Connie and Historian/Writer Nelson Price (click to view larger)
There’s a misconception out there that everything worth knowing is available online. Not true! There are whole worlds of information only accessible to those willing to take a journey, brave the sometimes intimidating protocol of an archival collection, open boxes or folders full of random papers, and dig into material that very few people may even know the existence of. There’s always a chance that some stray note might flutter out of the folds of an otherwise unremarkable newspaper clipping with a scribbled message that will bring a life into focus.
When I stumbled on a review of a book called The Allure of the Archives in the New York Review of Books (January 9, 2014) I felt as if I’d found a kindred spirit. The reviewer calls the author, Arlette Farge, “one of France’s finest historians” and describes her daily trips to the Archives Nationales as “marinating” in the past, taking it in slowly, deliberately, “through the pores.”
I would hate not having access to the Internet. I’m online all the time tracking things down. But my best insights come when I’m slowly marinating in an archive.