It almost seem like fait accompli that I would read this book after listening to the audiocourse The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin during a long car ride in early October. But I spotted the Classics Club edition and not the Harvard Classics edition that I bought in in 2020 when I assigned it to my boys to read during their long, long vacation from in-person classes. I’m not sure either of them actually read it, but the oldest has been looking for Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations which I also got in cheap editions for the boys about that time as well. Wait, that’s digressing.
So: Whereas the audiocourse was a long, full biography on Benjamin Franklin, Franklin wrote his actual autobiography in chunks. Part of it he wrote when he was young and was trying to capture what it was to be on his way up; the second part was written decades later when he was an accomplished businessman and influencer in Pennsylvania; and the last part of it was assembled from some notes after Franklin’s death. So this book is not the Director’s Cut. Or maybe it is. But it’s more than an autobiography as it gave some others time to do a bit of hagiography was well.
Still, it’s an amazing story: Franklin, born into a very large family, eventually becomes apprenticed to his brother a printer, but he breaks his apprenticeship and goes on the run from Boston to Philadelphia where he becomes a printer, eventually a writer and owner of a printshop, and he moves and shakes with the important men in the colony (but not necessarily the decendents of Penn who really owned the place). He makes the most of the opportunities he gets and speaks up on the virtue of industriousness (but, as we know from the audiocourse, although he described the virtues he espoused, he never completed The Art of Virtue). The autobiography, as I have mentioned, focuses mostly on his early life and mostly the business life as that is the example he was hoping to set. When get to page 246 of 300, we’re at 1756. His role in the events leading up to the American Revolution, the Revolution, his ambassadorship after, and his brief retirement get almost a page for each year depicted. Of course, this last was the bit the least assembled and polished by Franklin, and it’s at a high level summary. But, still, what a life.
Given my current position, hammering on the theme of personal industry was inspirational. My favorite aunt once said I had hustle because I had a full time job, a sideline of selling estate sale finds on Ebay, and thoughts of running a vending machine route or video game route. I somehow lost a bit of that ambition, probably after having a blog that did not turn profitable, publishing books which have not earned enough to cover the cost of the first book’s professional cover, trying to write a couple of software applications but getting stumped at certain points and doubting anyone would use them anyway, putting together a collection of fine fashion which has not sold a single t-shirt except to myself, and other bits of “hustle” that did not actually pay out. I have some ideas for other sidelines, but I’m not sure that they would pay out more than they cost, and certainly would unlikely pay me much in net revenue. But Franklin’s example leads me to thing maybe I should.
I read this book once before, probably in my college years–I think it was required for a class, but I’m not sure which one it would have been. I really need my transcripts to jog my memory of what exactly I took in that collection of English classes which was almost too many credits in one discipline to allow me to graduate. No, really.
At any rate, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The text is very approachable, although the sentences are longer than you would get in a Don Pendleton paperback or a Jeff Kinney book designed to get kids to read. But I’ve found that it’s easier to read than English prose from the same period. And a pleasure to read as well. I’ll have to read this again, probably when I find the copy which I bought in 2020 or one of the cheap copies I bought for my boys.
And I’m going to just stop trying to guess what the longest time between re-reads is when I re-read a book. I mean, this book is, what, thirty years give or take? A while, indeed.
