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London, England: Near Waterloo station. They were confused as to why I wanted to take a picture, but they were both just dead sexy in their costumes. He just looks a bit puzzled, perhaps, but she's working that costume: look at what she's doing with her left leg.
Manchester, England: Ghost Bike
London, England: That's me on the left, my friend and colleague Laurie Ellinghausen on the right, and an unidentified literary scholar in the middle. The three of us met at the British Library and then went out for coffee (and honey).
A quick post from the Newark airport, where I'm en route to KC. Last week I met Miriam from ScribblingWoman at the Starbucks (I know, I know) across the street from the British Library, and she has a brief entry on the meetup. It was great to meet her, and as she says, there's a strange kind of familiarity that comes from talking with someone whose life story you've been reading for a few months.
I have a backlog of information to share, dear reader, and a whole mess of photos, but that will have to wait for now because we are about to board. Look for more over the weekend. I see Sonic Youth this Saturday in Columbia, Missouri, and I'm quite happy about that fact.
I'll blog more about SHARP 2004 when I'm back in KC. Right now there are too many fun things to do over here. Suffice it to say that the conference was great. I'm back in London, now, where the weather is mercifully cooler.
As I was leaving the British Library yesterday, I passed three Americans looking at the enormous statue of Isaac Newton in the library's courtyard.
Man with strong southern (American) accent: Issac Newton. Now what was he famous for?
Young Woman, looking at the compass Newton is using: Drawing a circle?
Other Young Woman: The laws of gravity.
Me: He invented calculus.*
Man: Yeah, or an apple fell on his head or somethin'.
Me: [blank stare]
*This is not entirely correct, it turns out. According to the Wikipedia entry "Newton ... shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for the development of differential calculus."
I am about to deliver my paper at SHARP 2004, dear reader, but you are probably asleep right now so I won't ask you to send me good vibes. Lyon, France is fun, but hot. I cannot seem to stop sweating. My French has held up remarkably well, thankfully.
The keyboards are not QWERTY, so typing is a challenge. I cannot find the necessary keys to create HTML tags, for example.
More later!
Posting some pics from earlier in my trip: ladies and gentlemen, the lovely ladies of Manchester.
I had a very productive day yesterday in the British Library. The staff are just top notch and very helpful. I must admit, though, that when I first arrived, I was treated a bit brusquely (the bluejeans and bleached-out hair probably don't help) until the "Dr." on my UMKC card was noticed. Then everything was peaches and cream. It's good to know my advanced education is good for something.
Last night we had a fantastic South Indian meal (I blogged a NY Times article about this cuisine back in April) and then headed to the Tate Modern, where we took in the sublimely eerie "Head to Head" before settling in at the bar on the top floor and gazing out at St. Paul's across the Thames while mocking the pretensions of our snooty French waiter.
Manchester to London: three hours on a very Star Trek Virgin train with Sonic Youth in my ears. Rain and dark skies are exchanged for breezy warm blue. Meet Laurie at Euston Station. Walk for ten minutes to the Goodenough Club. Almost weep with pleasure at the posh, but tiny, room in which I'm staying. I've been in a dormitory for three weeks. Shower. Lie on the bed for a few minutes. Take the tube to Brick Lane, London's latest hip neighborhood (and the title of a recent novel). Delicious Bangladeshi food. Then a hookah bar for exotic and fruity drinks served by an Italian/Swedish server. Now for some sleep. Research in the morning: Calvinistic evangelical periodical.
Edit: Added more info later in the day. I saw Wilco perform last night, and they were great! A small club, and I was right next to the stage. An English band called Clearlake opened, and while they were a little rough around the edges in their performance, I think I'll probably check out some of their recordings. Nels Cline, the avant garde jazz guitarist touring with Wilco, used everything from a metal spring to (I think) a film canister to get sounds out of his guitar, plus he had about 20 effects pedals around him. Great stuff.
I spent today at the oldest public library in the English speaking world: Chetham's Library. I examined about a half dozen Bibles from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They contain a variety of marginalia, but nothing that compares to what I found in Bradburn's diary. What I'm after is the ways in which people used their Bibles, and in addition to sermons and essays on how best to read the scriptures, we have marks written on pages by readers. The sample size, so far, is way too small to come to any definite conclusions, however. I'm still trying to decide how best to construct the comparisons; I'd like to determine how unusual or common Bradburn's practice was. Suggestions are welcome.
Here are some research issues I'm dealing with:
Chetham's has on display one of only 5 seventeenth-century handpresses in England. There are only 70 in the world. I didn't realize they were so rare. Perhaps once new presses were developed, there was no reason to preserve the old ones. Of course, the fact that they were made out of wood, rather than the iron of later presses, probably didn't help their longevity, much.
In keeping with the day's early modern theme, I took a break for lunch and had oysters on the half shell at Sinclair's Oyster Bar, which dates from the 16th or 17th century (or 18th) depending on whom you ask.
Tomorrow I finish at the Methodist Archives (for this year), and then I'm off to the British Library in London. I'm meeting a colleague whose speciality is the Renaissance, and we're gonna party like it's 1688! (1688...anyone?...anyone?...Bueller?)
Early this morning I received this press release from the Jeremy Collier Association for Literary Purity and agreed to pass it along:
It has come to our attention that the poems of Tupac Shakur are being included on a high school summer reading list in Worcester, Massachusetts. As Michelle Malkin has pointed out, Shakur was a "drug-dealing, baseball bat-wielding, cop-hating, Black Panthers-worshiping, convicted sexual abuser who made a fortune extolling the "thug life" before he was gunned down in Las Vegas eight years ago," and students should not be encouraged to read his work. We at the JCALP have been monitoring the lives of writers for centuries, and we wish to draw Malkin's attention to additional shocking instances of deviants and degenerates whose work is currently being taught in our schools.
We call upon all concerned chosen people to submit the names of writers whose personal lives contain any questionable details. Our children, and indeed our cultural heritage, will not be safe until we have purged the reading lists of anything and everything that ... well, let's just leave it at anything and everything.
- Radical nutjob.
- Wrote filthy stories featuring rape, murder, anilingus, adultery, and witchcraft. Mocked religion and religious figures.
- Made his money in one of the sleaziest professions around, corrupted the morals of the public and encouraged thievery, prostitution, drunkenness, and the neglect of one's trade. Stole most of his ideas from others. Liked to dress up little boys as women for the purposes of entertainment. His poetry indicates that he was possibly a homosexual pedophile and had a fetish for inter-racial sex.
- A shady character involved in international espionage, was probably a sexual deviant, possibly a heretic, made his money in a sleazy profession, and - unsurprisingly - met a violent end in a drunken bar fight.
- Peddler of sensationalist tripe.
- Convicted criminal.
- Endorsed and actively worked for the overthrow of the government, wrote propaganda defending the execution of the head of state, and provided essential services for the homicidal terrorists who had managed to take over the country.
- Dangerous spy, rumored to be a whore. Perhaps the Monica Lewinsky of her day. Smut peddler.
- A flip-flopper who kept changing his religion depending on who held power in the government.
- Peddler of infantile humor. Potty mouth.
- Radical. Smut peddler.
- Held dangerous religious beliefs. Possibly a threat to the government. Wrote offensive "mock epics," probably because he couldn't write real ones.
- Rumored to be a whore. Smut peddler.
- Compulsive masturbator.
- Nutjob.
- Lived with a man out of wedlock and became his baby mama. Wrote radical political propaganda defending vicious terrorists and attacking family values.
- Supported a nation known to harbor terrorists. A flip-flopper, though. Voted for the terrorists before he voted against them.
- Drug addict.
- Radical nutjob with dangerous religious views. Attempted to convince his wife to let another woman move in with them so he could have sex with her.
- Sexually promiscuous. Rumored to be a sexual deviant. Probably had incestuous relationship with half-sister, resulting in the birth of a child. Fathered children by several women, in fact. Provided financial support for terrorists.
- Pervert.
- Sexual deviant. Convicted criminal.
- Pedophile.
- Nutjob.
- Fascist sympathizer.
- Pornographer and pervert.
- Pornographer.
- Suicidal nutjob.
- Shotgun wielding thug. Suicidal alcoholic.
- Shot and killed his wife for fun. Consumed massive amounts of recreational drugs for decades. Sexual deviant. Pornographer.
- Pornograper. Deviant. Drug user.
- Drug user.
- Suicidal nutjob.
I was lucky enough to see the legendary Patti Smith and her band perform on Friday night, and they were absolutely amazing. If that's not enough, Television was the opening act. In other news, yesterday I sustained a small wound to my forehead, and pride, when I walked smack into a pole on the sidewalk. I was walking along when I noticed a poster for an upcoming performance by a band I saw a long time ago, and as I was looking over my shoulder and thinking when that was ... WHAM! stars...pain...blood. Today I'm nursing a swollen eye, but it's not black, thankfully.
My research is going well at the Methodist Archives here in Manchester, if a bit slowly. It always takes longer than I predict it will to work through the material. I could do with a good six months here, frankly. I'd like to share with you, dear reader, some of my research and thinking process:
Last year, towards the end of my trip, I was very excited to happen upon Samuel Bradburn's Bible, a discovery that resulted from blind luck. Bradburn (1751-1816) was an itinerant lay preacher who became so well known for his pulpit performances that he was referred to as the Methodist Demosthenes. He began his itinerancy in 1774 in the Liverpool circuit, travelling and preaching incessantly for the next forty years. I found his Bible while going through a box of his papers. Expecting only handwritten material such as diaries and letters, very valuable resources themselves, I was surprised to discover a fat, leatherbound, printed book. None of the library's finding aids that I had consulted made reference to this Bible. I'm not even sure that any scholars have spent any time looking at it before me.
The first thing I noticed was the handwriting on the pages throughout the entire book. Marginalia is not uncommon, of course, but this is really something else. These marks are often very useful for reconstructing the practice of reading, a central concern of my larger research project and of many scholars in the fields of book history and critical literacy studies. Like many readers, Bradburn did write a few comments related to the content of what he was reading; for example, next to Exodus 8.14, he wrote, "The frogs were only dead, not removed! This was to convince Pharaoh of their being real ones, that he might truly repent. Such are thy dealings, Lord, in many afflictions towards thy people!" But compared to the other kinds of marginalia to be found in the book, such comments are fairly rare. More noticeably, Bradburn also drew distinctive symbols next to individual verses, more than a thousand of them, in fact. I am cautiously interpreting these symbols as markers for verses that he used for his sermons. In order to confirm this hypothesis, I need to consult his sermon memoranda. Incredibly, Bradburn recorded a few brief details about every single sermon he preached for 40 years: over 13,000 sermons. Each one lists which Bible verse he used, so if I cross reference the Bible and the memoranda, I'll have a good idea of what the iron crosses were for. This will provide us with some valuable clues about the practice of preaching and the ways in which it was interwoven with reading. This cross reference will have to wait until I return to American, however, where the memoranda are available on microfilm. I'm using my time to focus on material only available here.
Most impressively, to me, Bradburn sketched out on the endpapers what I originally took to be an elaborate reading schedule for the entire year, a schedule of study broken down day by day such that in twelve months he would have read most of the Old Testament once and five books of the New Testament three times. Until relatively recently, I thought this was an example of the Methodists' obsessive concern with regular and disciplined reading habits. John Wesley, for example, advised followers and preachers, in particular, to set aside time in the morning and evening for study. Jeff, however, suggested I consult the Church of England lectionary to see how Bradburn's study might compare. Now, I will humbly admit that I had never even heard the term "lectionary" before. In the words of the Oxford Companion to the Bible, "A lectionary is a set selection of passages from the Bible to be read aloud in public worship over a fixed period of time." The Church of England lectionary is to be found in their Book of Common Prayer, and a quick comparison of the BCP and Bradburn's Bible reveals that there is not a significant difference between the two. A more detailed examination might uncover something, but for now, I'm just recording his reading schedule. When I get back to American, I'll undertake a detailed comparison.
So what do I do with the fact that this reading schedule is not, in fact, evidence of the characteristically obsessive reading habits of Methodists? Well, for one thing, it's a bit of evidence that they were not as different from establishment churchgoers as outsiders feared they were. Although the Methodists did not split from the Church of England until 1796, they were long the target of suspicion as radical religious nuts. Bradburn's Bible, admittedly one piece of evidence among thousands, is evidence of an adherence to the state church schedule of worship.
But really, I need to gather more information in order to make any informed conclusions. I need to avoid making too many generalizations based on limited data. Here are some as yet unanswered questions:
The challenge, of course, is relatively limited time. I could research until the end of time, always finding a need for new information. But the fact is that I am here in England for only so long, and I only have so many years to work before I have to have produced enough published material to make tenure.
Like many assistant professors, I need to cut out reasonably-sized slices to publish as articles while I work on the book. I try to have patience, but it's not easy.
There's a moment when you're crossing all the time zones at 625 miles per hour, when the light in the sky no longer looks normal, when flight attendants have brought you a meal and you're not sure if you're supposed to be hungry or not but you eat it anyway. There's a moment when the hands just fall off the face of the clock, the gears slip loose from the spring, and you have no idea what time it is. I started thinking of this as "zero time." The passage of time eludes your senses. I kept doing the math, and it didn't seem to help. The inside of the Boeing 777 offered no usual indicators of time, and the trip here to England seemed to be over before I knew it. I managed only about 2 hours of fitful sleep.
I'm researching Methodist communications networks in eighteenth-century Britain: preaching, letter writing, diaries, publishing, reading, writing, listening, sharing. The first day in the library was pretty spacey due to lack of sleep, but I managed to get some good work done, returning to the inventory of books that was completed upon John Wesley's death in 1791. It's a very detailed snapshot of Methodist publishing activity in the late eighteenth-century.
Next, I returned to the Bible of Methodist lay preacher Samuel Bradburn, obsessively recording as many details from it as possible. This book is filled with marginalia, most of it in the form of fat "iron crosses" next to particular verses, which I take to be his system for reminding himself which texts to use when he preaches. Over a thousand of them are spread throughout just about every book in both the Old and New Testament. As far as I know, no one has ever written about the ways in which preachers customize their Bibles to improve their use as tools like this. I don't know how many Bibles that look like this survive from the eighteenth century, and I did not expect to find it: I just opened what I thought would be a box of Bradburn's personal papers and there it was.
I also got a tour of the boxes and boxes of manuscript material downstairs. Librarians and archivists are wonderful people, listening to what you're interested in and then pointing you towards what you need. And each box seemed to contain something unexpected. There are dozens of boxes containing thousands of pages, and as with most special collections, the level of cataloguing with most of the material is relatively general: you know the box contains the papers of so-and-so, but you don't necessarily know what those papers are. Diary? Receipt book? Letters? It's a treasure hunt. Fun and scary at the same time. What if I miss the best stuff? What if what I hope to find isn't here? What if it doesn't exist?
If you want to see something silly and fun, Manchester is currently doing the CowParade.
And just for yucks, here's a brief playlist of Manchester music in roughly chronological order:
Note: last year's Manchester Adventure starts here.
