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The Literary Foundations of America

This summer has seen a flurry of videos and tweets on what sets the USA apart from other countries, with the usual political sniping and grandstanding, but no one has mentioned the most remarkable and fundamental aspect of American history: it was founded as a nation of avid readers. 

No other world power was ever founded by, and for, such a highly literate population, on the idea that the common citizen could and must read and evaluate complex ideas in town halls, on juries and in judging the affairs of their country.

Aztec, Muslim, Chinese, Bantu and many other empires had armies and lands, but none had small towns where everyone read the newspaper, or bookstores or coffee shops where everyone gathered to debate the latest book. European Empires like Britain, France and Spain began in the Dark Ages  -- but developed a literate culture eventually, and when they found the New World, it was passionately literate sects like the Puritans that most often made the voyage.

Even in the middle of a dangerous wilderness, settlers quickly built printing presses, libraries and colleges; just 16 years after the first Puritans stepped off the Mayflower and 15 years after they almost died of starvation, they founded Harvard University. Even with a less-literate Native population and a constant influx of new and sometimes illiterate immigrants, colonial America still had a literacy rate upwards of 90 percent by the American Revolution. And Natives and slaves were more literate than people imagine; in 1764 explorer Thomas Morris, venturing into what is now Illinois and thinking that the Native tribes had never met an English speaker before, instead met a local chief and was presented with a volume of Shakespeare’s plays. (1)

Booksellers and printers did a brisk business in every city and town of colonial America, coffee-shops hosted vibrant debates on all manner of subjects, and wandering preachers paid their way through the countryside by selling books to rural homesteaders. They often read multiple languages as well, many books sold were in Ancient Greek and Latin, and newspapers were shipped in from various European countries – months late, of course, but still prized – in their native languages.

Thomas Paine’s book Common Sense sold half a million copies in its first year, reaching 20 percent of the population – only the Harry Potter books come close today. And despite its homespun title, its long and complex sentences, subtle philosophical distinctions and references to John Milton and classical literature flummox many a college student today. Take this sample paragraph:

“It is repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things to all examples from former ages, to suppose, that this continent can longer remain subject to any external power. The most sanguine in Britain does not think so. The utmost stretch of human wisdom cannot, at this time, compass a plan short of separation, which can promise the continent even a year’s security. Reconciliation is now a fallacious dream. Nature hath deserted the connexion, and Art cannot supply her place. For, as Milton wisely expresses, ‘never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.’”(2)

By 1831, French author Alexis de Toqueville wrote that “there is hardly a pioneer’s hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember that I read the feudal play of Henry V for the first time in a loghouse.” (3) English politician Richard Cobden, who toured the USA in 1835, estimated that there was six times more newspaper reading in the young America than in his own country – more than 1,200 newspapers publishing 90 million copies, in a country that had only 17 million inhabitants, implying that every adult read perhaps eight newspapers a day. (4)

When I point this out to people today, most retort, “If they were so much better than we are, how could they oppress Native Americans? How could they keep slaves?” One could answer in a number of different ways; for example, that we don’t need slaves, as we use fossil fuels, and leave the burden to our grandchildren. Or that we contribute to atrocities as well, but through corporations and governments that commit them far away on our behalf, leaving us with the illusion of moral superiority. The best answer, though, might be: Why do you think those things ended?

Paine’s writings, and many less famous texts, galvanised a population of fence-sitters to join the Revolution; nothing like this would have happened if Americans were not a people who would buy and read such a book enthusiastically and follow its sophisticated arguments. Lincoln spoke against slavery in masterful speeches, with extended sentences, expansive vocabulary and logical constructions. They were also, obviously, spoken, so his audience had to follow them by ear in real time – sometimes a long time, as the Lincoln-Douglas debates lasted for three hours, with each speaker lasting up to 90 minutes at a stretch, all to an audience of frontier farmers. Suffragettes gave extended, sophisticated arguments to crowds in their day, quoting Plato and Tacitus, and Martin Luther King quoted Ovid and St. Augustine. 

All these people had been introduced to a breadth of ideas by the Greek and Roman classics, from Aristotle to Xenophon, all able to reference the same cultural standards. Most of the writers we remember for their original works – Alexander Pope or John Dryden, for example – actually put most of their time and energy into magnificent translations of Greek and Roman classics. It was for this reason that by 1600 Shakespeare could write about Coriolanus or Titus Andronicus, confident that the audience would understand who these people were and would care.

A classical education involved more than merely reading ancient texts: it meant learning to think critically and debate logically, in the way pioneered by the Greeks. The legal, political and scientific infrastructures of the West continue to assume such training. It is no coincidence that much of our legal and scientific terminology comes from Greek and Latin. Obligations like jury duty and voting assume that ordinary citizens have an ability to assess logical arguments; science assumes the ability to test theories. 

Once I began to read Greek and Roman classics as an adult, I suddenly understood many of the paintings in art galleries and the writings of Jefferson or Lincoln, as most of them reference Greek and Roman works. I used to think the famous sculpture of George Washington in a Roman toga was a bit of pretentious glorification; now I understand, as Americans at the time surely did, that it was the opposite. It portrayed Washington as Cincinnatus, the farmer who did his duty to his country and then peacefully stepped away from unlimited power. As my daughter put it after reading Tolkien, “he put down the Ring.”

Even into the mid-20^th century American novels, black-and-white films, newspaper articles, popular songs and even children’s rhymes referenced Horatius or Croesus or the Gospels, assuming everyone would understand the reference. When I casually read books or magazine articles written a  mere few generations ago, written not for professors but for regular mailmen, farmhands or construction workers, I’m struck by how liberally they are peppered with references to the classics, lost on anyone reading today.

People had a literate culture not because they went to school for more years than we do – many children only went to formal school for a few years -- but because they read almost constantly, at home and at work, to themselves and each other. They had a democracy not because a document said so, but because they debated what they had read in coffee shops and town halls and churches. Our institutions – science, local government, jury trials – all depend on the assumption that we are still a people who can do this .. and until recently, we were. Only in recent decades have we abandoned this most fundamental characteristic of Americana, and without it our institutions remain only in name.  

As recently as 1940 literacy stood at 96 percent for white Americans and 80 percent for black Americans, and those were not just people who could read but did. Older Americans can still remember a time when people read books and newspapers on the bus, on the train, waiting for the dentist. Nor were these celebrity gossip magazines or children’s books; the runaway best-seller of 1927 was Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. Over the last century, however, this literate culture bled out with astonishing swiftness – all the more because so few have ever remarked on it. Not only do we no longer know any of the things for centuries we knew as a people, but we no longer know that we once knew them.

If you’re like many people I know, you might be surprised how much phones and television have eroded your attention span, how your very brain isn’t responding to your will the way it used to. Retrain it by reading a bit each day – not scanning text as screens train us to do, but actual reading. Do it for perhaps half an hour every morning before you've looked at a phone or a screen -- if you have to, start with material for children and work your way up.

On the Fourth we all enjoyed the usual barbecues and explosions, and that’s fine. Our test as a nation depends on what we do next, and I’d like us all resolve that we will rise above the sniping of the moment, and transform our country one person at a time, starting with ourselves … that we will become a nation of readers again.

 

1 – “Let Him Be Caesar!,” London Review of Books, Vol. 29 No. 15 · 2 August 2007

2 -  Common Sense

3 - Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, Chapter XIII

4 - The Political Writings of Richard Cobden p. 90

 

 

 

Whitewashing

Our homes might be made of brick and lumber, our cars of metal and plastic, but their surfaces – the part we see – are usually paint. Their colours, though, hold an alarming stew of ingredients -- benzene, tricholoroethylene, formaldehyde, phenol, titanium oxide and many others – all of which flake off over time but never, of course, truly leave us. That’s not even counting the lead, now long banned from new paint, that has been flaking off old buildings into our water, soil and blood for generations.

So when our chicken coop needed some brightening, we took the old-fashioned route and whitewashed. Whitewashing was used on buildings here in Ireland into the late 20^th century, only recently replaced by more dubious alternatives. Whitewash can consist of as little as two one-syllable ingredients – lime and water – that can be mixed and prepared with almost no energy in a few minutes. It is non-toxic enough that animals can actually lick it off with few or no ill effects, but anti-septic enough to discourage bacteria in the coop or dairy.

Lime refers not to the fruit or unrelated tree, but to a product made from burning limestone in a kiln. Limestone is mainly coral and shells of long-extinct sea creatures, squeezed over aeons into a solid mass of calcium carbonate, or CaCO3.  When burned at 900 degrees C or more it vents carbon dioxide (CO2), leaving behind the volatile calcium oxide (CaO) or “quicklime.” When combined with water – hydrated or “slaked” – it becomes calcium hydroxide or Ca(OH)2, or simply called “lime.”

Humans have been creating lime this way for several thousand years, putting it to many uses; as a mortar for building, as an early form of cement, as an antiseptic ointment for animals or an anti-fungal coating for trees. A bit of lime could help remove hair from hides, sterilise water, to bleach paper, to deter slugs from a garden, or preserve eggs for months.

Irish farmers, though, found it most important to neutralise acid soils and multiply crop production – as much as fourfold, by some contemporary accounts.  Some 40 per cent of the arable land in the world is too acidic for many plants to grow – the more acidic the soil, the more toxic aluminium plants absorb. Lime could be worked into boggy and acid soils to temporarily “sweeten” or neutralise the soil, increasing the fertility many times over.

Its brilliant whiteness was valued in places like Britain and Ireland, islands a thousand miles from the Arctic Circle where the winters grow very dark indeed. Irish cottages were traditionally whitewashed in spring, as the rainy season gave way to the less-rainy season, and again as part of the ritual leading up to Christmas.

After experimenting a bit, we settled on a rather simple recipe: two cups of water for every cup of lime, with a quarter-cup of salt thrown in. It was a particularly thick ratio and flaked off a bit when drying, so next time we might try a thinner combination. Once mixed, the wash can be applied with regular paintbrush strokes – or with my then-nine-year-old’s more Jackson-Pollock-inspired approach. It looks thin and transparent at first, but whitens as it dries. Wear gloves and goggles – lime is only a mildly caustic alkalai, but work with it all day and you’ll get raw hands.   

We also tried mixing milk in as well, recommended by many old books, but found the effect no different, so the extra expense of milk was not justified. Farmers here sometimes added oils – linseed was most popular – to make it more water-proof, or strengthened it with animal hair or cereal husks.

To be sure, whitewash has disadvantages; it is water-soluble, for one thing, so rain washes it away. This presents little problem when the sides are under a slight overhang, like the sides of our coop or most houses, but our hen-boxes receive a constant gusher of water from the roof, and we had to divert the water with a plastic awning or the white coating wouldn’t have lasted long. Even in dry weather, however, whitewash flakes off over time, and powders your clothes when you rub against it. On the other hand, it leaves no permanent stains.

I note that cob houses here – made of a mix of sand, clay and straw, mixed into a plaster that hardens like cement -- were whitewashed, and wondered how much of that was for decoration, and how much was as an early-warning system. Cob itself slowly erodes when exposed to water, and whitewash creates a first line of defence and points out vulnerable areas.

It is also, almost inevitably, white, except in the west of Ireland some farmers painted their houses pink by mixing pig’s blood with the wash. The fact that lime was cheap and easy, while coloured paints were expensive, probably accounts for the classic look of Irish homes -- clean white exteriors accented by brilliantly-coloured doors and windows.

Locals here seemed familiar with many vegetable dyes or fabrics -- elderberries for lavender; red cabbage or bramble-berries for blue; nettles for green; St. John’s Wort for magenta and marigolds, calendula, dock root and onion skins for yellow. Or they used clays and minerals -- yellow and red ochre, sienna, umber, cinnabar and iron oxide for reds and browns, copper ore for green paints, lampblack or charcoal for blacks and greys. Wherever you live, your plants and soil probably have their own palette of all-natural colours, which you can use at least as well as the Neanderthals who painted long-extinct animals on cave walls.