`But I Want Some Reading'

On Monday, between sessions at a conference on “Emerging Libraries” at the university where I work, I eavesdropped on a spirited conversation among four men and women I presumed to be librarians. They were discussing a program encouraging illiterates to learn to read by paying them. I thought it was a joke at first, a sample of grim librarian humor, but the talk was earnest and everyone agreed that cash is an excellent incentive. Call me old-fashioned but I thought literacy, like virtue, was its own reward. Judged strictly on utilitarian grounds, and leaving aside such intangibles as culture and pleasure, learning to read would seem like a prerequisite for getting a job, and thus earning money, even in the “service sector.”

I was reminded of my favorite among Charles Dickens’ novels, Our Mutual Friend, which is obsessively concerned with money. In Chapter Five, “Boffin’s Bower,” Noddy Boffin (a trash hauler – i.e., member of the service sector) and his wife, who have received an unexpected and undeserved inheritance, hire Silas Wegg, whom they invariably call the “literary man with the wooden leg,” to teach Noddy how to read. It all comes down, of course, to money. Noddy says:

“`Now, it's too late for me to begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-books. I'm getting to be a old bird, and I want to take it easy. But I want some reading --some fine bold reading, some splendid book in a gorging Lord-Mayor's-Show of wollumes,’ (probably meaning gorgeous, but misled by association of ideas); `as'll reach right down your pint of view, and take time to go by you. How can I get that reading, Wegg? By,’ tapping him on the breast with the head of his thick stick, `paying a man truly qualified to do it, so much an hour (say twopence) to come and do it.’

“`Hem! Flattered, sir, I am sure,’ said Wegg, beginning to regard himself in quite a new light. `Hew! This is the offer you mentioned, sir?’

“`Yes. Do you like it?’…

“`Half a crown,’ said Wegg, meditating. “`Yes. (It ain't much, sir.) Half a crown.’

“`Per week, you know.’

“`Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was you thinking at all of poetry?’ Mr Wegg inquired, musing.

“`Would it come dearer?’ Mr Boffin asked.

“`It would come dearer,’ Mr Wegg returned. “`For when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.’”

It’s an exchange worthy of William Gaddis, especially in JR – another novel the newly literate and affluent might enjoy.