Culture, Big Package

By 1943, practically everybody had heard about the Great Books, but hardly anybody seemed to be reading them. Only 167 adults had signed up for the study groups started by the University of Chicago. Then in 1947 Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins invited Businessman Lynn A. Williams Jr. to try selling culture to the public as he had sold radios and auto parts (TIME, June 16, 1947). Last week President Williams reported that his non-profit Great Books Foundation had signed up 50,000 customers in 300 cities.

Chicago alone could boast 7,000 Great

Books lovers. It had obviously become--in the words of the University of Chicago philosopher, Professor Mortimer J. Adler --"the cultural center of the. West." To spread the tidings, persuasive Lynn Williams persuaded Chicago's Mayor Martin H. Kennelly to proclaim a Great Books Week. Kennelly agreed: "I think Chicago should be known as something besides the 'hog butcher for the world.' "*

About 750 people filed into a Chicago auditorium last week to hear Lynn Williams read the mayor's proclamation. Then Adler recited an 8,000-word catechism for Great Books readers, designed to help them defend the faith against attacks from unbelievers. The gist: "We don't claim we're going to cure the world, or cure flat feet. We do say we're going to do something for the mind."

*Poet Carl Sandburg, author of the sturdy phrase quoted by Mayor Kennelly, is not included among the Great Books authors.

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