In that famous first chapter of Mimesis, Erich Auerbach does something that usually drives me insane. Introducing the story of Odysseus’ scar from Homer’s Odyssey, Auerbach writes, “Readers of the Odyssey will remember the well-prepared and touching scene in book 19, when….” Six pages later, when he introduces the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac in the Book of Genesis, Auerbach writes, “the story itself begins: everyone knows it….”

When contemporary academics do this kind of thing, make this gesture of knowingness, it drives me crazy, as I said. I want to cry out, no, everyone does not know it, readers will not remember! But in Auerbach’s case, I don’t mind it. Why not?

Because, despite his saying we all know the story, Auerbach always proceeds to narrate the story. He gives you, the reader, the details of the story, its plot, the relevant background. When he then undertakes his analysis, which follows his summary of the plot, we’re all working on the same page. He doesn’t make knowing references, without any support or concreteness. He doesn’t invoke authority to justify his claims. He doesn’t pile up concept upon concept, or context upon context, to get himself out of the work of argument, of demonstrating that what he is saying is indeed true, or at least has a justifiable claim upon our attention and engagement.

So despite his use of the “we,” which a generation of academics has taught us is exclusionary or creates a false idea of readerly consensus and audience, Auerbach actually works, hard, to create that “we.” By setting out his evidence, he invites us to disagree with him, to remove ourselves from that “we” if we have reasons to object to it. Despite our assumptions of the democratic progress we’ve made from the midcentury intellectual/critic to today’s intellectual/critic, the actual style and substance of that midcentury intellectual/critic’s engagement is far more democratic in some ways than that of much of our contemporary world.