HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? or... MAYBE I NEED A CHAINED REMOTE

A while back I heard a beautiful overture by the British Composer Edward Elgar, played on the classical music station of Minnesota Public Radio. At the conclusion of the piece, the announcer mentioned that the work had its premiere at “an English country fair” in 1890. That simple announcement got me to pondering: For the great majority of those who heard Elgar’s overture that day at the fair, this was the one and only opportunity they would have to do so. It’s not impossible that a very few were able to hear it again, perhaps in a London concert a few months or years later, but only a very few, if any. And none would have had access to the precursor of the radio I was listening to; the first tenuous radio broadcast was fifteen years in the future. If a music lover at that English country fair that day found the piece to be yearningly beautiful, that’s all she was left with: yearning.

I heard the Elgar piece because I can listen to classical music any hour of the day or night. If I find a piece to be yearningly beautiful, I click on iTunes or Amazon and order it as a CD or MP3, so it is then available whenever I desire. I wouldn’t trade places with the country fair-goer, but it is not unreasonable to wonder which of us had the deeper aesthetic experience. As Orson Welles said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

The Chained Library at Hereford Cathedral

A few years ago, Caryl and I worshiped at Hereford Cathedral in England. After church, we toured the “Chained Library.” The Cathedral has had a working theological library since the twelfth century; the literal chaining of the books was simply a medieval security system. (Especially before—and even after—the invention of the printing press, a purloined book would be impossible to replace.) I love arranging and rearranging the volumes in my little library—and adding books with a frequency that requires some creative shelving. As with my musical “library,” I have hundreds of books within easy reach even here in my 12’ x 15’ study, and any title I want is available at my wonderful local bookstore or its online site. (Amazon as a last resort!) But I wish I had the imagination to inhabit the

A corner of what I like to call "My Library."

mind of a medieval cleric as he pulls a single leather-bound book out of the stacks--backwards, so that the chain doesn’t twist--and the book lands open in his hands. (And I think I’m a book-lover?!)

I am of the generation that, in childhood, had to get out of the chair and walk across the room to change the TV dial to one of three channels, depending on whether we wanted to watch Maverick or Sky King or Disneyland or Captain 11. I am not nostalgic about this. (Well, maybe a little.) I mention it because we recently “cut the cable” for the opposite reason: We were paying for 800 channels and watching only three (okay, seven) of them. Now, with Roku and Spectrum and Netflix and Amazon and Broadway HD, we are unchained from the 800, and free to choose among the really good programs on the streaming channels. Really, really good. Our new complaint/mantra is “Too much good TV!” If we add the PBS programming that Caryl and I have watched every Sunday night (and now Friday and Saturday) for forty-eight years--and the programs of other networks included in these packages--to the offerings on our new streaming services, here is a partial, random, list of really, really good TV that we are watching now, or can get to on TiVo, or find with the juggling of two remotes: Masterpiece (currently, Victoria), Sherlock, Father Brown, The Amazing Mrs. Meisel, Stranger Things, The Queen, Call the Midwife(!), Crashing, This Old House, 800 Words, Vera, Last Tango In Halifax(!), Monarch of the Glen, Nashville, Grantchester, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Hollow Crown(!), Colbert, Conan, Highway Through Hell (my one guilty secret reality show!), Nature, Nova, Frontline, American Experience, the new Broadway musical adaptations of Wind in the Willows and From Here to Eternity, many HBO offerings, and more. (Let the judging of our TV tastes begin—certainly l’ve left off your favorite program.)

TV test pattern used for sign-off at midnight.
Good luck trying to binge-watch Stranger Things!

Speaking of HBO, Caryl and I nodded in agreement when we first heard, “HBO is the new Hollywood.” (HBO’s “Deadwood,” described by my demure wife as “Shakespeare with the F word,” is still the best thing ever shown on TV.) HBO was followed by Netflix Productions and Amazon Originals and Hulu… Now they’re all New Hollywood, and, mostly, excellent. Not to mention the regular “old Hollywood “ flicks that are included in their offerings. The memory of standing in a line that ran around the corner—to see Spartacus at the Elks Theater in Rapid City in 1962—fades as I pick up the remote to watch it again on Netflix.

A predictable conclusion to these musings would be to look back in the spirit of what we English majors call ubi sunt (“Where are they now—the old simplicities of yesterday?...”), to plead for the return of the three-channel Crosley Television Set in the living room, to look back in longing at that English country fair—to be sitting under a tree with a picnic basket, a Victorian orchestra serenading the scene. But that is not the conclusion I draw from these observations of history and progress. It is rather to raise again the question that accompanies all progress: “What have we gained, and what have we lost?” I make no attempt at a complete answer to this question, but the question itself helps us to temper our excitement with the new by setting it in the context of another question: “What makes for a good life?” It might sound wishy-washy to say that the good life must be found somewhere along a spectrum which includes a solitary country symphony concert on the one end and an iPhone with a thousand MP3s on the other. This is undoubtedly too mathematical a scale to judge matters of art and the heart, but it invites us to consider and apply an idea that has accompanied and tempered all progress: The Golden Mean. The answer to the good life question is neither “the olden days,” nor “anything new!” but a learning-from-the-old, and an adaptation of the new to a standard set by common sense, a balanced personal life, and supportive relationships. I don’t need to give up my iPhone and all its apps, but I also need to remember, as Sherry Turkle reports, that an iPhone at the dinner table—even turned off and upside-down—is an intrusion into the flow (and feel) of conversation and the connections of the lives around that table. The Golden Mean.

So now that we have nothing but quality TV and a home collection of classical music, perhaps we are not (in the words of Neil Postman’s cogent title) “amusing ourselves to death.” (“Hey, I’m watching Shakespeare here! I’m listening to that Elgar overture again!”), but could it be that we are enlightening ourselves to death? The quantity of high-quality television shows—of which my list, above, is a small percentage—reminds me of that truism about visiting the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.: If a visitor spends a minute at each display, he will not make it through the museum in his lifetime. 

This essay was sparked by that TV program list, which I started for a personal project of cutting down on some of this excellent TV-watching—limiting it for the sake of a balanced life and recovered time. If I cut some of it out, I’ll have a better answer to Caryl’s question, as she steps into my little library: “Are you ever going to read all of these books?”

A LIBRARY, A BOX OF BOOKS, AND A KINDLE

Carnegie Library, Huron, SD 1909 ~ 1965

I am grateful that my parents, my teachers, and the phonics-heavy “Alice and Jerry” series in first grade taught me how to read. Beyond these seminal reflections, I hold in memory two distinct episodes of what were, without exaggeration, life-changing experiences of the introduction of books into my life – books as physical objects of learning and enjoyment. I was apparently a good reader from the start. But it was these experiences that turned me into a book reader:

It was probably the summers after third, fourth, and fifth grades that I would ride my bike the eight blocks from our house to the Huron Public Library. At least part of the time I must have been participating in an organized summer reading program for kids. (Here’s to summer reading programs for kids!) I think I had a chart to fill out. The memory is as much physical and tactile as it is mental: The cool marble floors of the 1909 Carnegie Library building, the hot summer day left behind outdoors, the meaningful hush produced by the neck-craning grandeur of the high ceilings and book-lined walls, the kid-height bookcase island in one of the alcoves. And, of course, the solid feel of the book as I pulled it from that case – just browsing, I discovered it myself – and the light riffle of the pages as it falls open to “How the Leopard Got His Spots” in Kipling’s “Just-So Stories,” and the scrape of the chair as I take the book to the nearest table. I can’t wait until I get home – I’ve got to read this here: “How the Camel Got His Hump,” “The Elephant’s Child,”…. The memory is of the book – and the place of the book. The temple of the book.

Then, comic books (now I am exaggerating), until:

In my junior year in high school I was looking for something in a back corner of our basement, and I came upon a box of books. Hard-cover books with slip-covers intact. Not musty and smelly, but clean and almost like new. Like all smart young moderns, my parents had belonged to the Book-Of-The-Month club in the early years of their marriage, and this was a trove they had packed away in our move from Huron to Rapid City (or maybe earlier). It was the thrill of discovering “Just-So Stories” all over again – and the weighty feel of these tomes: “Clarence Darrow For The Defense,” “Dear and Glorious Physician” (a novel about the Apostle Luke – with some authentic, uh, earthy parts in it if you get my meaning), a novel called “Yankee Pasha.” I read book after book out of this box. And, like the bookcase in the Huron Library, I still have a picture in my mind’s eye of exactly where I found that box, and I’ve been a book reader ever since. (I didn’t return to comic books, although I’d kill for a good copy of “Donald Duck and the Pony Express Rider,” c. 1958.)

The rapid development and acceptance of the e-book (ten of the last twelve books I’ve purchased have been on Kindle) cause me to wonder (not rant – just wonder) what experiences children will have in the future that may be equivalent to the cool alcoves of the Carnegie Library or finding that box of books in my basement.

____________________________________________________________

Addenda:

It is obvious from the modest building pictured in the photo, above, that I am remembering it from my kid's-eye view. But it does kind of look like a temple, doesn't it? It was torn down in 1965 and replaced by a blond brick building of one level. You know what that looks like. It doesn't look like a temple.

I have another Carnegie Library memory. In the sumer after my junior year in college, I had a job selling dictionaries door-to-door (forgive me) in Washington, Indiana. There, too, I came upon the cool confines of an historic Carnegie Library on a hot day. I visited again and again, my dictionary bag slung on the back of the chair. It was during those visits that I discovered the treasures of The New Yorker, Harpers, and The Atlantic magazines -- which have become part of my life. The lure of the library was such that it, shall we say, interfered with my sales performance. I ended the summer owing the dictionary company twelve dollars.

This now-classic video depicts similar wonderment at the transition between the use of the scroll and the printed book. (Just in case you haven't seen it.)

I have reflected on my gratitude to those who introduced books and reading to me in this post: "Thank You, Miss Zamow,"  -- and more experiences with discovering books in "The Lord of The Plastic Revolving Book Rack."


I am proud, happy, pleased, and excited that one of our daughters is a librarian. She and her lively colleagues have moved far beyond Carnegie 1909, and have answers to book questions that I haven't even thought of asking.