The last month has seen a flurry of videos and tweets on what it means to be an American, with the usual political sniping, but no one has mentioned the most fundamental aspect of our creation and history: reading. No other world power was ever founded by, and for, such a highly literate population, on the idea that the common man could and must read and evaluate complex ideas in town halls, in churches, on juries and in judging the affairs of their country.
Aztec, Muslim, Chinese, Bantu and many other empires had armies and slaves, but none had small towns where everyone read the newspaper, or bookstores or coffee shops where everyone gathered to debate the latest book. The European Empires – Britain, France, 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 were the ones that most often made the voyage.
Even in the middle of a dangerous wilderness, colonists 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.
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.’”(1)
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.” (2) 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. (3)
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 very few Americans in the 1700s or 1800s killed Native Americans or owned slaves; such things were done by a miniscule percentage of the population. Or that Europeans committed a fraction of the atrocities of the Muslim slavers of that age, or of the Aztecs, or almost any other civilisation; such things were universal then, and that progress wasn't going to begin in an already-perfect society. Or 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.
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. Medieval Christian clergy were trained in these skills, and 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-20th 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.
In the mid-20th century, though, as modern Hollywood culture slashed through our real culture like a Mongol horde, references to classical literature 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, perhaps half an hour every morning before you've looked at a phone. If you have to, start with material that was once considered for children, like the McGuffey Readers of the 1800s. Work your way up to Robert Louis Stevenson and G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. Read a half hour every morning – I’ll do it too – and we’ll work our way back to the level of Revolutionary-era Americans again.
Today is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and of course we can enjoy all the usual celebrations and barbecues. What I’d like to see everyone do, though, is to resolve that this will not just be a day for flags and explosions, but a new beginning for everyone reading this: that we will become a nation of readers again.
1 - Common Sense
2 - Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, Chapter XIII
3 - The Political Writings of Richard Cobden p. 90
No comments:
Post a Comment