In Plato's Cave

by Alvin Kernan

Book Overview

In this candid and delightful memoir, Alvin Kernan recalls his life as a student, professor, provost, and dean during turbulent decades of change in the hallowed halls of Columbia, Williams, Oxford, Yale, and Princeton. His vividly remembered account is a unique personal story and more---it is also a history of what has been won, and lost, in the culture wars of the second half of the twentieth-century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300082673
• ISBN13: 9780300082678
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Intellectual History at its Best

If anyone wants to know what life was like in the literary world in the second half of the twentieth century, this is the book to read. It makes the intellectual struggles of those years come vividly alive for readers. _In Plato's Cave strikes me and several of my friends, English Professors all, as the best book we have ever read about our profession.

A Life of Literate Enlightenment, Academic Politics

Enjoyed this! Kernan depicts the literary and academic influences of his life in great detail, inspiring one to get a hold of the greats in the Classics and Criticism (again). The book would be of special interest to professors or English scholars, as the phases of Literary criticism over the last part of the 1900's is elaborated (I found this very interesting although I know I still don't understand what existentialism, deconstruction, etc REALLY mean...). One understands how his love for literature and humanity outweigh the Machievallian nature and silly politics inherent in academic institutions.Lastly, the author's way of writing is masterful, as one would expect of a life steeped in the literary tradition.

Death of the Ideal

Kernan's brilliant and tasteful book explores some of the most important issues facing our world today. As we move further and further into the democratic and technological age, the disintegration of basic values such as honesty, integrity, hard work, and fairness are disappearing more and more from our lives. Perhaps most importantly, these values are all but absent from our educational system. Kernan's exploration of the steady decay of meaningful scholarship and academic integrity--in students, faculty, and administration--at some of the world's most important research universities over the past fifty years provides a key for looking at our whole culture and the challenges it faces now and in the years to come. A haunting tale of loss, both personal and public, this book should be read by, and should give pause to, teachers, adminstrators, students, and parents at all levels of education. The decline of academic values affects us, and will continue to affect us, at all levels of society, and in ways that cannot yet be known, but at which Kernan hints with chilling prose and honest, forthright confessions.

What teaching and learning is all about.

This most delicious and passionate description of what teaching and learning is all about is an imagination grabber. I teach in a graduate program and undergraduate program in a California college and I often feel pressured to make the student's feel "good", and "not afraid". Al Kernan should be required reading for all faculty persons who believe that the democratization of the university is what is important instead of its true importance -- using the university as an environment for learning. Al Kernan describes such a university, in which ideas are important, in which disputation is important, and yes, where hierarchy exists and politicization is a deterent to all that is supportive of learning. I applaud him for reminding all of us who teach that we have a moral responsibility to students to make them feel uneasy, to know that learning is tough, and that if they feel too comfortable in the academic, learning environment they are probably skimming the surface. Kudos to Al Kernan for sending this wake up call to all of us.I am a businesswoman, but I also teach, one of those "part-time underpaid" people that colleges and university people like to hire. We are a cheap source of labor. Most of us are passionate about teaching and do so, not for the money, but because we love what we are doing. We are following our "bliss" and for me in particular, it is an opportunity to give back that which my family took, as immigrants, and made their own.

thoughtful and engrossing

Dr. Kernan inter-twines his own memoirs with an informed and astute analysis of what's happened to the teaching of English Literature over the last half-century -- and what's happened to the students one is trying to teach. Funny, witty, and in places bitter, this book is a must for anyone who has ever attempted to teach the humanities to American college students.