I saw a mention of “On the Illustrating of Books” (PLA Quarterly, 1957, vol. 1 no 3.) by Edward Ardizzone and was delighted to find it, and the rest of volume one, openly available from the Private Libraries Association (“an international society of book collectors – collectors of rare books, fine books, single authors, special subjects, and, above all collectors of books for the simple pleasures of reading and ownership”).
The training of the born illustrator, if any, is academic in the true sense, which is the learning of the right way to draw things rather than the particular way to draw a particular thing.
The born illustrator’s method of drawing is usually what I call the empirical one, a matter of trial and error. For example, should he want to draw something and is not entirely certain how to do so, instead of finding the object and drawing directly from life, he is more likely to practice drawing it, doing it over and over again, until it looks right on paper. This gives his drawing that personal quality which is usually his.
Just as the author’s world, if he is a novelist, is not reality but a semblance of it, so must the illustrator’s world not be reality but a semblance of it created specially to fit the author’s.
The truth is that it is not the illustrator’s job to supplant the reader’s imagination but rather to help it, and to give it ground to work on. It follows, I think, that dramatic scenes are best avoided. It is the view from the window, the picnic in the fields, the mystery of the empty room, rather than sudden death or violent action that should be the illustrator’s subjects. In any case violence is usually better described in words, and it is not the illustrator’s business to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of the author
I read a York University Libraries copy of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books, 2009). Right near the end he says (pp. 79–80):
New forms of industrial action need to be instituted against managerialism. For instance, in the case of teachers and lecturers, the tactic of strikes (or even of marking bans) should be abandoned, because they only hurt students and members (at the college where I used to work, one-day strikes were pretty much welcomed by management because they saved on the wage bill whilst causing negligible disruption to the college). What is needed is the strategic withdrawal of forms of labour which will only be noticed by management: all of the machineries of self-surveillance that have no effect whatsoever on the delivery of education, but which managerialism could not exist without.
Two different earlier readers had been writing penciled notes in the margins through the book. To the “pretty much welcomed” line, one added:
Then maybe you need bigger strikes! & the ability to negotiate back-to-work protocol that gets you those lost wages! ’Course you’ll still have to cover all the material!
Last week I had two questions about book-chapter relations in Zotero. Is there a good way of handling them and making it easier to cite different chapters from the same book? This question arises in research fields where it’s common to publish edited collections, where editors oversee an entire book but each chapter is written by different authors. It’s rare to see these kinds of books in regular bookstores and libraries, but in academic libraries we see them a lot. It’s equivalent to citing poems or short stories collected in an anthology.
Can we manage this nicely in Zotero? Not really, it turns out. In your head, you know the chapters are part of the book. Structurally, the book contains the chapters. Maybe the print book is sitting on the table in front of you and physically the covers contain the chapters. In Zotero, however, the chapters and the book are at the same level: they are all equal items in the library. This makes part-whole relations more difficult.
I asked about this on Mastodon last week and got some good replies, so I’m writing this to document what I understand of it all, which isn’t much. Any mistakes I’ve made, or things I’ve overlooked, please let me know. This won’t fix anything for anyone, but I thought it was still worth noting.
Citing book sections
Let’s start with citing. You might want to cite just one chapter from one of these edited collections. Citation style guides have rules for this—see for example the Chicago Manual of Style’s sample citations for a chapter or other part of an edited book. You might want to cite two or three chapters from one book—each deserves its own citation because it’s an individual work—and CMOS 18 14.10 (paywalled), “Several contributions to the same multiauthor book,” says:
If two or more contributions to the same multiauthor book are cited, the book itself, as well as the specific contributions, may be listed in the bibliography. The entries for the individual contributions may then cross-refer to the book’s editor, thus avoiding clutter. In notes, details of the book may be given the first time it is mentioned, with subsequent references in shortened form.
It gives this example, with notes:
William H. Keating, “Fort Dearborn and Chicago,” in Prairie State: Impressions of Illinois, 1673–1967, by Travelers and Other Observers, ed. Paul M. Angle (University of Chicago Press, 1968), 84–85.
Sara Clarke Lippincott, “Chicago,” in Angle, Prairie State, 363.
And then bibliography:
Draper, Joan E. “Paris by the Lake: Sources of Burnham’s Plan of Chicago.” In Zukowsky, Chicago Architecture.
Harrington, Elaine. “International Influences on Henry Hobson Richardson’s Glessner House.” In Zukowsky, Chicago Architecture.
Zukowsky, John, ed. Chicago Architecture, 1872–1922: Birth of a Metropolis. Prestel-Verlag in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987.
Very readable! That is nice. For author-date style, it says:
In a reference list, individual components of a multiauthor work should not be listed separately and then cross-referenced to the work as a whole (a departure from advice in previous editions that recognizes the difficulty of cross-linking references in electronic journals and similar publications). Instead, list only the multiauthor work as a whole. Components can then be mentioned in the text and cited to the collection.
This new approach (the eighteenth edition came out in September) should make things easier one day, at least for Chicago style, but I’m not going to get into that.
Example bibliography of book and chapter
Let’s start with an example I cooked up. Here’s a sample book, titled THIS IS A BOOK, as seen in Zotero. Notice it has an Editor, and Item Type is Book.
That book has a chapter, Chapter One. Here the Item Type is Book Section, and the chapter has an Author while the book has an Editor. The publication information (publisher, date, location) is the same.
There’s nothing inherent in this that says the chapter is in the book. There’s no relation between the two. We know the chapter is in the book, but Zotero doesn’t. It can make a proper Chicago citation for one chapter (exported with Zotero’s Chicago style, seventeenth edition because the update to the eighteenth is being worked on):
Sample, Marjorie Q. “Chapter One.” In THIS IS A BOOK, edited by Reginald Example, 2d ed. Toronto: Example Press, 1976.
But if I do the chapter and book, I get this, with a full citation for both the chapter and the book:
Example, Reginald, ed. THIS IS A BOOK. 2d ed. Toronto: Example Press, 1976.
Sample, Marjorie Q. “Chapter One.” In THIS IS A BOOK, edited by Reginald Example, 2d ed. Toronto: Example Press, 1976.
There’s no way to have Zotero do a short citation for the chapter and a full one for the book, as far as I can tell.
I messed around with making a stub version of the chapter item, with little information so that Zotero had to make a short citation because it didn’t have more to use, but I couldn’t get it working. I’d end up with something like this (where “n.d.” means “no date”):
Sample, Marjorie Q. “Chapter One.” In THIS IS A BOOK, edited by Example, n.d.
If you know how to get Zotero to handle citations this way, I’d love to hear how you did it. I hope I haven’t overlooked something obvious, but is everyone who’s managing this problem doing these citations by hand the hard way, or with a huge kludge?
Related items
It seems about all we can do in Zotero is tie the chapter and book together as related items. Here’s the Related tab for the book.
If I click on the plus sign (out of screenshot) Zotero pops up a menu and I can pick an item to relate. If I choose the chapter, we get this:
Clicking on “Chapter One” under Related changes the focus to the chapter, and we see there is a reciprocal relation: the chapter is related to the book.
That’s useful but limited. The relation has no type or direction: Zotero knows this item is related to that item, but we know that one is a part contained in the other, that this chapter is part of this book. Maybe an article refutes a book, or a book reviews a film. Zotero doesn’t allow us to give those details.
Requests to understand hierarchy go back a long time. Here’s Hierarchical item relationships from the Zotero forums, a thread that started in 2007, where four years ago someone helpfully added links to several other similar discussions. There don’t seem to be any plans to add this feature.
Creating sections from books, and vice versa
Zotero can generate a book section from a book, and a book from a book section. Here I right-click on the book, and the menu has a Create Book Section option:
That creates a new entry like this, which knows it’s a book section and that it’s related to the book (out of screenshot). You’ll need to add the Author field then fill in it and Title.
It works similarly the other way. This does make things easier to work with Zotero as it is, but we’re still left with chapters and books being equal in Zotero.
Chapters in a subcollection?
It occurred to me that maybe something could be done by putting chapters in a subcollection under the book, but it didn’t get anywhere.
The future?
Perhaps the change will come through or in concert with the Citation Style Language, which is where Zotero gets all its citation styles. I saw this comment from early this year in a discussion of handling multi-volume works: “There were discussions about changing the currently flat data model to a hierarchical/structured data model, which would allow for such things. But don’t expect anything to happen regarding this in the short term.” CSL is an incredible piece of work. It’s astounding how much it handles and how well it works. I’m a professional librarian, and you can trust me when I say the thousands of bibliographic citation styles that exist are almost entirely unncessary and dealing with them is maddeningly finicky. But CSL handles them, for free.
Zotero itself is a vastly complex project, with a PDF viewer and editor, cloud storage, cross-device synchronization, code that understands umpteen different publisher platforms, and more, all working on multiple operating systems. For free! It’s one of the best free and open source software projects in the world, and has made a huge difference to the lives and work of researchers of all sorts all over the world.
Many thanks to Zotero and CSL and everyone involved with the projects for all the incredible work they do!
Database queries
This section is technical. I got curious about how Zotero’s database is set up to contain all this information, and spent a little while digging into it. Exploring Zotero Data Model for Direct Database Access by GitHub user pchemguy was really helpful with this. I knew Zotero uses SQLite, but I didn’t know it uses the entity-attribute-value model, which was completely new to me. It’s good for dealing with flexible and sparse data such as bibliographic metadata, but it sure leads to a lot of table joins.
Here’s how I got started. I looked at Zotero’s documentation on its SQLite database and classified it as “too technical for me,” so I just starting poking around. I closed Zotero and ran this in a shell to open up its database, knowing where the data directory is:
sqlite3 ~/Zotero/zotero.sqlite
I ran these commands. The first two set up some formatting, then .tables outputs a list of all the database tables,
That says some items have fields with a value we know is THIS IS A BOOK, but not what the fields are. For that we need a more complex query:
sqlite> SELECT i.itemID, i.fieldID, i.valueID, f.fieldName
FROM itemData i, fields f
WHERE i.fieldID = f.fieldID
AND i.valueID = 13352;
itemID fieldID valueID fieldName
------ ------- ------- ---------
4435 44 13352 bookTitle
4436 44 13352 bookTitle
All right, that’s getting somewhere. Let’s join more tables:
sqlite> SELECT i.itemID, i.fieldID, i.valueID, f.fieldName, iv.value
FROM itemData i, itemDataValues iv, fields f
WHERE i.fieldID = f.fieldID
AND i.valueID = iv.valueID
AND i.valueID = 13352;
itemID fieldID valueID fieldName value
------ ------- ------- --------- --------------
4435 44 13352 bookTitle THIS IS A BOOK
4436 44 13352 bookTitle THIS IS A BOOK
Things with titles that we’re looking for: good. Let’s find more about items with IDs 4436 and 4437. I’ll skip over a few steps here, where I was joining more tables, and jump to this next query. Remember, I’m no database expert, and I’m sure there are tidier and more efficient ways to do this, but it works.
sqlite> SELECT i.itemID, i.itemTypeID, it.typeName, i.key, id.fieldID, f.fieldName, id.valueID, idv.value
FROM items i, itemData id, fields f, itemTypes it, itemDataValues idv
WHERE i.itemID = id.itemID
AND id.fieldID = f.fieldID
AND i.itemTypeID = it.itemTypeID
AND id.valueID = idv.valueID
AND i.itemID IN (4436, 4437);
itemID itemTypeID typeName key fieldID fieldName valueID value
------ ---------- ----------- -------- ------- -------------- ------- --------------------------------
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 1 title 13353 Chapter One
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 6 date 13094 1976-00-00 1976
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 7 language 404 eng
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 11 libraryCatalog 11781 ocul-yor.primo.exlibrisgroup.com
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 21 place 9267 Toronto
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 23 publisher 13371 Example Press
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 42 edition 13099 2d ed.
4436 7 bookSection DV3YIBUF 44 bookTitle 13352 THIS IS A BOOK
4437 6 book YT4DGR9U 1 title 13352 THIS IS A BOOK
4437 6 book YT4DGR9U 6 date 13094 1976-00-00 1976
4437 6 book YT4DGR9U 7 language 404 eng
4437 6 book YT4DGR9U 11 libraryCatalog 11781 ocul-yor.primo.exlibrisgroup.com
4437 6 book YT4DGR9U 21 place 9267 Toronto
4437 6 book YT4DGR9U 23 publisher 13371 Example Press
4437 6 book YT4DGR9U 42 edition 13099 2d ed.
There we have the chapter and the book, with all the publishing information detailed, and database ID numbers that show how it’s all tied together. The key, for example YT4DGR9U, is used by Zotero when it’s storing attachments on disk. Look in storage/ in your Zotero data directory and you’ll see lots of directories with names like this.
But there is nothing here about creators or relations! That information is in other tables. We can do some joins to get at the creators and their roles:
sqlite> SELECT ic.itemID, ic.creatorID, ic.creatorTypeID, c.firstName, c.lastname, ct.creatorType
FROM itemCreators ic, creators c, creatorTypes ct
WHERE ic.creatorID = c.creatorID
AND ic.creatorTypeID = ct.creatorTypeID
AND itemID in (4436, 4437);
itemID creatorID creatorTypeID firstName lastName creatorType
------ --------- ------------- ----------- -------- -----------
4436 1506 10 Reginald Example editor
4436 1509 8 Marjorie Q. Sample author
4437 1506 10 Reginald Example editor
That’s easy enough to read. The relations are trickier. With a bit of work I got this:
sqlite> SELECT ir.itemID, ir.object, ir.predicateID, rp.predicate
FROM itemRelations ir, relationPredicates rp
WHERE ir.predicateID = rp.predicateID
AND itemID in (4436, 4437);
itemID object predicateID predicate
------ ------------------------------------------- ----------- -----------
4436 http://zotero.org/users/4291/items/YT4DGR9U 3 dc:relation
4437 http://zotero.org/users/4291/items/DV3YIBUF 3 dc:relation
4437 http://zotero.org/users/4291/items/Q32SKZ3X 3 dc:relation
What’s with those object values? They are URLs, but they don’t work. Now, as it happens, 4291 is the ID for my Zotero account (except it isn’t, I made that up just in case I shouldn’t let my ID number be known). I know that from looking at URLs when I’m looking at my account details on the Zotero site.
I didn’t look into this at all, so forgive my guess, but with an object and a predicate and a URL I got to thinking about the RDF model of triples. The DC in dc:relation is Dublin Core, a simple metadata schema that has fifteen elements, one of which is relation: “A reference to a related resource. Recommended best practice is to reference the resource by means of a string or number conforming to a formal identification system.” Simple Dublin Core leaves the relation at that, but Qualified Dublin Core (which came later and is a little more complicated) has some defined relationships, one of which is IsPartOf. Maybe in the future Qualified Dublin Core might help?
In any case, the last part of the object URI is familiar: we saw YT4DGR9U above because it is the key for item 4437. I didn’t try to pick that piece of the object value out, but with this query we can see by eye that each thing we’re interested in is related to the other. In other words, this is where it’s defined that the book is related to the chapter.
sqlite> SELECT i.key, ir.itemID, ir.object, ir.predicateID, rp.predicate
FROM items i, itemRelations ir, relationPredicates rp
WHERE i.itemID = ir.itemID
AND ir.predicateID = rp.predicateID
AND i.itemID in (4436, 4437);
key itemID object predicateID predicate
-------- ------ ------------------------------------------- ----------- -----------
DV3YIBUF 4436 http://zotero.org/users/4062/items/YT4DGR9U 3 dc:relation
YT4DGR9U 4437 http://zotero.org/users/4062/items/DV3YIBUF 3 dc:relation
I already knew that bibliographic metadata is difficult, and that databases are difficult, and a few hours of ploughing through this showed me in a new way that storing bibliographic metadata in a database is difficult. Adding part-whole relations seems like it would be a major project.
I enjoyed exploring the Zotero database for a little while. It gave me a better understanding of how Zotero works, and greater appreciation for all the developers who make tools and plug-ins that work with Zotero. Thank you!
PS
I asked one of DuckDuckGo’s AI chat bots to help me write some SQL queries on the Zotero database. I made a simple request, and it gave me a query that didn’t work: it referenced columns that don’t exist. I told it the query didn’t work, and it gave me a new query, which didn’t work. I told it the query didn’t work, and it gave me another query, which also didn’t work. I told it none of these queries worked and expressed some displeasure, and it asked me for help in understanding the database model. Bah!
“Gentleman in a Large Hat Seated by a Window, Reading” by Rembrandt (pen and bistre with wash, on paper, 1655/66) (source: PubHist) reminds me very much of Edward Ardizzone.
Ardizzone shaded with hatching, not a wash, but there’s hatching there as well, and to me it’s very much in the Ardizzone style. For example, here’s “Self-Portrait” (pen and ink on paper, 1952) (source: Tate Gallery).
Once you know Ardizzone his work is instantly recognizable.
Browsing around I came across a really interesting YouTube video, The Art of Edward Ardizzone and the Esterbrook J Fountain Pen, which is part of Jonathan Weinberg’s “Drawing with Fountain Pens” channel. It’s a very nice introduction to the artist, and though he drew with a dip pen, not an Esterbrook, Weinberg talks about pens and nibs and finishes with an Ardizzone-style sketch of a Poussin painting. The channel is full of good fountain pen stuff. I just watched Pelikan M205 Fountain Pen: Small but Mighty, because my M205 is one of my favourite pens (I think the size is perfect).
But not only is he a fountain pen user (and restorer!), Weinberg is the curator at the Maurice Sendak Foundation, and as it happens just last week I listened to Afterwords: Maurice Sendak, on BBC Radio 3’s Sunday Feature. Weinberg is in that show! It’s fascinating, and if you’re at all interested in Sendak, I highly recommend it. All of this was a delightful coincidence.
Rembrandt, Ardizzone and Sendak: three great illustrators.
He sets out the basics of how publishers are screwing over public libraries, mentions the Five Laws of Library Science, tells some stories of punk interlibrary loan, ends on an inspiring note, and has many tasty quotes along the way, such as:
If you listen to podcasts, or watch YouTube videos, which I bet some of you do, you will hear someone occasionally say something along the lines of, I’m a lawyer but I’m not your lawyer. Or, I’m a therapist but I’m not your therapist. Librarians are different.
Or:
I’m not saying that because I want you to support the library. Folks, your taxes paid for the library. You’re supporting the library. You may as well go use it. It’s one of the few places where you can go use the things you paid for. You paid for the cop cars, go drive one, see how it works.
In the “Jukebox” column in the November 2024 issue of British music magazine The Wire, Margaret Chardiet (who performs as Pharmakon, and once opened for the band Swans, which is fronted by Michael Gira), says, “Michael Gira is the James Brown of industrial. He’s very much a band leader, and he’s like: ‘follow my cue’ and ‘we’re doing this like this, in this moment’ and his band has to know exactly what he’s thinking and feeling.”
You could do a good surrealist game, a variation of Exquisite Corpse, by having three people make up two names and noun, then combining them this way. Doug Ford is the Tintoretto of sandwiches. Clara Schumann is the Phil Silvers of vexillology.
I never miss an episode of BBC Radio 6 Music’s Freak Zone Playlist, a one-hour selection picked by a different person (or sometimes group) each week. A couple of weeks ago was the 2024 Oram Awards Special hosted by Karen Sutton, who ran the Oram Awards: “a platform to elevate the work and voices of women and gender non-conforming artists innovating in sound, music and related technology.”
Daphne Oram (source: Wikipedia)
There’s a lot of good music in the hour, but I was particularly struck by the two pieces by Daphne Oram, for whom the award is named. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know of her, but she was a co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, though she soon left to work on her Oramics composition system. This is amazing stuff, and I bought Oramics on Bandcamp to start to get to know her work. See the Daphne Oram Trust for much more, and “How Daphne Oram’s Oramics machine paved the way for the modern DAW” from Future Music magazine earlier this year.
The Wikipedia article mentions a BBC Radio 3 documentary about Oram: Wee Have Also Sound-Houses (sadly not available for listening at time of writing). There’s a footnote saying it’s a quote from Francis Bacon (the one from the 1600s), from his incomplete novel New Atlantis. Modernized, the full paragraph goes:
We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmony which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly; we have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and, as it were, tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.
Oram liked this and apparently quoted it often, including in her book An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics, which is in the collection of the library where I work and which I will borrow tomorrow. What an astounding quote. I’m delighted by all these discoveries. All this from one hour of radio!
We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.
UPDATE (16 October 2024): Below is the original quote as taken from Oram’s book, where it is an appendix on p. 128 (London: Galliard Paperbacks, 1972).
Wee have also Sound-houses, wher wee practise and demonstrate all Sounds, and their Generation. Wee have Harmonies which you have not, of Quarter-Sounds, and lesser Slides of Sounds. Diverse Instruments of Musick likewise to you unknowne, some sweeter then any you have; Together with Bells and Rings that are dainty and sweet. Wee represent Small Sounds as Great and Deepe; Likewise Great Sounds, Extenuate and Sharpe; Wee make diverse Tremblings and Warblings of Sounds, which in their Originall are Entire. Wee represent and imitate all Articulate Sounds and Letters, and the Voices and Notes of Beasts and Birds. Wee have certaine Helps, which sett to the Eare doe further the Hearing greatly. Wee have also diverse Strange and Artificiall Eccho’s, Reflecting the Voice many times, and as it were Tossing it: And some that give back the Voice Lowder then it come, some Shriller, and some Deeper; Yea some rendring the Voice, Differing in the Letters or Articulate Sound, from that they receyve. Wee have also meanes to convey Sounds in Trunks and Pipes, in strange Lines and Distances.
I saw a John Berger quote recently and tracked it down to “Drawn to That Moment,” collected in Berger on Drawing, edited by Jim Savage (Aghabullogue, Ireland: Occasional Press, 2005). This is on p. 71.
To draw is to look, examining the structure of appearances. A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at. Whereas the sight of a tree is registered almost instantaneously, the examination of the sight of a tree (a tree-being-looked-at) not only takes minutes or hours instead of a fraction of a second, it also involves, derives from, and refers back to, much previous experience of looking. Within the instant of the sight of a tree is established a life-experience. This is how the act of drawing refuses the process of disappearances and proposes the simultaneity of a multitude of moments.
The sentence I saw quoted was this, a gem I isolate for its beauty: “A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at.”
(No library in Canada had this book, and I got it through interlibrary loan from Rice University in Texas. Resource sharing departments are wonderful.)
Over the summer I read The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen, and I highly recommend it to anyone who regularly keeps notes, even if not on paper. I keep my work notes digitally (in Org), which is the best system for me in my work, but for everything else I use paper. Whatever your methods, The Notebook is full of interesting examples that will give you ideas about how you can keep your own notes. If you don’t use paper, it may convince you to try: there are many mental and memorial advantages to using paper over a screen, as Allen discusses.
Cover of The Notebook
This is a popular book, not a scholarly one, but it is well researched and will lead the curious reader on to many intriguing sources. Allen writes in a lively, engaging way. Aside from notebook users, anyone interested in stationery, documentation or the history of scholarship should also look at it, but it has wide appeal. (If you know someone is particular about their pens and pencils or where they write things down, this will be a great present for them—but make sure they don’t already have it, because many stationery lovers stay current.)
Reading this got me using a notebook again. Years ago I moved to notepads where I would jot down quick notes and ideas (I like Rhodia paper), or sheets of paper I would later file, but now I’m back to using a notebook and I wish I’d been using one all along. I’m documenting things, grappling with ideas and showing my work as I go, gluing in snippets from magazines, writing in quotes from books, doing sketches, and more. I’ve missed having a notebook at hand, and it’s a delight to flip through it whenever I want. It will be nice one day to have a whole shelf full I can review.
The notebook I like
I tried out a few different notebooks (not a Moleskine, the artificiality of which Allen documents) and settled on a sketchbook from Above Ground Art Supplies here in Toronto. The size is right, the binding is sturdy, and the paper has a bit of tooth and can take not only fountains pen ink but light washes when sketching.
The Notebook is filled with examples, but it is not exhaustive. A review by Henry Hitchings in the TLS no. 6292 (03 November 2023) said:
Other maestros of the notebook who come to mind are Beethoven, Einstein, Thomas Edison and Antonio Gramsci—the last two of whom Allen doesn’t mention. His account never pretends to be comprehensive, and the emphasis is on groundbreaking uses of notebooks rather than on their most felicitous deployment, but I was struck by the absence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as Sylvia Plath, Geoffrey Madan, Katherine Mansfield, Northrop Frye and Samuel Beckett.
Hitchings mentions that Allen does not draw on the work of Matthew Daniel Eddy, who I will investigate, but there are many sources in the notes and bibliography that bear looking up. I read The Reckoning by Jacob Soll thanks to Allen, and will soon go on to The Information Master, about Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
The person I really missed was Harriet M. Welsch from Louise Fitzhugh’s classic children’s novel Harriet the Spy. Surely she did more than anyone else to get children to keep notebooks—and keep them private.
But Allen can’t include everything. What he does cover spans hundreds of years and is rich with interesting, rewarding and inspiring examples of how people have written things down.
Miskatonic University Press
