Every One is Entitled

 The Gutenberg project this week feature among other books Volume II of Alexander Herzen's My Life and Thoughts. Looking into it, I noticed

Who is entitled to write his reminiscences?

Every one.

Because no one is obliged to read them

In order to write one’s reminiscences it is not at all necessary to be a great man, nor a notorious criminal, nor a celebrated artist, nor a statesman—it is quite enough to be simply a human being, to have something to tell, and not merely to desire to tell it but at least some little ability to do so.

Every life is interesting; if not the personality, then the environment, the country are interesting, life itself is interesting. Man likes to enter into another existence, he likes to touch the subtlest fibres of another’s heart, and to listen to its beating ... he compares, he checks it by his own, he seeks in himself confirmation, justification, sympathy....

But may not memoirs be tedious, may not the life described be colourless and commonplace?

Then we shall not read it—there is no worse punishment for a book than that.

Simon Leys quotes the first three sentences in his essay Overtures, collected in The Hall of Uselessness.

I think that "some little ability" to tell something is only so widely distributed. Still, as an account of why we like to read memoirs, Herzen is correct.

Reviewing

 About forty years ago, The Washington Post published a review of a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, I suppose the one by Edward Rice. The reviewer was Anthony Burgess, the review was informative and readable. Presently the Post's book section carried a letter praising the quality of Burgess's sketch of Burton's life, and remarking on his graciousness in making a passing mention of Rice's book.

Today I went to the Gutenberg Project to check on something Macaulay wrote, and having found it, read on in the Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume III. In part this was a hunt for typographical errors to be sent in as errata: the text appears to have been created through optical character recognition (OCR), which is pretty good but here and there subject to error. In part this was because (of course) Macaulay is very readable.

The essays in the volume are mostly reviews, and reviews of the sort that the Post's correspondent complained of. The author is often enough dismissed in the first couple of paragraphs, usually with dispraise:

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oar. Guicciardini, though certainly not the most amusing of writers, is a Herodotus or a Froissart, when compared with Dr. Nares.

After that one gets Macaulay's own thoughts on the subject of the book. He has more than a few, and if not always convincing, they are usually entertaining. I suppose that a close criticism of Dr. Nares's work would make for much duller reading than Macaulay's harsh account of Lord Burleigh.

Still I wonder that he didn't consider the application his readers might make of

Almost all the distinguished writers who have treated of English history are advocates. Mr. Hallam and Sir James Mackintosh alone are entitled to be called judges. But the extreme austerity of Mr. Hallam takes away something from the pleasure of reading his learned, eloquent, and judicious writings. He is a judge, but a hanging judge, the Page or Buller of the High Court of Literary Justice. His black cap is in constant requisition. In the long calendar of those whom he has tried, there is hardly one who has not, in spite of evidence to character and recommendations to mercy, been sentenced and left for execution.

 

Not In a Post-Modern Era

 Noticed in the essay "Philosophy in a New Century", collected in the book of that name by John Searle:

If by "modernism" is meant the period of systematic rationality and intelligence that began with the Renaissance and reached a high point of self-conscious articulation in the European Enlightenment, then we are not in a post-modern era. On the contrary, modernism has just begun. We are, however, I believe, in a post-skeptical or post-epistemic era. You will not understand what is happening in our intellectual life if you do not see the exponential growth of knowledge as the central intellectual fact. There is something absurd about the post-modern thinker who buys an airplane ticket on the internet, gets on an airplane, works on his laptop computer in the course of the airline flight, gets off of the airplane at his destination, takes a taxicab to a lecture hall, and then gives a lecture claiming that somehow or other there is no certain knowledge, that objectivity is in question, and that all claims to truth and knowledge are really only disguised power grabs.

 

Doing Without

 For the first time in many years, we went on a trip without bringing a computer. We did not have, that is, a computer with a keyboard and a fair-sized display. We did have mobile phones, which have computational power beyond what some of those computers in the past did.

Only a few times did I think that it would have been well to have a computer. Those were times that I wished to write something at length, or to read something in larger increments than will display on a telephone. Yet despite my ineptitude with the iPhone "keyboard", I did get by, and may have managed to send some messages of a couple dozen words or so.

The benefit, apart from sparing a couple of pounds to carry about, was that there was no temptation to linger over the web after waking up. That probably gave me at least another half hour per day out looking around.

Following

At the end of February, the American runner Jess McLain and the two runners behind her followed a lead bike off course at the American half-marathon championship at about mile 13. They turned around to rejoin the course, finishing ninth, twelfth, and thirteenth. They filed protests, of course, but their protests were denied.

About 1985, a leader in the DC Marathon (a much less important race) was led off course with about three miles to go. I think that it was at that race another runner and I were nearly diverted off course by a policeman distracted in a conversation. We were well back from the leaders, and a loss of eight or ten places would have been nothing to garner us sympathy.

In 1980, the lead runners in the Marine Corps Marathon followed a press truck in cutting across above the tip of Hains Point, then were diverted across grass near the Tidal Basin rather than kept on pavement. My recollection is that the race was about 300 yards short of the standard distance. Curiously, the finishers' certificates that went out said that the runner had successfully completed the Marine Corps Marathon "at the Oympic distance of 26 miles 385 yards".  At the bottom of the certificate is the adjusted time.

Shipping

 About a dozen years ago, our washing machine ceased to spin properly. A check on the internet suggested that this was caused by a failed ratchet on the agitator, a part that as I recall you could hide under a quarter and that cost about $2.50. It cost that if you could find one, that is. The internet takes away as efficiently as the internet gives, and it appeared that there was no store within ten miles that sold the part. We ordered it from Tennessee.

About a week later, we were about to go out of town, the ratchet had not arrived, and the washing machine did not work. Considering our prospects--would the store in Virginia really have the part?--we called for a repairman, who did what I could have done, though I'm sure he was more efficient. The ratchet arrived a couple of days later. The out of town business had shipped "UPS to USPS", which allows UPS to do the efficient long haul work and leaves the more labor-intensive delivery to the Postal Service. Had that business folded a piece of paper around the part, placed it in an envelope, and mailed it for (then) 40 cents from the nearest post office or mailbox, we would have received the part in ample time.

A fortnight ago, I ordered a book through Alibris. The seller promptly sent a notice that it had shipped. After some days, I checked the tracking number. This showed that the item had been picked up by a USPS shipping partner and was ready for USPS pickup. Such was the status a week ago, such it is now. I had hoped to take the book along on a trip that starts Sunday, but now I doubt I will.

Given the low cost of media mail, I wonder how much money can be saved by using a shipping partner. I suppose the partner handles the labor of packaging, and probably has the equivalent of the postage meters I used long ago. I can see that one might wish to have somebody else manage the meter.

But I wish I had the book.

No One Will Debate

 Footnote 46 to Chapter 10, "Preface" of Quentin Lauer, S.J.'s A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit reads

No one will debate Hegel that a constant effort is required to understand his statements the way he intends them to be understood.

I certainly will not.