Him before and i know youre going to enjoy his company and hes going to be in conversation with jess mchugh author of americannon. Shes a writer and researcher whose work has appeared across a variety of national and International Publications including the New York Times the wall street journal the washington posts and many many others. Shes reported stories from four continents on a range of cultural and historical topics from presentday. Liverpool punks to the history of 1960s activists in greenwich village, and i have spent some time with both of our guests in the green room and just now early in a techron, and i know youre going to enjoy their company, so im welcoming now to the screen jess mchugh. Hi, jess. Hi, so happy to be here. And i will tell our listeners too. That what time is it where you both are one oclock in the morning. That is correct. Were doubly glad to have you here and i cant wait to hear what you have to say. So peter, will you let me know when its time to come back on and help us questions and answers sure. Thank you and welcome. This is a treat. Its great to see you again, jess. And yes, were a little blearyeyed, but this is a great opportunity to talk about this book and first of all, congratulations for the great reception of this book the great attention thats been paid to it and the story that you tell i i kept thinking when i was reading this book, its hard to imagine that this hadnt been done before kind of alternative canon and that you have created that that explains so much about history and culture and identity but also about myth. And and yet were not talking about literature right . Were not talking about the canon with a sort of capital c in the great books sense. And so i do want im gonna quote very quickly that from the the little quotation that you begin with. Ralph ellison and he says among other things our memory and our history are ever at odds, and i just i love that sentiment because this yeah, it says, you know, this is a story told by inattentive idealists and what interesting way to describe america and and our population inattentive idealists, and i do want to begin with the general and then well move to the specific of your chapters, but these ideas of myth and identity and aspiration and even i might say nostalgia which which i got from every one of these chapters some of them i felt quite personally personally things like Betty Crockers again, its your idea. Seems like such a big idea and it seems also now that its come to fruition seems like im such a mature idea. How did you come to this way of telling this story which is to say grouping of canonical texts, but that were not literary socalled literary texts sure. So i think maybe just to start with a slight overview of the approach that im taking for people who havent maybe read the entire book yet, but hopefully it once you after this and as you said with the kind of Ralph Ellison quote, which i use as the epigraph i was interested in in kind of the gap between mythology in the sense of you know, greek mythology a storytelling the stories. We tell about america versus perhaps the way that average americans live and so in wanting to write what for me was a book about average peoples lives middle class life in america. I wanted to look not at what we might consider great books, even though i love great books. I love talking about great novels and you know mark twain a lot of people have asked me about why isnt mark twain on the list. Why isnt Harriet Beecher still on the list . When the reason for that, that as you kind of pin to that. The canon of books that i was looking at here is didactic books reference books a book thats teaching you something and so i wanted to look at books that were daily books ones that you would consult every day whether it was a speller or a cookbook or a dictionary if you had more money and so that was sort of the idea if you were an american in 1850 or 1950 and you only owned a handful of books. What were the books and and what did they teach you about what it was to be an american and so i tried to focus on on bestsellers and and on you know, the books that touch the greatest number of people and i came to it by way of noah webster, which was that i was i was interested and this is one of the kind of funny connections between us over the years and merriamwebsters twitter presence in you know, 20152016 and i remember hearing this offhand comment and a lecture that no web service and nationalist. I remember thinking i wonder what he would make of this new this new attitude that they have and so that was what led me into writing this article for the paris review about the roots of websters dictionary and his as we can get into quite a vast agenda that he had for the way that american language could be a sort of a bedrock of an independent american identity. Yeah, i mean absolutely and you and i do think its interesting that you know, the academic canon the literary canon is something that were we kind of take almost take for granted as a you know as an elevated rare air of culture and yet most of us have experienced many if not, most of these works in ways that you are distinctly not literary and and so, you know this conversation. I think we can go into that that original that first document that first chapter on the farmers almanac something. I was familiar with as a kid in new england seeing it around so they sort of seeing it everywhere and peoples bathrooms and it you know and to this day for sure and yet its Something Like so many of your choices that we took for granted for so long that i never really thought much about it, except it seemed to always be there and thats sort part of your story isnt it . Exactly and in some sense . It has kind of been there almost from the very start of the United States, you know this particular. Almanac the old farmers almanac has the first issue came out in 1792. They published continuously since then i never missed any years and they still sell Something Like 3 million copies per year, which is just staggering especially when you think about you know, people might not need to have animal mating tables or sometimes and sunset times before their farms, but theres a sense that its kind of its functioning again as kind of a vehicle for nostalgia for some people who you know their ancestors used to farm or and they they want to connect back to that or even for us. I feel like it was always in my grandparents house. It was always in my parents house. It was a part of kind of new england folklore in a sense and and i think as you kind of hint to that what is interesting about this particular book is that its its almost a tool more than a piece of literature. It was there to help farmers, you know do everything from grow crops and breed livestock to vote. There were things like how heres where to vote. Heres one court. Or heres the vacation at harvard and dartmouth. And so the idea really was is its not just a guide to farming but its a good guy to citizenship and its kind of laying the ground for the republican farmer republican in the sense of republic this sort of ideal citizen who is of the land but is also a thinking person and its its an idea that persists and is so important to kind of american archetypes. Yeah and just comes to mind that you know, the the european model of those who who owned land was very different was you know that they were different classes. They were not the they were not the citizen farmers and the citizens soldiers and the representatives. I think it even the almanac even published the salaries right of the of the congress, which is a sort of charming detail. This is wonderful. So anecdote that you tell of near the beginning of the farmers almanac of this encounter between i think that the Founding Editor and a clergyman and theres this quote that i just love the clergyman said that you you seem better fed than taught. Could you explain that . Its just so this is actually happened to him, but i could see it happening in in massachusetts in the 1770s. So he comes upon this this clergyman and the road and the farmer doesnt move out in time for him to pass by his carriage and and the clergyman says something to him to the effective. You know, you were better fed than hot and retorts. Yes because you teach me and i feed myself. And i think thats sort of the idea of why the farmer resonates so much because weve had this connection in american imagination and in american reality to some sense that landownership is equated with freedom and independence and its also equated with kind of voting power and economic power and there was this idea but you know as were cultivating this supposedly empty land which of course its not empty. Theyre kind of growing the seeds of liberty and this new republic as they kind of till their fields. And so its this notion that farming is not just for oneself or for ones family even but for ones country and this is i think the farmers almanac might not have been likely way even wasnt conscious of that but its very much present in the way that they present how Farming Works and what its there for. Yeah, and and thats thats such a beautiful allegory of this this kind of new ideal of a citizen and you can draw a line from this far citizen farmer to you know, libertarian ideals to today and its just such a you know, a resonant part of the book as another anecdote that i just cant let a couple of them with farmers almanacally taught for a long time one was about Abraham Lincolns use of all i mean the farmers thought i feel like i could have written an entire book about the farmers almanac. Theres so much history there because its been there since the beginning but yeah, theres this this lore and its that when Abraham Lincoln was a young lawyer he was defending a person whos accused of murder and the primary witness said, yes, i saw this person kill this other person and i saw him by the light at the moon and in this, you know dramatic flourish lincoln whips out his old farmers almanac and says, i think youll see here that there was no moon that night and the whole case falls apart and he wins and her just you know, there are so many moments that the almanac and interacts with American History in so many ways beyond the daily life of farming. Theres also this case and i think that maybe you were gonna get to as well and in the 1940s the only time that the almanac almost stops publication is because a german spy gets off of a uboat in i think its manhattan or hes anyway, hes captured in penn station and the only book that he has on him is the old farmers almanac and so, you know the sensors fear that theyre the nazis are using the almanac to plan and attack on the United States because the forecasts are done a year in advance the editor at the time said he thought they were more concerned with the tide tables for submarine attack. But anyway, the forecast was switched to general predictions and the almanac saved. So i was looking as well. But i mean thats i mean theres two movies screenplays right there. And i mean, its really the and i mean its to your credit that something that we have taken for granted is such a vivid, you know a vivid source of of information and history now your next chapter is on webster we and we have to give a little prior to print place to know webster given our audience tonight. And of course who who we are partly because i just learned this about you. I think youre one of the kind of people. Youve said who as a child would read the dictionary. Is that right . That is right. Quite a nerdy child this multiplies many in audience and i wanted to seem smart and to be smart, but especially to seeing smart and so i had the collegiate werent married monsters collegiate dictionary and i would read it before i went to bed because i kind of thought that this was the way to be educated or to seem educated but really what it led to me doing was just mispronouncing a lot of words. And so i remember reading a sign to my parents and saying oh look, its a Pedestrian Crossing and turning around saying what . So yes kids out there read dictionaries before you go to sleep. Yeah, you know, its its a its a funny thing. There are i think theres just two kinds of people in the world people who read the dictionary and people who dont its just that simple, but when we get when we talk i love this and i love that that the roots of the story goes so deep with you that makes sense given, you know, given the way that youve told the story and and so webster himself is just a fascinating american character without question. Obviously, we understand that he did an important thing, but he also embodied important things, you know, he was an idealist. He was a christianist if you if you will, but he was also a federalist. I mean he was a he was a hardnosed political thinker and all of those things again, we can see in contemporary culture and yet he also had this passion for language. So could you just talk a little bit about the maybe the aspirations of webster and that ended up being expressed in a book that was essentially written for the aspirations of a nation . Exactly. Yeah, i think you know webster is so endlessly fascinating in the books that he wrote to me are so compelling and thats what really brought me into this. Subject matter was that and as i said, i had had this long relationship with the dictionary, but i hadnt thought about it as a book that was written by a person with a goal in mind. And so i was quite surprised to learn that for webster, you know, making the speller and then the dictionary was this sort of linguistic declaration of independence from britain. Its the the postrevolutionary era and hes saying, you know american english is going to be as different from British English as you know, swedish is from german and this is the way that were going to have a christian and a patriotic language, which is such a radical idea for what is the same language, but hes saying through spelling through standardization and through this sort of ethos that we can imbue our scholarship with in having a literary, you know, i could see him projecting these great literary dreams for the United States. Its such a young age is kind of extraordinary and i think you can make the argument that maybe we didnt go quite as far as swedish, but there are certainly in many differences and i would argue that many of them are fundamental to the way that we conceive of our identity whether its you know, the amount of biblical language thats used public speech or just the way that so many of the examples tie together these ideals of the kind of postrevolutionary era and in terms of you know the aspirations of americans this truck accord with people who said yeah, you know, we did just beat this empire. We need to have our own language and then throughout history. You see many many other people picking up this book with different aspirations. So, you know Frederick Douglass uses one of websters later spellers to teach himself how to write which is you know, and then he becomes this great aurador in this order and this great writer and there are many people throughout history who realize that the dictionary and language and speaking well is a way to a better life, especially i would argue in the 19th and early 20th century. Yeah, i mean no question and compelling and of course we could talk all day about webster and all of his controvers but among other things he obviously as you just said so perfectly he sought with this project a sort of National Identity and there was a linguistic part of this too that we all recognize. Im just for the benefit of our audience. Ill say it very quickly that websters is maybe best known linguistically for the the spelling changes and and that he brought to english or rather the sort of settling of an american style of spelling that we recognized today all of us. He thought he was simplifying things. I think i would argue he complicated them because now were all responsible for understanding two different sets of spelling conventions the you and color and honor and humor of the letter z or z for a word like civilization or analyze the terminal k and a word like music or public and and especially the the subtle he hated webster hated silent letters and he hated double letters which are kind of the same thing. And so the inflections the verb to travel for example would be traveled with a single l in american english with two ls and in British English canceled that kind of thing so many different changes that we associate with webster, but also webster had this weird. Capacity for prediction that in that preface to his 1806 edition. He says that american english which again in 1806 we were in you know agrarian nation that was sort of on in a weak position internationally certainly economically and militarily we had barely survived the election of 1800 politically and yet theres webster writing that the american variety of english will be the dominant one and that it will be spoken in his words by 300 millions of men which in 1806. It is quite an accurate prediction. But theres one thing id like you to speak to a very briefly about webster, which is this connection in his work and in his life, he was a product of the enlightenment to be sure but also a product of the american second grade awakening he was itself described a bornagain christian and there was a great deal of of christian message in the in the text of his dictionary, but beyond that this another connection, which is that if you and it maybe you should tell the story but if someone were to buy copy of that 1828 dictionary today, in fact simile. They would have to get it where . From a bible says he yeah, its quite funny the christian homeschool. Ing group has really taken or has taken to this book for quite a long time seeing it as kind of the only or one of the only christians early christian american texts. And so theres a Bible Society that has digitized the entire original 1828 dictionary, which is what 70,000 entries or Something Like this and its for a researcher like myself. Its hugely helpful and and kind of surprising and ill also i would love to hear you. Tell that story about the question that you get asked for people about reprinting it. Oh, yeah, i mean and that comes back to the the very first a book book fairs and conferences that i attended for merriamwebster often standing at a table or little little book stand in a suit and happy. Answer your questions as i could but it there was a little pattern and i learned a lot and i was a huge education doing that kind of thing and one