Reading Lists

I think I first read E.P. Thompson's magisterial The Making of the English Working Class around 1978, just after leaving university. I know it made a huge impact on me in terms of its explanatory power. But I suspect I rushed through it somewhat, driven by the excitement of the discoveries I was making.

I say this since I have a strong sense on rereading it some forty-something years later that I'm taking in a lot more of the fine detail this time around. This is particularly true of the various lists that Thompson provides. Reading Perec's Life: A User's Manual taught me the immense value of even the most random-seeming list, and I find myself deliberately slowing down when I encounter a list like that enumerating some of the products of Birmingham's skilled artisans around 1807: buckles, cutlery, spurs, candlesticks, toys, guns, buttons, whip handles, coffee pots, ink stands, bells, carriage-fittings, steam-engines, snuff-boxes, lead pipes, jewellery, lamps, kitchen implements. As Thompson notes, the list in itself evokes an intricate constellation of skills. A sort of lost world, in its way.

Back in 1978 I suspect I would have just glanced at the list and impatiently took it in as a kind of whole with little or no sense of the particularities. Now the whip handles alone fascinate.