Return of the Compiler?

September 24, 2009

When al-Maqrizi (the 15th century Egyptian historian I am always talking about) introduces a quotation from another book he uses an odd construction. He often writes "the compiler of such-and-such book." The Arabic word for "compiler" is jâmi'—which means: a person who collects or brings together. That will strike most modern readers as an odd way to refer to an author. Our authors create, they don't compile.

If you read medieval Arabic histories you will immediately perceive the aptness of the term compiler. These often have the feel of cut and paste jobs.. although learned ones, to be sure. They are large multi-volume works put together from reports and anecdotes from past works. As al-Maqrizi set out to write on elements of Egypt and Cairo he could at times do no better than simply to excise the passages from earlier histories that covered a certain topic. On some topics—such as the pyramids—he had nothing very personal to add, so what we get is a pile of citations.

For a compiler originality comes in the act of choosing the topic and organization. Many authors probably touched on events that occurred in a mosque in the course of writing a linear history, but al-Maqrizi might be the one to arrange these scattered references into a topic headed by the title of that mosque. That pushes the act of creation back a stage. It's now about organizing material in a novel way instead of creating new material. Medieval Arabic writers had a much easier handle on this topic than we have.. but I think we need to get some of this back.

The Internet offers lots of opportunities for re-conceptualizing scholarship, but getting back to this idea of compiler is one of the most exciting. Why should history be driven so strongly by a narrative? Why do we need that hand of God on our shoulder all the time? Once the historian was working away in archives that were voluminous and which could not be reproduced, so the aim was to summarize and connect the dots. But those archives are now mostly online.. or getting to be online. So instead of writing the next biography of Abraham Lincoln, why not select the important passages and letters and speeches that everyone goes back to, and compile them on a site so that a reader can walk through them?

Not everyone wants to go wading through the literature on Lincoln or Jefferson, so arrange it in an order of centrality.. sort of like the songs on iTunes Essentials: the basics, next steps, deep cuts, complete set. There would obviously be some haggling as to what winds up in which category, but that should be a group decision and would not require a massive new biography out of anyone.

The thing to be avoided is a selection like this one, set up by Barefoot Bob Hardison:

A compilation is often used, both on the Internet and in print, as an implicit claim to authenticity: "See, it's in his own words!" But obviously the critical role of compiler is glossed over. And that is the whole point of this post: be a compiler! Build a narrative out of words lost in the archive! God knows we don't need another book on How the Greeks Saved Civilization or How the Empire State Building Created Modern America.. all these bullshit titles which result from the need to have a grand narrative.

photo "WeinerText" ("Photograph of Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole, by Lawrence Weiner"). Photo used under GNU Free Documentation License.