Pen & Ink

My computer is still out for repair, so I must use the workstations at the library. This means that I am restricted to working only when the library is open (unless I decide to emulate the hero of my book and break-in during the dark of the night).

For someone like me, used to working late into the night, this restriction is a bit of a challenge, and my wife "The Compleat Technophobe" suggests that my crankiness is the result of digital withdrawal symptoms. This is, of course, utter bunkum. I am cranky because of the weather, because of the interference of social responsibilities, and because the library doesn't stay open until 3 am.

Rather than withdrawal, the lack of a computer is more like forgetting one's pocket knife, you keep reaching for a tool that you are used to having nearby. It's an irritation, not an insurmountable urge.

But not having the computer available has benefits. It forces me to work more deliberately and plan more carefully. This blog entry, for example, is being written during a sweltering Sunday afternoon, in longhand (italic, I hate Palmer Method), and, out of sheer perversity, it is being written with a dip pen.

Since I don't have air conditioning, a fan on the large oak table is giving me a bit of a breeze to make things more bearable. A couple of binder clips on the pad of paper keep the sheets from fluttering.

It is a good sensation to work this way. It's not just that I'm using writing tools that are not much different from those used by Major Tash, or whoever the ghostwriter of Henry's book was, it is the the forced change of pace. There's a lot to be said for low tech.

I'm not a Luddite, far from it, I love technology and gadgets, but I also have a certain discomfort at letting devices do too much. I carry a mobile phone, but not a PDA (at least not since leaving the corporate teat), and have seldom used a pocket-sized device to access the web (a situation that is unlikely to change as my eyes age. It confuses the heck out of people as I spend part of my time doing complex research over the internet and part of it analyzing and writing the results with a pencil or pen and a pad of paper.

When I was young, I was, for a time, an actor. One of my challenges was that it was difficult to memorize lines. I am, after all, the scatter-brained poster child for ADD. My options were to quit acting, try to apprentice myself to Marcel Marceau, or find some way to memorize better. In another context, my father had mentioned a theory of his that the act of writing something helps to embed it in one's memory. So I tried it. I wrote out all my lines and it worked. It worked even better if I wrote out the entire play. It worked if you typed but not as well, and this led to my conclusion that it wasn't the writing as much as it was the slower pace that forced you to think each word in order. It is a kind of physically imposed deliberation. When I moved from speaking the words of others to writing my own, I found that ideas and language that I composed in longhand were often better than those that I wrote directly on a typewriter. When word processors came along the difference remained.

A few years ago I tried the experiment of writing with a dip pen. It slowed the writing down in a different way. Now, I was forced to take odd little breaks in order to dip the pen again. I found it pleasant and a useful way to work. I've had a dip pen on my desk ever since.

I don't use a quill pen (I'll go into the historical quill pen mistake another time). I use a General's #204B penholder with a cork grip, and a Speedball "Bowl Pointed" steel nib which I dip into either Pelikan 2001 Blue or, if I'm feeling fancy, Norton's Walnut ink I keep the open inkwell in a wide raku bowl in case I have an attack of the klutzes. Squares of salvaged t-shirt material are pen wipes, extra nibs are in a medicine bottle and a plastic eyedrop bottle holds cleaning water. More pens are in a container that my wife made for me; reed pens, crow quills, and others.

And when I put my pen down, for a moment it rests easily on a six inch long cast-iron paperweight shaped like the upper surface of a log with two frogs on it.

What is the name of the damn book?

That's not a simple question. It has two different names already, and I'm about to give it a third.

The original book was published in 1807 by Samuel Bragg, Jr. (a Dover NH printer) as:

"A Narrative of the Life, Adventures, Travels and Sufferings of Henry Tufts, Now Residing at Lemington, in the District of Maine. In Substance as compiled from his own Mouth."

It was republished in 1930 as:

"The Autobiography of a Criminal"

This edition was edited by Edmund L. Pearson, a librarian and writer of true crime accounts, best known, perhaps, for his book on Lizzie Borden. Pearson edited out some of the more egregious flights of fancy and superfluous preaching and added an excellent introduction and end note.

It was republished once more, with the same title, by Loompanics Unlimited of Port Townsend WA, the sadly defunct counter cultural publisher. This edition used Pearson's edits, but excised his other supporting material, replacing the introductory essay with one by Neal Keating.

Omission?

It occurs to me that I haven't yet identified the book. Fear not! I shall in my next post.

Not really a wasted day

My computer is out for repair, so I came to the library with my thumb drive and the best of intentions. I got all set up, opened my portable apps, and was about to start work, when I realized that I had a question that I hadn't answered.

The Tufts and Pearson families are intertwined in the genealogies, and the question had occurred that Edmund L. Pearson, who had edited the second (1930) edition of the book, might possibly be a relative of Henry's ... though probably much removed.

So I went looking.

Pearson was born in Newburyport, MA which might be a clue, but I'm not ready yet to start subscribing to the genealogy websites to try to nail down the relationship.

But I found out some other good stuff about ELP. There's a true crime writer, Laura James, who writes about him on her blog CLEWS, and a number of his books are available at the Internet Archive. I'm going to have to set some time aside to read them, but not until my computer gets back from the hospital. I just don't have enough time at the library, and frankly his prose calls for late evening and a glass of good scotch.

At that last site, I also found a bit of a gem; a genealogy of the early Tufts which confirmed that Henry's first lie was on page 1 of his autobiography. Very cool!

Unfortunately it is time to pull my thumb out of the library's computer and wander home to take care of more corporeal responsibilities.

What?!

I am going to tell you a story about telling stories. It is a story about a liar supposedly by himself and the challenge of trying to figure out when ... or if he tells the truth. The liar at the heart of the story is long dead self-confessed criminal and his "autobiography" was "ghost-written" and published more than 200 years ago.

The book is a poisonous confection. It consists of layers of confessed crimes flavored with lies and misdirection and frosted with an indigestible sugary frosting of flowery language and superfluous classical allusions, resulting in a torte of torts.

... and yet ...

There are some great virtues to this book. I think it will be worthwhile for me to edit and expand it; to make it palatable for a modern audience and make it more meaningful than it has been.

From the little work that I have already done, I know that the effort will affect me, it already has, so it might be useful for me to document my reactions, what bubbles up from my life or seeps down into it as I go about the work of extracting his story.