The Way We Were

How to use pop culture as an unexpected research vehicle.

- BY JEFF SOMERS

When I was a young lad working an office job in Manhattan long ago, in a more civilized age, I used to spend my lunch hours at used bookstores all over the city.1 Most of these stores offered old paperbacks for ridiculously low prices—a quarter each, in some cases. I would routinely pick up 20 books for five bucks and add them to my overflowing library. I'm still working through those books today, decades later—I bought a lot of old paperbacks that way. Why not! They were basically free.²

Those old paperbacks were of mixed quality, but they offered an opportunity I didn’t appreciate immediately: The chance to travel back in time a bit. Digging into those old books offered a break from the bestseller lists and the constant focus on what was new, to experience examples of writing from other time periods—they were lessons about what life was like decades or even centuries ago.

The first time I was conscious of learning something about everyday life from an old book involved Dorothy L. Sayers’ classic mystery Whose Body?, featuring her aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey.^3 Published in 1923, the story could be updated to the modern day pretty easily, except for one detail: The way everyone treats telephones. Phones weren't brand-new in 1923, but newspapers were still publishing articles chronicling the astonishing growth of phone networks, and phone calls were expensive and complex, especially long-distance calls. In the novel, not only does Lord Wimsey keep his phone in a special room, but making a long-distance “trunk-call” is a notable activity, and one that involves politely asking someone to make the connection and ring you back when they have your party on the line.^4