Destroying encyclopedias

After much consultation with librarian friend, Elizabeth, I determined there was no agency on earth (within a reasonable mailing distance, or perhaps even not) with a need or wish for old encyclopedias. I watched this phenomenon developing in my years as Regional Librarian for western Newfoundland. When I first put the uniform on in 1979, and we held used book sales, I was plagued by phone calls from people offering me their first born, if I would hold aside a set of encyclopedias. So desirable were they, that I had to make special efforts to be seen to be scrupulously fair, and resistant to all forms of influence peddling. We held auctions and made money. Into the 80's the market held, but then as soon as the first personal computers came over the horizon, with CD-ROM reference materials, the demand for used encyclopedias became less hysterical. We sold them by the kilo the same way we sold all the other books, but within a few years, by the time the internet had blossomed, they were not worth their weight in any known currency - least of all first born children. By the mid 90's we gave them away, and then came Wikipedia, and we could not even do that. I still had one set rescued from the dumpster that would have been its fate. I do not know how I came to have this Encyclopedia Britannica 1960 as it had no markings on it. It was probably acquired locally by a school-public library, where it occupied shelves until I began to make my draconian purges of out-of-date reference works. Now I have to be draconian again, and it does not feel right now either.

“A good carpet knife is better than an Exacto,” said Elizabeth. The boards would have to be removed before the pages could go into the blue bag to be recycled. I had taken apart a book or two before. During my year at library school, I had even worked in the bindery, attempting to learn something of the ancient and honourable art of making books from scratch, and rejuvenating those in need. My boss was a jovial fellow with a sunny, Caribbean work ethic. He knew his stuff, but was seldom around to pass on his wisdom. I spent the entire term restoring one volume - removing it from its boards, cleaning away the crispy backing, sweeping away the crystals of dried glue, separating the signatures, cleaning it up, then lining up the signatures in the press to sew them back together with fresh linen thread, cutting and gluing new headbands, re-backing, making new boards and replacing the refurbished text into the boards complete with attractive end papers. Yes, I knew how a book was made, but it is hard work to take apart an encyclopedia built in 1960. They were made to last. First you slice the boards, and pull them off, break the backing, cut through the stitching and start tearing out signatures, or whatever number of page you can manage to pull apart without committing to a major workout. I decided that 4 or 5 volumes a day would be my max.

As I applied myself to the task, I put on a new CD of stories freshly arrived from storytelling friend, Mary Gavan, of Vancouver. There was the excellent story of the burial of Robert Burns,which I had so enjoyed in Victoria last summer. The first boards came off the index, the loose pages piled up, Burns’ corpse embarked on a number of adventures, and I proceeded in no particular order through the volumes in hand. I began to watch the collected wisdom of the precambrian era 1960's piling up in loose pages on a stool beside the table with page headings like:

“War Financing - WW 1 and WW2" - that would be a cheery read. A article detailing the cost of conflict in the first decade of this century would probably be downright energizing.

“Optics” - a scientific article written before PR people re-invented the word to manage celebrity apologies, or the visits of rich provincial premiers heading to the US for heart surgery, just as the US President attempts to make major health care reforms. They are strange people, the natives of that country, to demonstrate against anything resembling our style of health care, which costs the total populace one third less than theirs and covers everybody. I especially loved the Tea Party’er who was quoted saying none of them had read the 2000 page piece of legislation, but knew it to be communist and Nazi anyway. How powerful the insurance lobby must be to relieve people of such large portions of brain more effectively than any neurosurgeon.

I googled the word “optics” and found on buzzwhack.com, an useful website dedicated to demystifying buzzwords: “optics: Business jargon for ‘how things appear.’ A favorite of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who wanted to create a new way of looking at the business world through the rosy lenses of the New Economy.” How could the editors of EB1960 have foreseen that? “Hey, Nero. It would look better if you played the fiddle while Rome burns, not the bagpipes.”

Polycarp - Ah, Saint Polycarp. He was a bishop of Smyrna - all I knew of him before was his name, emblazoned on one of the most intriguing highway exit signs in Canada: St. Polycarp, St. Télesphore, and St. Zotique - just west of Montreal approaching the Ontario border.

Polycarp lived ca. 69 – ca. 155 and died a martyr, bound and burned at the stake then stabbed when the fire failed to touch him. He is regarded as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran Churches. Who, I wondered, were the other two saints? A google search indicated that they were probably not saints at all, merely outstanding citizens, after whom I supposed several communities might have been named.

Roman Catholic priest, Zotique Racicot was baptized François-Théophile-Zotique in 1845 in Sault-au-Récollet. He was an auxiliary bishop, and educational administrator who had much to do with the creation of Laval University in Quebec. He seems to have been universally admired, but I could find no indication that he had ever been canonized, or that anyone else of that name had been. Could he never-the-less have inspired the naming of a community that celebrates its lakeside beach? This information eludes me.

As for St. Télesphore, could that place have been named after Télesphore Saint-Pierre, newspaperman and writer born in 1869, who was much disturbed by the emigration of French Canadians to the US and lobbied hard to prevent it? He researched and wrote about their descendants in the US, especially Michigan. “The 65,000 colonists abandoned by France,” wrote Saint-Pierre, “have become a people three million strong, united by community of faith, language, and aspirations.” He asserted that “an invisible hand directs events to give the [French] Canadian people its distinct character.” I could find nothing about a saint of that name either. So much for idle speculation.

New York - I removed a glossy photo of lower Manhattan Before the Twin Towers looking much as it does now. I moved to New York before they were built. That glossy photo was my New York. I never did like those towers, the arrogance of their nomenclature, their lumpen architecture and inappropriate scale even in a city of skyscrapers. What deals originating in its towers had dealt misery to whom, as world trade moved jobs out of America to places with cheap labour? Surely my grumpiness had nothing to do with their fate. Oh, dear, don’t let me be thinking of butterfly wings in the Amazon.

Where was I? The destruction of Encylopedias! Diderot turning in his grave! The task is completed; the blue bags are on the sidewalk - but not before I learned that the “Duke of Exeter’s daughter” was a nasty torture instrument resembling the rack. This information is available in Wiki, but what are the chances that I would have stumbled across it? Stumbling on the Internet is a far more haphazard process than stumbling upon things contained alphabetically on one bookshelf. I also saw again, for the first time in many years, the overlapping cellophane pages of the male and female human anatomy, that peeled away to reveal muscles, then internal organs. That was what passed for titillation when we were young.

I could not bear to discard immediately the chapters on “The Crusades,” “Homer,” and “Bookbinding,” and saved them to read with morning coffee. Halifax, the proposed city of our dotage rates half a column page in EB 1960. I read with curiosity the two page history of the Gypsies, as I have a lovely friend, who is from a Gypsy family settled several generations in Pittsburgh, and now teaching at a university in the US. The author of this article quotes an ethnographer who describes the Gypsies as having a mental age of 10 and lacking creativity and a written language. My husband recalled this article vividly because he read the entire “G” volume when he was younger, and this had leapt out. Yes, I mused, such an article could indeed have been written in the same unpleasant era in which I first became aware of the larger world. Perhaps my perspective on this time explains my addiction to “Mad Men”. By coincidence, this week’s New Yorker Critic at Large, Jill Lepore, discusses, among others, an “astute, engaging, and disturbing” book by Rebecca L. Davis: “More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss.” It is a history of the marriage counselling industry which has roots deep in the frightening depths of the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. We meet Paul Popanoe, Madison Grant and other proponents of “race betterment” through encouraging marriage and reproduction among superior persons and discouraging or disallowing it in inferior, and we know who they meant. “By saving the marriages of the biologically superior, Popenoe hoped to save the race.” We all know where all that led, but proponents of this view are yet amongst us.

The list of contributors to EB1960 occupied a substantial portion of volume 1, and sure enough there was the listing for Col T.E. Lawrence, author of the article on “Guerilla War.” My husband talks more fondly of that article, and how well written many EB articles were, but Lawrence will be there waiting for us in Dartmouth, for Dad still has the same edition. Shall I shred the offending article in the “G” volume? Or leave it open for the cat?

Stuff reduction score for today: Yes, sir, three bags full.