A-Z 2021 F: The Autobiography and Other Writings (Benjamin Franklin, 1722-1790)

The founding of my country is taught fairly thoroughly in school; we're exposed to the great heroes of the American Revolution early on, though largely in their mythic forms.  George Washington and the cherry tree, Abraham Lincoln and the log cabin, Paul Bunyan and his digging of the Grand Canyon...  well, OK, that last one's not real, but you get the picture.

For the longest time, my idea of Benjamin Franklin was to the effect of 'bifocals and electrified kites'.  It wasn't ever really clear what his position in everything was, and I quite honestly learned more about him from Robert Lawson's Ben and Me (and its Disney adaptation) than I ever did from anything formal in school.  Even then, and even knowing that he was important enough to get his face on the $100 bill, it really didn't give me a solid feel for just what his place in history was.  Even to this day, what I know of the man is largely based on tangential stories, his interactions with the other figures of the day, and less about his story itself.  Unfortunately, reading The Autobiography and Other Writings did little to demystify this.

The first, and perhaps most relevant, reason for this is simply the nature of the work, cut short by the author's death in 1790, and thus not having actually reached the end of his life.  Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the vast majority of his truly important achievements and his adventures in international politics come during the portion that went unwritten.

So, what are we looking at, with Franklin's autobiography, if not an exploration of his place in the Revolution and the early days of the United States?  To begin with, it's a story of his early life and where he came from.  Roughly the first half of the autobiography was written when he believed it was going to serve largely as a set of family anecdotes for a son, and it takes a form akin to that of a Horatio Alger novel, where he begins in a considerably less than ideal financial situation and, through hard work and perseverance, brings himself to respectability and wealth.  It's very much a rose-tinted look at the man, and indeed the work as a whole acts that way, with even the later part where he knew he was writing for posterity focused on his tendencies toward altruism and the pursuit of knowledge.

Franklin's wit is on clear display through all of this; he's self-deprecating when appropriate, pointing out his own faults and making note of when he made mistakes that it would take him years to remedy, both when he made the error of judgment and when he fixed the issue.  His gift for careful writing and ability to think of solutions that are best for everyone involved is shown, largely through his interactions as part of the Philadelphia city council and the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, and as postmaster of Philadelphia (his later positions as postmaster-general not being covered here).  These positions gave him the ability to cross paths with British colonial leadership on a regular basis, and his civic-mindedness leads him to go out of his way to set up defensive sites during the French and Indian Wars, even managing to get the anti-military Quakers to help.

Even so, it's difficult to see in the autobiography a man who would later become an important figure of the Revolution.  At the point where the narrative cuts off, what disagreement Franklin has with British royalty is limited to his ongoing battle with the Penn family over their general refusal to give their share of taxes.  While the problems that led to the Revolution are still present, at the end of the narrative (in 1757), he's still rather firmly a monarchist.  Granted, there are two decades of gap between this point and the later outbreak of open hostilities, but this simply means that the 33 years left out of the Autobiography are perhaps the most important.

The Penguin Classics edition of the Autobiography includes about 60 pages of other writings from across the length of Franklin's life, as an attempt to give a more well-rounded view of the man than what his own writings reveal.  These are perhaps too sparse, though; I found myself wanting more context for where some of the essays were coming from ("Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress" being a particular question, as I had a hard time telling if it was intended as satire or not).  Penguin does have an alternate volume, The Portable Benjamin Franklin, which includes a larger selection of writings, and in fact seems to focus more on his political life.  This is an unfortunate omission in the volume I read; the political writings on display here are the satirical "Edict from the King of Prussia" and more serious "An Address to the Public; From the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage," neither of which serves to give any solid view of the man's place in the Revolution.  For someone who met five kings in person, signed all four of the major documents of the founding of the United States, and, well... is pictured on the largest banknote still in use in this country.

For that, I suspect my best source will come up during my next intermission from the A-Z run; at the library today, I picked up The Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, a work compiled by Mark Skousen (who otherwise seems to be an economics/Wall Street writer) in which Franklin's writings and speeches during the 1757-1790 period have been reworked into a continuation in his own words, albeit through an editorial lens that, based on the cover flap blurbs, may be biased toward the founding mythologies and the modern view of American Exceptionalism.

The Naked Civil Servant (Quentin Crisp, 1968)

I really don't read as many autobiographies as I probably ought to.  There's a lot to be said for being able to get a look at someone's life through their own eyes, especially when they're a person who has a vastly different lifestyle to your own.  Add in a remarkably self-deprecating sense of narration, and it's difficult to say that The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp's autobiography (actually the first of three), isn't worth spending the time to read.

Prior to this, I didn't actually have an idea of who Crisp was.  I'm in the middle of doing the local library's 'Own Voices' challenge, where they want participants to read literature coming from various marginalized communities, and one of the categories was LGBTQ+.  I was reasonably certain at the time that my shelf didn't actually contain any queer literature, so I did a quick search to see what options exist in Penguin Classics, and this one stood out, largely because the description mentioned the author's dry wit.  I'm always down for a bit of dry wit.

Yeah, I've been focusing almost exclusively on Penguin Classics lately.  It's a good way to curate a selection of literature, even if it's taken until comparatively recently for them to start getting a decent selection of non-European literature.  I'm trying to reflect that at least somewhat on my shelf when I buy online rather than getting what I can find at thrift stores/used book stores, but it's slow going.  It does give me a good, inexpensive way to fill the gaps in what I've read, with solid translations and (usually) plenty of context notes, though I wound up reading this book with my phone at my side so I could look up names and unusual terms when necessary, as there weren't any notes whatsoever in this one.

Anyways.  This covers about the first 50 years of Crisp's life, starting with his realization that he was "different" and the difficulties in dealing with that, quickly moving into his decision to lean into his effeminacy, a decidedly problematic choice to make in 1930s Britain, particularly when homosexuality was very much against the law in that country.  He goes over his difficulty in maintaining employment, his struggles with keeping financially afloat during the first half of his life, and his general view that, well... everything that wasn't himself was pretty hard to maintain interest in.

I don't really get the sense that Crisp was a particularly likeable person to get close to.  There's a general tone to the work where he's sort of leaning into this; he's rather open about how he was almost confrontational about his camp aesthetic, and being out in the open with it rather than keeping it to the underground clubs that most gay men of the era limited their expression to, but it's very much camp; he outright states that he only actually dressed in drag once, and doesn't seem to have enjoyed the experience.

Crisp spends much of the book going through various art/design-related jobs, doing book covers and logotypes for films and the like; he outright states at several points that a large part of why he perhaps struggled to keep these jobs was the combination of 'no formal training', 'rushes to get it done quickly', and 'never learned how to be detail-focused'.  He has a general dislike of art and, in fact, all culture; the brief period he talks about in which he was going to movies on a regular basis is explicitly described as not having included anything with English-language audio, but also he actively refused to go to anything alone, preferring to have a companion, as if the idea of being alone in attending a film was somehow anathema.

During the Second World War, Crisp was actually quite willing to go, but received a discharge when he reported, due to "sexual perversion," so that he instead remained in London.  This resulted, however, in his first encounters with Americans, and particular with the many gay servicemen who passed through Britain when on leave, especially sailors.  This actually surprised me, in large part because of the numbers of servicemen involved; given the U.S. Military's rules at the time, congregating as groups could easily have resulted in mass delivery of blue discharges, which could have been seen as an easy way off the frontlines, but just as easily caused a lot of problems upon returning home, given that such discharges were treated as 'dishonorable' in many cases.  And yet, here are large groups of sailors aiming to sleep with Crisp, even if he was much more interested in just talking.

It's clear, in fact, that he's very interested in talking about himself.  He states as much, it's true, but we're talking about someone who wrote three autobiographies, had a successful one-man stage show, and had a healthy career as a raconteur in his later life, after this particular book's timeline ends.  The beginnings of that career are visible as he has his first few times speaking, as it were, during the period covered (though rather than public speaking as one might expect, they were instances of speaking at a mental institution).  He's quite open that he's not sure what anyone expected out of him in that case, especially as he told them up front that he wasn't much good at talking about any other topic.

The book's title comes from his primary employment during the second half of the book, working as a (mostly) nude model for various figure-drawing classes at local universities, a job which eventually came to feel less as exhibitionism and much more as a sort of government job.  He acknowledges the difficulties involved early on, the physical demands necessary for maintaining a pose for hours, and that his flamboyant style made the students actually dislike him because he tended to make exaggerated poses that were anything but 'usual' for the classes.

The overall feeling that one gets from reading Crisp's autobiography is that he didn't much care what anyone else thought of him, really; his more public later life included a number of controversies when he made comments that seemed either tone-deaf or actually anti-gay, and refused to retract them.  That would largely seem to be material in the other two autobiographies, which cover his life after this book was made into a film starring John Hurt, his relocation to New York, and the end of his life (the third autobiography having been published posthumously and actively worked on during the last year of his life).  That he lived to almost 91 may be surprising after the way this book ends, however; he gripes openly about the state of elder care, that nobody should be forced (or even allowed) to live past 60, and that there ought to be a Nineteen Eighty-Four-style "Ministry of Heaven" which would enforce this.

I'm definitely left with a good idea of why Crisp seems to have been a divisive figure, at the very least; his sardonic writing style at least kept me interested in seeing where his life went, and I could definitely see myself reading the other two autobiographies at some point, but for the moment, I think I'm more interested in just moving on to my next book.

The Pillow Book (Sei Shōnagon, ca.995-1010)

 

There's a reputation that particularly old literature starts to gain, to the effect of 'It wouldn't have staying power if it wasn't dry and serious and somewhat socially-conscious of its time.'  And it's true, many of the examples of ancient works that we have fit that to a certain extent.  There are, after all, rather a lot of histories and biographies that have come to us from Greece and Rome.  Shakespeare has some remarkably fun comedies, but with the classics, he's considered something of an outlier.  He's the Bard of Avon, of course he's something special.

So let's just push that thought aside, right now.  There's plenty of lighter fare available in literature, even if it's centuries old, and I found one example, right here.  The Pillow Book is witty, light-hearted, and... well, social consciousness doesn't seem quite the intention here, but it's an utterly delightful read.

Written by a member of the court of the Empress Taishi, the first consort of Emperor Ichijō, this is a somewhat rambling work, happy to change directions with little warning, relate humorous anecdotes in whatever order they happened to come to mind, and generally acts like, well...  sort of a Heian miscellany, really.  There are lists of things that Sei Shōnagon finds to be beautiful, things that she finds distasteful, names of places and flowers and birds that are of poetic significance, and numerous incidents within the tiny, insular world of the Empress's court, all of which are positive in some way.

From the very start, Sei intended this to be anything but a serious work.  The story related in the text is that Taishi received a gift of paper similar to that being used by the Emperor's court engaging in the copying of a Chinese manuscript, and while debating over what to write on such fine paper, Sei suggested, "a pillow," at which point the stack of paper was passed to her to do just that.  There's some lost-in-translation-and-time pun work going on here, but the translator suggests that because the specific work being copied in the Emperor's court was "Shiki" (The Records of the Grand Historian, Shiji in Chinese), and "shiki" also refers to the 'mattress' part of a futon setup, the obvious pairing with that would be a pillow.

There's a lot of this stuff in here, homophones and poetry making reference to other poetry and...  I genuinely wish I was in a position to be able to appreciate all of what's going on in the poetry, because there's a lot of context that is lost simply because English can't elegantly do some of the things that classical Japanese could.  There's just over 100 pages of notes and appendices in the back to help with cultural and lost-in-translation things; it's actually very helpful, given the sheer cultural distance between the author and myself, across 1000 years and an ocean.

All that said, the combination of what was provided as the appendices and the sheer skill in Meredith McKinney's translation brings the images forward marvelously.  Sei has a particular affinity in describing clothing, focusing on the colors, patterns, and combinations thereof in the outfits worn by everyone around her.  There's a whole appendix devoted to giving illustrations of what courtly wear looked like (which was very useful for me; the Heian era predates the ubiquitous kimono so often seen in depictions of Japanese culture, which would have led me to very different mental images) and what the various poetically-named combinations given in the text actually mean in terms of the colors involved.

There are also a number of frankly splendid passages written in the second person, translated in present-tense (the implication being that the original was doing the same thing), describing a particular event in great detail.  This has the effect of letting a suitably-receptive reader experience the setting mentally, and I found these sections to be one of the best uses of second-person narration that I've encountered outside of interactive fiction.

What stands out for me the most in having read this, though, isn't the lists, or the descriptions (as delightful as the anecdotes are), or even the intimate descriptions of Sei's life within the court and her time as one of Taishi's favorite companions, and the entertainments that they devise for themselves.  Rather, it's the way that literature, and waka poetry specifically, is the very lifeblood of interactions between members of the nobility in this time.  If a gentleman spends the night with a lady, when he returns home afterward, he immediately sends a messenger with a poem, and the expectation that she will send a poem in return.  Poetry competitions are a recurring aspect of courtly life, both in structured situations and simply as a way for members of the Palace bureaucracy to engage in small flirtations with the cloistered women of Taishi's court.  Received poetry is shared between friends, responses carefully considered... it's almost like poetry in the Heian period was a spectator sport.

It's directly suggested in the text that Sei's position in Taishi's court is directly related to this literary sport.  She came from a family of poets, and her quick wit is brought up repeatedly as a great asset, often able to craft responses to poetic challenges that are difficult for the gentlemen on the other side of the exchange to top.  She's well-read, and knows her way around the Chinese classics that were essential reading for gentlemen of the courts, but as that kind of knowledge was considered somewhat uncouth for a lady, she has to come up with ways to subtly allude to the stories in conversation without making it clear that she's referring to them specifically.

This doesn't mean she's perfect, however.  There are multiple times that she tells about her difficulties in writing in more structured ways, and several times she brings up times that she worded things poorly, and was suitably chastised as a result.  She's also very much a product of her specific culture; there are numerous times where she writes that she's not fond of commoners, for a variety of reasons, and several times where she does things that seem downright mean (in one particularly cold-hearted passage, she describes how, in response to a commoner who was audibly depressed that his house had burned down as part of a huge blaze that destroyed an Imperial grain storage house, she gave the illiterate man a poem, implied that it was a promissory note, and told him go off to find someone who could tell him what it said as she was just too busy at that moment and was being called by the Empress).  Several times, her wit results in friendships and relationships being destroyed, as well; it may not be a huge surprise that Sei's literary rival, Murasaki Shikibu (who served in the court of Empress Shōshi, Ichijō's second consort), wrote in a decidedly unflattering way about Sei in her own diaries, albeit while respecting her wit and writing skills.

All in all, I'm glad to have read this.  It made for a very cozy read during a power outage, and I find myself rather wishing that I knew of anything else quite like it for me to keep on hand for when I need a bit of a cooldown after other, decidedly heavier tomes.

The largest book on my shelf, and one that's very much impending on my 'The Longing' reading list, is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père.  I don't know how heavy of a read that one is going to be prose-wise, but it's over 1300 pages and I know I'm going to need some lighter, shorter fare after that.  I think I'm going to stay light-hearted for the moment and go read some children's literature first, though.