Augustine wrote 5 million words that have come down to us, Garry Wills reports with the appropriate tone of astonishment. He notes that in a recently discovered letter, we learn that Augustine dictated some 6,000 lines of text in less than three months. Wills describes the fascinating “literary industrial complex” of late antiquity, still an oral culture, and the many scribes that Augustine kept busy with his massive outpouring. Writing in that period was in the service of oral delivery and this, Wills contends, conveyed “more inwardness to his original audience” than writing alone would do.
Thus Wills opens this brief, beautifully written story of the Confessions themselves, how they have reached us and how they been understood and misunderstood over time. He is a prolific writer who has tackled an extraordinary range of topics. Unfortunately, in recent decades Wills has become a rather shrill partisan in his political writings, casting anathema on those who dare to disagree with his basic liberal-left orientation on nearly all matters.
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