A Day in the Life
Jason Kuznicki on Jun 25th 2004
Paul Musgrave is doing archival research in history this summer. Here’s how he describes a typical day in the archives:
a bizarre ritual wherein introverts lock themselves away with filing cabinets full of decaying letters written by dead and unknown people. Occasionally, the researchers make little squeaky noises to announce that they’ve found something tremendously important (to them, at least).
And it’s so true. From the most tenured and dignified octogenarian down to the first-year summer research fellow, historians are absorbed in things that seem momentous to us, but which are difficult to explain and quite often inconsequential to others.
Today, I’m off to re-read for probably the fouth time a section about figurism in Jansenist responses to Unigenitus in Catherine Maire’s book From the Cause of God to the Cause of the Nation. I happen to be covering the same territory in a project I’m working on, and it’s important that I do not give even the vague impression that I’ve failed to read it.
Then someone else would get to make little squeaky noises at my expense–and this we cannot allow.
Filed in The Basement