The Penguin Scholar

Culture has broadened and flattened. If you were a dramatist, you might say the Internet is the death of the age of depth. But what became the Internet is the capstone; the real pyramid has been a drive to publication - a commercial will to found a reading public that spends money. But that stuff has a remarkable dessicatory quality; it sucks dry the giblets and leaves the bone. Hence an affecting similarity between the image of a casual reader of "the classics", and the Paleontologist.

Specifics: a body can come home after work, pick up a Penguin classic, and read, in a fairly good selection of translations, any tradition he pleases. Moreover, these things lie in bookstores ready to ambush him. While his right hand is massaging the Princesse de Cleves, his left has found the spine of Fear and Trembling, while his feet are already making contact with Cao Xueqin near the end of the row.

Most everybody can read these things. They are there to be read, and moreover, are in normal English. This does not disvalue learning a language, but it does mean that now more than ever a man can "get at" the significant wisdoms of the Earth via English. Only the specialist need learn a foreign language. If we do learn them, it's to speak them. Reading a work of literature "in the original" is a fetishistical notion that blurrs the easiness of the actual deed. Literary English is the best preparation for any other literary language; as is usual, they are more akin to each other than to the dialect.

This state of easy literacy likens us almost to monolingualism. The culture of Confucius and Homer was monolingual. Or rather, was more focused on interal dialect and accent over completely barbarous tongues. The culture of Jefferson and Voltaire, and of data hungry Europe and America in the early 20th century, by contrast, was polylingual.

On the list

"We read, we read" they say "evER-y-day!"

Say my gen., who've time for novels

.................but little for poetry.

The denser the text, shorter the wordcount;

there's not much in a few pages

.................to brag about.

Of indecorous Villon, pushy Catullus, and steady John Donne

big-hearted Du Fu, muck-loving Basho, or even whimpering Novalis

.................they'll have little or none.

Short and steep; long and casual;

That people go where others lead

.................Is it so unusual?

Notes toward another Librarianship

Introductory Serious Question on Librarianship

Can the “ship” be turned to the establishing of the people? Is there anything humane left in the profession?

All I mean to suggest by these notes is first of all that the current way of doing librarianship is not conducive to culture, civilization, charity, or anything beyond what exchanges used to occur at the video rental counter. Second, I look over alternatives - notes to be considered, and if there might be anything in them, tried out at convenience.

Information Age?

We are told by experts that at some point in the 90's the ages switched, from industrial or post-industrial, to information. Hesiod might wonder. We are less informed as to how to stand up straight and feed ourselves - who's to speak of culture in the Information Age?

Information is now "immeditaley accessible". And what has it been before now? What were we up to before we had our magic mirrors on the wall? If a man wanted to be informed back then...Would he not have to trudge through hail and ice, civil war, and repressive bureaucracy all the way to library? And before that - read his Bible, hear his priest, poke a stick at an apple!

What does this magic substance do, our "information"? I can now know that a man in Australia is as wicked as my neighbour or myself; can glean very little else...

Let us be honest with ourselves. We have nothing new under the sun. We are simply all the more susceptible to distraction. Whatever age this is, who will contradict the Viscount St. Alban:

"Reading maketh a full man."

ABCs

I am afraid for literacy today; not afraid for its extinction (would that not be a blessing?) but rather for its dissemination over too wide an area. Letters! Our all-healing moly - have we not diluted it, reduced its god-confouding potency to watery alphabet soup? Most people can pick out phrases and sentences; some few notice words; who is left that can nail down proper definitions? We have dictionaries, etymologies, and philological discussion - but who reads them? We have museums, libraries, concert halls - to assuage the cultural guilt of the many, but to nourish only the very few. Perhaps this must always be. I for one would like to help those few - or however MANY - by preserving the strength of their heritage, by slowing down its decline, and by making it easier for them to communicate with themselves and eternity.

This means, above all, cultivating disdain.

The decay of letters is called cliché, the process by which this occurs, stereotype. This is a natural process; when the road is not well built, the ice and sun contract it, shatter it, and the dandelions grow in the cracks. I define as "natural" those patterns which attend the passivity of human action. If you fail to see how detrimental the decay of definitions is to civilization, I suggest you run a favourite painting, first through a photocopier, and then, taking that copy, scan it, print it, then, fax it, and so on, until the strength of the image is blurred over to oblivion. Try listening to an old record of Bach over the phone...

Those of you who think yourselves to be post-modern, de-centred, de-constructed etc., will ask me about the "essence" of definition, and proceed to pick at the target like a turkey-vulture at roadkill. There is nothing so helpful to an old building as when its landlord has sounded out its wobbly points, essential faults, and the like, and is constantly aware of them. This does NOT mean evicting all the tenants for a loose tap. I take Derrida at his word when he spoke of the healthy, strengthening effects of deconstructive thinking. It is a method for making better, sounding out faults, and not an excuse out of the afternoon's chores.

We are being duped. Our books are mouldering in the meanwhile. What do you intend to do about it? Put aside your information-ages, as-technology's, your sweeping e-reader vistas and digital wonderland's- and take one deep thought - how are we best to get at our books today?

Principles?

Where are our organizational principles? The current is a step lazier than "laissez-faire", might even be called "lazy faire" - even if he didn't want it let alone, he is to lazy himself to do anything about it. If we have to nail down the modern principle, insofar as any organization is really going on? A vague sense of direction between the Scylla of public fads and the Charybdis of financial viability. We are far from the Phaeachians.

Method?

Proposed method for digital materials: our first step is to re-claim the conception of digital dissemniation from the bores. The current cliché must be overturned.

The goal: catalogue and metadata as DIGEST, as the TELOS of the primary library materials - the TRUE goal of digitization - the readable catalogue. Or if you like, the well-crafted tool. (The well implies the aesthetic value of handicraft and its resurgence among the petty bourgeois).

What it ain't

Textbooks are the scam of the century. They are almost sincere DaDaism. I mean, the dictatorship of format, font, and graph, with a cream filling.

Wikipedia isn't it - isn't even the front lawn. Plot summaries and accumulated prejudice do not a good 'reading' make.

Academic/annotated bibliographies, “further reading” lists etc. are the unread fine-print - and what's more, usually of better quality than the main show (ie monograph). Even still, composed to be an after-thought, a follow up, rather than a proglomena - it shows in the care! Compilation for someone you take to be an expert is far different than a guide for the beginner.

Introductory books of the “Dummies” specie are to be avoided at all costs, to say nothing of Cole's Notes. They ignore everything important and give you names and dates. If you think any substance can cling to these bones, be forewarned that they have been thoroughly bleached and sterilized.

All of these might be useful as negatives - what they deal with is he dross, avoid at all costs etc. This is what accumulates when the writer is unprepared in reading.

Agassiz and the fish

"A post-graduate student equipped with honors and diplomas went to Agassiz to receive the final and finishing touches. The great man offered him a small fish and told him to describe it.

Post-Graduate Student: 'That's only a sunfish.'

Agassiz: 'I know that. Write a description of it.'

After a few minutes the student returned with the description of the Ichthus Heliodiplodokus, or whatever term is used to conceal the common sunfish from vulgar knowledge, family of Heliichtherinkus, etc., as found in textbooks of the subject.

Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish.

The student produced a four-page essay. Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it.

By this method science has arisen, not on the narrow edge of medieval logic suspended in a vacuum."

Roots and branches

You cannot truly have organized the books until the catalogue is readable - real cataloguing doesn't give superficial access - real access comes with acclimitaztion and mastery of the books themselves. To be readable...This means to go from cover to cover, with some sort of profit.

王何必曰利？

“Why must your majesty use that word 'profit' ?”

The librarian must KNOW his books - must be a summarizer.

The danger of him not? And offering what he himself doesn't properly own? Nobody can give another what he does not have himself - what he thinks to have done is irrelevant when the patron comes out muddled.

The only person who can do this has been educated in a real sense. Has been taught to read from Bacon:

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things."

The end of reference is not to refer reader to a cheap snack:

"The medical man tells us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. It is very true; and flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all — are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries and confectioneries for their real appetite, of which even they are not destitute, though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after solid nutritive food?"

The Mission

How to introduce a non-reading public to books? Summarize the books, give them the books in pill form, then, if the cure takes effect, they will look up the references and go back for more themselves.

The purpose of the librarian is to tantalize.

Thus the aphorisitic and well written catalogue entry will stick in the throat like a ball of molten lead. Cannot be thrown up or swallowed, but will stick.

There is a chain, tying in librarians, the "information need of the patron", all the way to the digests of the Confucian school and the middle ages - even to Thoreau, who read his Iliad while sitting on a pumpkin.

Librarianship as economy above all - the one maxim I agree with in current scholarship. Save the reader time.

In an age of museums, where the culture is stored away so that it need not be confronted, the librarian has a poetic function.

Composition by compilation and comment and digital presentation...

Regularity and format of metadata into "stanzas"...The fugue and the sonnet already relate to the practice of cataloguing as it currently exists.

You can infer from the above that I do not reccomend ordering as alphabetical, subject, date...Rather, by idiogrammatic and creative connotation. Interpretative bibliography.

Librarians, a breed of people who can guide one through the periplum of culture with bibliographic methods, avoiding dangers, adapting lists to the susceptibilities of characters.

Not a random pathological rant like Burton, but a crafted course or digest. Peter Lombard. Pedagaogues but not pedants

Poverty in style (as opposed to poverty OF style) in an editor is good. The mission proves aesthetics are not so far from responsible public thought.

They will not be so quick to send people away to what they do not understand. They will be SURE of themselves, and, despite their limitations, the librarian will KNOW what he reccomends at least. Rather than all fuzzy - limited, but sure.

The use of "subjective hierarchy" based on one's own personality and reading - what shades of culture and history could be revealed...

Quick Order

“It is much easier to "sit pretty", keep one's mouth shut or speak of any author as a whole or apply general statements to a whole book, than to risk picking out the good and the bad, the brilliant and the dull—which latter IS the critic's job, especially in an age when the plenum of books and knowledge is increasing. There is more to choose FROM, and the best 100 books or the best 100,000 or million pages DOES not remain the same 100,000 or million from one age or decade to another.”

-E.P.

"It is by the Odes that the mind is aroused. It is by the Rules of Propriety that the character is established. It is from Music that the finish is received."

-Kung