I bought this book on recommendation. History, to me, on any subject is fascinating. When the book arrived I was struck by how similarly it looked to another book I read in 2017, Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, by Christopher De Hamel.
"Don't judge a book by its cover", and I didn't, but the similarities extended a little deeper. The structures were similar. "Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World" was De Hamel's; "thirteen charismatic episodes"' is St. Clair's. Both by English writers. I honestly thought this anthology-like structure was a new thing among English writers (and maybe it is).
Both subjects compel illustration it seems to me and Manuscripts is lavishly illustrated with high-quality plates. Puzzlingly, Golden Thread is not. The storeroom, hidden behind a wall in a cave in China, which contained a trove of ancient silk, manuscripts and paintings: no photograph. The layered shrouding of King Tut--I think there are photographs of King Tut: no photographs. The cocoons of the mulberry silkworm we have all seen and can picture in our mind's eye, but refresh your recollection.
Homo sapiens is distinguished from other species by being tipped at the head by a "divine flame." With our minds we can see even with our eyes shut, smell even if the object is not under nose, and feel even when not touching. None of our five senses is as acute as those of other species, it is the divine flame which augments them by synchronization, but of the five the human sense touch is the most finely-tuned to minuscule variations. The legend of the Princess and the Pea, for instance. Touch is what enabled our species, alone among the others, to fashion tools, to paint and draw and write, to make fabric from animal and plant material, indeed, it is our tactile sense which enables us to read books through our fingertips.
Fabric is a tactile material. The way that silk feels on our skin is exquisite, sensual, even erotic. The lightness and breathability of linen makes us feel free. The snugness of wool makes us feel protected. All of these we know with our minds because we have experienced them. Our sense of sight is pedestrian compared to other species but we consider ourselves a visual species. Photographs of Egyptian linen, Chinese silk or Mammoth wool--we can feel the texture of the fabric with our minds. They would have contributed greatly to Golden Thread.
Ms. St. Clair writes with the felicity of the English that abashes this colonist. She is precise in her word usage and intimate with technical terms. Warp, weft, tabby weave, twill, heddle loom, I don't know what those terms mean and so Ms. St. Clair explains them. Once. Highly intelligent, Ms. St. Clair's intelligence is that of the physician who retains definition once and needs no repetition. She assumes her readers are as intelligent, like a doctor who explains a condition using the medical terminology, who may, even if unasked, explain the term once and then assumes that the definition has stuck, that she need not repeat the exercise tiresome to her. The doctor and the fabric expert are not teachers, they do not know to reinforce the oral or written explanation by repetition--or by illustration. And so we don't comprehend and lose interest. There were times I got bored with this book.
The first nine "episodes" of Golden Thread are compact, disciplined and tightly composed. And then St. Clair runs off her rails. "Layering in Extremis: Clothing to Conquer Everest and the South Pole" is a natural next installment but the author loses her focus with George Mallory. Five full pages of the twenty-page chapter are devoted to poor Mallory's final, fatal attempt at Everest--and Mallory's death had nothing whatsoever to do with inadequate clothing. I remember when Mallory's body was found. St. Clair's account makes for the most lapel-gripping chapter of the book, but it has nothing to do with fabric and nothing to do with "How Fabric Changed History," the subtitle, the real title, of the book. A more accurate, and doable, subtitle would have been "How Fabric Shaped History."
There is no account of Eskimos and hides, Indians and moccasins, or what the Maasai wear on the Serengeti. St. Clair does not make the case, if there is a case to be made, for how silk or linen or wool changed history. Cotton did change history and I would have liked to have had more on the Industrial Revolution, of which fabric was the crucial driver, and the symbiosis of the American cotton plantations and the "dark satanic mills" of Liverpool and Manchester, "Cottonopolis".
By the time of the extreme clothing episode the book is well into the 20th century and St. Clair nails the task of the real title with synthetic fabric, a feature of the 20th century. Synthetics have wreaked a human catastrophe and an environmental disaster. The use of slave labor by the Nazis and slave-wage laborers, overwhelmingly women, in poor and developing countries such as Bangladesh and China continues to the present. Synthetics' petrochemical and cellulose raw material has led to widespread pollution, deforestation, and global warming. The synthetics revolution did indeed change history, and on a scale that rivals the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. St. Clair ably chronicles it. But in chapter ten, "Workers in the Factory," St. Clair mysteriously loses her facility with the rules of English grammar. She mixes tenses:
Agnes and her fellow forced laborers had no idea...
They learn on the job...
Something they discover early is...they were working with open vats...
Unlike the civilian workers, who were given...
All in one paragraph on page 216. St. Clair is using Agnes Humbert's memoir Resistance (which is also title of the first sub-episode in "Workers" for reference. If she had put those present-tense statements in quotation marks then it would be clear that she is quoting Humbert. But she doesn't.
As the war drags on...they are expected...they are working...and are pulling...(also on p. 216)
Agnes and her companions were also...
Everyone sleeps badly...
Agnes's spirit, however remained unbroken... (all in two paragraphs on p. 217)
When I first encountered this tense conflict it was jarring and I had to re-read. It was temporary, however.
What flows naturally, and chronologically, from Everest is the "Final Frontier" and spacesuits. Talk about extremis! To state the obvious, human space travel would have been impossible without the right "clothes." However, St. Clair conflates human "firsts," the achievement of talismanic goals, with historical change. The conquest of Everest did not change history; "One small step" was a giant achievement for mankind, but changed nothing: "For NASA, the spacesuits were part of the myth of the agency's usefulness to the wider public." (236) Yet, chapter 11, "Under pressure, Suits Suitable for Space" accounts for 18 pages; chapter 12, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Record-Breaking Sports Fabrics" another 18.
The last chapter, "The Golden Cape, Harnessing Spider Silk." The final episode is sixteen pages long on a "first" that never happened.
...
This book, Ms. St. Clair writes in the Preface, "is not--and was never intended to be--an exhaustive history of textiles. Instead...[the] thirteen very different stories... help illustrate the vastness of their significance." (emphasis added: no illustrations). "The vastness of their significance"...Alright, I am going to give her a do-over on the subtitle and replace "changed history" with "vast significance." There is no significance to spider silk of any magnitude. Other than chapter 13 she knitted a to-specs, perfect suit for that reformed task.
I read a lot, mainly the news, but my shelves are full and the books
have spilled over onto the floor space. In grading
a book I consider how it stacks up against those others. They make for a
hard curve and make of me a hard grader. Early on I settled on the
Middlesbrough streets, B, C, and D for Golden Thread. But which one,
above average, average, below average? Will I remember this book? Average and no, I will not remember it. C.
