Hi Reader! When I worked in educational technology, a business executive told me that new car salesmen don’t learn from, or even like, lofty ideas. They’re excited by physical things, he said: the glass, steel and fabric, the smell and sound, the power and handling of a luxury automobile. He made up a verb to nail this cognitive principle: “tangibilitate” — for making abstract concepts tangible. Dictum: tangibilitate the sales training! In other words, design pedagogy that is experiential rather than overtly instructive.
The modernist American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) never uttered the word tangibilitate, but he conveyed much the same meaning in his epic Patterson (1946-1958) where he declared “No ideas but in things.” * Not just declared, but walked the talk. Modernists like Williams (and of course George Moore) engaged readers with sensory impressions rather than philosophy. Some people today call this world building. I also call it book collecting. Books are the ultimate tokens of ideas in things.
In the Collections pillar of George Moore Interactive, I identify public and private repositories that include George Moore materials; where his books, pamphlets, periodicals, manuscripts, and pictures are stored. These are tangible things that contain the entirety of an author’s oeuvre. In future, Collections will also have to include virtual assets (e.g. emails and NFTs). George Moore Interactive anticipates that evolution by digitizing the Moore legacy now.
The Collections pillar covers printed and handwritten, painted and drawn artifacts. People who collect such things may be scholars but often are not. Scholars rarely choose to spend the money.
My friend Rupert-Hart Davis had over 15,000 printed materials and innumerable handwritten and painted objects in his Yorkshire home when I visited, plus a table in his study stacked with new arrivals. His collection is now in the University of Tulsa Library where scholars can pore over it. Rupert had superb literary acumen but no PhD.
My friend Edwin Gilcher collected more than 600 printed materials of George Moore before I met him, and other things of course. (His copy of Berlin Alexanderplatz is on my shelves.) His Moore collection is now in the Arizona State University Library. Edwin too was blessed with literary acumen, but no PhD.
These outstanding men of letters were not academic, but were beacons of ideas in the things they collected. Things they put on their shelves animated their thinking.
I too collect books, on a smaller scale, and some of what I have is by George Moore. I had only a vague idea of what was on the 21 linear feet of shelves devoted to Moore, so with the encouragement of local librarians and friends, I used the Libib application to catalog it. From August 2022 until just last week, I spent over 100 hours entering my Moore collection into Libib. So far there are 450 entries. As on the table in Rupert’s study, the number keeps growing (number 451 arrived today). Now that I know what I have, I begin to know what I want!
I hope to post many Moore catalogs in the Collections pillar of George Moore Interactive. Starting with mine and including those of other people who are willing to open their kimonos. I will likewise identify institutions that have significant Moore assets. Doing this will help Moore’s readers skirt the hundreds of hours it takes to find the things they want to see. It will introduce collectors to brethren who share their passion and ideas.
Collections is vital to George Moore Interactive because every manuscript and artwork is unique of course, but many printed materials are also uniquely telling. For example, loosely inserted into my copy of George Moore’s Letters to Lady Cunard (London: Rupert Hart Davis, 1957) is an important manuscript letter by Moore to Lady Cunard that is not printed in the book, along with a letter from Lady Cunard to Shane Leslie. Hot damn!
Ideas are indeed in things, and every single thing that is collected potentially imparts ideas worth having and sharing.
* Patterson was also a popular automobile when William Carlos Williams was writing.
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You Are Invited
The Oak Park Public Library is going to host a brief discussion of George Moore Interactive a few days after George Moore’s birthday on Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 12:30 PM Central Time (6:30 PM GMT). You may remotely attend on Zoom or in person. Here is an announcement that will soon appear on the Library’s free registration page.
The brilliant iconoclast George Moore (1852-1933) helped put modernism in the vanguard of Western literature and art; afterwards he was eclipsed by friends such as Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce. What is the value of Moore’s legacy today? Dr. Becker is proposing an answer in the form of George Moore Interactive, a project that makes it easier for people to access, enjoy, understand, and use the art and literature they experience. The technology can be applied to other modernist creatives including Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Oak Park is where Ernest Hemingway was born and raised; where Frank Lloyd Wright founded and grew his architecture practice; and where I live and work in my own home studio. The Oak Park Public Library is a pillar of the community; Special Collections librarians Kathleen Spale and Kheir Fakhreldin make projects like mine not just doable, but joyful.
