Kathryn Kramer, who grew up as a faculty brat on the campus of St. John’s College, the school best known for offering a curriculum based on the Great Books (those deemed by the sages of the ages to be the seminal works of Western culture), here looks back on an upbringing steeped in its assumptions. In the tradition of educational chronicles that runs the gamut from St. Augustine’s Confessions to Alice Kaplan’s French Lessons, Missing History is a kind of revisionist intellectual autobiography. Instead of tracing her progress from a state of sin to a state of grace, the author revisits her school years to figure out how she was indoctrinated into thinking that she should embark upon this classic journey. An idiosyncratic and affectionate book, Missing History is part educational memoir, part meditation upon how our assumptions as to what it means to know form and deform our experience.
218 pages
First edition Fall 2015
ISBN: 978-0-996391-0-6
Kathryn Kramer is the author of the novels A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space, Rattlesnake Farming, and Sweet Water, and co-author of a language textbook, Welcome to Vermont: English for Working and Living. She lives in Vermont and teaches at Middlebury College.