From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: Self-knowledge of bookstore workers
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 18:51:36 GMT

Earlier this month Fiona Webster proposed a thread for post-holiday
consideration. I resurrect it now. Since some time has gone by I have
reproduced most of Fiona's original article and added my comment at
the bottom.
 
In article <1992Dec17.191623.24770@grebyn.com> fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster) writes:
				
				>...I'm still intrigued by the
>whole notion of patterns of ignorance that are "curious" (that
>was my word--not "appalling").  Maybe we can do that thread some
>other time--I'm sure everyone has packages to mail and other things
>to do of more pressing importance.  Nonetheless, what struck
>me about the bookstore owner I mentioned--and we needn't restrict
>this line of thought to bookstore owners/factoti either--was the
>way her areas of ignorance were so widely scattered across the
>map.  My impression is, most educated people have large identifia-
>ble areas of ignorance--e.g., one of mine is the history of politics,
>wars, and potentates--in which the separate items of ignorance
>cluster together.  No one should be surprised to find, for example,
>that I don't know what country Ruler X belongs to, what dates corres-
>pond to the birth of parliamentary democracies, and so on.  Even if I
>didn't know who Henry the VIIIth was, you might be astonished, but
>it would still fit in with the general scheme.  But what of those
>interesting, curious, perhaps even admirable, souls whose patterns
>of ignorance are more like small isolated spots here and there, rather
>than one all-encompassing blob?  That's what intrigued me about the
>women who knew of neither "Hellraiser," nor Katherine Anne Porter,
>nor Joe McGinnis' _Fatal_Vision_.

	First of all, I am reminded of a *book*, specifically one of
David Lodge's (either *Small World* or *Changing Places*) where the
academics play "humiliation" - the basic idea being to admit to books
important to your field of study that you have never read. The punch
line coming when the Shakespeare scholar (Philip Swallow?) blurts out
that he's never read *Hamlet*. On the Henri Matisse thread I confessed
to an ignorance of art history but I sense that fact functions as a
part of Fiona's "general scheme." I am particularly intrigued by
Fiona's description of "those interesting, curious, perhaps even
admirable, souls whose patterns of ignorance are more like small
isolated spots ..."  I have met souls widely read and naturally
inquisitive, who have absolutely no idea about x or y. There are times
when I thought such ignorance abhorrent and at other times admirable.
And it's the admirable part that interests me. I don't exactly know
why but in our information-chaos-society I find it refreshing that somone 
will just not know about something and not be perturbed about it. Certainly
there are irritating individuals who will proudly proclaim their
ignorance about an artist, genre, or event; however, to discover
people who are, I don't know how to say it, modestly ignorant perhaps,
these people are interesting. OK, too long a post - what do others
think?

Keith

Oh, and Fiona will have to explain who the "factoti" are.


--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books