Man puts the hand back into writing, jots a 349-page novel with a calligraphy pen

The progression of handwriting from a necessity to a (rare) craft was foretold back when Gutenberg invented the printing press. Now, some 600 years later, as less and less people put pen to paper — preferring keying words to screen — and paperless offices have become the norm, one man appears to be leading a rearguard action to put the hand back into writing, by quite literally penning an entire novel in longhand.

That it also happens to be the name of the book is clearly not coincidental. The effort of writing 349 pages with a calligraphy pen —43 of them, actually, according to the author Andy Hamilton — will be appreciated most certainly by the generations that remember the hours of ink, toil, blots and tears that went into making ‘fair copies’ of school essays and other lengthy dissertations. The post-pen generation that finds even scribbling signatures with a pen onerous may be even more impressed that he has managed to keep his thoughts (and mind) together while undertaking this marathon exercise.

Hamilton’s assertion that printing words has excised emotion from writing — the blotches and crossed-out words that reflect a writer’s feelings while engaged in the process of writing — rings true. Backspace and delete keys have made it possible to feign equanimity and ordered thinking. Provided it is legible, the writing is not on the wall yet for handwriting.