Words, Words, Words

In The Library at Night Alberto Manguel writes that for the cultures of the Book, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, "knowledge lies not in the accumulation of texts or information . . . but in the experience rescued from the page and transformed again into experience, in the words reflected both in the outside world and in the reader's own being." Later, he claims that Paul, who never knew Jesus "face to face," knew that since he had read the Word, the Word was now "lodged in him" and "that he had become the Book, the Word made flesh, through that little bit of the divine that the craft of reading allows to all those who seek to learn the secrets held by a page."
It's interesting to think about this notion of words becoming experience, even divine experience on a more mundane level. For instance, I have just finished Nathaniel Philbrick's book about Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, The Last Stand. It's a fascinating subject but the book doesn't come off. Usually I enjoy reading even the more technical descriptions of battlefield maneuvers, of which there are plenty in this story, but I got very weary of the events leading up to the slaughter of Custer and his men, perhaps because the words did not translate into lived experience--especially important in a work of history of this sort. Neither Custer nor Sitting Bull came to life for me--although both of them are colorful and ultimately tragic men. Philbrick's compare and contrast methodology just doesn't work, at least it didn't for me.
When I was about twelve I was sent to a camp in the Pennsylvania Poconos that featured a staff member said to be Sitting Bull's grandson. In our camp photo, dressed in full tribal regalia, he stands in the midst of the campers, little girls in white shirts and shorts. It's quite a scene, and one that came to mind reading the appalling account of his grandfather's last sad days and his death.