Open Mike: Readings

["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP. That might be all you need to know.]

When vacation times come around my thoughts turn to reading. The treadmill revitalized my reading time; I read on my phone or my iPad while I'm exercising.*

Daniel Strieff at a site called Medium wrote an article called "The 15 most influential journalism stories in U.S. history" back in 2018. I just discovered it in my ramblings around the internet in search of good nonfiction (which landed me with my nose in a book of historical fiction written by a writer of romance novels, odd considering I hardly ever read either historical fiction and might never have read a single romance novel. I can't think of one, anyway). I don't think it's reasonable to assume that anyone will have read all the stories Strieff covers: one is a novel; one a series of articles; one famously took up the entire issue in a prestigious magazine, running over 31,000 words (about a third the length of a book); one is The Federalist Papers.

One of the entries credits not so much the written story but the gruesome photographs that no other media outlet at the time would show—the mutilated and decomposing body of poor Emmett Till after his murder. (No, I won't illustrate this post with one of those.) And the credit for that one goes mostly to the committed and brave editors and publishers of Jet magazine rather than to a writer or photographer.

It's a lofty, distinguished list, limning many riches. But the originals, collectively, are daunting. I'm not sure anyone could be expected to read all of that. Too much tragedy and heartbreak, not enough relief; too specific about certain subjects, mute about so many more. Maybe that's journalism, "the first rough draft of history" (a quote often credited to Phil Graham of The Washington Post but actually said first by Alan Barth in 1943).

But I enjoyed reading the article about the articles.

What she said
That might be the way that a lot of books get into the culture, after all. When I was young a book came out that was reviewed and discussed extensively in Washington, D.C., where I lived at the time. I can't recall the title; I believe it concerned the journalist and liberal hero Walter Lippmann, who, among other things, originated the idea of a "cold war" and coined the term "stereotype" in its modern meaning. [UPDATE: The book was Walter Lippmann and the American Century, by Ronald Steel, 1980. Thanks to Jeff.]  Anyway, when I went to a local bookstore meaning to buy it, I was put off by the sheer size of it. It was an enormous tome with tiny print that would have taken me weeks and weeks to slowly slog through. I'm a thoughtful reader, but not a fast one. So I got to discussing that with the bookstore owner. Those were the days when small bookshops were staffed by their owners, who were book lovers.

When I asked how that particular book could be such a local bestseller in D.C., given that it was so long and formidable, she said, "Oh, none of the people who buy it are going to read it. They find out all they need to know by reading the reviews of it, and then they can discuss it at parties and with their friends. They buy the book to put on their shelves or leave casually on a coffee table so everybody can see they have it."

I've always remembered that. Sometimes when I read a really good book review, I'll quietly think, there—now I've read that, and I know enough. I don't need to read the book. (Of course if the review is really good, I might really read the book. I think this one is next up in the queue.)

Anyway, maybe you'll enjoy reading the accounts of those great masterpieces of journalism in "The 15 most influential journalism stories in U.S. history" (the author actually names 21**) over the holiday break, if you're taking one. You don't necessarily have to read the primary sources themselves. Just the article and its descriptions are likely to expand the reach of your knowledge.

After all, learning can never come to an end, and life isn't nearly long enough to learn all we should. (When it comes to learning I wish I had a thousand years.) Shortcuts allowed.

Mike

*It makes it important to choose good books. A good book makes the time on the treadmill fly by; a bad book makes the exercise session into a trudge and slows the hands of the clock.

**I don't know why people do that, but they do. I believe the Penguin Guide (is that still published?) used to award up to three stars for a record, but it diced the results into half-stars—meaning it's a scale of six, not a scale of three. So why not just make it a scale of six in the first place? Why the cutoff at 15 if you're going to go ahead and name 21? Six are "Runners-up." The author says they didn't quite make the list...but then he adds them to the list. Sigh.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jeff: "Walter Lippmann and the American Century (almost 700 pages). Never cared to read it. But I’m fortunate to still have an independent bookshop 1.5 miles from me that is owned by knowledgeable book lovers."

Mike replies: That was it. By Ronald Steel, 1980. Thanks. And by the way, I'm sure a lot of people did read it.

Alan Whiting: "On books for show: the Irish columnist Myles na Gopaleen (an alias) pointed out that it was clear that these books had never been read. Tongue in cheek, he offered a book-handling service. Several pages would be dog-eared, old theater programs inserted as forgotten bookmarks, the spine would be cracked, and a worn look generally imparted, for a reasonable price. That was many years ago, but maybe it's a viable market niche now in some pretentious place."

Mike replies: Houses for the superrich are sometimes sold completely decorated and furnished, as they are essentially places for their owners to visit occasionally, and some high-end antiquarian book dealers offer a service whereby they will stock the shelves of such houses with appropriately elegant books. If you've never read A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes, I highly recommend it for book lovers. It's now cheap on Kindle, a fact which belongs to some species of irony.

John Camp: "Okay, you started the book thing, and I've been looking for a place to whine about one of the stupidest editorial decisions I've ever encountered. I've never read Tolstoy's War and Peace. I decided this holiday season was it, so I carried myself down to the local bookstore and bought a copy, a Vintage Classics edition. Translated, of course, from the Russian. But aristocratic Russians from Tolstoy's time commonly spoke French. So this book is translated into English from the Russian, but they didn't translate the French into English, except in small-type footnotes at the bottom of the page. So the first page of the book begins with seven lines of untranslated French. Then there are mixed paragraphs of English and French through the rest of the book (I didn't read, I just looked.) It's insane. You're trying to get a feel for the heart of the book, into the flow of the story, and you keep getting thrown out by passages in French, and I think, not even contemporary French, but 200-year-old French. Well, excuse me mon cher, but I don't read Napoleonic French, which is the reason I bought an English edition. Honestly, in an entire lifetime of reading, never encountered anything quite like it.

Mike replies: I went to prep school, so of course I read all sorts of 18th-century Englishmen, who were fond of peppering their writings with Latin and Greek quotations. Same thing—modern editions did not translate those. Like I had received the same neoclassical education as those writers enjoyed, and "had" at least Latin if not Greek. because what educated gentleman didn't? And French, but of course. My prep school actually taught Latin. And I took it, for three days.

I always recommend this volume of Montaigne because it's a nice articulate readable translation, and because a little Montaigne goes a long way; most general readers don't need to read the complete essays, however much they love the word "complete," and because that one, at least, translates all of the little quotations so beloved of Montaigne into English. But, yes, as footnotes.

A quirky little thing I do now and then is to compare the readability of various translations and research the best translations of foreign-language classics to read. (And don't get me started on translations of the Bible.) For your project, I'd recommend the Anthony Briggs translation of War and Peace (2005), which emphasizes idiomatic flow (in British English at least). It has all of the French bits translated inline. You can get it in hardcover (in the pleasant Penguin Clothbound Classics Series), or in paperback—for a higher price than the hardcover! But the paperback is one of Penguin's oversize ones with the nice fake deckle-edged pages. They have an option for Kindle as well, although I'm suspicious—Amazon is notorious for mixing translations on its sales pages, and the preview they give for the Kindle edition may just be the preview for the paperback, with the actual Kindle version being a different translation. You'd have to buy it to check. But that's happened to me before.

I heard once that three things are best saved for late in life: travel to Alaska, because nothing else will ever measure up after it; War and Peace; and opera.

Rob L: "I am deeply grateful for this article—I'm teaching Journalism Merit Badge at camp next week and this is a treasure trove to work from. And yes, the editors at Jet were magnificent. A writer or photographer can afford to take chances, it's expected and they always have the safety net of an editor to rein them in. When the editors take a risk, they bet their publication's existence."

Arch Noble: "I first waded all the way through War and Peace as a precocious 11 year old, bewildered—not by the book, but by the fact that it was reputed to be great literature. It was only when I reread it some 60 years later (and much education and many, many books later) that I realized that in fact it is painfully and irretrievably dull. Flat-out boring and very poorly written. I have finally concluded that it is not great literature; it is just the opposite. Which makes me wonder how many people have actually read the thing."

Mike replies: I have a memory of the first bad adult book I read. I was the same age as you were, 11, and that summer had just read an issue of TIME magazine cover to cover for the first time (TIME was denser and more serious in those days that it was later). I picked an adult book off my parents' bookshelves and started reading. About halfway in I was just astonished by how bad it was...so I kept reading, because I couldn't imagine it wouldn't improve before the end! Most of the books I'd read before that were either for school, chosen by teachers, or they were from the school library and thus vetted by the school librarian. I read that novel all the way to the bitter end and to my astonishment, it never got any better. The experience shook my foundations a bit. Previously I had just sort of assumed that any book that made it into print had to have some redeeming qualities.

I've never read War and Peace. The book I read that struck me like Tolstoy struck you was Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens. "Painfully and irretrievably dull" in spades. It boggled my mind that it was once a best-seller. I guess if you were in the Air Force Stateside in WWII it might have been interesting. For me it was like four days in a dentist's waiting room.

Comments

[John C Longenecker]

I'm in the process of giving all my paperbacks to the local library. I had a tree come through my roof, the second one in a year, and must move my bookcases out of the room. The bookcases are floor to ceiling, stacked 3 deep with books. I've donated 10 boxes so far and haven't put a dent in them. The Amish kid that fixed my ceiling the last time is coming in January. My wife was overjoyed when I bought a Kindle.

[Chuck Albertson]

Don't forget the "Beltway skim" - picking up a new tell-all book at the bookstore and immediately going to the name index in the back to see if you're included.

[Joel Becker]

A while back I read a fascinating article on the history of Anna Karenina translations. The translators that tried to make it sound good to the British reader. The translators that tried to convey the Russian mental state evoked by Tolstoy's writing structure. The things that worked and did not. It was a great piece of work, and I can't find it.

I did find this shorter article that has a table at the bottom highlighting what each translation brings to the table: https://tolstoytherapy.com/best-translation-anna-karenina/. So much in translation is about the context of the author and the context of the reader, because they can never quite line up.