The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting: An Interview with Anne Trubek
Anne Trubek and I hang out in some of the same places online. Or perhaps more accurately, I lurk in some of the online places that Anne Trubek has created for people who are interested in writing about intelligent stuff for a non-academic audience. She is not only a creative writer, but an innovative creator of spaces in which writing, and talking about writing happens. When I saw that her new book appeared on the list of September books to review for Shelf Awareness for Readers, I was quick to put up my virtual hand and say “pick me!”
I was not disappointed. And I’m pleased to be able to offer you a chance to hear what Anne has to say about the book.
Before we get to the interview, a little bit about the book:
In The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, Anne Trubek explores the development of handwriting—physical and cultural—from clay tablets and cuneiform in ancient Mesopotamia to handwriting’s role in the world of digital communication.
Trubek describes changes in the technology of handwriting. (Making a quill pen is more complicated than you may realize.) More importantly, she considers the political and social implications inherent in who learned to write, what they recorded, and the scripts they used. She traces the relatively late rise of the idea that a person’s handwriting is a unique production, and ties the idea that handwriting is a reflection of personality to psuedosciences such as phrenology and eugenics.
Some of the most interesting sections of the book arise from the recurring fear the innovations in handwriting and technologies such as the printing press and the typewriter that threatened to replace it, would prove detrimental to the intellectual abilities of future generations would embraced them. Handwriting itself was the target of impassioned attacks by Socrates and his followers, who believed the written word would destroy not only the ability to remember but the ability to think complex thoughts.
Trubek never loses sight of the fact that handwriting is a controversial subject today. Throughout the book, she offers amusing and insightful comparisons between past and present, preparing the reader for a final discussion of the future of handwriting. The result is a light-handed and thoughtful account of a complicated subject.
And now, please welcome Anne Trubek:
You bracket your history of handwriting with the controversies that surround teaching handwriting today. Is that where the book began for you or did something else inspire you to write about handwriting?
Yes and no. I did start writing about handwriting when my son was in elementary school and his handwriting was causing him problems in school. But I was then also researching and writing about book history, so it synced with an area I was already working on. But most importantly I wanted this book to be for parents and educators who are confused and anxious about changes happening with writing—to give them a longer lens through which to view them, and to alley their fears.
One thing that fascinated me about your book was the way the function of handwriting as a marker of social status shifted over time. Can you tell us a something about the issues involved?
Isn’t that fascinating? One thing that I was interested in is that literacy levels fluctuate across time and cultures. It is astounding how few Egyptians learned to write–.3 percent according to some estimates. And in the 18th and early 19th century, some American women were taught to read but not to write.
Handwriting serves as a marker of social status because it reflects literacy rates, of course. But then there are more gradations. For most of Western history, the higher your status, the more likely you were not to write—you had people take dictation for you. In 19th century Britain, there rose an astounding number of different scripts that people used for specialized purposes—so if you wrote in one it would mark you as upper class, or as professional class, or as a woman.
Americans still have some ways of judging people’s status by their handwriting: consider the assumption you might make of someone whose handwriting is very large, neat, and rounded, with the I’s having circles above them instead of dots—do you think relatively uneducated woman, perhaps? Now compare that with someone whose handwriting is small but almost illegible—a male doctor or lawyer, perhaps?
You set your history of handwriting in the larger context of the history of what I guess I’d call “communication technology”. (Is there a better term for this?) What innovation in the way we produce the written word most changed the nature and use of handwriting?
Wow what a great question! And tough to answer. Maybe papyrus? In Sumeria, people wrote on clay. In Greece and Rome, they wrote on clay as well (as well as stone), but they also imported Egyptian papyrus and the book grows out of that. More recently, the shift from quill pen to fountain pen (and then ball point) definitely sped things up! I should add here I’m only considering Western innovations.
You describe a number of different scripts with different purposes. Do you have a favorite?
I love uncials. And I love that it was all majuscule or upper-case letters. IT WAS LIKE THIS. (there weren’t spaces between words either so ITWASLIKETHIS. Then they invented half-uncials, which are all lower-case, or miniscule. And you never combined the two!
In the interest of giving equal time to both sides of the handwriting controversy: Do you have a favorite font?
I like myself a copperplate font. Also Courier. But I use Times New Roman. It’s incredible how dominant Times New Roman is now. I should have bought stock! In the early days of computers we used lots of different ones—it was more playful, really. Now you show yourself a rube if you use the “wrong” font.
While I’ve got you here, could I ask you to tell my readers about Belt Magazine?
You bet! Belt Publishing is both an online magazine that publishes independent journalism about the Rust Belt and a small press. We publish books about cities like Cleveland and Detroit, and publish articles about these places online as well. I founded it three years ago to give voice to an underrepresented, fascinating region.
Is there anything else you wish I had asked you about?
No– I love your questions! Thanks so much for engaging with my book. It’s wonderful.
Anne Trubek is the founder and director of Belt Publishing. She is the author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting and A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, MIT Technology Review, Smithsonian, Slate, Salon, Belt and numerous other publications. A tenured professor at Oberlin College from 1997-2015, she currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio.
Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Know Nothing Party
A major political party divided against itself. Fear of profound social changes. A populist movement that feared America was in decline and looked for a leader that would make the country great again. Virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric and fear that members of a “foreign” religious group are a threat to–well– pretty much everything.* Sound familiar? Welcome to 1854 and the rise of the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, more commonly known as the Know Nothing party.***
The Know Nothings tend to be overlooked in American history classes, largely because they are overshadowed by the events leading to the Civil War and partly because they represent an ugly side to the antebellum north that muddies the narrative. Located in the urbanized North with a membership base that was primarily working and middle class, the party had a “nativist” ideology: they were for white men born in the United States (preferably several generations previously) and against pretty much everyone else–particularly the Irish Catholics who flooded into the country following the potato famine of 1848. Long before Max Weber coined the phrase “Protestant work ethic”, the Know Nothings believed that Protestantism was responsible for America’s freedom and prosperity and that Catholics in particular and immigrants in general had corrupted the political system.***
Because they played little role in the sectarian divisions of the war, it is easy to brush them off as a minor movement, but their contemporaries saw their rise as a major political problem They were originally a fraternal order, complete with secret rites and vows of secrecy–think Masons with a bad attitude. By 1854, they had some 50,000 members in sixteen states. By the end of 1855, they had elected eight governors, more than 100 congressmen, mayors in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and thousands of local officials. Their influence did not survive the presidential election of 1856. Their candidate, Millard Fillmore (previously a member of the Whig party), took only one state and split the Whig/Republican votership, ensuring the election of the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan. By 1860, the Know Nothings had disappeared, taking the Whig party down with it.
* If you’ve spent any time here in the Margins, you may have noticed that one of the themes I return to from time to time is the fact that we** historically screw up on the question of immigration. In theory we say, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” In reality, large numbers of us say, “I’m on board the freedom ship, pull up the ladder so no one else can get on. Don’t want it to get too crowded in here.” We pass quotas. We put up signs saying “No Irish need apply.” Now we rant about building walls. It really irks me that we keep going back to this poisoned well whenever people feel threatened by social, political and/or economic change. Rant over.
**And by we, I mean the United States. I know some of the Marginalia are from other parts of the world.
***Because they swore an oath when they joined that they would answer any questions about the order by saying “I know nothing.”
****In all fairness, it was the height of Tammany Hall corruption, which in fact drew on New York City’s immigrant base for its political clout. But Tammany Hall was able to do so because existing political blocs rejected immigrants. Chicken or egg?
Forgotten Women: A Reading List
Clio, the muse of history, hasn’t done very well by her daughters.
Over the last month or two* I’ve been thinking about how women vanish from history. How their contributions are often erased. Rachel Swaby, whose book about women scientists is listed below, describes writing about their lives as “revealing a hidden history of the world.”
Here are a few examples of books that bring otherwise forgotten women back into the story, with links to books that I’ve written about before:
Karen Abbot. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War. Harper Collins. 2014 An account of four women who played active roles in the American Civil War, including Emma Edmonds who disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Union Army
Margalit Fox. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. The forgotten role of classicist Alice Kober in the decipherment of Linear B, which is usually attributed solely to Michael Ventris.
Nathalia Holt. Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us From Missiles to the Moon to Mars. The overlooked story of the women who did the math that made space exploration possible. “One small step for man” depended on a lot of pencil pushing by women.
Denise Kiernan. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. Touchstone. 2013. Kiernan tells the story of the young women who were recruited to work as secretaries, factory workers, mathematicians, and low level chemists at a secret installation at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where they unknowingly helped develop the atomic bomb. Oak Ridge is familiar to anyone interested in the development of the atomic bomb, but its history has generally been told from the perspective of the men who led the project. Kiernan looks at the familiar story from the perspective of the women involved—women whom traditional histories of Oak Ridge have left out of the story entirely.
Adrienne Mayor. The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World. A sweeping and authoritative study of the realities behind the Greek myths about the Amazons. (If you want your Amazonian history and related popular history in bite-sized pieces, joint Mayor’s Facebook group, Amazons Ancient and Modern
Rachel Swaby. Headstrong: 52 Women who Changed Science–and the World. Broadway Books. 2015. Written in response to media accounts of brilliant women scientists that routinely note “domesticity before personal achievement”, Headstrong treats “women in science like scientists instead of anomalies or wives who moonlight in the lab.” Swaby makes the interesting choice not to include Marie Curie because Curie “is who we talk about when we talk about women in science…thee token woman in a deck of cards featuring famous scientists.” Instead she gives us fifty-two fascinating stories of women you’ve never heard about.
That should keep you going for awhile.
*Or the last thirty years, depending on how you count.
ADDENDUM: A regular blog reader reminded me of another book that should be on this list, and my personal TBR list: Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, by Cokie Roberts. thanks, Paul