania mind is not complex"), although the perspective does produce some pithy phrases("The habit of reticence-talking without meaning-is never effaced", and: "The effect of power and publicity is the aggregation of self.") Of course, some of these criticisms are also the source of his unique strength. Adams stands in select company in his level of objectivity, and while he is negative about others, he applies the same harsh gaze upon himself. Some reviewers call this false humility. Clearly he knew he was an intelligent person with a unique perspective, but it will be obvious to any reader that he struggled with his self-esteem. Adams is far more introspective than most of the people who's voices are passed down through history, and he is not afraid to ask the big questions. This is the book's greatest asset, and it has provided the book with something close to immortality. His central challenge at first appears somewhat manageable. He basically wants to travel through time (OK, maybe it's not that manageable); that is, having reached old age, he asks what young people require to become educated. He takes it as a given both that a young person is too inexperienced to know, and that the educational system does not provide the tools. But his definition of education proves to be all-encompassing. He is such a generalist, and he is so intent on pursuing universal truth, that I found myself at times worrying for his sanity, in much the same manner I felt about Pirsig in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He is at times lost in a kind of anomie, because he refuses to construct false truths that would make his life easier. He will pursue knowledge for its own sake, no matter where it takes him. This proves to be a costly education, in so far as he ends up having little hope in humanity or his own place in the world. He basically feels that most change is directionless (i.e. due to ennui, not true improvement), and that like a pearl with a grain of sand, most people shape their perception of their environment (truth) to suit their needs. He raises the interesting (if controversial, even today) idea that female empowerment (which includes becoming aware of female power) might provide the direction-i.e. morality-missing from men's motion, but feels only time can answer that question. While we could easily write this off as gross overgeneralization today, the fact remains we have barely tested his theory a century later. He sees some hope out of this conundrum in Bacon's idea of trying to evolve thought from the universe, rather than the other way around. However, he feels the accelerating pace of scientific discovery and technological innovation will ultimately destroy our entire sense of reality by shattering those illusions which make life liveable for us. He also raises the possibility that acceleration will lead more directly to our corporeal destruction. Adams closes the book with the wistful hope that by 1938 (ironically enough) we might live in a world that "sensitive and timid natures could regard without a shudder." Sadly, one senses that this is one of the few times this realist allowed himself to hope. Even in that moment though, we sense that he does not really believe the future will be brighter. In the last book I read, Life of Pi, one is encouraged to choose a belief, perhaps unreal, that might lead to a better reality in the future. Here we meet someone who has attempted to pursue truth, even if it ends up leaving him unhappy in an unhappy world, with little to believe in. Perhaps Pi's choice is the easy way out. It is certainly the easier book to read and is more popular today; but will it survive as Adams' book has? Time will tell.
Rating:
Summary: Very tough going, but ultimately worth it
Review: This book ultimately offers a lot, but it takes a lot of work to get there. The writing is very stilted (he refers to himself in the third person), and the perspective is decidedly upper-crusty. Other potentially off-putting aspects of his personality include his negativity, his cold-hearted rationality, and his tendency to find external excuses for his own passivity. The footnotes are also extremely long, although some of them do provide valuable factual background both on the events of the day and on Adams many historical, cultural, artistic, and literary allusions. This is important because his emphasis on the universal in the main text makes some of the historical description quite vague and rushed. Utterly untouched is his personal life, which makes the book in some ways incomplete as an autobiography (which he doesn't intend for it to be, incidentally). He is also prone to overgeneralization ("The Pennsylvania mind is not complex"), although the perspective does produce some pithy phrases("The habit of reticence-talking without meaning-is never effaced", and: "The effect of power and publicity is the aggregation of self.") Of course, some of these criticisms are also the source of his unique strength. Adams stands in select company in his level of objectivity, and while he is negative about others, he applies the same harsh gaze upon himself. Some reviewers call this false humility. Clearly he knew he was an intelligent person with a unique perspective, but it will be obvious to any reader that he struggled with his self-esteem. Adams is far more introspective than most of the people who's voices are passed down through history, and he is not afraid to ask the big questions. This is the book's greatest asset, and it has provided the book with something close to immortality. His central challenge at first appears somewhat manageable. He basically wants to travel through time (OK, maybe it's not that manageable); that is, having reached old age, he asks what young people require to become educated. He takes it as a given both that a young person is too inexperienced to know, and that the educational system does not provide the tools. But his definition of education proves to be all-encompassing. He is such a generalist, and he is so intent on pursuing universal truth, that I found myself at times worrying for his sanity, in much the same manner I felt about Pirsig in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He is at times lost in a kind of anomie, because he refuses to construct false truths that would make his life easier. He will pursue knowledge for its own sake, no matter where it takes him. This proves to be a costly education, in so far as he ends up having little hope in humanity or his own place in the world. He basically feels that most change is directionless (i.e. due to ennui, not true improvement), and that like a pearl with a grain of sand, most people shape their perception of their environment (truth) to suit their needs. He raises the interesting (if controversial, even today) idea that female empowerment (which includes becoming aware of female power) might provide the direction-i.e. morality-missing from men's motion, but feels only time can answer that question. While we could easily write this off as gross overgeneralization today, the fact remains we have barely tested his theory a century later. He sees some hope out of this conundrum in Bacon's idea of trying to evolve thought from the universe, rather than the other way around. However, he feels the accelerating pace of scientific discovery and technological innovation will ultimately destroy our entire sense of reality by shattering those illusions which make life liveable for us. He also raises the possibility that acceleration will lead more directly to our corporeal destruction. Adams closes the book with the wistful hope that by 1938 (ironically enough) we might live in a world that "sensitive and timid natures could regard without a shudder." Sadly, one senses that this is one of the few times this realist allowed himself to hope. Even in that moment though, we sense that he does not really believe the future will be brighter. In the last book I read, Life of Pi, one is encouraged to choose a belief, perhaps unreal, that might lead to a better reality in the future. Here we meet someone who has attempted to pursue truth, even if it ends up leaving him unhappy in an unhappy world, with little to believe in. Perhaps Pi's choice is the easy way out. It is certainly the easier book to read and is more popular today; but will it survive as Adams' book has? Time will tell.
Rating: 
Summary: A Boring Education
Review: This book was so slow and boring, I couldn't stand to finish it. Henry Adams was just another modernist author who was unsatisfied with his life in the world of the wealthy elite. I couldn't identify with him at all. He just seemed to be another wealthy stuck up man, at times bored and disturbed by the unfulfilling and superficial life he led. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who's not ready for a long, slow read.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat Distant
Review: This books is indeed full of some memorable aphorisms. Adams certainly lived through some remarkable changes, but to someone who is not particularly well-versed in the period, many of the references to people and events will be maddeningly and drearily obscure. This edition (The Mariner Paperback) would be greatly improved by the inclusion of thorough explanatory notes. Also, the memoir is strangely recounted in the third person, which contributes to a disagreeable distance between the author and the reader, making it difficult to get a sense of the "real" Henry Adams.
Rating:
Summary: SEVENTY YEARS IN THE HISTORY OF A MIND!!!
Review: This is an amazing document that chronicles seventy years in the history of a mind. Since the mind chronicled is that of Henry Adams (who is the son of congressman/diplomat Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of President John Quincy Adams, and the great grandson of President John Adams) it is of more historical value than most other biographical memoirs. The elucidation and harsh criticism that Adams lauds upon himself and the chaos of the world during the 19th and early 20th centuries is at once acute, biting, satiric, and warm with a fervent desire to see this country come of age in the new era of modern technological advances. Even though the subtitle of the book is "An Autobiography" Adams doesn't strive to tell the story of his life, but instead tells us the story of the development of his mental processes and of his ultimate conclusions after a lifetime of political, philosophical, and historical contemplation. As a result of this rigid excise of narrative the reader loses out on some of the man's more personal and intimate moments including the controversial absence of twenty years in which his marriage to photographer Clover Adams, her subsequent death by suicide (she poisoned herself with potassium cyanide), and the writing of his massive ten volume "History Of The United States" are completely omitted (although there are some references to the latter work in the text). But "The Education" as a whole is not hurt by this absence, and the twin chapters "Darwinism" and "The Dynamo And The Virgin" foretell a haunting future in which the unity of force as established by the Church, Christianity, and the majesty of the Virgin Mary is uprooted by Darwin's theory of evolution and the "power" of technology as represented by the energy dynamos Adams witnessed at the Paris exposition of 1900. After seeing the emergence of such technology and the chaos Darwinism caused he felt that the power of force as encapsulated by the Church had been thrown into such a chaos that it could never be righted again until a new man for a new age was capable of harnessing the forces of technology and forging a new future that would repair the damage done by the dislodging of Chruch and Christianity into the fiery sea of scientific philosophy and discovery. Although the pessimism of science without religion, and the disadvantage of religion without science is a fracture that must be remedied if both studies are to help explain the reality of our existence and give us hope in facing the nuclear/biological terrorism of the 21st century in which religion alone can't stop a bomb from being deflected and destroyed, and science alone can't provide an answer to the wickedness of a human heart hell-bent for power, greed, selfish gain, hedonistic pleasure, and rampant violence against all humanity. Adams' "theory of acceleration" is a bit difficult to understand, but boils down to a figure of numbers in which the advances in technology result in an acceleration of process and modification and availability of that technology until the latest research comes along to take us away on a voyage of new discovery (i.e. the development of computers which continued on a small scale, then were refined and marketed to the whole of society, then refined and made less expensive so that every household could afford to own one, and which is now being refined once again by the internet). This simultaneous looking forward and looking back is what makes "The Education" such a prophetic and groundbreaking work, and the reason for its ranking as the number one book of the 20th century by the Modern Library.
Rating:
Summary: The cold classic of an unlikeable genius
Review: This is one of the great American books. The scion of one of America's most patrician families tells the story of his education. And his education is the story of his disillusionment with the time and world he comes to live in, and his idealization of a long lost medieval world. The Virgin of the medieval Catholic vision which represents for Adams an organic harmony is opposed and contradicted by the Dynamo of his own world. And that Dynamo is of scientific and technological progress accelerating at such an intense pace that the sense of the world, the center falls apart . And the Adams born to the heart of America's founding elite feels himself increasingly not at home in the world. The majestic tone, the third person narrative, the whole detached way he tells his own story prevents the reader from the most intense kind of sympathy with him. And yet his vision of a world somehow come apart in going too far and too fast in directions we do not understand does speak to us today.
There are of course other aspects of the richness of the work, including the insight into the political worlds of the Washington of his time.
But there is too a sense of an elite observer for whom the America of successive waves of immigration is not the real America . And there is a sense of Miniver Cheevy child of scorn cursing the day that he was born, of that is the ' old- line aristrocat ' who feel these new and other Americans have stolen his home and place from him.
This is a work which much can be learned , and which certainly has much to be admired in it intellectually. But it is not a work nor is it written by a person , that warms the heart, moves and inspires.
|
