Written by the 25th librarian at Oxford's Bodleian Library, this is a book about books that starts in Mesopotamia, detours through Alexandria, takes a quick stop in Cromwell's England, followed by a trip across the the Atlantic to Washington DC. It returns this side of the pond to and pays a quick ode to Byron and Kafka (who had different views on what should happen to their archives once they died), before going to Nazi Germany, and finally Sarajevo in the early 1990s. At each turn, books and manuscripts and papyri and tablets were destroyed, and knowledge was lost as a result.
In times of war, books are destroyed. Authors want manuscripts burnt. Accidents happen. The same library suffers the same fate multiple times. And, re-building broad deep collections takes time.
I'm still reading this book, and will update this as we go along, but some fun facts I learnt along the way:
- The word "museum" comes from the inner library at Alexandria, Mouseion, a temple to the muse.
- The classic story of Alexandria—the library was consumed by one catastrophic inferno—is a myth. (My whole life's been a lie)
- Lord Byron had "accumulated a menagerie while in Italy: ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon."
- Byron's memoirs were destroyed posthumously based on a consensus vote as a subset of his family, friends, and publishers thought it would ruin his legacy ("fit only for a brothel and would damn Lord Byron to certain infamy if published.").
- Meanwhile, Kafka wanted all his works "burned" once he died (he wasn't famous while he lived). His friend and the guardian of his archives, though, created a "literary aura" around Kafka, and ensured his works were published posthumously, arguing "Kafka would have known Brod could not have gone through with this decision – if he had been really serious, he would have asked someone else to destroy the papers."
- Philip Larkin breaks down the value of literary collections as "magical" and "meaningful": "magical" being the actual paper work was written on and the actual words written; "meaningful" being the degree to which it enhances our knowledge and understanding of the writer's work and life. I love this categorisation, but also feel a bit...sad...that with time the "magical" will fade away. As writers use computers and word processors more, the penmanship, the paper, the "manuscript" becomes a lot less personal. You don't get a sense of the writer's handwriting, no notes in the margin, and no insight into real-time editing.
- In 1992, when Serbia attacked Bosnia, they targeted the National and University Library. Marksmen were placed to "pickoff" the firefighters who took ~three days to quell the fire. "It has been estimated that more than half of the provincial archives of Bosnia were destroyed: more than 81km of history." This didn't even make the A1 in newspapers across the world.
- When nations become independent, who owns their archives: the nation or the colonial power? Historically, colonial powers have dictated what happens to the archives: what gets destroyed and what returns to the homeland. After all, the colonial powers weren't answerable to anyone as they were leaving countries, and had reason aplenty to hide their behaviour.
- Looted archives, treasures, and cultural artefacts from other countries make their way into state and private collections, including the British Library, Cambridge University Library, and John Rylands Library.
- The East German Stasi "trained Iraqi officers in covert surveillance (especially bugging), the use of secret ink and in decoding communications, as well as in the protection of high-ranking political officials" in the late 1960s.
- The New Zealand government is encouraging their citizens to donate their social media profiles to the national archives. The idea isn't to get all profiles, but instead to get a representative sample to capture this moment in time, when so much data is in the hands of a handful of "private superpowers."