Getting to the point with pencils
This week the focus here is not language per se but a class of tools of keen interest to many who toil in the language field: pencils.
Mary Norris, in 鈥淏etween You & Me,鈥� her charming usage guide-cum-memoir of her career at The New Yorker, devotes an entire chapter to her relationship with pencils. Her passion is the No. 1, with a softer 鈥渓ead鈥� (really graphite and clay) than the ubiquitous No. 2.
She was introduced to the No. 1 through a subtle professional subterfuge. Penciled notations on paper were essential to getting the magazine from the writers鈥� and editors鈥� minds to the readers鈥� hands. One colleague, though, had handwriting (quaint concept, no?) that was neat and precise but faint. His markings often disappeared from proofs faxed (another quaint concept) to the printer.聽
But Joe in makeup figured that Mr. Faintmark, if given No. 1s, would leave his mark more legibly without even trying. This introduction to the No. 1 changed Ms. Norris鈥檚 professional life forever. When the magazine鈥檚 office-supply store dropped No. 1s from its catalog, she sought out her own source.
Norris鈥檚 book came out a month after a new specialty pencil shop opened in New York City, in a neighborhood we might call 鈥渘ot your grandmother鈥檚 Lower East Side.鈥� 鈥淧ens are king, but pencils are rising among desk-bound urbanites,鈥� a headline on its article about the shop proclaimed, on the basis of no actual data discernible in the piece.
Maybe this is a zeitgeist thing that doesn鈥檛 need data. In May, an exhibition called 鈥淭he Secret Life of the Pencil鈥� opened for a brief run in London. Its aim was 鈥渢o reaffirm the classic #2鈥檚 status as a powerful emblem of creativity, innovation and critical thinking in the 21st century,鈥� according to one .
The pencil 鈥渢rend鈥� has prompted me to explore something I鈥檝e long wondered about: the connection between Caran d鈥橝che, the Swiss pencilmaker, and karandash, the Russian word for pencil.聽
The company, I find, is named for , pseudonym for Emmanuel Poir茅, a cartoonist born in Russia of French heritage. He eventually settled in France, where, the Charlie Hebdo of his day, he skewered the establishment for its anti-Semitism during the Dreyfus Affair. He indeed took his pen (pencil?) name from karandash 鈥� derived from the Turkish words for 鈥渂lack stone鈥濃�� a reference to graphite.
Ah, graphite! Centuries before our smartphones let us tap, tap, tap our little notes-to-self, the humble graphite pencil emerged as a significant thinking tool for people with more ideas than they could comfortably hold in their heads. Pencils let them jot down, quick and dirty, concepts not fully formed enough to commit to vellum and oak gall ink.聽
In the Digital Age, silvery-gray graphite, pink rubber, and fragrant cypress wood help anchor our ideas to their concrete expressions. It is the nature of graphite to leave a mark. And that is exactly the point.
