At the moment I am enjoying listening to the audiobook version of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. As you would expect, Lincoln’s life and character has many fascinating facets but one that pops up continuously throughout the book is his love of reading. It is clear that much of the genius of the man flowed from his lifelong habit of deep and regular reading, even though his formal education was almost non-existent: “Altogether, Lincoln’s schooling amounted to less than a year. He learned by borrowing books and reading by the light of the fire at night.” In place of formal education “Books became his academy, his college. The Bible, Aesop’s Fables, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Weems’s Life of Washington—these he read over and over until they became part of his inner life and furnished his style.” (Lincoln’s incredible powers of communication and persuasion appear to stem in large part from his engagement with, and incorporation of, the likes of the Bible and the works of Shakespeare. His gift for storytelling to win over crowds and endear himself even to enemies was remarkable, and was “nourished by a lifelong love of humorous writings. He read and reread the comic sketches of Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby, finding in their rustic wit a release from the cares of war.”.
Reading Michael Kirke’s In Passing column from this month’s Position Papers in the light of Lincoln’s love of reading makes the prospect of the “postliterate” society all the more sad. I wonder how much of the contrast between world leaders (or even more local leaders) and the likes of Lincoln can be put down to little or superficial reading.
The demise of deep reading appears to me linked to two other phenomena that we look at in this month’s issue: the decline of religion (see James Bradshaw’s review of Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America by Christian Smith) and the rise of plain stupidity (see Dominic Perrem’s review of The War on Science by Lawrence M. Krauss (editor)). The capacity to engage with serious written works seems very much linked to the capacity to engage reflectively with the liber Dei – the book of God’s creation, as the Medieval’s termed it. It also makes a person far less vulnerable to sheer nonsense. Joseph Ratzinger makes a memorable observation from his childhood in Nazi Germany to this effect:
“The classical education we received gave us a certain mental backbone that made us resistant to the slogans of the day. Whoever knew the tragedies of Sophocles and the speeches of Cicero could not easily be deceived by the slogans of National Socialism.” (Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Ignatius Press, 1998, p. 43)
But not only does the advent of the post-literate society make people, especially the young, superficial and credulous, but it also robs them of the joy and solace that the likes of Lincoln received from reading: “When the burdens of office grew intolerable, he turned to Shakespeare for solace. He read the plays aloud to his secretaries, sometimes weeping at passages from Macbeth or King Lear.”
Society has been through eras before when literacy was eclipsed but always somehow (well, actually, through the monks in the case of the post-Dark Ages West) rediscovered serious reading. There’s no reason why we won’t emerge from these self-imposed literary Dark Ages in the same way.