Posts Tagged ‘Remembrance of Things Past’
“I am my own secretary; I dictate, I compose, I copy all myself”*…
In this age of the email attachment and of the “duplicate” and “save as” commands, we’ve come to take copies for granted. But the quest for a way easily to make/keep duplicates of correspondence and records without transcribing them has a long history: most readers will be old enough to remember the days when Xerox machines– introduced in 1959**– were the duplicators of choice; and some, the era of the carbon copy. But while xerography ruled for around 50 years, carbon paper held sway for over 100.
The first version of carbon paper was patented by Ralph Wedgwood—an estranged member of the famous Wedgwood pottery family—in 1806. The paper was the central component of Wedgwood’s “Manifold Stylographic Writer,” which was originally meant to aid the blind in writing (through the addition of thin metal wires to guide in forming words along lines), but was soon used primarily as a copying device. Wedgwood wasn’t the only manufacturer of manifold writers; the portable (approx. 8.5 x 10 in) leather wallet above includes a label naming “inventor and patentee” F. Folsch.
Early adopters were mixed in their reviews.
Poet Robert Southey called it a “very excellent contrivance”; on the other hand, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Charles Willson Peale in 1807, noting with disapproval the olfactory effect of the oil used to create the carbonated paper: “The fetid smell of the copying paper would render a room pestiferous, if filled with presses of such papers.”
In the end, wide adoption of carbon paper came in the 1870s with the introduction of typewriting (and the development of better-smelling ink).
Read more at Slate in Nora Wilkinson’s “The Nifty, Portable Copying Technology Used by Early-19th-Century Letter-Writers,” and even more in her longer post on the subject on the Bodleian Library’s Conveyor blog.
* the Venerable Bede
** The Xerox machine was the much sharper competitor of- and, with it’s technological copycats, ultimately replacement for– the first office copiers, introduced in 195o (main among them, 3M’s Therma-Fax machine).
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As we savor sharing, we might send nostalgic birthday greetings to that most exquisite of (self-)copiers, Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust; he was born on this date in 1871. Proust spent the last three years of his life confined to his cork-lined bedroom, working to complete what Somerset Maugham called the “greatest fiction to date,” the seven-volume novel A la Recherche de Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, or as more recently translated, In Search of Lost Time).
All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and they only who have founded religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be conscious of how much it owes to them, nor above all of what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.
– Remembrance of Things Past: The Guermantes Way
“There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it”*…
As many as a million young people. mostly young men, in Japan are thought to have become hikikomori— to have holed up in their homes, sometimes for decades at a time.
click here and agin to enlarge
The BBC has the full story at “Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?”
* Roland Barthes
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As we burrow under our blankets, we might slip birthday greetings under the bedroom door of that most-famous literary shut-in, Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust; he was born on this date in 1871. Proust spent the last three years of his life confined to his cork-lined bedroom, working to complete what Somerset Maugham called the “greatest fiction to date,” the seven-volume novel A la Recherche de Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, or as more recently translated, In Search of Lost Time).
All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and they only who have founded religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be conscious of how much it owes to them, nor above all of what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.
– Remembrance of Things Past: The Guermantes Way
For emergency use only…
Emergency Compliment: “a steady supply of emergency compliments to be used at times of great insecurity.”
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As we feel better about ourselves, we might spare a thought– well actually, lots of thoughts– for Marcel Proust; he died on this date in 1922. He spent the last three years of his life in ill health, confined to his cork-lined bedroom, struggling to finish his masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). He died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes, the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother, Robert. Still, Graham Greene called Proust the “greatest novelist of the 20th century,” and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the “greatest fiction to date.” Indeed.
Amazing covers for Amazing Stories (and other magazines)…
Clintriter (Glenn Harris) has given us the gift of his collection of vintage speculative fiction magazine covers… the wonder! the awe!
Marvel at them all here.
As we get down with our inner Jules Verne, we might run in gleeful circles– on this date in 1912, Keystone Pictures premiered Hoffmeyer’s Release, the first Keystone Kops picture.
Keystone Kops (The policeman at the left in extreme background is Edgar Kennedy; the hefty officer at extreme right is Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.)
But while comic genius Mack Sennett’s career took off, another important artist was stalled: on precisely that same day, Nouvelle Revue Francaise, rejected an excerpt from Remembrance of Things Past (or, as the translation is now somewhat better known, In Search of Lost Time). Following a series of similar rejections, Marcel Proust was reduced to publishing his first volume, Swann’s Way, at his own expense the following year. Thankfully for Alain de Botton (and us), it was a great success.
Here begineth your correspondent’s annual hiatus, the period when the responsibilities of the Holidays and the exigencies of travel overwhelm his (already marginal) capacity to focus… There will likely be a post or three over the next ten days or so, but these missives will resume regularly early in the next decade. (“Next decade”… has a nice ring, doesn’t it?)
Meantime, Happy Holidays!
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