This is a warm and funny essay about Cohen’s introduction to various neighborhoods and cultural institutions. It is a long essay, not often about the reading room. We might, he might, be interpreting the reading room as life, of course.
I love the section where he tells of a neighbor child’s insights:
I did have one source of inside information about the BM. One of our neighbours in the flats, Mr Skeet, worked in the Department of Ancient Manuscripts. His son, Jonathon, a boy of about my own age, with whom I did not get on particularly well, gave me to understand that as ‘keeper of old papers’ his dad held a position of some power and responsibility. However when I asked what his dad actually did, Jonathon replied that he sat at his desk all day and cleaned stuff up with a small brush before writing out little labels saying what was on them. As my own father spent his time saving people’s lives by taking out their tonsils, I was not unduly impressed.
He has other “reading room” in the local Boots library, on buses, at home, at school. He has eventually a reader’s card that not only gives him access to the BM but also access to walk through the building and get more quickly to a destination on the other side. He talks too of the library within the museum, the tangential feeling of that proximity between the two:
This sense of privilege was enhanced on late nights, when the reading room remained open until 9pm, while the rest of the museum was closed. It was then possible to wander through empty, dimly lit, galleries on the ground floor en route to the small basement cafeteria and feel a childish delight in having the place to yourself, as you took your own leisurely private view of the Egyptian statuary or Elgin marbles.
He also talks about how readers treat their reading materials:
Reading is not just an individual mental activity, it is a material and social practice, and I soon discovered there were many different ways of doing it. The extrovert reader sprawls books and papers all over the desk, not bothering too much if s/he intrudes on a neighbour’s territory. The more introverted reader builds little barricades, using books or bags to protect their personal reading space from intrusion by any prying gaze. There are the obsessionals who have to lay out their pens, notebooks and other apparatus in a precise order on the desk before they can begin work, and the happy go lucky ones who manage to make do with whatever comes first to hand. Some readers have annoying nervous tics. One BM habitué used to emit a continuous low hum while reading which only stopped when he came to a page with a picture or photograph on it. Another used to mutter furiously under her breath as she turned the pages, no doubt having an argument with the author.
All in all, a great memoir of a place and thoughts on the inscribed word and identities being shaped.
—
Also from the website publishing the essay:
From this website:
Phil Cohen has been a (sometime) shoplifter, Situationist, squatter and sociologist. He has published his reflections on writing this memoir in an article in History Workshop Journal (issue 74) and now has a website and blog at philcohenworks.com.
Keeping (and Telling) the Past 