I am two-thirds of the way through The Missing Ink by Philip Hensher. I have mixed feelings about the book but I will go into those after I am done in a day or two. I only mention it because it has me thinking about handwriting lately and taking note of mentions of handwriting around the internet.
Like a recent article at Brain Pickings Mary Gordon on the Joy of Notebooks and Writing by Hand as a Creative Catalyst (via). The article is about a Gordon essay that appeared in a 2001 book called Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times. The article quotes Gordon:
Writing by hand is laborious, and that is why typewriters were invented. But I believe that the labor has virtue, because of its very physicality. For one thing it involves flesh, blood and the thingness of pen and paper, those anchors that remind us that, however thoroughly we lose ourselves in the vortex of our invention, we inhabit a corporeal world.
In another quote she describes her pen and the color of ink she likes to use. I do love writing by hand which is a very physical act, slow and deliberate. I’m not sure I could compose a whole novel by hand though. One of the things I like best about composing on a computer is the ability to erase or edit what I don’t like without wasting paper. Sometimes, especially when I am writing something new, when faced with a pen and a blank piece of paper I find myself suddenly at a loss of how to start. But a screen, it forgives all false starts. I do find, however, that if I am in the middle of writing something and I get stuck, switching to pen and paper can get me going again. I suppose the lesson is to have a variety of tools in the toolbox!
I read a New York Review blog post by Colm Toibin yesterday on Proust and an exhibition at the Morgan Library of his notebooks and manuscripts. There is a photo of a page from a 1910 notebook that contains an early version of Swann’s Way. As Toibin describes it, “Proust’s handwriting is bad.” I don’t read French so I can’t begin to puzzle out what it says, but I can’t even tell what most of the letters are.
Coincidentally, this afternoon, I read a chapter in The Missing Ink on Proust! Hensher writes about various references and scenes in Proust’s novel that center around handwriting, but he also writes about Proust himself. Proust, apparently, took great pleasure in the handwriting of others. When he received a letter he liked to try and guess who it was from just by the handwriting on the envelope. Graphology was also the rage at the time and he was fascinated by the idea that character could be revealed by one’s handwriting. Today graphology is akin to reading someone’s personality by the bumps on their skull, but in Proust’s day, they had no such reservations.
According to Hensher, Proust often took pleasure in the illegible handwriting of his many correspondents. In a letter to Emmanuel Berl Proust wrote:
the mysterious arabesques which you ironically call handwriting …[the] signs which, though devoid of rational meaning, nevertheless conjure up your face.
To Anna de Noailles he wrote:
What a resurrection of joy after so many years to see that Handwriting, whose wondrous machicolations would seemingly suffice to protect the Garden of Eden, where the Angel (now redundant) bearer of the flaming sword, stands sentinel…Need I tell you that your wonderful letter is no more than an exquisite drawing as far as I am concerned, and I can’t make out a single word.
I think if someone said that about my handwriting I would first be horrified and then break down in great gales of laughter.
I suppose the creative mind of Proust enjoyed illegible letters because it allowed him to make them say whatever he liked. I will have to give that approach a try when next I receive a letter from a long time friend and correspondent whose scrawl is difficult to read and sometimes illegible and for which she is unashamed. I wonder if I should warn her that I am just going to start making up things when I can’t read her writing or wait and see how she reacts to my replies? I think I won’t say anything and see what happens. She is a person of good humor who will likely find it entertaining.
For some, the great advantage of the computer keyboard or its antecedent, the typewriter, is that they keep pace with a writer’s thoughts much better than handwriting. When I try to write about something, midway through the sentence or well before, I often lose track of what it is that I want to say. And since my handwriting is unreadable, in the end writing by hand becomes a huge waste of time. And I know of no convincing evidence that indicates that writing by hand is superior in whatever way you chose to measure superiority, than writing on a keyboard.
Richard, oh yes, when you are thinking fast and more or less know what you want to say a keyboard is fantastic at allowing you to keep up with your thoughts. No, I have not come across any convincing evidence that writing by hand is superior either. There is evidence that students taking notes by hand remember what was taught in class better than those who record the lecture and those who type notes into a laptop. The theory is that because writing by hand is slower, the note taker must pay attention to what is being said so as to pull out and summarize the most important points. People recording the lecture don’t pay much attention at all and people on laptops tend to pay attention only to the words so that they may be transcribed. But this is such a narrow instance one can hardly claim overall superiority for writing by hand.
There was a great deal of publicity about this book when it was first published in the UK and Hensher did the rounds of all the radio talk shows at least. It set me thinking at the time about my own practices. I wrote my Masters thesis by hand pre word processing days and I know that my PhD thesis, which came just post the first laptop, was written in half the time. But, I still think better through my pen than through my laptop if I’m making notes, possibly because it’s easier to pick up pencil and paper for a couple of seconds than to find and switch on even my iPad.
Where handwriting is concerned I tried yesterday and failed to find a the sort of pen shaped writing tool that worked on the same principle as a biro that we used to give the children when they were moving from pencil to ink. It allowed them to develop a distinctive hand without all the mess of ink bottles or cartridge. They no longer seem to exist which is going to make developing an individual style much harder.
Alex, I made it through most of college and a master’s degree with only a typewriter. I’d write all my papers by hand and then type the final draft. Having just gotten a second master’s degree a couple years ago I found myself wondering how I ever did it the first time around! I prefer a pencil and paper for making notes too. At library conferences I see everyone sitting with their laptops and iPads typing away and there’s me with my notepad and pencil.
I am intrigued by the writing tool you are describing. Children don’t get anything like that here. It is pencils only when learning to write both print and cursive. I think I was in sixth grade before I was allowed to write with a ballpoint pen in school. I don’t have children so I don’t know if that still applies. One of the things I do like about Hensher’s book is how the emphasis in later chapters is on developing one’s own personal style. I don’t go in for graphology but I do think that handwriting is an opportunity for self-expression.
I’ve tried to keep a reading journal, but always give up. As for other writing here’s my modus operandi: – personal correspondence: fountain pen/flamboyant stationery (and I like my handwriting). Professional writing: word processor. Work Notes: my favorite mechanical pencil/small legal pad. Lists for groceries and things “to do”: Uniball rolling writer with blue ink/little lined pad that fits in my purse. Calendar: Red ink (for important stuff like deadlines) or my mechanical pencil/chunky desk calendar that shows a week at a time with lovely thoughts printed on it. This week’s lovely thought: “Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things – Bertrand Russell. Now, wasn’t that a lovely thought? I peeked at next week’s lovely thought and it’s by Ralph Waldo Emerson. As for writing in books, I seldom do unless it’s a cookbook, which I often write in. When I was reading John Adams by David McCullough, though, I did a lot of highlighting and scribbling and post-it-noting. Adams said and did so many interesting things I just couldn’t help myself.
Grad, my personal correspondence is always with a fountain pen and nice stationery too though nothing flamboyant. I prefer neutral paper so I can indulge in my bottled ink habit. No mater how many different colors I have it is never enough! I also keep a diary and use a fountain pen in that. For meeting and conference notes I like a small legal pad and a slightly dull #2 pencil. Grocery and to-do lists are made with random ballpoint pens. Books, when I write in books, a sharp red pencil. That is a lovely thought from Russell. I hope Emerson’s thought is a good one too!
My handwriting starts out nice and legible, but it seems my hand gets tired the more I write and quickly declines! Maybe I just need more practice? There is something sort of soothing writing by hand, though. Typing is much faster, however… And I have a few friends whose handwriting can be a challenge to read, but I will happily decipher any card or letter for the pleasure of getting real mail!
Danielle, my handwriting does the same thing except it isn’t so much from getting tired as my thoughts start to move faster and my hand tries to keep up which of course it can’t do! I find writing by hand soothing too. I definitely agree, even if I have to make up what the letter says because the handwriting is illegible, I still love getting cards and letters in the mail.
My handwriting is awful now, too many years of taking notes too fast. But a friend of mine had his handwriting sent to a graphologist by his mother as a bit of a joke. He just received this unexpected report in the mail and said he had never read anything that nailed his character so exactly. He was completely spooked by it! I always remember that story as he wasn’t the sort of bloke to be taken in by voodoo. Actually in France, graphologists were the rage for a while in companies who wanted to recruit. I suppose now all CVs and covering letters are typewritten, it’s not a possible way of weeding out candidates!
Litlove, everyone seems to think they have atrocious handwriting. From what I have seen of yours it isn’t bad. How funny about your friend having his handwriting analyzed and being spooked by it! I remember as a kid the county fair had a booth where you could sign your name on a card and the person would feed it into a machine that would analyze your signature. One year I did it it said how smart and creative I was and of course, I agreed. A few years later I did it again and it told me how boring and conformist I was. Hey! it got me all wrong. This handwriting analysis thing is such a scam!
My husband is lucky they don’t do graphology for hiring because sometimes he can’t even read his own writing!