John Kaag, American Philosophy: A Love Story **

 American Philosophy is a memoir and a survey of Harvard-based philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the midst of an existential crisis, the author stumbles upon the personal library of William Ernest Hocking, whose contents bring him solace and turn his life around.

The subject matter is off great interest to me: William James, links between American pragmatism and German idealism, the purpose of living, bibliophilia, beautiful libraries tucked into the New Hampshire woods.

The building was constructed of rough-hewn, multihued granite... From the outside I was able to make out the skylights in the roof, which probably filled the space with glorious reading light. ... It was one large room, partitioned into different working nooks by walnut built-ins... To my right and left, at opposite ends of the building, were two large marble fireplaces. ... Oriental rugs, mismatched and nearly worn through, covered the library's wide oak floorboards. The first-generation Stickley rocking chairs -- with their solid walnut slats and musty horsehair seats -- looked as if they hadn't held a visitor for years.

But man oh man, is Kaag a terrible storyteller! He can't convey a clear line of thought or action. On the first page, for example:

[Holden Chapel] was a place I became intimate with in the spring of 2008. I'd spent months scouring Harvard for the origins of American philosophy. ... The aisles at Widener Library, just steps from Holden, are altogether fifty miles long. In the autumn of that year, I'd walked their entire length. ... Still nothing. It was only November. ... But then, on an evening in the spring of 2008, I gave up.

Spring, then autumn and November, then back to the same spring? Just the first of many times Kaag jumbles together thoughts from before and after and now. He also builds paragraphs that drift randomly from descriptions of a philosopher's thought to incidents from that philosopher's personal life to Kaag's personal life. There are lots of interesting tidbits in the book, but it's not clear Kaag knows what to make of them. His ultimate conclusion -- that the great generation of American pragmatists cared deeply about how philosophy addresses the meaning of life and how they resisted the professionalization of philosophy -- is rather trivial.