The History of Pirates

I have been spending a lot of time in bookstores. Most recently, I have been trying to find a book to teach me a very concise version of world history, so that I can teach my students an even conciser one. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so. I mean, why they don’t have a short and sweet, riveting and yet simple summary of a few thousand years of human history, with plenty of pictures, that doesn’t relegate Africa, Asia, Latin America, and women to the sidelines and provides a variety of perspectives without being complicated is just beyond me. I think such a thing could easily fit in under 300 pages, and the print wouldn’t even have to be too small. I read some good reviews on Amazon of a German book from the early 20th century aimed at younger readers called A Little History of the World, which it said was appropriate for all ages, but when I browsed through it at Barnes and Noble it began something like, “Once upon a time, life on earth began as something very small, even smaller than you! Too small to even sit in your lap!.” And I didn’t think I’d be able to stand the next 299 pages.

However, where the bookstores (and probably the historical canon) lack such a book as I require, I discovered one thing they have myriad plethoras of. Yes. Myriad plethoras. That many. Guess. No, really. You’ll never guess. Books about pirates. Not just Johnny Depp as a pirate, but historical books about pirates. And we’re talking the section designated “World History” in both Borders and Barnes and Noble. It’s not a large section, considering what it should hold, and I would say as many as 40% of the books in it were about pirates. There was even, I kid you not, The History of Pirates for Dummies. There were first-person accounts of pirates, broad surveys of pirate history, geographical focuses such as the Caribbean or the South Atlantic. So many that now, in relating this to you, I have gotten to the point with the word “pirate” where it starts to lose all sense and form and begins to sound like gibberish. You know? Say it about 10 more times: pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate. Yep. Total gibberish.

It was as though I had gone to the education section looking to brush up on the foundations of educational theory and had not found any such books but instead found an abundance about Hogwarts and the “magical educational approach that made Harry who he is today,” including one entitled How to Pass Your N.E.W.T.s and O.W.L.s for Dummies. I mean, right? Or if I went into the art history or religion section and all I could find were “historical” spinoffs of The Da Vinci Code. Oh wait…

It’s interesting to me though, what it says about the correlation between pop culture and history. Pirates are fascinating, I guess, in the dangerous way that natural disasters and the wreck of the Titanic are fascinating, and in the transgressive, we-all-wannabe-outlaws kind of way that Robin Hood is fascinating. But would there be so many history books about them without Johnny Depp and his sweet sweet eyeliner? Is it good when movies, or any such pop-culture element, incite a temporary boom of historical exploration, which then becomes what people interested in history read and what bookstores carry? I’m all for the argument, when it comes to a literate public, that reading anything (like Sweet Valley High or car magazines or even the dreaded Left Behind series) is better than reading nothing at all. But if what we read about history becomes all we know about history, at the expense of learning about the influences of what brought us to where we are today (all the influences except piracy, that is), and at the expense of learning from our forefathers’ mistakes when it comes to thinks like, oh, say genocide or tyrrany, are we in the process of rewriting history for the worse? Will such tunnely knowledge of history infiltrate the collective memory of humanity like poison into an aquifer making this generation one step closer to 1984 where once you lack the words for a concept you lack the concept?

Probably, books about pirates are not the most important thing to worry about. But it makes ya think, huh?

In other news, the countdown to school starting is rapidly depleting. My mom says this is good because it can’t be as bad as I’m building it up to be. But I don’t even think it will be bad, it’s more…this unexplained dread, not the dread of it being bad, but the dread of it being. Like, the responsibility of it. The endlessness of it. The always-being-or-at-least-trying-to-be-one-step-ahead-of-the-gameiness of it. I doubt my students read this blog, but if they do, hi darlings! It’s not you, it’s me. I’ll be fine. Really. I used to dread going back to school as a student—not so much in college, but definitely in high school and oh god, definitely in middle school. But all you students out there, my dad and I can tell you that nothing compares to the dread of going back to school as a teacher.

But even though it’s the end of sleeping in day after day (not that I’ve done much of that), the end of waning afternoons at the beach, the end of doughnuts and optional seminars and whitewater rafting and the Orgasmic Spider Hair Tickler Thingy (it really is called the Orgasmatron, no joke, and even comes from the land down under), the end of MSCL, the gayest-themed-show ever, the end of “you are beautiful” and the hairy baby fan club, the end of being in one home in exchange for another that doesn’t quite fit yet, the end of sunlight that lingers past 9:00, the end of reading books for pleasure and the end of reading everybody’s tarot cards at 2am, even though all of that, perhaps my mom is right and it will also mean the end of dread.

And there is so much to learn about pirates, how can I help but be excited?