Well-Read Life™

Finding—and Giving—Joy in Small Things

There is a joy in small things, which partly explains why some of our most popular products are also some of our smallest. But I think it’s also because many of our smallest products pack the biggest punch.

Take, for example, our Page Nibs. These tiny slips of phosphorus bronze mark your passages in a book forever or for a day—as you wish. Literally paper-thin, they can be priceless for what they point you to.

Or consider our Wallet Cards. They were born from a common observation: people are always writing on business cards. Ironically, business cards aren’t designed to be written on—it’s just that people have business cards when they don’t have anything else.

Tom Kelley,  the general manager of the legendary design firm IDEO, advises us to observe what we observe when people work around designs. That’s what we did when we designed our Wallet Cards, cards the same size as business cards but optimized for notetaking. You can fit them anywhere you fit business cards and our customers do, which explains why they are so popular, both personalized and not.

There’s an equally tiny leather holder for these cards, our Slim Wallet Writer. And a pen so teeny, we named it Walletini. Munchkin-sized but mega-powered, the Walletini pen is a mere 3 and a quarter inches and weighs less than one ounce. You can clip it in whatever  wallet you’re using and you won’t know it’s there, except when you want it to be.

 My other tiny favorites include our Circa Micro PDAs, which we sell as a four-pack. They’re incredibly handy and fun—I carry a few in my bag to hand out to kids and grownups, and it’s a toss-up as to who has the broader grin. These little notepads are the size Thomas Jefferson used in his carriage rides (although his were erasable ivory) and pocket-perfect even when you’re not in a carriage.

Perhaps never has so much untangling been accomplished by so little leather as with our Pocquettes Earbud Holder.

Small footprints, big impressions

 Some of our best small products are, surprisingly, furniture. Leading the charge is our No-Room-for-a-Table Table, which comes out of the box fully assembled and ready to delight just where you thought you couldn’t fit any useful furniture. It holds more than you’d ever think a table this size could, and looks like something an interior designer might custom-order for you from a cabinetmaker.

Our ever-favorite Skyline Bookcase can hold 100 books in one square foot, for those books you’d rather store in your home than in memory.

Sometimes it isn’t a thing at all, but an idea, as you’ll read in J. B. Priestley’s scrumptious Delight. Its subtitle is Taking pleasure in the small things in life. And he has found many, from meeting a friend to shopping in small places.

Priestley understood the power that lies in the small but thoughtful gesture. One such small thing I’m doing more of this holiday season is making my gifts personal—adding their monogram or name to the gift when I can. Then it’s not just joy: it’s their joy. And for gift-givers, that’s big.

How about you, dear reader—do you think it’s possible to give great joy with small things? Let me hear your ideas, won’t you? Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Jack London’s call of the book

Many of you have discovered our exclusive line of Levenger Press books. And yet not all of our literary pursuits are bound between book covers.

We sometimes go three-dimensional, as we have with Ogden Nash’s poem on the porpoise and E.B. White’s story and poem about his winsome pooch.

Another author in our pantheon of writers most admired is Jack London. Did you read The Call of the Wild and White Fang? Several of us here at Levenger did and were bowled over by how beautifully crafted these classic American tales are.

The stars of those stories were just begging to be captured in 3-D. And now they are.

 Mim Harrison, our editor of Levenger Press, gives you the back story on our new sculptures of The Call of the Wild and White Fang. (And I have a follow-up question for you at the end of the post.)

—Steve

Jon Bickley just seemed like a natural to create these bookends. A British sculptor, Jon crafted the larger-than-life statue of Samuel Johnson’s cat Hodge, which is on permanent patrol outside Johnson’s house in London. Later he sculpted Hodge in miniature as a bookend for Levenger (sorry, we've sold out). I had met Jon and knew he was an animal lover of the highest order.

There was just one problem: Jon’s British, and Jack London was most emphatically American. How could Jon artistically scale that daunting distance across the pond?

“That’s the great thing about books,” says Jon. “They cross continents and cut through boundaries.”

But his words are far from mere rhetoric. As it turned out, Jack London’s books were all but imprinted in Jon’s soul.

The call to the child

“The Call of the Wild and White Fang were some of the first books I remember reading for myself,” says Jon. “I was about seven years old.”

He was “animal-mad,” as his mum called him, even then. Reading Jack London sealed it.

“The Call of the Wild was the first book I knew that suggested animals had lives outside of human beings’, that they were entities unto themselves and not just add-ons to humans,” Jon says. Then he adds:

“It’s about respect. We have to respect the other creatures in the world.”

Wolf-Man Jon

The two books continued to call to him. At art college, Jon read them again, fascinated by the wild places of London’s stories, so different from the tame and tidy world of England.

And recently, he read them once more, this time in readiness for sculpting the wolves.

“Once I read the books this time ’round, I had an image of what the dogs looked like,” Jon says. “Books create images in your mind, without being fettered by illustrations.”

But here again, there was just one problem: unlike with Johnson’s cat, there are no wolves in England. And Jon is a sculptor whose works are grounded in authenticity. After all, he’d combed many of England’s beaches looking for the kind of oyster that Johnson would feed to Hodge.

“I used to work as a zookeeper in Kent,” says Jon. “We kept wolves.”

Who knew?

Wakes up with wolves

“The wolves had big packs,” Jon continues, “and they were allowed to sort out their own hierarchy. They lived behind the house that I stayed in, and they’d often howl at 3:00 a.m.” A bit disconcerting, he adds.

Symmetry, balance, the fundamental shape of wolves—all these were in Jon’s head when he set to work sculpting the wolves. But what was in his soul? What would make these statues haunting, memorable creatures?

The bases, in part. (Surprise.)

“I wanted the bases to look as if they could have come from Jack London’s period,” Jon explains. “It’s a bit like framing a picture. They’re not part of the picture, but they are part of the impression the picture creates. It’s taking things in context, and it does change the way you view them.”

But there has to be more to it than merely putting these wolves on their pedestals. When you first encounter these sculptures—especially the two together—they’re startling, they’re so lifelike.

Much of it has to do with the poses of each one. Jon took his cue from the quotations we had selected to be engraved on the bookends.

 It was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he had ever uttered.

That was from White Fang, and thus Jon's sculpture shows the creature in mid-howl, crossing the threshold into a place he had not been before, and where humans could not follow.

 There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself.

For The Call of the Wild, the image in Jon's mind (unfettered by illustrations) when he read the quote was the metamorphosis of Buck. "It's what Buck became as he changed into a wild wolf after being a tame dog," Jon says.

Perhaps this is where some sculptors would have stopped, content that they'd captured the essence of these wild spirits. For Jon, there was something else calling to him.

 “With wolves, the detail is all in the eyes. It’s the difference between a piece of taxidermy and looking at a live wolf. If you can get the eyes right, you’ve got it. It’s as we say of humans: the eyes are the window into the soul.”

—Mim

And now to you, dear reader—are there books you “see” in 3-D? And do you envision them, as Jon did Jack London’s, without being prompted by illustrations? And what of wolves--are there wolves in your mind's eye? Do you find them scary or attractive, or both?  I’d love to hear your ideas. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

—Steve

…and in a flash, you’re bilingualLearning Language the New Way, Part II

Have you ever sat in a darkened theater before a play begins, waiting for the curtain to open, while unexpectedly before your eyes you see lights coming on, illuminating a scene behind the curtain, and you realize the curtain was transparent all along?  That’s the feeling I have now that I’m learning Spanish.

The other day, for example, I learned that Gitano, a brand of jeans, means gypsy. And Colibrí, which I’ve seen on lighters, means hummingbird. The restaurant at Neiman Marcus is Mariposa, which means butterfly. (Oh, that’s why they have all those butterflies suspended above the escalators...)

I’m learning the previously secret meanings of the town and city names I grew up with, such as Escondido (hidden), Mission Viejo (old mission), Las Colinas (the hills) and even that city that supposedly keeps its secrets, Las Vegas (fertile valleys).

Honestly, I’m one of the least talented people you’ll meet for learning a new language—but slowly learning my second language has been a joy every step of the way, mainly because of technology. So if you’ve been on the edge about committing to learn your next language, read on.

Since my last post about the helpful digital assistants just waiting to provide you with a virtual immersion experience, I’ve discovered yet more of these digital docents thanks to the iPhone.

The answer to my language-learning dream

No, I don’t work for Apple. But in the first week of iPhone ownership, Apps have changed my life as a second-language learner. Here’s how:

Last year I bought two boxes of old fashioned paper flash cards to tutor myself in Spanish, but I quickly became frustrated with them. Lashed with a rubber band, kenneled unhappily in my briefcase, the haphazard stack daily became more dog-eared. Another stack on my nightstand toppled over as I groped for the clock. When I did actually begin using the cards, it wasn’t easy to separate ones I knew from the ones I needed to repeat. I complained to Lori, “I just wish my PDA could dish up electronic flash cards for me, whenever I wanted, and that it would keep track of what I got right and wrong….”

Like Aladdin, my wish was answered with a most gentle rub of my iPhone. There’s an App called Spanish! by Andre Khromov (with audio by Juan Miranda). I’ve already spent joyful hours with it, made up of three- or five-minute sessions while I wait for a haircut or stand in an airport security line. It does just what I dreamed of and more, with its optional pronunciation.

¡Asombroso! (Amazing!)

There’s another Spanish-language game App I’ve been playing called 24/7 Tutor, and a marvelous Spanish/English dictionary App, both now in the palm of my hand.

When Lori and I visited our older son, Cal, in Beijing while he was on his junior year abroad, the first thing he raved about was how much an iPhone app was helping his Chinese. He demonstrated by tracing his finger on the screen to make a Chinese character, and up popped the definition. “The electronic Chinese dictionary on my iPhone is always faster and more convenient to use than a paper dictionary,” says Cal.

The other night I was at a dinner sitting next to a woman who confessed she wanted to finally get back to her college French and learn the language—just for herself. I pulled out my iPhone and proceeded to amaze her.

I feel like we’re now living the scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast when the cups, knives and forks come to life and start singing and dancing “Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest!”

What we have today, in the digital tools at our fingertips, is just that magical.

Do you have a new language-learning tale to share? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Reading Dickens aloud as Dickens did

Be careful what you say to publishers.

Our friends at The New York Public Library made the fortuitous mistake a few months ago of mentioning a treasure in their archives: the only known copy of A Christmas Carol that Charles Dickens had made for himself to hold when he performed on stage. It is known as the prompt copy.

We didn’t even know then what a prompt copy was (an annotated reading copy for the stage), or that Dickens had performed his books (big time, including a major U.S. tour in 1867). But that was all we needed to hear to know that publishing Mr. Dickens’s prompt copy was in order.

Common sense and several colleagues told us it would take to least another year to go through all the steps before we could publish such a prize. We cast all such sound advice aside.

 After all, Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in just a few short, fevered weeks—much as Robert Louis Stevenson did his Jekyll and Hyde. Surely Levenger Press could publish The Prompt Copy of A Christmas Carol for our customers, in time for Christmas 2009. After all, this is a year that cries out for some Tiny Tim-style cheer. And so we have.

One of The New York Public Library staff members who made it possible was Isaac Gewirtz. Isaac is the curator of the Library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, which houses the Dickens treasures. He told me how Dickens had his prompt copy made so that he could cross out sections and write in the margins, including stage cues to himself.

Then Isaac showed me the book and offered to let me hold it. Out of reverence, I declined. But I took this picture of Isaac cradling this one-and-only book in his curatorial hands.

Isaac, who holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance History from Columbia University, wrote the marvelous introduction for our book. After we read it, we wanted still more. So we interviewed him with some questions we thought our customers might ask, too. Here are excerpts of our conversation.

Why is Dickens’s work as a performer so little known among readers, even many of his fans?

If much of the general public is not aware of his performances, it’s probably because they weren’t taught about it in school. For quite some time now (judging from the students I encounter), high schools have not taught history with much enthusiasm, much less tried to acquaint students with the historical context in which authors lived and wrote. Recent film adaptations of A Christmas Carol have had commercial success, as have Broadway productions. But, not surprisingly, television commercials for the films don’t talk about Dickens’s performances, and I don’t know if the promoters of the theater performances include statements about them in their playbills.  It might make no difference if they did. Most people, naturally, are more interested in how a work speaks to them than in how it spoke to previous generations.

One reason that Dickens’s performances might be ignored by those who could tell us about them is that they know we like to put each other in boxes, even (maybe especially) the famous. A writer is a writer, a musician a musician, etc., though literary history is filled with instances of great writers who also pursued other arts or sciences at a very high level. In regard to Dickens especially we should break this habit, since his performances teach us a great deal about his attitude toward his writings.

His performing was radical for its day, as you note. What would be the present-day equivalent?

It wasn’t his manner of performing that was radical, it was the fact of it. Dickens “became” his characters, people said, but so did other good actors of his day. In truth, we would probably find his and their style too histrionic.

Authors did not perform their works before the general public. I don’t know if we can conceive of a present-day equivalent simply because the breaking of boundaries is now an expected feature of the artistic persona. Dickens did not perform in order to shock, but to make money, though the adulation he received on these occasions became addictive, and no doubt helped motivate him as well.

Do you read aloud from the prompt copy?

I often use the prompt book in presentations to elementary, high school, undergraduate, and graduate classes, as well as to non-academic visitors to the Berg. I occasionally read passages aloud to show how Dickens changed the original text, although I wouldn’t call those readings performances.

Are there excised portions you wished he'd left in?

This is impossible to say, since he would sometimes read excised passages. The complicated sentences that he rewrote for performance probably remained in their simpler form, but I wouldn’t second-guess his judgment about what needed to be rewritten for the stage. He knew how to seduce an audience.

What is the major difference between performing and reading A Christmas Carol?

When we read any novel or short-story, our imagination is intimately manipulated by the images of the characters we meet; the scenes they walk through, whether in streets or fields; the rhythms of descriptive passages and of dialogue; and the tension and release of plot development and character revelation.

With a writer like Dickens, the narrative voice also becomes a character—perhaps the most important—in our imaginative consciousness. This means that if the work is to be performed for an audience that already knows it, the performer needs to speak in a voice that each audience member can accept as the one that they heard in their heads and have come to trust and love.

The dialogue of A Christmas Carol is probably less challenging for the performer; hearing Scrooge or Crachit speak in a voice somewhat different from the one we imagined is not an affront. But Dickens’s voice is that of an old friend. This means that the performer has somehow to embody the wisdom and compassion of our friend’s narrative voice so that we accept the new one as our own.

An audiobook recording of A Christmas Carol, which is already a short book, still takes about three hours. Dickens, through successive edits in his prompt copy and more than 100 public performances, cut his gem down to 85 minutes, including a five-minute intermission. This may make the prompt copy the most authorized of all book abridgements in history.

And it makes the resulting script, which we print in the book immediately following the facsimile, about as perfect a piece as we know to read aloud to others. Modern performers can read knowing they are in the hands of a master, and carrying on a great tradition in storytelling.

Please do let me know what your experiences are like if you perform A Christmas Carol—whether to one listener, or a thousand.

Also—is there a living author whom you’d like to see perform his or her work? Tell me about it. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).