Reading Room Reflections

September 19, 1999

Sitting in the spacious, excellently lighted reading room of the Selby Library the other day, I was reminded of notes I took a few years back when reading IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY, by the English historian J. H. Plumb (published 1973). He wrote of the momentum for knowledge in the late 17th century. In publishing, it was an era of encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Plumb wrote that the English High Church bishops viewed with anxiety the spread of lectures, science, particularly – “popular education led to questioning accepted beliefs in religion and politics. What began as scientific curiosity often ended in political and moral speculation.” It was a great age of libraries and book clubs, hi the libraries serious works hugely outnumbered fiction ... and toward the end of the century there was an obvious connection between dissenters, liberals, and libraries. At Birmingham, 18 out of 19 members of the committee who ran the library were dissenters led by Joseph Priestley; the originators of the London Library were men with a strong liberal bias, supporters of America and sympathetic to the early aspirations of the French Revolution.”

This thirst for knowledge was often found in combination with a critical and realistic attitude toward politics and religion. The governing circles “were horrified that miners were reading Thomas Paine.”

I recall how important in my boyhood was the Parlin Library, near Everett Square. There I developed my life-long habit of reading books. Beginning with “boys’” stories – Frank Merriwell, Tom Swift, Zane Grey’s westerns, Tarzan, I gradually responded to biographies, histories, Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, the heroic myths: King Arthur, Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver, Ogier the Dane. Then the novelists: Charles Dickens, James Fenimore Cooper. Alexandre Dumas’ (the elder’s) THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO was thrilling reading. My continuing fondness for good mysteries was sparked by the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Charles Parlin was a benefactor of the City of Everett. My Junior High was Parlin Junior. Incidentally, in my third year of Junior High (equivalent to the 9th grade), I was one of those awarded the “Parlin P.” Qualification was based on academic grades, athletic tests, and character (the latter the appraisal of teachers). I barely qualified for the athletic part because I was not a swift runner. However, I did OK in strength tests – pushups, chinning the bar, throwing the baseball. I still have that “P” letter – I don’t think I ever had it put on jacket or sweater. It was a bit moth-eaten the last time I looked at it.

Today, with the Internet and computer science becoming so wide-spread, will the libraries still be an important part of our education and absorption of culture? I hope so, because much as I like the computer and am fascinated by it, it doesn’t replace good books.

In 1951, when I was doing some graduate work at Boston University School of Theology (BUST), I remember the Professor of Church History, Edwin Prince Booth, emphasizing at the beginning of the semester, “History is in the books. If you want to know church history, or any other history, go to the books!!”

Will that still be true in the computer, information, fax, TV, video age? I surmise that my grandchildren and greatgrandchildren and their millions of countrymen and women will answer that question. Will the progressive, even radical ideas many of us encountered in the books be available on the sophisticated, electronic networks? For in the books, time and again, was a counterpunch, or a basis for debate when special interests or “establishment” powers were quite willing to have the people remain in ignorance of other ways and ethical principles.

Shakespeare has Caliban, who hated Prospero, say in THE TEMPEST (Act III, Sc. 2),

“Remember
First to possess his books; for without them
He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not
One spirit to command: they all do hate him
As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.”