Timekeepers by Simon Garfield

 Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

It has been a while since I read any Simon Garfield, which is a shame, because I really enjoy his writing. I discovered him through Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, which I own. (I have been fascinated with fonts ever since I got my first computer as a kid.)  I also read On the Map: Why the World Looks the Way it Does, which is another engrossing book, at least for nerds.  

Like the above books, Timekeepers isn’t a systematic history of clocks, or a story in chronological order. Rather, Garfield writes about topics related to time that interest him. So, for example, the book opens with an account of a bike accident that Garfield was in, and how time slowed down. This is followed by the story of how the French tried to re-do the calendar after the revolution. (For more on this story, Whatever Happened to the Metric System? has a detailed account of the history.) There are also two chapters on the design and creation of high-end mechanical watches - and how they are marketed to the ultra-wealthy. There is a whole chapter on music and the CD - with a discussion of Beethoven tempos, naturally. There are discussions of movies, railroad timetables, time zones, photography, industrialization, modern art, slow food, and the British Museum. Yes, that is quite a broad range, which is exactly what is fun about Simon Garfield. He knows something - often quite a bit - about a huge range of topics, and writes engagingly about them all. 

 

Garfield opens the book with an introduction, which contains this gem:

 

This is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalize it and make it meaningful. It considers how, over the last 250 years, time has become such a dominant and insistent force in our lives, and asks why, after tens of thousands of years of looking up at the sky for vague and moody guidance, we now take atomically precise cues from our phones and computers not once or twice a day but continually and compulsively. The book has but two simple intentions: to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts. 

 

The answer to the question, of course is, “yeah, pretty much.” And the stories are really entertaining. 

 

Here is another line, found in the aftermath of the bike accident. 

 

Our neural mechanisms are constantly attempting to calibrate the world around us into an accessible narrative in as little time as possible. Authors attempt to do the same, for what is fiction if not time repositioned, and what is history if not time in retrospect, events re-evaluated in our own time?

 

There is a lot of truth in that. History itself is indeed our own attempt to make sense of a complex past. 

 

Speaking of history, the chapter on railway schedules and time zones was fascinating. Human nature really hasn’t changed over the years, and it was hilarious to see how many people got their panties in a wad over standardized time. Editorials decried the use of “London Time” over local solar time, calling it “tyranny more monstrous and unbearable” than any other. The United States owes a lot of its culture to England, and in particular, we have our weird obsession with “freedom” which often just means idiosyncrasy. (Or, in the worst cases, “freedom” to harm others. But this one is more benign.) Take, for example, this quote:

 

Is it possible that this monster evil, with its insidious promises of good and its sure harvest of evil, will be tolerated by freeborn Englishmen? Surely not! Let us rather rally round Old Time with the determination to agitate, and, if needs be, to resist this arbitrary aggression. Let our rallying cry be ‘The Sun or the Railway!’ Englishmen! Beware of delay in opposing this dangerous innovation! No time is to be lost - ‘Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!’

 

Overheated rhetoric much? In retrospect, this seems ridiculous. In an age where rapid travel is the norm, the idea of a gazillion local “times” seems ludicrous, and we denizens of the 21st (or even 20th) Century find time zones to be perfectly normal and logical, and certainly not some sort of malevolent evil conspiracy. But things looked different back then. I am convinced that many of our current “moral panics” over technology and change will look equally as silly 200 years from now. 

 

One factor in this panic should also look familiar. Back in the day, the keeper of time for most people was the church, summoning everyone to morning and evening prayer. So, the “takeover” of time itself by the railroads was not just an affront against Nature, but a weakening of the role of the church in everyday life. The issue of time thus triggered not only the conservative and reactionary instincts many of us have, but also tapped into the anxiety of organized religion about its constant decline in authority and power since the Enlightenment. 

 

I also rather enjoyed the chapter on music, in significant part because Garfield knows and understands classical (as well as popular) music. Although he does lack one bit of insider knowledge about how orchestras work. In describing the premier of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, he tells of the efforts made to keep things together despite the deaf composer’s inability to competently conduct at that point. A second conductor was set up, and the musicians instructed to follow him as best possible. However, as everyone who has played in an orchestra knows, when a conductor isn’t being helpful, everyone just follows the Concertmaster anyway. I have been in a number of situations where we did just that. There was a performance of Mozart’s Requiem a number of years back, where the conductor got sick right before the concert, and was unable to conduct. The assistant was thrust into a role she had never really played before - she was okay, particularly for choir cues, but she didn’t really know the orchestral score well enough to help us out. Oh, and we also had a pure orchestral piece she hadn’t had a chance to prepare for - this was an emergency, after all.  In most cases, we ignored her and followed our Concertmaster, and things went fine. This is something, by the way, that all good conductors understand. A good orchestra can play without a conductor in many cases - we don’t need someone to beat time for us. The conductor provides a unified vision, and assists in those places where it is tricky to make changes together as a large group. 

 

Another interesting historical tidbit comes in the chapter on industrialization and timed processes. A key name in this era was Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was a pioneer in scientific management of processes and tasks. Love or hate his ideas, they did revolutionize production methods. (Later, Frank and Lilian Gilbreth would both expand and humanize the field - and their kids would write the delightful Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequels, about their lives.)

 

Particularly interesting is that Taylor wrote a pamphlet in 1911 about his ideas, notable for being fairly bombastic, and for its appeal to make America great again. Indeed, MAGA was probably a bit of a cliche even back in 1911. At least Taylor wished to accomplish this by conserving resources and expanding America’s industrial capacity. Garfield notes this in a footnote. 

 

Conserving national resources was a sensible wish; it became a prescient necessity when the US entered the war six years later. But the desire to make the country great again may have appeared a tired political slogan even then. The belief of a better past is clearly a compelling one, but whether the past was better in the days of Taylor and Roosevelt in 1911 or in the mind of Donald Trump in 2016 is difficult to say. 

 

Garfield, it is important to note, is a Brit, so his perspective and dry wit are a bit different than ours, perhaps. 

 

In the chapter on self-help “time management” books (and classes, and seminars, and videos, and…), Garfield makes another great observation. So many of these books (etc.) advise people to “delegate” tasks. Which means making someone else do them - and that other person is not really considered. 

 

In the digital environment, delegation no longer means overloading a beleaguered person on a lower pay scale in an office (i.e. dumping on the less fortunate), but outsourcing with an app or URL; time-saving has become democratic, and a goldmine for startups. 

 

This is indeed something that has bothered me about so many of these books. They really are geared toward people who have a lot of money. It certainly is easier to find extra time if you can just pay other, poorer people to do your stuff for you. Not so easy without the money. Leisure is a privilege, not something you can just manufacture while trying to stay fed and housed on minimum wage. 

 

The chapter on food was a bit disturbing at time, primarily because of the actual existence of Soylent. No, not the stuff made from people, but the actual product intended to replace food. The goal behind all of these sorts of products is to eliminate the need to take time for a meal. And, indeed, to replace the pleasurable act of eating with a quick nutritive gulp so that one has, presumably, time to do other things. I find this completely contrary to my own goals. I love food. (Probably too much.) I love good food. I love the pleasures of cooking and eating. I love the way a house smells like food when it is being prepared. I love the way food is a universal human pleasure. (Well, except for the sorts that are fine with Soylent.) Food transcends culture - and brings people together. I live in a state that is a true Foodie Mecca, with flavors from around the world easily obtainable. And yes, there is a taco truck on my corner - with fresh tortillas and amazing cabeza and lengua. I can go down the street to an Indian grocery, get a variety of Asian ingredients on the way home, and even grab some Pakistani - or Jamaican - goat curry for dinner. It’s a beautiful thing. 

 

There are, of course, a bunch of other nifty passages in this book. I have seen some of the art mentioned in that chapter, at LACMA and elsewhere. Some of the stories were familiar, but others were new to me. In any case, this book is thoroughly enjoyable.