Thursday, April 19, 2007

Tap, tap, type

I spent this afternoon catching up on email and reading the Archives and Archivists listserv, digest form, which had been piling in my in-box. Though really, can electronic items actually pile? Anyway, I came across an article in the Trentonian, a paper out of Trenton, NJ, entitled Beat generation tools and words inspire teacher. It was a perfect thing to read on a sunny Thursday afternoon! But, as these things often do, this little gem, reminded me of something else I'd read earlier this week.
Professor Debra Larson is teaching a course on Beat Literature at the Lawrenceville School, a prep school in Lawrenceville, NJ. In the grand tradition of the Beats, she is requiring her students use typewriters for their papers. Since she and a fellow English teacher both used typewriters, decided that her students needed the experience of writing all their papers by hand, and typing them on a typewriter. Apparently, she says, the tap tap of the keys will "change the way that they think." "They have to be a lot more deliberate about their writing, and committed to the words that they type" because "the computer lets you change a manuscript so quickly ... it’s diminishing the first drafts. First drafts and second drafts disappear just as you hit the backspace keys. We don’t really have the legacy of the crossouts and the strike-through."
And so, those drafts, upon drafts, upon that I wrote of my grad thesis would have been lost-- unless they were on a wiki, of course! Well, and unless I hadn't printed them all out from my computer...
The typewriter is getting a lot of press these days, specifically for its impact on he writing process, which seems to have something to do with the noise, physical contact, and pain of carrying around lots of paper & correction fluid.
In "The Typing Life," an article in the April 9th issue of the New Yorker, Joan Acocella reviews a book entitled The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting by Darren Wershler-Henry. The book explores the typewriter, its murky and unremarkable origin, drugs, monkeys, the role of women-- are you interested yet? Oh, and then there is the celebrity gossip!
Acocella tells us that
"Nietzsche used a typewriter. This is hard to imagine, but in the effort to stem his migraines and his incipient blindness-symptoms, some scholars say, of an advanced case of syphilis-he bought one of the new contraptions. So did Mark Twain, and he was the first important writer to deliver a typewritten manuscript, 'Life on the
Mississippi,' to a publisher. Henry James also had a typewriter, and a secretary, to whom he dictated. That is a famous fact; it is said to have contributed to the extreme complexity of James's late-period style."
Apparently, "James got used to the sound of his Remington; when it was in the repair shop and he had to use a loaner, the new machine's different sound drove him crazy." And, interestingly enough,
"for years after his death, his devoted typist, Theodora Bosanquet, claimed that she was still receiving dictation from him ... through her spirit medium she was informed that Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, and John Galsworthy, all as dead as James, also wanted to use her stenographic services."
William S. Burroughs and Kerouac (as we know from the prep school class) both used typewriters. Fun fact: apparently, Burroughs' and Kerouac's relationships with their typewriters were heavily mediated by drugs. "Kerouac would buy nasal inhalers, pry them open, and eat the Benzedrine-soaked paper within, followed by a chaser of coffee or Coca-Cola." Acocella tells us that they've changed the formula since then...
Acocella also explores our relationship with the computer, something Wershler-Henry does not do. She asks us to consider "our physical involvement with the typewriter, which stands in relation to our connection with the P.C. as a fistfight does to a handshake." Instead of the banging and stabbing, there is a "gentle, pitter-patter sound;" instead of a clean sheet of paper, the "record of the torture of thought," we have a screen, "a kind of indeterminate space" that "does not seem violable in the same way as the page" -- and is "effortlessly and undetectably erasable." No record of the struggle to find words, no white-out, no cross-outs. No taped together sheets of sliced up paragraphs-- it's so easy to cut & paste, move things for better or worse.
And, really, I always thought typewriters were loud...

Friday, April 13, 2007

The Middle School Invasion

Last Friday afternoon I had a delightful visit to the Archives by 6 middle school girls. They are taking a Historical Fiction writing class through ArtCentric, and were here researching their stories. What a joy it was to see engaged researchers, charged by what they were finding and happy to have the opportunity to touch the old stuff.
In a week full of meetings, stress, Clifford Lynch, and a Luciana Duranti article, it was really nice to have them here...

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Have I found some del.icio.us limits?

Limits, limits, limits: have I found one?

Has anyone had trouble with a character limit in the "Notes" field of del.icio.us? For someone who loves to cut & paste large chunks of text for later, I just realized I had lost lots of chunks!

I am prepraing a conference presentation and thought, since it's on social software, I would use some of our great tools. No dice for long notes, it seems... Does this mean I should bookmark in del.icio.us, compose in google.docs, ponder & gleen from the communal wisdom here, and then cut them all out to paste in a Word file? Argh-- I sure hope not.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Acclaim & Agony

This weekend, I walked by a church with a sign out front promoting a service that week entitled "Acclaim and Agony." I'm sure they weren't talking about professional development, but since that was on my mind, I read it as a sign. Well, beyond its obvious meaning as an actual sign.

My own professional development has been on my mind a lot lately. Namely, how much is enough? not enough? overwhelmingly too much? It seems like the line between my own acclaim & agony is thin. The mere fact that I have a job, as an archivist, and perform my job duties everyday is set, but on either side is the slacker and the over-achiever-- and it's oh so easy to be both... And, when I step back from my manic level of involvement, I wonder why I am actually working so hard. What is the ultimate goal?

During my walk in the Oregon drizzle this weekend, I came to the conclusion that the goal seems to be the involvement itself. It is the charge I get from being a part of the group that contributes and creates. I feel priviledged to be allowed to be a part of the conversation, honored that people want to hear what I have to say! At the same time, I long for coasting... Coming to work everyday, typing my email and answering reference questions, going home at night without a reading to do, and getting up the morning without checking my email/blog/news feed/etc.

Any other hyper-achievers out there?!?