Hero

I love Benjamin Franklin. When I was a kid, I used to take out The Value of Saving: the Story of Benjamin Franklin over and over again from my school library. Today, I have a bust of him in my home office (not to mention a totally cool action figure). More than ever, I wish I could be a fraction of the person he was, with one tenth the accomplishments.

In a short paragraph, it’s hard to fully express what it is that I admire about the man, whose life was so full that there was very little he didn’t do. First and foremost, I’d say it was his sense of civic duty, the need to serve in a public capacity in every way: politician, businessman, printer, postmaster, founder of a lending library and fire brigade, inventor of the money-saving Franklin stove, and member of countless societies and clubs, among other things. He was also a man of letters in its purest sense, producing thousands of written works. An insatiable curiosity led him to excel in the realm of science, for which he was internationally recognized. On top of that, he played a huge political and diplomatic role in Pennsylvania, the Colonies-turned-America, England, and France. People classify him as stodgy and square; to that I reply that they’re just jealous.

Edmund S. Morgan’s biography, simply entitled Benjamin Franklin, is the first on his life I’ll be reading this year (which happens to be the 300th anniversary of his birth). This highly renowned American history scholar skips most of Franklin’s childhood and personal life, cutting straight to his Philadelphia career and beyond. Although the work is somewhat academic, it is still highly readable. The author has a clear and profound respect for his subject, though he does point out Franklin’s failings when merited. If he wanted to demonstrate one thing, it was Franklin’s deep dedication to a greater public interest. He succeeds masterfully.

Contrast this work with David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. The book is an anecdotal explanation of how Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians) have taken over the upper echelons of society, reviling the values of thrift, industriousness, and reliability so embodied in the person of, you guessed it, Benjamin Franklin. I actually liked this volume even though it lacks teeth in terms of evidence (you can tell the author is a journalist and not an academic). One has only to hang out in any hip downtown core to find exactly what he’s talking about: SUV-driving millionaires in khakis and hiking boots drinking fair-trade coffee whilst discussing killer business deals on their cell phones. I especially liked the chapter on “Intellectual Life”, which seethes with cynicism.

I think I’ll be giving a lecture on BF sometime in the not-too-distant future. He may be un-hip, and hard-working, and practical, but he’s still my hero.

Comments

[Dad]

The thing about Ben Franklin is that he was considered cool then and remains cool some 300 years later. He never had a slow day. There was no country large enough to contain him. And he managed to transcend the generational divide. Still does. Fact is, Library Girl, he is Hero to me too.