[opiniojuris] Roger Alford: The Hunger for Books

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Posted by Roger Alford:
The Hunger for Books
http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1197131870.shtml


   Doris Lessing received the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday. Her
   [1]Nobel Lecture is a joy to read.
   It's so easy to take for granted how much books enrich our lives.
   Lessing helps us imagine a world without them, a world that is a
   reality for many in Africa today. Here is a taste:
   
     Not long ago I was telephoned by a friend who said she had been in
     Zimbabwe, in a village where they had not eaten for three days, but
     they were talking about books and how to get them, about
     educationâ¦.
     It is said that a people gets the government it deserves, but I do
     not think it is true of Zimbabwe. And we must remember that this
     respect and hunger for books comes, not from Mugabe's regime, but
     from the one before it, the whites. It is an astonishing
     phenomenon, this hunger for books, and it can be seen everywhere
     from Kenya down to the Cape of Good Hopeâ¦.
     We are seeing here that great hunger for education in Africa,
     anywhere in the Third World, or whatever we call parts of the world
     where parents long to get an education for their children which
     will take them from poverty, to the advantage of an educationâ¦.
     I would like you to imagine yourselves, somewhere in Southern
     Africa, standing in an Indian store, in a poor area, in a time of
     bad drought. There is a line of people, mostly women, with every
     kind of container for water. This store gets a bowser of water
     every afternoon from the town and the people are waiting for this
     precious water. The Indian is standing with the heels of his hands
     pressed down on the counter, and he is watching a black woman, who
     is bending over a wadge of paper that looks as if it has been torn
     out of a book. She is reading Anna Kareninâ¦. This man is curious.
     He says to the young woman. "What are you reading?" "It is about
     Russia," says the girl. "Do you know where Russia is?" He hardly
     knows himself. The young woman looks straight at him, full of
     dignity though her eyes are red from dust, "I was best in the
     class. My teacher said, I was best." The young woman resumes her
     reading: she wants to get to the end of the paragraphâ¦.
     We are a jaded lot, we in our world â our threatened world. We are
     good for irony and even cynicism. Some words and ideas we hardly
     use, so worn out have they become. But we may want to restore some
     words that have lost their potency. We have a treasure-house â a
     treasure â of literature, going back to the Egyptians, the Greeks,
     the Romans. It is all there, this wealth of literature, to be
     discovered again and again by whoever is lucky enough to come on
     it. A treasure. Suppose it did not exist. How impoverished, how
     empty we would beâ¦.
     That poor girl trudging through the dust, dreaming of an education
     for her children, do we think that we are better than she is â we,
     stuffed full of food, our cupboards full of clothes, stifling in
     our superfluities?
     I think it is that girl and the women who were talking about books
     and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may
     yet define us.

References

   1. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/lessing-lecture_en.html