Wikipedia

I've found wikipedia to be very helpful, but as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. I just looked at the entry for Thomas Nuttall after reading about him in Dana's "Two Years," and the section that relates to Dana is completely false. It says that Nuttall was the basis for Dana's character "old curious," but Dana's work was autobiographical and contained no fictional characters. In fact, Dana had known Nuttall at Harvard and both had left Cambridge at about the same time, Dana as a seaman on the Pilgrim, and Nuttall "overland to the Northwest Coast."

According to Dana, Nuttall made his way down the coast and when he discovered there was a ship, the Alert, heading back to Boston, he took passage on the Pilgrim from Monterey down to San Diego and boarded the Alert when she was ready to sail. It was Dana's old shipmates on the Pilgrim who called Nuttall "old curious" due to his habit of walking the beach and collecting specimens. Dana said that he and Nuttall recognized each other immediately when he saw him on the beach, but once he got on board the Alert had few opportunities to speak due to the difference in circumstances, and discipline on the ship. Only occasionally, while Dana was at the helm on the night watch and the officer of the deck was forward, did Nuttall come on deck and "spin a yarn" with him.

The wikipedia entry doesn't mention any of this and presumes that Dana's work was fiction. Does anyone actually read anything for themselves these days? It reminds me of a story George Bass, one of my professors at A&M, told our classical archeology class. One of the large donors to his Institute of Nautical Archeology was a wealthy Oklahoma oil man, and at one of the donor receptions, he started talking about a book he's just read which he pronounced as "less miserables." Dr. Bass said that at this, the academics chuckled a little under their breath, but when the guy asked who else had read it, it turned out that he was the only one in the room who had. The academics had only read "about" it.

Now, I'm not picking on academics, because they've obviously read a bunch of other stuff, but it is curious, and I think it's true of most of us, that very few people read the classics, or anything else, for themselves anymore. Even sailing classics like "Two Years Before the Mast" aren't being read by sailors either. I mentioned it to a few people around here and of course they've heard of it, but no one had actually read it.

I remember Dale Baum giving me a poster a long time ago, right after I'd gotten out of the Corps and gone back to school, from the University of Texas entitled the "Texas List of Unrequired Reading." I'd been complaining about my poor high school education and how all the other students seemed to be so far ahead of me, and had asked him if he could suggest any works I should read to help me catch up. He told me not to worry too much about being behind and just start from wherever I was, then he pulled the poster down from his door and gave it to me.

It consisted of 96 titles evenly divided into 4 subject areas, Philosophy and Religion, Literature, History, and Science. The idea was to read one book a month during your 4 year undergraduate career; 48 primary works, and another 48 alternates. They didn't so much expect you to actually read everything, as to give you a starting point. How else would you know where to begin? At that time, I'd only read a few of them, one of which was "Pride and Prejudice."

I used to make an effort to read as many of them as I could, especially in the areas I was weakest. I used to keep track of which ones I'd read, but at some point I stopped worrying about it -- by then I'd read over a quarter of them and felt like I'd caught up. I eventually lost track of the poster and don't think it's available anymore, but you can still find the list online if you look. I printed it out not too long ago and have it somewhere. I'll have to break it out once I get the boat in the water and see what else I might want to tackle.

I'm not sure what any of this means, or if people read more, less, or about the same as they did before, but with all the additional leisure time we have these days, you certainly can't use the excuse that you don't have time. Also, I'm not sure if I'll fix Nuttall's entry, but I'll certainly finish Dana's book first.