Dan Pelzer died earlier this 12 months on the age of 92, leaving behind a handwritten record of all of the books he’d learn since 1962. His family had it digitized, put it on-line, and now it’s gone viral, somewhat to the surprise of these of us who’d never heard of him earlier than. However that, it appears, is how the unprepossessing Pelzer himself would have needed it, according to the impression given by his grown children when interseen concerning the popularity of their father’s greater than 100-page-long learning record. He started preserveing it when he was stationed in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer, and stored it up till the top of his learning days in 2023, lengthy after he retired from his job as a social worker at an Ohio juvenile correctional facility.
Examinationined together, whether or not within the type of a complete scan or a searchin a position PDF, the three,599 books, most of them checked out from the library, that Pelzer fileed having learn constitute a personal cultural history of the previous six a long time. Described as a religious Catholic, he certainly appears to have been consistent in his purgo well with of an interest in not simply the history of Christianity in particular, however the history of western civilization in general.
It comes as no surprise to see him dig into Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization sequence within the early 9teen-eighties, slightly startling although it’s that he learn its eleven volumes in an apparently random order. This behavior seems to be characteristic: although reputed to finish each guide he begined, he solely obtained round to 6 volumes of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, begining with the eleventh and finishing with the tenth.
Interspersed with the books of The Story of Civilization are the likes of Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of Struggle, John Irving’s The World According to Garp, and three novels by Ken Follett. Although abidingly concerned with the story of mankind, Pelzer seems additionally to have had a weakness for style thrillers (he’s remembered as an enormous John Grisham fan) and primeical books-of-the-moment. However whether or not learning at excessive‑, low‑, or middleforehead level, he appears to have been willing to offer all main religions and political philosophies, in addition to some minor ones, a good hearing — or slightly, a good learning. This makes for striking juxtapositions in his record: Ayn Rand followed by L. Ron Hubbard, Ta-Nehisi Coates by Jonathan Haidt. In that respect, he was, perhaps, the ideal of the engaged, “democratic” common learner one imagines populating America whereas somehow never encountering. If his record raises the question of why he didn’t go right into a extra intellectually ambitious line of labor, it additionally, in a means, solutions it: what time would which have left him to learn?
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Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
