John Caron pitching Great Books discussions for 40 years - and counting

For the last 40 years, a group of intellectually curious readers have met together in the Greenwich Library for two hours every month, year-round. Their reading material is the Great Books canon. Senior among them is longtime resident and retired businessman John Caron.

"We just read (Marcel) Proust's Swann's Way," said Caron. It's a very difficult reading with its long sentences; it's an entirely different literary style. There's no story line, no plot, no beginning or end, no answers."

Contributing to his group's discussion of the book, Caron said, was a member who'd read all of Proust and another who'd read the book in its original French. "He said it was more beautiful in French," said Caron. "The French language was more romantic, the English language more concise."

This is the heart of the Great Books Discussion Series: group discussion. "The ideal size is 10 people," said Caron, and the maximum 16. "You get too many people and there's no discussion. It's "shared inquiry." Everybody is analyzing what the author is saying. Everybody sees something different." Particularly intriguing, he said, is the way the discussion always ends -- with a question: "What is the relevance to today of what the author is saying?"

"We first met at night," said Caron. "But we now meet from 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. on the first Thursday of the month." The group meets in the Jewel Room at the Library with readers ranging from young mothers to retired men and women.

As point man for the group, Caron gets "all sorts of calls from people interested in Great Books," he said. "Most people think it's a lecture thing. It's not. You have to put in a lot of effort. You have to read the book and understand it. What is the author trying to say? What is the message?"

Caron shared the group's most recent study book. It contained works by 15 authors listed chronologically, beginning with Plato's Meno and ending with Proust's Swann's Way.

"We read 20th century authors as well," he said."Tim O'Brien, who has written about the Vietnam War, and Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian writer, Herman Hesse and Jean Paul Sartre."

These 20th century authors fall under the Great Books definition, said Caron, "Books that have made history or that cover a subject of perennial importance."

The cost of the Great Book course was $24.95 for the study book, paid to Great Books Foundation. The actual author's works can be taken out of the library he said. The course has been ongoing since it was created by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins in 1930 at the University of Chicago. "It attracts people who are interested in learning," he said.

It's the learning experience that has kept Caron going in the group all these years, along with one or two other original members. "Learning is exciting," he said. "You read things you normally wouldn't read by yourself."

Caron's study book was heavily marked up with notes like "key point" and underlined passages. "If it's an essay I outline it," he said. Members of the group take turns leading the discussion groups. "The leader has more work to do," he said. "He or she asks questions to get the other people talking."

Returning to Proust and Swann's Way, Caron spoke of one woman who balked at reading it. Why, she asked, was it a Great Book? She was told of its new literary style. "For Proust, reality was what he thought," said Caron. "For us reality is what we see and hear."

"When you prejudge a book," he added, "you've got a blind spot."

Caron emphasized that the group us all-inclusive. "We are open to one and all. Others in the group make it interesting. It's a discipline. If they haven't read the book, they can't talk. They only talk about the author's opinion. We're not interested in personal opinions. That would make it cocktail party conversation."

The Great Books Discussion Series will next meet on Thursday, Sept. 2 at the Greenwich Library. The author lineup in this new series includes Euripides, John Keats, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Stuart Mill, D.H. Lawrence, Reinhold Niebuhr, Simone Weil, Eudora Welty and Iris Murdoch. Those interested in attending can contact John Caron at 203-661-2907.