I mentioned this book a few weeks ago. It comes out on 2nd November, but the publishers kindly sent me a copy in advance. It has a very readable style, and interestingly the footnotes are in a different font from, and bigger than, the main text.

I love the subtitle: A history of thinking on paper (my emphasis). I do think there’s much to be said for writing on paper, and there is no paucity of research showing the benefits of analogue over the digital approach.

The range of aspects and the amount of research that has gone into the book are breathtaking. From pre-paper note-taking to modern practices such as bullet journaling and authors’ jottings.

Bearing in mind my own predilection for jotting down overheard snippets of conversation, I was quite pleased to read of this, from Joan Didion:

See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write — on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there: dialogue overheard in hotels and elevators and at the hatcheck counter in Pavillon…

From On Keeping A Notebook, by Joan Didion

It’s also fascinating to learn how the notebook has been a kind of proactive agent in some circumstance. For example, Giotto’s ability to draw realistic figures, thereby hugely influencing the development of Western art, has been attributed to his habit of drawing in a notebook from life — as opposed to merely copying drawings and paintings that already existed.

The development of the notebook itself is an interesting story, one involving not only a technological revolution but economies of scale and even protectionism. Glance through the index and you find not only the names you’d expect, such as Pepys, but many you would not. For example, I was delighted to discover that both Perec and Queneau (of the Oulipo: see below) get a mention, as does the MP William Cobbett. I know his name from his book Rural Rides, which I very much enjoyed when I was studying Economic History (not that it proved useful from an exam point of view), but apparently he was a keen advocate of keeping a diary:

“It demands not a minute in the twenty-four hours, and that minute is most agreeably employed.”

How did Chaucer manage to write stories based on the work of Boccaccio shortly after Boccaccio had written them, in an age before mass communication? It’s a good question, one that had never occurred to me before. Apparently, the stories were brought from one place to another via trade routes. It’s kind of obvious once it’s pointed out.

Moleskine books were (and perhaps still are) regarded as a status symbol. I wasn’t aware of that, but two of my accessories while working in a proper job were, along with a suit/jacket and tie and, indubitably, double cuffed shirt with cufflinks, a Moleskine notebook and fountain pen!

Finally — and this is another thing that hadn’t occurred to me — some people regard the notebook as a kind of Oulipian object. The Oulipo is based on constraints, and a notebook is in effect a physical embodiment of that idea.

Comprehensive as the book is, there are some surprising omissions. For example, Victor Klemperer maintained a record of how words were being redefined, in effect, under the Nazis, but his name does not appear in the index. Neither does that of Dr Johnson, whose work on the dictionary, as far as I know, relied heavily on notes for its compilation. Perhaps these were not included because, I believe, they were on slips of paper rather than in a notebook.

These, though, are mere quibbles. The Notebook can be read chronologically, which I should recommend as it gives you a good, overall historical perspective. However, you can also cherry-pick the chapters and the order in which you read them. The author is to be commended on providing such a rich and fascinating reading experience.

The publisher is Profile Books.

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