Off the Top of My Head
July 9. Hot, humid, but still pleasant enough out back, where we have a protective layer of foliage. That drops the temperature maybe ten degrees. Of course, that also means loud birds and squirrels scampering overhead. So frayed nerves replace hot/humid. Life in the big city.
Humbled
I like to think of myself as well read (doctorate in English, strong liberal arts background, always had a book or some reading material at hand, even in bed at night where I contend I ruined my eyes by reading by the light of a 40-watt bulb in the hallway) regular visitor to the library (first card when I was six) and on and on. Reading is the story of my life–I have no idea how many books, magazines or cereal boxes I've read. There are 17 books in my to read
stack, with maybe another six in my e-books folder
Turns out I may not be as well-read as I thought. I was browsing an e-book site (not like browsing in the library but still something) looking for Seneca's Letters (don't ask) when I came upon the Harvard Classics at a very attractive price. I mean, a buck or two for a five-foot shelf of books?
What's not to like? All 71 volumes, all 36,500 pages, over 400 authors, curated by Charles Eliot, a noted scholar of the day and President of Harvard.
So why? When the series started in 1909, America was still an immigrant nation, and there was a great desire for upward mobility. One of the ways to achieve that was through education. Most people finished school in the eighth grade, and there was a great push on to build high schools and encourage attendance. College was for scholars, professionals (doctor/lawyer/engineer) and farmers. But education was encouraged as a life-long activity, and to be well-educated and cultured one should be familiar with the great minds of the past.
So that's why my aunt had a copy of the Harvard Classics (the fiction/literature part), which she insisted be passed on to me when she died. They're very impressive sitting there on the shelf (see picture), but I've never looked at the paper copies–they're the type of book that you don't want to read because you're afraid something bad will happen, like a cracked spine or torn page. God forbid you might want to make a note in the margin. I don't know if Aunt Mary ever read them either, but they were there as a sign of culture and education.
I suspect that in a lot of homes, the Harvard Classics sat next to a set of encyclopedias, another sign of culture and learning. Since the Harvard Classics were published by Collier's, a leading encyclopedia publisher who sold the encyclopedias door to door, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't the way the Classics were sold also.
The days of scholars being able to establish a canon of common works we all should know are long gone. The last gasp was E.D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, published in 1987. The book was met with a storm of criticism saying that the whole concept of cultural literacy excluded non-European, non-white, non-male voices, and gave precedence to DWEEMS, or dead white educated European males. Some people didn't question the idea of a common knowledge, but did have questions about what Hirsch saw as cultural touchstones (some baseball references but few if any football references). There are people who still push for a common or core curriculum, but their voices are muted and the debate has moved into academic circles.
Anyway, back to the humbling. When I skimmed the table of contents, I realized that, for all my reading and learning, there were a lot (42) of authors I hadn't read (I counted only authors where I had read nothing at all, but books not in the HC {for example, I have read Henry James, just not Portrait of a Lady]), and others I had never heard of (24). So I am not educated, or even particularly culturally literate, according to the HC.
So now what? Do I start frantically rushing through the HC, focusing on all the people I haven't read, or just accept that I am a boor? How did this happen?
I started looking at my reading life. Most of the books I read, especially on my own, were American and British fiction post Civil War, and that was my area of concentration in college. Obviously most of what I read could not be in a book series published in 1909, with a great emphasis on the classic-classics of Greek and Roman philosophy. A lot of my reading has tended toward the contemporary, that is, the authors aren't dead yet, and includes categories like motivation and creativity, not represented in the HC. And if you're going contemporary, you have to contend with over 80,000 books published in the United States alone last year, another reading goal I'm not going to reach. So I'm going to dip into the classics as I feel inclined, or need to find out some information (remember Seneca?). Mostly, I'll carry on plowing through the books to read
stack, and adding to it as needed. So still staying the course.
If you'll excuse me, I have to go to the library to pick up a book that I put a hold on before the lockdown. The library is a little bit open, which I guess is good news. The book is an entertainment
and will never be in a revised or updated Harvard Classics, or on any list, except maybe a best-seller list.
Don't judge me!
Speaking of Libraries
I went to the library to pick up a hold I placed before the COVID Carnival began. So the good news is the libraries are sort of open (the lobbies). It's a start, but the gatekeeper librarians are out in force.
Also, please update the number 17 in the wanna-read
stack reference above to 18. top
