Even in his worst moments, my father never resembled the simpletons
who masquerade as blue-collar heroes on television; in the darkest of times he
never talked like Archie Bunker, the malignant sow dreamed up by West Coast
millionaires as a mechanism for sneering at people who have to work for a
living.
Unlike TV’s prefab proletariat,
self-congratulatory buffoons all, my father could tell you why Julius Caesar
crossed the Rubicon, why Richard III killed the little princes, why Hannibal dragged
his elephants over the Alps, and why one should think twice before venturing
out onto the English moors at night.
Hemmed in by ignorant men, he was not himself ignorant.
He was...the best the working class had to offer. He was ceaselessly in the process of
educating himself, not because he thought it might advance his career--he had
no career--but because reading was a way to escape to a better world. ...While some people, to borrow an insight
from C.S. Lewis, read to know they are not alone, the poor read to know that
they are not condemned. ...Books are a
guiding light out of the underworld, a secret passageway, an escape hatch. To the affluent, books are ornaments. To the poor, books are siege weapons.
Joe Queenan. Closing Time, New York: Viking Press, 2009, pp. 14-15.
