D. USING MEMORY, AS CRUCIBLE—NOT JUST A CONTAINER
“To him [Erasmus], memorizing was far more than a means of storage. It was the first step in a process of synthesis, a process that led to a deeper and more personal understanding of one’s reading . . . Memory, for Seneca as for Erasmus, was as much a crucible as a container. It was more than the sum of things remembered. It was something newly made, the essence of a unique self.” (178-9)
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I'm getting around to reading more of Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson, which I think I mentioned in our discussion of The Shallows excerpts. Johnson is providing another look at the practice of commonplace books, which Carr seemed to be using as an example of sustained attention. Johnson's description makes it sound like commonplace books had more in common with a multi-tabbed web browser and bookmark list than Carr made them out to. Rather than ponderous copying, he describes them as fragmentary and focuses on their indexing as a way of letting ideas collide, making them a place where the "slow hunch" of innovative ideas (like Darwin's insight on natural selection) could slowly brew.
ReplyDelete"The historian Robert Darnton describes this tangled mix of writing and reading: 'Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks.'"
Thanks, Craig, for telling me more about Johnson's book; I look forward to reading it. Robert Darnton now interests me, too. I had vaguely remembered commonplace books from some reading in the past, and Carr re-introduced me to the subject. Your comment will take me back to Carr--to see the impressions his description leaves on me. I look forward to reading Johnson for this comparison, as well as his overall book. As for historical interpretation, I look forward to seeing what specifics Darnton uses to create his.
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