One-of-a-kind mind

By Colleen Carroll
Of The Post-Dispatch

* He's been called "one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century" and likened to "a walking encyclopedia." The Rev. Walter J. Ong, 89, just loves to learn. "I'll be interested in anything that lives," he says.

The Rev. Walter J. Ong, Jesuit priest and world-renowned scholar, shuffled past a television set in his Jesuit Hall home.

Between discourses on the history of each person, painting and plant that he passed, the 89-year-old stopped and turned his frail frame toward the TV screen, where a slick soap opera actor was thundering his lines. Ong grinned and tapped his cane.

"That's secondary orality," he said before resuming his shuffle, an overstuffed file of his latest theses tucked under his arm.

Ong, whom some scholars consider one of the greatest thinkers of his time, still loves to teach, talk and tout his celebrated ideas about communication and culture from his home on the corner of Lindell and Grand boulevards in St. Louis. But perhaps most tellingly, Ong still loves to learn. At an age when many of his surviving contemporaries have withdrawn from the larger world, he pays keen attention to his physical surroundings and bubbles with enthusiasm about his new discoveries.

"I'll be interested in anything that lives," said Ong, a veteran fly fisher, bird-watcher and plant tender.

During an interview at Jesuit Hall last week, the former St. Louis University humanities professor expounded on everything from the epistemological implications of the Internet to his burgeoning interest in jazz. But when asked about his reputation as a pathfinding critical theorist, his brow furrowed.

"I don't think I'm a theorist," Ong said, his voice growing louder as it does when he makes a key point. "I just like to see how things are and try to tell somebody about it."

A scholar for all disciplines

The world has been listening to Ong for the better part of 60 years. His insights into human consciousness and culture have captivated fellow scholars and shattered the boundaries of individual academic disciplines, crossing from language and literature into religious studies, sociobiology and psychiatry.

Ong, a native of Kansas City and a graduate of the city's Rockhurst University, entered the Society of Jesus in Florissant in 1935. At St. Louis University, he earned a graduate degree in English and studied under media guru Marshall McLuhan. He also earned licentiates there in philosophy and sacred theology. After his ordination as a Jesuit priest in 1946, Ong began studies for a doctoral degree in English at Harvard and eventually moved to Europe, where he lived in the same Jesuit community as priest and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Ong returned to St. Louis University in 1954, and spent more than three decades teaching and researching there. His work spilled into so many disciplines that the school finally dubbed him, simply, "University Professor of Humanities" in 1984. St. Louis University later established a humanities chair and student award in honor of Ong, who taught his last course in 1991.

Oral vs. literate cultures

Central to Ong's theories are the distinctions he draws between oral and literate cultures. Ong traces communication from its oral roots to its reliance on literacy in modern times to its postmodern dependence on radio, television and the Internet, which mediate what Ong calls "secondary orality." He argues that tools from the pen to the printing press to the computer keyboard have changed not only how we live but also how we think.

So just as people in an oral culture value the communal memories that their elders possess, people in a literate culture focus on the individualistic introspection and abstract thought made possible by literacy. And people in today's visually stimulated, technology saturated culture look at paintings while unconsciously comparing them with photos, read novels while imagining video clips in their minds and surf the Web where their exterior and interior -- or virtual -- worlds blur together.

Many academics credit Ong with laying the foundation for our understanding of modern media culture through his meticulous scholarship. He was the only priest ever to be president of the Modern Language Association, a two-time Guggenheim Fellow, a member of a White House Task Force on Education under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and a recipient of numerous honorary doctorate degrees, lecture series appointments and visiting professorships from the world's top universities.

Testimonials to his intellect

"He'll definitely be remembered as one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century," said Lance Strate, an associate professor in communication and media studies at Fordham University in New York. Ong's work "is yet to really have its full impact. He's somebody whose intellectual stature will be much larger by the end of the century."

Strate wrote the foreword for a new collection of Ong's work, which is scheduled for release this spring by Hampton Press. "An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry" contains 28 selections edited by scholars Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. The collection will give readers yet another look at Ong, whose 22 books have been translated into as many as 12 languages, as in the case of his most widely known work, "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word."

Farrell, who wrote a book about Ong in 2000, "Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication," said most people read Ong's work selectively.

"If you want to see what this guy is doing, you're going to have to look at the whole picture," said Farrell, a former Ong student who sees strong ties between Ong's academic work and his identity as Jesuit priest.

"He clearly sees the work he does as a scholar as feeding out of that vocation."

Vincent Casaregola, an associate professor of English at St. Louis University, agrees.

"It's all driven by the same kind of fundamental faith and concern for others, and by a real sense of Christian love."

Casaregola has been studying Ong's work for more than two decades, but when he finally met Ong in 1991, he gained new insights into Ong's theories. Casaregola now sees them as the work of a man who is endlessly curious about God's creation. Whether gazing at unusual birds or teaching plant names to Casaregola's 4-year-old daughter, Ong is intensely interested in the physical world -- a quality that distinguishes him from strictly cerebral scholars.

"He has this childlike awe with the things that God has made," said Casaregola, whose daughter was baptized by Ong. "He's still like the child telling you about the bird he sees."

It's all linked to God

Among colleagues and friends, Ong has built a reputation for combining scholarly precision with attention to the real world of language and culture. For Ong, it seems, heart and mind, soul and body are inextricably linked to each other -- and to God.

"God created the evolving world and it's still evolving," said Ong, who said he loves such hobbies as bird-watching because they "connect me to the world I'm physically in."

Critics of Ong have rejected the rigid distinction between oral and literate cultures drawn by Ong and his students, as well as his bold claim that tools such as the Internet reshape human consciousness. But his reputation as a kindly priest, as well as a scrupulous scholar, is widely acknowledged. And his passion for sharing his wisdom -- by dominating conversations with his new findings, doling out copies of his bibliography, writing letters to legions of pen pals, and regaling former colleagues at English department parties with fact-laden lectures on every topic under the sun -- is legendary.

"He's known for lively conversations," said the Rev. John Kavanaugh, a fellow Jesuit and St. Louis University philosophy professor. "It's like a walking encyclopedia sometimes. But the best is when he talks to you as a friend."

In Jesuit Hall one afternoon last month, fellow Jesuit and St. Francis Xavier (College) Church pastor the Rev. Len Kraus passed by Ong, who was polishing off a second helping of strawberry banana frozen yogurt.

"He's one of the greatest minds in the world," Kraus said. "Also one of the greatest people in the world."

Ong's eyes crinkled into a smile behind his round glasses, a hint of pink yogurt still lingering on his lips. When asked what he thinks about his scholastic disciples and the burgeoning academic industry that has sprung up around his work, Ong shrugged.

"I don't think about those things."

So what does he think about?

"Just what I'm doing now," Ong said, "talking to people."

CULTURAL SCHOLAR\Reporter Colleen Carroll: \E-mail: ccarroll@post-dispatch.com