Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Saturday, February 27, 2010

So I'm Reading The Evils of Revolution: What Is Liberty Without Wisdom, and Without Virtue? It Is the Greatest of All Possible Evils. by the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, and...

So I'm reading The Evils of Revolution: What Is Liberty Without Wisdom, and Without Virtue? It Is the Greatest of All Possible Evils. Boy, they used to give their books some long titles! That was the fad at the time. This title contains two complete sentences, with punctuation! A period at the end. But I've sidetracked myself. I'm reading The Evils of Revolution: What Is Liberty Without Wisdom, and Without Virtue? It Is the Greatest of All Possible Evils.

By Edmund Burke, and I read a little of the way into it, and then I got so confused I started looking in the front, I'm looking in the back, I'm looking on the back cover, inside and out - and I'm thinking, wow, a little bit about this Edmund Burke character would be nice! Just a little information to settle us on who this guy is, where he's coming from, and maybe how did he get so humble? There should be a little box with a portrait of the author (one of those tasteful money-style engraved portraitures!) and a little 'About The Author.' Perfect!

But no. Nothing, really. No 'About The Author.' The man comes to us as a cipher.

And that's making it hard for me to read the thing, because, see, I'm reading what he has to say, and I'm like "who IS this guy?"! He's writing on the topic of the French Revolution, at a time when most of Europe supported it (the back cover does tip us to that much). At first I thought he was American, because he keeps speaking of the Revolution as if he's had one too. But then it becomes clear he's in England. What Revolution is he talking about? Can he be perhaps one of those in England who sympathized with the colonists, and supported their uprising? Or is he an American now living in England, amicably spreading the ideals of polity and circumspection to that barbarian island, even then still in the throes of the grips of the archaic and insidious institution of Monarchy?

But then he even says "our revolution"! He says: "those who cultivate the memory of our revolution" - funny, he doesn't capitalize it there. He does elsewhere. Perhaps he's being sly, alluding to the revolution of the globe on its axis or something. But the implication is definitely that he's been involved in a revolution. So he's American! But then he says "The beginnings of the confusion with us in England..." so he's English!

What possible revolution can he be talking about? If the English had a revolution around this period in history, it must have been one of those 360° deals where they came out of it facing the same way they went in. It certainly was one low-profile revolution. I never even heard about it!

Yes, yes, I know: I can find out all I want to find out about Edmund Burke. I can google it. I can wiki it. But damnit, that might help me now, but it didn't help me before! Out in the wide world, no internet, no blackberries or droids of any kind, with only my book to guide me as to the mysterious past of its secrecy-cloaked author. The publishers did not do a proper job, here, to leave me high and dry like that. There ought to have been an 'About The Author' in or on the book itself, convenient and accessible. Sometimes one does go out into the world, and sometimes one does bring with one a slim volume of interest, to read on the way, or at stopping-points along the way. And in circumstances such as these, it may not be wikiconvenient to call forth from the ether an elementary blurb or two of explanatory authorial biography! It is customary in most cases for the publisher to give us a little somethin'-somethin' of that nature on the back cover, or in the back, or on the first few pages of the book. That's all I'm saying.

And yes, I'm sure the Right Honourable ("Honourable" - he's English!) Edmund Burke is some kind of leading light, to initiates of a certain sphere. I'm sure he's as famous as Dr. Johnson to some people. Well kindly refresh the rest of our memories, okay? What is the purpose of publishing a slim 84-page gem like this one, if not to make this guy's words accessible to new readers beyond his cult of in-the-know enthusiasts? Is anybody going to be insulted by a bit of 'About The Author'? Is the President of the Edmund Burke Society going to gnash his teeth, throw down the volume in disgust, knock the rest of them from their display and tramp upon the pile of helpless copies on the bookstore floor? "How DARE they tell ME 'About The Author'! I know ALL 'About The Author'!"

Where's the harm cluing the rest of us in? I guess he's an eminent revolutionary-era thinker and political theoretician, I'm gathering that much. But last I checked, his face didn't make the currency for any major countries. So considering that many of his contemporaries did - that makes him a comparative nonentity, and I say you should tell us a little about the guy.

There are three pages at the back of this book that are completely blank.

There is one page at the front that has only this upon it - the entire rest of the page is blank:

Edmund Burke

1729-1797

Really? I'm intrigued. Tell us more!

Yes, I'm home now for a moment, and I could easily google it up now. But you know what? It's become the principle of the thing at this point. I'm not going to look it up. I'm just going to keep reading, see what sense of him I can get from that. I'm only on page 6.

I really don't get the sense that he's going to interrupt his lucid and stately rant for snatches and asides of his life story at any points, though. But who knows? I could be wrong.

I've been wrong before.

3 comments:

dogimo said...

Damnit I didn't have the willpower.

He was Irish! That explains it.

They could have just put that on the back of the book for Pete's sake!

Jen said...

It sounds like an excellent book.
They probably should have made us read it in high school. All "their" fault that you know nothing about Sir Edmund Burke.

dogimo said...

Well, if all they did was made us read this book, I'd still have been none the wiser about the guy!

He's a "Sir," eh? The book doesn't even give him that! That would have ruled him out as an American, at least. It does highlight a curious deficiency of the American education system, though: they don't really pound the critical importance of the lists of British Sirs.

But in our defense, it's only in recent times that the nature of the institution has changed, so that they now knight more notable figures such as rock stars. Prior to that it was mostly a lot of chemists and explorers and political types and, going a bit further back, dudes who clanked around in metal suits and hit each other. It wasn't as big a deal then as it is now.