Suppose someone offers to loan you a book. “It’s called The Discovery of Slowness, and it’s translated from the German.” You probably decline politely, citing a prior commitment to read epic poetry in the original Icelandic. But maybe it’s not what you think.
The Discovery of Slowness is a biography of Sir John Franklin, one of the most famous and unsuccessful English explorers of the 19th century. It’s easy reading, and you would never guess that it was a translation just from reading it—especially since most of the surnames and place names are English. The author is very solicitous of his protagonist, generally referring to him as John. The book is written in a simple straightforward style that almost suggests “young adult” fiction. It was, according to the back cover, “a stunning success all across Europe” back in the 1980s.
So what makes this book unique? Nadolny has two agendas. He is telling Franklin’s story, but he is also telling the story of a “slow” person. Slow, in this case, is not the same thing as stupid, though in his childhood Franklin is frequently taken for a dolt—or at least Nadolny’s Franklin is. I have not done the research to determine if or to what extent Franklin was considered to be slow in real life.
Nadolny’s Franklin does not perform task in “real time” very well. He cannot catch a thrown ball or engage in repartee or know how to react when his ship goes into battle. But he is able to “capture” sensory input and then process it thoroughly at his own pace. He has a unique cognitive style, and part of the pleasure of reading The Discovery of Slowness is watching how Franklin compensates for his deficiency and even prevails over quicker-witted colleagues by analyzing and preparing. He’s a tortoise who learns how to beat the hares. Early on, one of his teachers comes to appreciate Franklin’s unique abilities and writes an essay about him, in which he proposes that different kinds of people take up different kinds of occupations:
One should let the quick live quickly and the slow slowly, each by his distinct temporal measure. The quick can be put into synoptic professions, which are exposed to the accelerations of the age: they will be able to bear up well and perform their best service as coachmen or members of Parliament. Slow people, on the other hand, should learn professions requiring detailed application, such as craftsmanship, the medical arts, or painting. From their withdrawn position they can follow gradual change and judge carefully the labor of the quick and the governing.
The author of this essay goes on to propose that candidates for office should only be drawn from the quick, but that only the slow should be allowed to vote!
Franklin’s slow style turns out to be well suited to life at sea. He studies and ultimately masters the limited repertoire of possible events one can encounter on board one of his majesty’s ships by observing, processing, and planning. Through preparation, he is able to appear nimble and spontaneous.
He becomes a captain and leads expeditions to the North American arctic. Here we are in the territory of Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton. There is adventure, there is adversity—oh, Lord, is there adversity. And then there is the final enigmatic journey that captivated England in the middle of the 19th century. You can go on youtube to this day and hear renditions of the beautiful ballad “Lady Franklin’s Lament”: Bob Dylan appropriated the melody for one of his early songs (“Bob Dylan’s Dream”).
During the most exciting parts of the book I was not really aware of Franklin’s alleged slowness, and my one complaint about this book is that its two themes—the life of Franklin and the advantages of being slow—do not always mesh so well. The book’s forward was written by one Carl Honoré, “author of the international bestseller In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed.” I think there is a lot to be said for slowness. When you go over things, break them down, think about them, they sometimes reveal themselves in amazing ways. I don’t often read books twice, but I try to pick books that I think would show me something different if I re-read them. I’m not sure if In Praise of Slowness is such a book, but it was nice spending time with John and reading about the remarkable events in his life.
