| 16 February 2006 Books “I like books.” Those are the words I put on my application for my first grown-up job. They were vacuous but true. I like the heft of them, and the smell, and their ability to seduce. That is what I meant, of course, even if the thought seemed incomplete. They sufficed to get me an interview, and then a job offer from the venerable publishing firm of McGraw-Hill, Incorporated, of New York. The address of the Headquarters remains 1221 Avenue of the Americas. I was in New York City over the holidays, and I saw the soaring tower is still there, with the same corporate logo. Seems like a long time ago, and a lot of water under the keel since then. I don't read much anymore, certainly not with the voracious thirst I had as a young man. Maybe it is because I don't have time, or maybe it is that my attention span has been fractured by electronic stimulation. Maybe e-mail is all I can deal with anymore. Goodness knows that is dressing enough this morning. More images have appeared from the West Virginia National Guard's disastrous pirouette on the world stage at Abu Ghraib prison. Old news, but calculated to further inflame a hyper-alert Muslim street, alert for signs of disrespect. There are no more powerful signs than these old pictures. Whoever decided to publish them apparently thinks what this fire needs is more gasoline. They need serious counseling on proper conduct in a crowded theater. But maybe they think none of us are getting out of this alive anyway. In front of the old news from the War is sadness about the inability of the new edifice of Homeland Security to respond to the Perfect Storm. The report is out. The new department was inept at best, and incompetent in so many areas. There are calls for the resignation of those in charge, and I am sympathetic to them, aren't you? Secretary Chertoff was picked because he is was a determined prosecutor in charge. Now he is in charge of an enterprise that is supposed to respond dynamically, not wait for the facts to build a case. In public session yesterday, the Secretary said he intended to fix most of the problems before the next storm season begins, Maybe that is why I like books. There are no new surprises in them, only the old ones. There is a chance, when picking up a book, to contemplate whether or not the revelations within can be endured. It is a purely voluntary thing, not like words that spill out of the media on police death squads in Baghdad, or Vice Presidential errors of aim. If I picked up a book that claimed the management of the six largest American ports, including that of New York, is being sold to a British company that is in the process of being purchased by a larger concern headquartered in the Gulf Emirate of Dubai, I would put it down in disbelief. The Emir is an ally in the region, and I support capital in most regards, but on its face this appears to be a spectacularly bad idea. Perhaps the only thing more frightening would be to place the Department of Homeland Security in charge. So you would not be surprised that on my way to the shower the other morning I was distracted by some lovely bound volumes of a book written long ago. I bought the edition on a whim, thinking someday I might have the time to look them over. In the meantime, they are a pleasant decoration on the shelf. There are eight books with ivory bindings. Gold words are embossed on rich blue and red fields. They are arranged in two red slip-covers. The common title is “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and the author is a man named Edward Gibbon. I had no intention of ever reading the books right through, but I find myself increasingly drawn to the well. At every turn in this newest Long War, I find myself stumbling over the Romans. The West has appropriated and tailored our holidays from the old Empire, and our public buildings once mimicked those of ancient Rome. In trying to understand the rise of Islam that supplanted much of the old Empire, I see the end of institutions that I understand and the beginnings of ones I do not. Gibbon was a moralist, and saw in the long Decline a moral imperative. That was the underlying theme of his mighty work. I am not sure if I agree with him. After all, the Empire lasted twelve centuries, with fully eight of them in Gibbon's long decline. That is a good run by any measure. But regardless of his premise, the scholarship is superb, and his source material is definitive. Nothing has changed since. Gibbon spent most of his time on the turning of the tide in the Western Empire, from the rule of Trajan and the Antonines when the monarchy had attained its “full strength and maturity.” The second period is a sort of Restoration drama when Justinian, by force of will, restored glory to the Eastern Empire, even as the Arabs conquered the Asiatic and African provinces with the fervor of their new faith. The last period, the longest, included six hundred years and ended with the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. I started there, of course, being a modern man and desirous of seeing the end of things first. I wasn't worried about spoiling the ending. The “extinction of a degenerate race of princes, who continued to assume the titles of Caesar and Augustus, after their dominions were contracted to the limits of a single city” was pretty amazing, considering the blood and rape and despoliation in Gibbon's elegant and subdued prose. It is enough to stiffen one's spine, and resolve not to lose wars. The end of the Romans, Greeks, really, by that time, was in 1453. The five hundredth anniversary of the victory was marked by widespread looting of the Greek marketplace in what was then known as Istanbul. There was a minor reprise of what happened the first time. I was two years old and in Detroit, so I don't remember it. But to have that event, and the five hundredth commemoration of the landing of Columbus in the new world, both in one life, makes one realize that all of this is connected to one cloth, just like the one that binds all eight volumes of the Decline and Fall. I like books. I am thinking about going back to them. Copyright 206 Vic Socotra |