Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
Things I have discovered to be of most use, I learned mostly without formal teaching. What little knowledge I have picked up in a rudimentary manner here and there was mainly the result of reading for amusement. Yet that is not the word, either. As a boy and a youth in my teens, I read purely for the love of reading. I can say with confidence that no man, however mature, ever loved reading for its own sake more than I. I did not read because of any particular urge for learning, or to merely pass the time, or to escape the realities of life. I read simply because I loved reading for its own sake alone. The printed page was like wine to me. Books were scarce in the country. I could not go into a library or book store and select what I wanted. I had to read whatever came to my hand; and I did, and generally enjoyed it supremely. Perhaps that accounts in part for my still rather indiscriminate taste. If I had tried to pick and choose in my early youth, damned little I’d have ever read. I was not critical; I never tried to analyze what I read; I was simply and sincerely grateful for whatever chance put it into my hands. Often I would read a book through, and without pausing, turn back to the first and read it through again — sometimes repeating this three or four times. As a youngster, I would sometimes skip a paragraph here and there, in order to thrill over its newness when I re-read it. My own library was generally the largest in the place I lived, but it was small. I generally was given a book on Christmas and on my birthday. Occasionally between times a book was bought. For the rest, I borrowed whenever I could. My main source of reading material were the hand-made bookcases which served for libraries in the country schools. Each tiny school had one, and the contents were small, but varied. In the summer I regularly raided those “libraries”. During the long summer vacations which usually lasted six or seven months, schools and bookcases were kept locked and barred. Then I made my raids. Occasionally I could obtain the key and permission to read the books so guarded. But refusal did not halt me. In my passionate quest for reading material, nothing could have halted me but a bullet through the head. With a flour sack tied to my saddle-horn, I raided isolated school houses far up the creeks, in the hills, and in villages. I jimmied the doors or windows of the buildings, and pried the locks off the solidly made book cases; if that failed, I removed the hinges. Then with my flour-sack saddle-bag full of books, I departed in a cloud of dust, oblivious to the maledictions sometimes directed my way. I did not steal those books. I always returned them in as good shape as I took them. But I had to read, and I did read, even in the teeth of threats to have the law on me. It was a matter beyond my control; literature, of one sort or another was meat and drink and the wine of Life to me.
This is one of my favorite passages from Robert E. Howard's letters, one that I think shows so much of his character - which was so at odds with his surroundings and yet so intimately tied to it - and maybe an object lesson in the unreliability of narrators. Did a young Bob Howard really break into school houses to borrow books? Well, perhaps. There is no evidence against it, and certainly, he was known as a voluminous reader with a prodigious ability to memorize poetry. Yet at the same time we have to look at the context of these claims in his letters, who he was writing to (Lovecraft) and why (in support of a longer argument on education, book learning, and civilization vs. barbarism that the two men were having, and would continue to have right up until Howard's death in '36) Howard shaped his myth in letters like this, maybe stretching the truth a little in the Texas "tall lying" tradition.
The actual facts may be of a bit of doubt; the sentiment is certainly genuine. There is a pleasant image to the young boy, maybe just in from milking the cow, eagerly tearing open the home-made wrapping on the paper Christmas morning, excited at his new book, staying up all day and night to read it through at a sitting, stopping only for meals.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, December 13 - Thursday, December 19
| Top 10 Posts | score | link to comments |
|---|---|---|
Great Question! In Bram Stoker's Dracula, one of the character speaks highly of Texas and its inclusion to the Union. Given that the novel is set in late 19th Century Europe, what place does Texas hold in the popular culture, or collective consciousness, at that time? |
3,321 | 35 comments |
| Confederate politicians were quite unambiguous in their defences of slavery. However, by the end of the 19th century, some Confederate veterans were insisting the Civil War had been about "states' rights." What was the contemporary reaction to these attempts to whitewash the Confederacy? | 2,958 | 60 comments |
| My grandfather never spoke about his experience in Belgium in WW2. He was in his early 20’s and a soldier in the Belgian army before the King surrendered. He survived the war in hiding from German troops. What would he have likely experienced in occupied Belgium at that time? | 2,723 | 44 comments |
| Did a soldiers swordsmanship/skill really matter in large medieval battles? | 2,649 | 71 comments |
| Did ancient civilians get PTSD? What do we know of the psychological effects of war on noncombatants, and how they dealt with them? | 2,399 | 63 comments |
| How multicultural was the city of Rome during the height of the Empire? | 2,166 | 83 comments |
| Why is Czech Republic atheist and Poland Catholic? | 2,012 | 53 comments |
| Did the Nazi's make detailed plans to occupy and administer over the U.S.? | 1,693 | 48 comments |
| What was the “Easiest” beach to invade on D-Day? | 1,372 | 79 comments |
| Did the switch from wood to metal in shipbuilding affect the amount of forests in Europe? | 762 | 11 comments |
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I'm hoping someone will be interested in answering a question I had several months ago: What was the role of the [Church of England] in the invention of Christmas Specials for the BBC, if any?, asked by me, /u/voyeur324. Maybe there will be more interest now that it's December.