Augustine vs. Self-Esteem

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 â??literary industrial complexâ? 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 â??more inwardness to his original audienceâ? than writing alone would do.