JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2149

I have found sometimes that books aren’t necessarily badly written when they’re written badly, especially when there’s good content hidden under the layer(s) of unfortunate wordly insulations, so the job of the reader which such a thing is to either read half of what is written, or approach the thing full-on by reading it as an archaeological found-poem expedition.  This sounds horrible, but sometimes it actually works (or so it seems to me), as in the following examples.  I was looking for something entirely different when I opened the creaking old door to a Dickensian world of books and letters in James C. Fernald’s (1838-1918) Scientific Sidelights, which feels much more Victorian than its 1903 date of publication. (Fernald was educated in the 1850’s and 1860’s and that and along with his reading carried over solidly into this work.)

Cracking the book a bit I found a fabulous heading,

“Accumulation of Ethical Forces”

for a short two-paragraph screed from a mid-19th century German source, quoted in the very sniffy Psychology of Henry James,. It was followed by another beauty,

“Accumulation of Excitements”

and then, another:

“The Accumulation of Small Impulses” 

All of these were entries on the same page. The titles were terrific and inviting and called for a little reading–which was defeated by indifferent text.  But the titles had a life of their own, independent (and in spite of) their articles, and called for assistance, and they found some, by simple re-arrangement of the visual aspects of the piece–this changed the metre and timing of the reading, making everything different, and perhaps better. (All that was done with the text was to alter the spacing–everything else remains the same.)

And so, in the first case, the realignment reads: