January 29, 2001
Notebook Fetish
I just finished reading a novel by Mary
Gordon, Spending. I thought it was fascinating.
It had much to say about creativity, art, love, and money. I will undoubtedly review it on
my book page sometime in the near future, so I
won’t go on and on about it here.
After I finished reading Spending, I went to the New York Times page to see if it had been reviewed.
It had, albeit somewhat unfavorably. I agreed with much of what the reviewer had to say,
but I honestly felt that the strengths of the book far outweighed its weaknesses.
But that’s not really what I want to
write about today. While I was at the NYT site, I discovered an essay by Mary
Gordon on her writing habits. It’s actually about her love of notebooks and pens.
Like many writers, she uses one special pen (which she describes in this essay). But she
loves all kinds of notebooks, and clearly has spent a lot of time (and probably money)
collecting them. She hoards them and uses them for different purposes. An excerpt:
A secret of
notebook lore is the treasure trove of Swedish notebooks, primary colors with neutral
borders; fuschia and mauve, peacock and dove-colored. These seem so healthy, so sturdy,
that I use them for my most uncensored journals: they can take it; they will keep it to
themselves; nothing can hurt them and mum's the word.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this essay.
Partly because I always find it enlightening to learn about the writing rituals of others,
especially those of writers I admire (this is
likely why I love the book Bird by Bird so much;
I love Anne Lamott’s novels and so I eat up her discussion of writing even more
hungrily). But mostly I was happy because it made me feel like not so much of a freak for
my notebook fetish.
I have bought blank books –
notebooks – for as long as I can remember. In high school I owned several journals,
including one diary covered in gorgeous shiny turquoise Chinese silk with a red leather
binding, in which I wrote about my first dates with Marty (among other high-schoolish
things). Some other favorites have been a book of unlined pages covered in a natural fiber
made of bark, a particularly well-made composition book I bought in England, and a
spiral-bound Hello Kitty notebook with pansies printed on the cover and all the pages.
Hardly a birthday or Christmas goes by when I do not receive at least one notebook of some
description, and I can say in all honesty that I love every single one.
I probably own about 30 notebooks and I
do write in all of them, although I hardly ever completely fill one up. I’m always
using several at the same time. Several of them are used as infrequent journals, although
not all of them become journals. I have at least a couple that I use when I’m reading
to copy out paragraphs, sentences, or just words that I find interesting or evocative. In
others, I write down my ideas for web sites, journal entries, and birthday presents. I
make lists: grocery lists, lists of chores, lists of favorite movies. I write letters:
some to send, some not to send. When I’m stuck in a waiting room, I freewrite in a
tiny notebook I carry in my purse for just such an occasion. Right now, one of my
favorites is an adorable Japanese notebook in which I make lists of songs I plan to use on
different compilation CDs.
I am intrigued by the blank notebook,
sitting in the store, just waiting to be filled up with whatever I decide to put in it.
Each one represents a world of possibility, a way for me to write something that will let
me look at myself. The notebook lets me make myself an object, in the way a mirror might.
But at the same time I become a very subjective
object, because I’m using a mirror of my own creation.
I think it’s that sense of my own
potential that I find so irresistible when I look at notebooks. Looking back at the ones
I’ve recorded my life in so far, I can see that I’m not trying to find the
perfect notebook so I can write the great American novel. I’m using these blank books
to record myself, so that later on, I can look
back through them to find the person I am now. |
