November 22, 2007
Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading
I picked up an old copy of Ezra Pound's 1934 book ABC of Reading in a used bookstore, and almost bought it until I looked at the price ($48 for a contemporaneous-looking copy).
You can find most of it at Google books (the "limited preview" seems to include almost the whole book).
Here's a typically confusing passage, early on:
* * *
No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish:
A post-graduate student equipped with honours and diplomas went to Agassiz to receive the final and finishing touches. The great man offered him a small fish and told him to describe it.
Post-graduate student: "That's only a sunfish."
Agassiz: "I know that. Write a description of it."
After a few minutes the student returned with the description of the Ichthus Heliodiplodokus, or whatever term is used to conceal the common sunfish from vulgar knowledge, family of Heliichtherinkus, etc., as found in textbooks on the subject.
Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish.
The student produced a four-page essay. Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it.
By this method modern science has arisen, not on the narrow edge of medieval logic suspended in a vacuum.
"Science does not consist in inventing a number of more or less abstract entities corresponding to the number of things you wish to find out," says a French commentator on Einstein. I don't know whether that clumsy translation of a long French sentence is clear to the general reader.
* * * *
Is Pound saying Einstein was someone working on the narrow edge of medieval logic, because he "invented more or less abstract entities?" What about the Fish Story?
Anyway, I find the book to be amusingly pedantic, and often exceedingly stupid and preachy—in other words, somewhat like Emerson. It's possible to read the whole thing in an hour or two, and if you're like me, you'll feel somewhat dazed and Confuciusly confused throughout. A bit like hearing a good baptist sermon, or Ralph Waldo on drugs.
Highly recommended.
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