Review by New York Times Review
IN an era when the comment "You're all thumbs" can be taken as high praise of texting prowess, the notion of hand writing a note, a business letter or even a grocery list seems quaint - like studying elocution or fastening shoes with mother-of-pearl buttons. Bemoaning the decline of the written hand smacks of fogyism, but the British novelist Philip Hensher, who is also a columnist for The Independent and an arts critic for The Spectator, enlivens his musings about penmanship's demise with sharp insights and wry wit. In "The Missing Ink," he argues that handwriting fills a human need: "It involves us in a relationship with the written word which is sensuous, immediate and individual. It opens our personality out to the world, and gives us a means of reading other people." However, it was a drive toward not individuality but uniformity that spurred the widespread teaching of handwriting in the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries in England and the United States. Once the domain of the leisure class, penmanship - in a popular style called "copperplate," modeled on the printing of engravers - had long been a luxury pastime, the more curlicued and ornate the better. The growth of industry brought pens into the hands of the masses. Copperplate "was no longer a leisured, artistic activity," Hensher observes, "but a crucial way in which people should learn to communicate for practical, business purposes." To serve the needs of commerce (in America) and bureaucracy (in Britain), professional penmen, including Platt Rogers Spencer, Vere Foster and A.N. Palmer, simplified and modernized copperplate. Their methods and motivations varied, but the outcome was the same: the creation of generations of Bartlebys, human writing machines who could rapidly and reliably fill ledgers with clear lettering produced to an exacting standard. Americans of a certain age will be most familiar with Palmer, whose athletic, "whole-arm" method was the standard technique taught in American public schools well into the 20th century. The chapters that detail the work of Spencer, Foster and Palmer form the core of "The Missing Ink," which Hensher interlaces with anecdotes, annotated lists and even the occasional interview. He makes amusing forays into the development of the Bic pen and the practice of handwriting analysis. Like a charming dinner guest, he brims with fun facts, good humor and amusing reminiscences. In the chapter "My Italic Nightmare," he recounts a day in which "it had taken me all morning and half an afternoon to establish definitely that there was only one pen to be bought in London which fit my description, . . . and I already had one." Hensher meanders not only in his home city, but on these pages. The portrayals of clerks and barristers in Dickens's novels; the comparison of reading handwriting and "reading characters" in Proust; the connection between Hitler's illegible scrawl and "an enormous market in fake Nazi documents" in the 1970s - all are fair game for contemplation in "The Missing Ink," which can be so wide-ranging as to feel loosely constructed. In the end, Hensher's passion for writing prevails. As the punning title suggests, he equates writing by hand with being fully human. "Ink runs in our veins," he declares, concluding with a plea to rediscover the joys of writing: "To continue to diminish the place of the handwritten in our lives is to diminish, in a small but real way, our humanity." "The Missing Ink" succeeds in making a strong case for the renaissance of handwriting. Unfortunately, when it comes to putting pen to paper nowadays, most people would prefer not to. Abigail Meisel has written articles and book reviews for The New York Times.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 17, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
While there are no rigorous surveys tracking how many people write personal letters these days, it's a safe bet that in this era of ubiquitous e-mail and text messaging, letter writing isn't what it used to be. Partly to encourage readers to take up their pens and partly to indulge his curiosity, acclaimed British novelist Hensher (King of the Badgers, 2011) provides a droll and eclectic tour of handwriting history. Prompted by the realization that he had no idea what a close friend's handwriting style looked like, Hensher interviewed friends and family about the topic, with amusing and illuminating results. A handful of chapters records their testimony, while the rest of the book is devoted to penmanship styles, famous letter writers, like Dickens and Hitler, and the pseudoscience of handwriting analysis. With his novelist's gift for shimmering prose, Hensher may be just the man to inspire a public handwriting revival. If not, his work is a fitting tribute to a dying art that, with voice recognition software now approaching human proficiency, may be poised to disappear forever.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Attempting to document the value of handwriting and make the case against its disappearance, this book satisfies the former goal better than the latter. Novelist, columnist, and art critic Hensher (The Northern Clemency) sets out bemoaning the decline of handwriting in daily life, and his conclusion that handwriting should hold a spot in our hearts similar to that of cooking a meal from scratch, while sensible, arrives as predictable. The body of the work contains more interest than its bookends, examining how handwriting became a universal skill in Western society. Chapters on the Protestant-ethic genesis of copperplate and the pseudoscience of graphology, in particular, prove fascinating. Hensher punctuates this history with eight engaging though meandering short interviews with individuals and groups about handwriting in their daily lives. Overall, the book is not cohesive-the section on forgeries of Hitler's handwriting, for instance, feels out-of-place, and a page-long anecdote about italic script, signifying for Hensher the preparation for death, is frustratingly murky. The value, limitation, history, and decline of handwriting are undeniably topics worth examining, but the book only fills half the glass of discursive possibility. 30 b&w illus. Agent: Georgia Garrett, Rogers, Coleridge & White. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Critic and novelist Hensher (Creative Writing/Univ. of Exeter; King of the Badgers, 2012, etc.) laments the loss of handwriting instruction and surveys the history of our love affair with the pen. After some introductory comments about the once-important but now diminishing significance of handwriting in our culture, the author zooms back a few thousand years for a glimpse at the invention of writing. He then gradually moves forward to look at the various styles and techniques and teaching philosophies that once rose, reigned and fell. He occasionally inserts minichapters (all called "Witness") that comprise interviews with people of differing ages, genders and professions discussing their handwriting, how they learned it and how they feel about it. (These are not the most riveting sections of the text.) Hensher looks closely at the methods that once were prominent--copperplate, Spencer, Palmer and others--and offers some surprising tidbits along the way--e.g., hand printing (as opposed to script) did not emerge until the early 20th century. The author also discusses the handwriting of significant historical figures ranging from Dickens to Hitler; talks about the role of handwriting in literature from Sherlock Holmes to Proust; charts the history of the quill, the steel nib and ink; and sketches the history of the "pseudo-science of graphology." He waxes ironic and amusing, too, several times suggesting that a person who dot his i's with little hearts is a "moron." The author ends with a wistful list of things we might do to save the dying art. Informative, amusing and idiosyncratic--just like an interesting letter written in unique hand.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
