Well-Read Life™

My Holiday Wish List for Our Customers

That you have all the joy that you can wish, to borrow from Shakespeare, both in this season and in your endeavors. At Levenger we take joy in our own endeavors—bringing you products that we hope will help you in yours.

That you know Levenger will continue to be a company that practices conscious capitalism. We will partner with institutions that foster learning and literacy, and seek out responsible suppliers the world over.

That what you find at Levenger will be not just good stuff but the stuff of ideas: products that inspire you to pursue whatever forms your creative expression takes. 

That you will count on us to always be the company that will do right by you, so that shopping with us is a delight for you. (And I’m counting on you to tell us if it isn’t.)

That you accept our gratitude for caring that a product is well made and thoughtfully executed. For knowing the value of owning good things made to last. For having expectations that make us raise the bar that much higher to meet them.  

You have brought such meaning into the lives of the people of Levenger. I hope we have done the same, and then some, for you.

Happy holidays,

A writing mother’s read on children’s reading

If you were one of the estimated 200,000 readers who enjoyed this fall’s National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., you were treated to presentations by two members of the same writerly, readerly family: David McCullough and his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson.

Turns out that Dorie already has a couple of books under her belt, the newest being a children’s story called Tex. But there’s more to this storyteller than just the story. Dorie has become an advocate for getting kids to read in ways that matter.

Since Levenger has just introduced this year’s batch of recommended gifts for young readers, we thought it was a good time to also introduce you to Dorie. Here’s her conversation with our editor of Levenger Press,  Mim Harrison: 

Levenger Press: How did you come to be such a thoughtful champion of children’s reading? 

Dorie McCullough Lawson: I was lucky to be raised by parents who love books. My mother has always said, “If you can read, you can do anything.” When you grow up hearing that, you know books are powerful things. As a child I was read to, I read on my own, we talked about books. The characters and scenes from books were simply a part of my life and consciousness from the beginning. And I’m sure it had an effect knowing that books were being written right there at home, by my father.

Something else that was important: from about third grade on, my friends and I talked about books. I still remember which books we read. Once my friend Shannon and I were both crazy about a book called The Blind Connemara, and the school library had only one copy. It was quite a war over that book!

LP: Many advocates of children’s reading believe that as long as kids read something—anything—it’s a good thing. Do you agree?

DML: I disagree. There are so many wonderful books out there that in a lifetime we couldn’t read them all. There just isn’t time or brain-space to waste on anything that isn’t terrific. It’s true at any stage of life, but especially in early childhood, because what we read and put into our brains during that precious time tends to stay there forever and in turn influences who we are.

LP: What role do sports play in children’s willingness to read?

DML: As a culture we do spend an inordinate amount of time and money on sports. Families are consumed by children’s soccer or hockey and the task of transporting the players here and there. And the players are becoming younger and younger. I wish a greater proportion of that time and effort and interest were spent on reading and books and the life of the mind.

It’s really pretty simple: Children are very good at knowing what’s important to the adults in their lives. If we adults are interested in sports, talk about sports, buy the right equipment, the likelihood that the child will be interested in sports is very high. If we are interested in books, and read to our children, and talk with our children about books, if we spend time in bookstores and libraries, then the same will be true for books and reading.

The question also raises the issue of scheduling. If our children are too overscheduled with athletics and lessons of all kinds, reading and time for the imagination suffer. Kids need more time to just roll around on the floor and have a few hours of boredom to give their heads time and space to go to work.

LP: There are plenty of opportunities for children today to escape into a fantasy world. Do you think that’s beneficial?

DML: I think there is certainly a place for fantasy, and it is valuable to children to have fantasy in their lives, but I do think that we tend to blur the distinction between fantasy and imagination. It’s imagination that we need to propel us forward. It takes imagination to put oneself in another person’s shoes, to build a tunnel or develop a new surgical technique, to come up with a new evolutionary theory. It definitely takes imagination to get an obstinate child to do something he or she doesn’t want to do. We need imagination every day.

With children, we should remember and appreciate the value of simple things. We need to help them use the power of their minds to envision themselves doing things they can’t already do, or going places they’ve never been. I’m not crazy about over-filling their heads with talking trains and sponges and avatars and powerful robots.

LP: Do you read aloud to your kids?

DML:  Yes. We have four children spanning nine years, and my husband and I read picture books whenever we can to the littler ones, but we also read aloud every night to the whole family. It’s only for about twenty minutes, but everyone sits down together in the living room to hear the story. We read longer chapter books aimed mostly for the older children, but the little ones are there and they absorb some of it. They often color or draw while we’re reading, but no matter what, they know it’s a time of day when we’re all together and it’s important to us.

It’s most definitely not always a beautiful, cozy happy scene of family bliss! Often someone is disruptive or fussy, or someone is complaining about the book, or someone has just learned how to make himself burp and can’t seem to stop, or my husband or I wish we could make a phone call instead, but we stick to it. If it goes badly one night, there’s always the next day to try again.

For us it’s like dinner—sometimes the food is delicious and the conversation is wonderful, and sometimes it’s none of those things. But just because dinner doesn’t go well one or two nights, you don’t give up on it. And we don’t give up on reading together.

LP: In an age of e-books, is there still value in putting tree-books in little hands?

DML: There’s huge value in real books! Children learn to get enjoyment from something that isn’t plugged in. A child’s attention span is strengthened by spending time with something that doesn’t have any flashing colors or changing pictures or whiz-bang technology. The only excitement with a real book, and it’s real excitement, happens inside the brain.

I also think there is a connection when you give a child the actual book that you enjoyed or a grandparent enjoyed. The real book reaches across time.

---

Now to you, dear reader. When it comes to kids and reading, is there too much time for sports and not enough for books? I’d love to hear your comments. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

—Steve

My Formerly Secret Love Affair with the Piano

I know I’m not the only person harboring a secret love affair with the piano. I’ve decided to tell all here because my private obsession has led to a public unveiling of an unusual Levenger object: our Carnegie Hall bookend.

A rube and a Rubinstein

Where my infatuation came from, I don’t actually know. Not from being a student of the piano, because I never took a lesson and never played. It’s odd that I didn’t, since we had a baby grand in our home when I was growing up that my mother played.

Had I expressed an interest in learning piano, I’m sure my mother would have been delighted, but it was smaller instruments I wanted to try, so after throttling the neck of a violin and puckering on the end of a reedy clarinet, I finally put a trumpet to my lips and blew. I liked it.

I still revel in the greats of the horn, as, for example, those blowing the doors off their hinges and sweet-talking your soul on the recent Grammy nominated CD, To Fred with Love. Even so, it is the piano that has me in its hammers.

As a pajama-clad boy, I’d fall asleep while my mother practiced Bach and Chopin. Especially ingrained in my memory is Chopin’s Waltz No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor. My mother would slow at its sweeping grand staircase of notes and ascend it imperfectly, rarely getting to the top without stumbling. I’d fill in the right notes in my head as I drifted off.

It must have been around 1970 when my mother got us tickets to hear Arthur Rubinstein at the San Diego Civic Center. I remember the waves of standing ovations for the great man, already in his 80s, to the point where it was embarrassing. Maybe we’re just hicks here in San Diego, I thought, and wondered if at Carnegie Hall, the audience would have filed out the doors already, content with just another transcendent concert.

A promise to Otto

When we moved Levenger from our Boston townhouse to real offices in Delray Beach, Florida, in 1987, I encountered another great elder statesman, about Rubenstein’s age. He had written a book that Levenger sold called The Delights of Reading. His name was Otto Bettmann.

Otto had founded the Bettmann Archives, the first company to sell photos to publishers. He sold his business (it is now part of Corbis) and moved to Florida to pursue his other passions—rare books and the piano. I visited his apartment one Saturday with my son Cal, who was then four. Otto sat Cal on the piano bench beside him as he played Bach on his big black concert grand.

“My parents forced me to learn piano and I hated it. I wish I could tell them now how much I love it,” Otto said. He had been born in Bach’s hometown of Leipzig and now played Bach every morning. Otto made me promise I would make Cal and his younger brother, Corey, play piano. “Even if your sons rebel, you must force them,” he advised, in his slight German accent.

It was an easy promise to agree to since we were about to move into our new home in Delray Beach, and I had already decided to buy a piano. My promise to Otto to torture my sons provided another excuse.

Of course, it couldn’t be just any piano. I became fixated on the most famous brand, Steinway. I knew there were more expensive pianos, like the Bösendorfer. But the very word—Steinway—is synonymous with Piano, and I knew I would have no other.

Breakfast at Steinway’s

Over the years, I had often lingered in front of Steinway’s concave glass window on 57th Street in New York, the way Holly Golightly lingered in front of Tiffany’s, a few blocks away. 

Of course I’ve never gone in. A salesman might ask if I wanted to play one. What I wanted to do was something more unusual.

In my imagination, the conversation with the Steinway salesman would go like this:

Salesman, wearing a dark suit: “May I help you?”

“Yes. Please find an exceptionally talented pianist, preferably a woman who has seen a lot of life and is wise—and especially tolerant—and have her play Rachmaninoff No. 2 on this concert grand, while I lie on the carpet under it. After the opening minutes, I’ll rise and put my head inside, under the lid, so I can watch the hammers blurr up and down and breathe in the sound, as a dog breathes in the wind while he sticks his head out the window, and then, while she continues to play ever so beautifully, I want to gently close the lid, and I will bend at the waist and lie face down on the closed piano with my arms stretched out, hugging it, allowing the vibrations to enter my heart like shocks from the paddles in an ICU. Then, in the last few minutes, I’d like to sit in a chair a few feet from her, watching her hands and body so I can marvel at God’s symphony, and after she finishes, I want to leap to my feet and clap for her loudly while she comes out of her trance, stands, smiles and bows, and then I’d like to embrace her, kiss her on both cheeks, and hand her a bouquet of two dozen white roses, which you’ll have ready for me. After that, I’ll sit down at your desk and write out a check for the piano.”

The salesman would have listened patiently, without much reaction, and would then say:

“Sure, Martha’s right in the back, fixing her hair. One minute, please.”

Fearing to enter Steinway’s New York store for reasons you now know, I set my mind on researching the Steinway options and buying one from a dealer in Florida.

The music staircase to heaven

I didn’t want a new piano but rather, one with a heritage, with a story, one whose keys had already traveled miles and miles of songs. I figured such a piano would have a soul, and in the hands of a good pianist, could more easily ascend the music staircase to heaven.

I wanted our house filled with piano music—real, acoustic music—music made from centuries of refining how felt-covered hammers strike their strings and how those vibrations are amplified and resonated by metal and wood in some ways that can be explained by science and other ways still mysterious, and sent forth shuddering into the air and our ears and our souls.

So I located the Steinway dealer at the time, Hale Piano in Fort Lauderdale, and learned that they had plenty of beautifully reconditioned pianos. So far, so good.

But I faced a serious challenge.

I knew from my trumpet playing days that each instrument is different—you had to play a number of them to find your soul mate. How was I going to buy my piano soul mate when I couldn’t play?

Through my musician friend Steve Slaman, I was introduced to pianist David Carlson. David had had a long orchestral and solo career and was, Steve assured me, something of a nut when it came to his instrument.

Together David and I went to the Steinway gallery in Fort Lauderdale, where there were dozens of reconditioned instruments lined up for trial.

Through David, I learned that I should get a piano over a certain size, which was necessary to have the bass resonate with authority. It didn’t have to be the massive concert grands that Glenn Gould would play at Carnegie Hall, but just a thoroughly professional model, like Dave Brubeck or Nat King Cole or Keith Jarrett would expect to find in a recording studio. It also had to be newer than the mid-1960s in order to have something called accelerated action.

A story…

David and I made several trips to the Steinway gallery. He would play some piece that sounded exquisite to me and then suddenly just stop and shrug and move to another piano. I couldn’t tell if my salesman was annoyed or amused, but he was patient with this odd couple.

Finally the salesman, knowing I wanted an instrument with a story, called me one day to say a famous piano was fresh out of reconditioning, and we ought to come check it out. “I think you’re going to like this one,” he added.

When David and I arrived, the salesman told us the story of how this instrument, a full-sized, matte-black Steinway, had been for a dozen years at a jazz club at a local hotel. It was the place to perform in Fort Lauderdale. Untold numbers of famous players had used this Steinway and famed singers had been accompanied by it. But the hotel had finally closed and sold off the piano, which Hale bought and then brought back to its next life.

David sat down and played. Slowly a smile appeared on his face. He played more and louder, and higher and lower, and softly and then stopped. He turned to me. “This is it,” he said.

…with a different ending

The next day I brought Lori to the showroom to show her the new member of our family. As I walked her down the center aisle of the showroom, she turned her head to the right and said, “Wow, isn’t that one pretty?”

She was looking at a natural mahogany piano with a beautifully detailed case.

“Yes, it’s pretty, but that’s not what this is about,” I said, and kept her moving toward my prize.

But I knew that look in her face, and saw her cast her glance back at the pretty one.

Reluctantly, I followed her over to it. Pretty it was, and yes, it would match our home perfectly. I pointed out it was too small and too old. But she had fallen in love with it, the way I had with mine. With sadness in my heart, I agreed to bring David back to play the pretty piano.

He soon gave me the answer I expected. “It’s not as good,” he said. “But you know what? It’s a Steinway, and it’s lovely, and any pianist you have to your house will be thrilled to play it.”

And so that’s the piano, Model No. 198320, born in 1919, that came to our home in 1998 and that our dear friend Eric Wainscott played beautifully at our New Year’s party to ring in the new millennium.

Piano man

Alas, our sons are now grown and gone and I failed Otto by not torturing them enough to learn on our piano. Talents they have, but not at the keyboard. Over the years, I’ve hired professionals to come play it, which gives me great satisfaction. And religiously, every fall, I have it tuned by Karl Roeder, formerly of the Steinway factory in New York, and now the most sought-after tuner in South Florida. 

While my own sons didn’t take to our musical hearth, a neighbor girl has swept me off my feet. Her name is Esme Hurlburt, and someday she will be a famous opera singer, but she plays piano too, and I’ve hired her occasionally to do her practicing at our house. I sit in another room, out of her sight, and just listen and let my heart fill up till it overflows, and that way Esme doesn’t see me wiping my eyes.

When we developed our bookend with Carnegie Hall, we wanted an iconic instrument on its stage, and it could be no other than a Steinway grand piano. You’ll find this bookend with a story to tell at the Carnegie Hall gift shop, at Levenger, and, I hope, in the homes of others who love the piano.

Do you have a piano love story to share? Please do. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

A century-old British tradition carries on at Levenger

When our older son, Cal, left for New York to begin his first real job after college, he took something from my closet. It wasn’t a tie or a coat or a hat. (More likely, those items are the butt of jokes by my sons.) It was a Tusting briefcase.

I didn’t mind. In fact, I had stashed two Tusting cases up on a shelf. I had used them both and worn them in a bit and thought my sons might like them when they set off in the world. I still remember starting out myself many years ago, very light in experience and confidence, so I know that carrying a well-made briefcase with a bit of millage on it can serve as a hopeful portent of success. It’s also a practical way to carry increased responsibilities, should they come your way.

My sons can’t remember when Levenger didn’t carry Tusting cases, because the two companies have been partners for the last 20 years. So it’s about time I shared with you a bit more of the story behind these bags so lovingly crafted in England, and show you some photos from the visit to the factory that Lori and I made in September.

Five generations strong

William Tusting is the senior member of the fifth generation of Tustings currently running the leather-goods company, which is located in the village of Lavendon, about an hour northwest of London. William works with younger brother Alistair and Alistair’s wife, Gillian. John Tusting, William and Alistair’s father, still comes to work most days, as he did the day Lori and I were visiting. John has a beaming, avuncular smile and a hearty handshake. His desk is at the end of a well-lit office and presides over all the other desks, much as I imagine dear old Fezziwig presided over his young charges in A Christmas Carol.

In 1875, when the company was founded, the focus was on tanning leather, an occupation that other Tusting cousins in the area still pursue. Our branch of the Tusting family has been “tanning, grading and trading” some of the world’s finest leathers for 130 years. About 30 years ago, the family started to focus on making fine leather bags, and that’s what we’ve been bringing to America these many years.

Just as fine food begins with the best ingredients, fine leather bags must begin with the best leathers. This isn’t merely paying a high price for their leathers, although the Tustings do. It’s knowing just what kinds of hide, measured by myriad different characteristics, are right for the application, and then sometimes taking those hides for special (and rather secretive) additional preparation before cutting and sewing.

The hides in our Cambridge collection originate from North American cattle. They are aniline drum dyed, which enhances the luster and intensity of the color and their longevity. While you can use a leather polish on these bags if you wish, you can also blissfully ignore them for decades and watch them improve with natural age and character.

Tusting adds to these bags brass fittings solid and stout, plus top-of-the-line zippers, made on the Continent by RiRi.

We work with Tusting to modify designs for the American market and frequently add some more internal features for the exclusive Tusting-Levenger bags (our “inside IQ”). But the bags remain simple, and thus adaptable to the changing stuff we carry over the years. Like so many art forms, these bags triumph from what is left out as much as what is put in.

There’ll always be a Tusting

While Tusting is a small manufacturer on a world basis, they are one of the largest in England, and one of the most respected. When you buy your Aston Martin and check off the matching leather luggage option, you get a Tusting bag.

In our exclusive partnership, we bring to the United States the best of the Tusting designs, which are expanding and changing each year. Not only do we have the classic bags we’ve been selling for almost a generation, but you’ll also find new bright colors that have been garnering press coverage in London in Vogue and Elle, among other trendsetting magazines. (One such magazine published a photo of Princess Kate carrying a Tusting duffel, which reportedly she stole from William.)

Over the years, Tusting family members have become not just trusted business partners but friends as well. William and his wife, Susan, came to ride Loop the Lake for Literacy last year, and will be back again for this year’s ride.

And I’ve enjoyed riding the English countryside behind the strong wheel of William, who told me after our last ride that I’d done “a proper job as a limpet.”

A limpet? said I.

Yes, said William. ”You know—those creatures that stick onto rocks by the seashore.”

Limpet or no, customers do tend to stick with their Tusting bags. As one customer said about his Cambridge Messenger Brief, “The best purchase I ever made 13 years ago and I still use it today.”

Do you have a Tusting-Levenger bag to call your own? I’d like to hear about it here, and encourage you to post your story on our website as a review as well, for the benefit of other customers yet to form bonds with their own cherished bags.

Charles Dickens’s ‘Brilliant Improvisation’: Behind the pages of A Christmas Carol

“My own, and only manuscript,” scrawled Charles Dickens on the final page of his handwritten draft. He was referring to his little story of 1843 that became the colossal hit, A Christmas Carol.

Now little Levenger Press brings readers the one and only full-color facsimile of these manuscript pages. We did so in partnership with The Morgan Library & Museum, which owns the manuscript. (If you’re in New York between now and February 12, 2012, go see the Morgan’s superb Dickens exhibit.)

What makes this facsimile extraordinary is the Morgan’s painstaking restoration of each page. As our friend Declan Kiely, Morgan curator and Dickens scholar, says, the result is as close as science can get to the pages looking exactly as they did when Dickens rushed them to his printer shortly before Christmas, 1843.

How do great thinkers and writers think? That’s what we try to reveal for readers in the facsimile editions we publish. The way Dickens wrote—not only stylistically but physically—reveals much about the maestro behind the masterpiece.

Come eavesdrop on our conversation with Declan and Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison, as Declan takes you deeper into the mind of Dickens.

—Steve

Levenger Press: Why will lovers of A Christmas Carol want to read this version of it—a kind of “Christmas Carol in the raw”? What do we gain by watching how the writer wrote?

Declan Kiely: A Christmas Carol is such an iconic story—it has been referred to as a “culture-text” for the world at large—and has been adapted so many times, that it is easy to lose sight of its origin. What readers gain by reading this story in manuscript is the excitement of seeing the first product of Dickens’s imagination, his first thoughts and second thoughts, the false starts and revisions, and the sheer toil of the literary mind at work. The manuscript is literally crammed with small and large-scale revisions that are vividly evocative of Dickens’s working methods. To see them is to witness at first-hand, and to be enthralled by, his fierce creative energy.

LP: Dickens wrote this story in just six weeks. How was he able to just dash off a classic?

DK: There was a popular misconception during Dickens’s lifetime, which continued for a surprisingly long time afterward, that he wrote easily and carelessly, that he was a writer with a facility rather than genius. It is quickly apparent, when looking at the manuscript, that this was not the case, and that Dickens wrote, as he told one correspondent, “with great care and pains (being passionately fond of my art, and thinking it worth any trouble).” I think that the original manuscript, inasmuch as it allows us to see how the writer wrote, deepens rather than dispels the essential mysteriousness of the creative process.

LP: Did Dickens’s other stories help him in writing this one?

DK: It is worthwhile to remember that for Dickens, A Christmas Carol was an experimental work of fiction. By 1843 he had, of course, been writing for several years, beginning with his Sketches by Boz, going on to write his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, followed quickly by Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, all published serially over many months. What he had never written before was a story that would be published in a single volume and that aimed to capitalize on the Christmas holiday market. The whole enterprise was, to a certain extent, like so much of Dickens’s early work, a brilliant improvisation and also consciously and necessarily opportunist in nature.

LP: What do Dickens’s strike-outs and changes reveal most compellingly to you?

DK: When Dickens sat down to write A Christmas Carol in October 1843 he was writing with his back against the wall, conscious of the clock ticking down to December 25, and knew that he couldn’t allow himself the same freedoms that a much more capacious, novel-length narrative permitted. So the manuscript reveals Dickens’s rigorous discipline and his sharpest wit. The story represents Dickens’s literary genius in its most concentrated form. His changes are indicative of an author consciously reining himself in, cutting off digressions—as he does on the very first page, when he decided against an extended meditation on the character of Hamlet in the interests of moving his story along at a brisker pace. A tight narrative was essential to his purpose, and so his revisions seek to achieve concision, and increase vividness and immediacy. A Christmas Carol is a lean book, there is no superfluity, and that’s why it can and has been so well adapted—initially for the stage and, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the big screen.

LP: How does this manuscript compare with other manuscripts of Dickens?

DK: There is more revision evident on each page of A Christmas Carol. As Dickens matured as an artist, he became more deliberate, writing in a slower and more deeply considered way. By the time he wrote his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (the manuscript of which is also at the Morgan), his writing had shrunk in size, and many more revisions appear on every page. Indeed, the pages are so clotted that one early commentator wrote that “the fineness and closeness of writing are enough to render the most amiable of experienced printers temporarily insane.”

LP: So in other words, the better he got as a writer, the more he revised?

DK: Absolutely. Dickens said of his early writing that he did not know the source of his ideas and inspiration, that they came “ready made to the point of the pen.” He seems to have made no outline or plan for A Christmas Carol—at least, none survives. He certainly made no plan for his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, which, like all of his subsequent novels, he composed serially as well as published serially. The same can be said for Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, so it was not until he came to write The Old Curiosity Shop that he began to write plans—or “mems,” as he called them—to guide his own progress from the story’s beginning until its end, which was published eighteen months later. Perhaps the reason he revised his earlier work less than his later work is because, as he told a friend, “the plot, the motive of the book, is always perfected in my brain for a long time before I take up my pen. I add a great deal to the original idea as I work on, but, as I always know the end from the beginning, I can safely commit my work in parts to the press.” It’s likely that this is true of A Christmas Carol: Dickens knew precisely the plot, characters, and themes of the story before he put pen to paper. The manuscript is fascinating because, following his revisions, we can see the ways in which Dickens improved upon his original conception as he shaped his narrative.

LP: Why was Dickens so keen on using good paper for something that would be transmuted to print?

DK: Dickens had very high standards in just about every aspect of his life. He was extremely orderly and fastidious. He could not write unless everything on his desk, and in his work space, was “just so.” That included his paper and ink. He kept a collection of carefully prepared goose quills that he shaped with his pen knife (which is where the term originated), so that he would not be distracted if he needed to change quills when writing. The manuscripts of his early novels survive in fragmentary form only, but as his writing developed it is clear that he took a closer interest in the preservation of his working papers. Anyone who wants their work to last chooses the best available writing materials, the finest tools for the job. Dickens was discerning in his selection of paper, using “superfine” cream-colored paper for A Christmas Carol, and black iron gall ink. Later in his career he switched to blue paper and blue ink, which dried more quickly.

LP: Do you think Dickens somehow knew there would be value in his “own and only manuscript”?

DK: As far as I know there is no other manuscript that Dickens pointedly annotated “my own and only manuscript.” This quite clearly suggests his own fondness for the story and his estimation of its value. He gave it to one of his oldest friends, Thomas Mitton, both as a token of close friendship and in gratitude for his financial and legal assistance. Today, A Christmas Carol is one of the most highly valued literary manuscripts, in both the materialistic and artistic senses, in the Morgan’s collection.

LP: What do we lose, in terms of understanding a writer’s creative process, now that we have keyboards instead of quills?

DK: The arrival of word processors has led to the disappearance of any evidence of creative process. Word processors were invented, after all, to facilitate the creation of seamless, sophisticated, professional-looking, “finished” documents that can be infinitely replicated. Even with typewritten texts it is possible to compare typed drafts, to follow the evolution of a work through the author’s literal cut-and-paste insertions, or revisions made by hand onto the completed typescript. But an electronic document, even when changes can be tracked, does not convey the same vivid sense of something hand-made, or allow the development of the work to be as easily traced.

Handwritten manuscripts have an indisputable uniqueness and a special aura because they are the closest we can now come to their creator, and represent the creative spirit. We have gained in efficiency and convenience but we have lost the personality of a handwritten text in which it is possible, in some cases, to gauge the speed of writing, the difficulties (or otherwise) involved in achieving a certain effect or particularly successful sentence or paragraph, or the emotional temperature of the author at the time of writing.

Computer-generated documents are impersonal, and completely mute in terms of what they can tell us of the struggles of composition. A handwritten manuscript tells the story of its composition in the same way that the age lines of the human face can reveal the story of a person’s life.

LP: What was the most surprising development in the Morgan’s restoration of the manuscript?

DK: When carrying out conservation treatment, as with any carefully controlled activity, the last thing one wants is surprises! So the treatment progressed very much as our very experienced conservators expected. I think it is true to say that the appearance of the treated manuscript exceeded all of our expectations—it looks much fresher and, overall, much better than any manuscript that has not been so extensively restored. The removal of the silk backing from each sheet, which was probably attached in the 1920s as a preservation measure, returned the manuscript to its original state; it is an exciting development, restoring its physical authenticity. The conservation treatment reaffirmed that the “silking” of the manuscript was an unnecessary act of preservation in this case – but that’s because Dickens chose such good quality paper for his writing.

LP: What’s the most striking difference between how the restored manuscript looks and how it had looked before it was cleaned?

DK: The manuscript of A Christmas Carol had acquired the patina of age but had become dull and a bit muddy-looking. The acidity of the iron gall ink was partly responsible for this, and one of the primary reasons for washing any manuscript written in iron gall ink is to de-acidify it and prevent any further deterioration. The result is that the paper color and brightness return to something much closer to its original color – cream, in this case— and the text becomes crisper and clearer. The paper’s texture is also restored, making it less brittle and more flexible, just as it was when Dickens took a sheet and began writing. What we see today, in Levenger’s facsimile edition of the manuscript, is as close as scientifically possible to the physical appearance of the manuscript when Dickens sent it to the printer at the start of December 1843.

And now to you, dear reader: Does seeing the author at work enhance your appreciation of that author’s work? I’d love to hear your comments. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Thai Pad Country

We make a point to visit all manufacturers of Levenger products, but for several years, our silk Thai Pad, those traditional Thai silk pillows handmade in Thailand, had been an exception. We always met with our supplier at their offices in Bangkok.

“Oh, they are made so very far away, in the country,” we were told when we asked about visiting the factory. “And there’s really nothing to see. Plus there are no hotels up there.”

But we’re insistent on this matter, for several reasons. First, we want to assure ourselves that the people making products for us and for you are working in safe conditions. Second, we almost always come away with ideas for how to improve our designs, as we understand what their strengths and limitations are. Finally, we want to get a feeling for the human beings, for how they live, for what their neighborhoods are like, their schools and their libraries.

So when my older son, Cal, was embarking on a job interviewing swing through Asia, I asked him to take the time to fly from Bangkok up to the remote area where our Thai pillows are made and let us know what he saw. Below is his report.

—Steve

The tiny village of Yasothon, Thailand, sits unobtrusively near the Cambodian border. Last May I journeyed there to learn more about the community that provides Levenger with these vibrantly colored silk pillows so many customers have come to love—the Thai Pad.

From the air, Yasothon is barely visible amid endless greenery. The town and its environs seem to be nothing more than a quilt of rice patties and verdant forest. Soon after touching down, I met Aoh, a pretty woman in her forties who runs the small trading company that helps Levenger source Thai pillows. After greeting each other with a bow and some pleasantries, we climbed into her truck and began the hour-long drive to the village where Thai Pads are born. The community I found there, and the circumstances of production, were like nothing I could have imagined.

On past trips to Levenger’s vendors, it had been customary to tour the factory with management before sitting down to talk. From the start I could see that this visit would be different. There was no factory to tour. There were no big machines to admire. Instead of a factory, there were only handsome two-story homes with wide verandas facing a well-worn dirt road. In place of machinery, there were small groups of women sitting together stitching silk panels together.

In the shade of one porch, six women sat on a low table, sewing and chatting. A couple of dogs dozed beneath them, and the sounds of a children’s television show could be heard inside the house. Although these women were making the silken pillows I recognized from the Levenger catalog, it was hard to imagine that their products would ever leave rural Yasothon, let alone cross the Pacific and reach American hands.

I had expected to see something industrial that day. I had expected to see sewing machines, at least. Instead, what I found in Yasothon was traditional and familial. These women work with their hands while their children play nearby. There is no need to choose between family and career. Both are located on the steps of their homes.

Women’s lovely work

After viewing production with Aoh and two of her young assistants, it was time for lunch. A selection of local dishes was placed before us on a low table, just like the one I had seen the women sitting on while they worked. There were no stools or chairs. Local tradition, I learned, is to sit on the table. After taking off my shoes, I joined Aoh and her assistants on the table. Over lunch I learned more about their village.

Tourists seldom visit Yasothon, Aoh told me. Local incomes and the local diet both depend upon the cultivation of rice. During the spring and autumn, women work in the rice fields alongside the men, but during the rainy summer months, when there is little agricultural work to do, they earn extra income by stitching and stuffing traditional Thai pillows.

For centuries the women of Yasothon have crafted vibrantly colored pillows and mattresses, and it is easy to see why they still make them today. The silken furniture makes even hardwood floors cozy and inviting. Local ties to this traditional product remain so strong that the town’s bus stop is sheltered by an oversized, brightly painted plaster “pillow.”

Serendipity, scaled down

It is a happy accident that Thailand’s traditional pillows make an ideal home for a hardcover book or tablet computer. At Levenger we discovered that a scaled-down version of Yasothon’s ancient pillows could support both your handheld device and your hands with comfort and grace.

Ours is a traditional product, made in the traditional way. There is no factory. There are no heavy machines. It is simply Thai silk, stitched into pillows by Thai hands.

From their hands to yours, this is the Thai Pad—ancient, elegant support for your modern device.

—Cal Leveen

 

 

From holding books to upholding literacy

While our Thai Pad has become a helpful tool for many of our customers, it’s also helped us launch a special arm of our Partnering for Good initiative called Upholding Literacy. Through our foundation, Levenger is contributing to an international literacy group, the International Reading Association, which reaches remote communities in Thailand such as Yasothon.

We’re making a similar contribution to a literacy group that supports outpost communities in India, where our first Fair Trade Federation product, the India Cloud Book Pillow, was handcrafted.

It’s one more way that Levenger (and by extension, our customers) can do good in the world, helping to support literacy-based program.

We’re searching for more such opportunities. If you know of artisan groups—in other countries or our own—whom we might be able to work with, 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).

—Steve

How Lincoln got the Gettysburg Address to go viral

I learned something reading our new Levenger Press book on Lincoln and his five versions of the Gettysburg Address.

There was a reason Lincoln kept the speech so short (about 272 words), and it had nothing to do with a lack of something to say. He calculated—correctly—that his brevity would help carry his message the length and breadth of the Union.

As Doug Wilson, the co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center, describes it in the narrative he wrote for our book:

“In an age where newspapers were virtually the only access Americans had to news of important events, the great majority of Northern adults would have seen, usually on the front page, not just a notice of the President’s speech at the Gettysburg ceremony, but, because of its brevity, the speech itself in its entirety.”

Today we would call that smart viral marketing on Lincoln’s part. Just imagine what he might have done with Twitter.

It wasn’t just the length of the speech that mattered to Lincoln, of course. It was the words and their cadence. Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison asked Doug, himself a man of words (read his Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words), to talk more about how Lincoln crafted this most revered of American speeches.

Levenger Press: Even the first draft of the Gettysburg Address that Lincoln wrote—the Nicolay copy—is very neatly penned. There are few strike-throughs or cross-outs or incomplete sentences. How was Lincoln able to deliver such clean drafts of this speech?

Doug Wilson: My own view is that the first page of the Nicolay copy represents the earliest stage of the Gettysburg Address of which we have a documentary record, and as such is probably the distillation of an unknown amount of previous drafting. The evidence for the way Lincoln composed a consequential letter or address is only partly from the existence of earlier drafts, but largely consists of testimony about the way he took notes on his topic, preserving ideas, phrases, arguments, etc. on pieces of paper that served as the basis of his first drafts.

LP: Where are these original draft notes?

DW: Most of these scraps of paper, along with most earlier drafts of important speeches, have disappeared. The few examples that have survived, as well as his early drafts of letters that he retained as file copies, show that he typically made changes that added to, deleted from, or corrected what he had first set down.

LP: How do you think Lincoln wrote the Nicolay draft?

DW: A reasonable guess is that the first page of the Nicolay copy represents the state of the first half of the speech at the time he left Washington for Gettysburg. The second page was not written at the same time, does not actually fit the material on the first page,  was written on different paper with a different writing instrument, and, to my way of thinking, is actually the second page of a different draft. In other words, he created "clean drafts" like the first page of the Nicolay to see what, if any, changes were still needed.

LP: Did Lincoln ever read his speech drafts to his wife for her critiquing?

DW: I'm sure he must have read drafts of speeches to his wife, if only because he liked to try his speeches out in the presence of a listener. We have many examples of his doing this, but I don't recall a well-documented example involving Mary Todd Lincoln.

LP: How do you think Lincoln inflected his “of the people, by the people, for the people” when he delivered the Gettysburg Address? Do you think he stressed “if,” “by” and “for”? Or did he repeatedly stress “people”?

DW: I know that there is some evidence that he emphasized the word "people," which persuaded Carl Sandburg and others to do likewise. I have always had reservations about this, if only because of the awkwardness of the resulting cadence, and prefer to see the emphasis placed on “of,” “by,” and “for.”

LP: Why do you think that myths about Lincoln’s writing of the Gettysburg Address persist? For instance, the myth that he wrote it hastily, on the back of an envelope, on his way from Washington to Gettysburg.

DW: I am tempted to speculate that any text that becomes so famous and familiar as to become the focus of a widespread common interest is probably ripe for myth-making. In the case of the Gettysburg Address, the myth of the envelope gained enormous popularity in the famous fictional story by Mary Andrews at the beginning of the 20th century. The strong impression made on readers by her treatment of this detail overrode the circumstance that it was not a verifiable fact.

LP: Perhaps because of its cadence, the Gettysburg Address comes close to sounding like a sacred text. How much was Lincoln influenced by his readings of the Bible?

DW: We have an abundance of evidence that Lincoln knew the Bible very well, that he could cite chapter and verse to an impressive extent, and that he read the Bible habitually while President, so I don't have any doubt that the Biblical sound of the Gettysburg Address, language and cadence, was influenced by his intimate familiarity with the original. I think there are other writings that carry the imprint of his reading of the Bible, the Second Inaugural being the most conspicuous case, but he was wise enough not to overdo it.

_____

Now to you, dear reader: What has your own experience been in reading the Gettysburg Address? Did you ever memorize it? Has it moved you in some way? I’d love to hear your comments. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

The History You're Helping Us to Write

Something about the Fourth of July and its history of a once-fledgling country has me thinking about the history of a once-fledgling company called Levenger…

When Lori and I took our first orders for reading lamps back in 1987, I confess I wasn’t thinking much about a vision for our newly hatched company. Mostly I was worried about whether the lamps would get there in one piece. And if our customers would like them. And whether our tiny company would survive to grow out of our second bedroom in Belmont, Mass.

As it turned out, not all of the lamps did get there in one piece. But we took great care of our customers and listened hard. Listening to customers became not just a habit but a credo. (Happily, I get to talk to even more of you now, thanks to new social networks and your lovely old-fashioned letters and cards.) So much of what Levenger became is because of what you expected us to be.

Digging deep into DNA

What you’ve told us in the past couple years is that Levenger could be, and should be, a company that not only sells good products but does good deeds.

We heard it within ourselves, too. That’s why we’ve embraced Conscious Capitalism in ways that we feel will resonate with serious readers. This is the impetus behind our creating Partnering for Good products, as well as underwriting the National Book Foundation’s Innovations in Reading program. And these are just two of several initiatives we’re working on.

But programs and initiatives only work if their goals are part of a company’s DNA. That’s why I would like to share with you the renewed vision and values of Levenger. They represent the latest chapter in the history that you, our customer, continue to help us write.

These many years later, I still worry about whether your order gets to you in one piece. I want you to feel good about what you buy from Levenger. I also want you to feel you can trust the company you’re buying from to try to do some good in the world.

Keep talking to us. We’ll keep listening. And thanks for helping us write a history we can be proud of.

P.S. As always, I’d love to hear from you. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

When government and business get it really right—together

In a downtown office building in Phoenix last month, five librarians answering questions from two visiting CEOs admitted to stealing from businesses. They confessed to violating basic tenets of their profession. And under questioning, they confirmed that other librarians around the country were emulating them, particularly after their alleged misdeeds in Maricopa County, Arizona, won them an Innovations in Reading Prize from the National Book Foundation.

The librarians were led by the avuncular Harry R. Courtright, Maricopa County Library District (MCLD) director and county librarian. It was in his office, around a conference table with its 7^th-story view of downtown Phoenix that we met.

I was one of the CEOs, representing the board of the National Book Foundation, there to check in with past winners of the Innovations prize. The other CEO was Laura Roberts, whose company makes eco-friendly chemical products for other companies worldwide and is a leader in Conscious Capitalism—or capitalism with a conscience.

Our mission was to find out how the librarians had managed to pull off their Innovation.

Much ado about Dewey

“We began by listening to our customers,” said Courtright.

Customers? Already I was doing a double-take.

“Yes,” Courtright smiled, “that’s how we refer to the people we serve. We receive a portion of their tax money, so they are our customers.”

What they heard their customers tell them, in physical suggestion boxes in the library branches and virtual ones on the Library District’s website, was that 85 percent of customers arrive at the library with no particular title in mind. They want to browse.

Trouble is, the century-old Dewey Decimal System doesn’t make browsing that easy.

“We decided the library world had a problem,” said Courtright. “Librarians get hung up on the Dewey system, but the general public doesn’t understand or care about it.”

The Dewey Decimal System doesn’t have a number, for example, for books on weddings. So a customer coming in to get help planning a wedding has to look under flowers 745.926, and wedding cakes 641.8653, and maybe etiquette 395.22.

But customers planning a wedding just want to go to a wedding section.

So the librarian leadership in MCLD thought the unthinkable. What if they threw out Dewey? This professional blasphemy ruffled feathers. Some librarians accused leadership of dumbing down libraries.

“It’s a matter of professional pride,” explained Courtright. “We librarians can sometimes develop an almost dare-you-to-find-it attitude toward a hapless public.”

Doing more with Dewey-less

But the librarian leadership was fired with derring-do, and they decided to go ahead with their plan to do away with Dewey. Gently.

“When we had the chance to fit out the new Perry Branch Library in Gilbert, we decided to try to do it without Dewey, and we wanted to see how far we could rethink the whole library experience,” said Courtright.

The building in Gilbert, a suburb of Phoenix, had been designed for a traditional library. Courtright and his cohorts were undeterred.

“We studied retail stores and adopted the way bookstores organize books according to subject areas. And just as retailers know that eye-level merchandise is what customers see and buy most, we put our focus there,” said Courtright.

“We are thieves,” explained Jim Govern, branch development administrator. “From Barnes & Noble we stole the idea of comfortable seating. From Nordstrom we stole their wide-open aisles. From Costco we stole the idea of fewer SKUs but higher turns.”

I knew that librarians keep careful track of their inventory and circulation. But as a merchant, I was impressed to hear the Maricopa outliers talk about book lending in terms of stock-keeping units (SKUs) and how frequently you turn over your inventory.

 “It’s not about how many books you have, but how desirable they are to customers,” said Courtright. “The new design of the library and the freshness of our collection allowed us to deliver better service with fewer items.”

The Perry Branch was slated to hold 75,000 books. By the time the library thieves got through putting into action the ideas they stole from retail, the branch housed a mere 45,000 books.

Shush gets shushed

That was just the beginning.

The old library model had separate desks—Circulation, Reference, Children’s. The Dewey-less Perry Library has one big desk in the center called Customer Service.

While some of the librarians sit behind the desk, others engage in even more derring-do. They roam.

“We have roving librarians who walk around looking for customers who seem confused and ask, ‘May I help you with something?’ It’s a completely different attitude from the shushing librarian of the past,” said Courtright.

And here’s the math that every beleaguered budget officer longs to hear:

“We find that we can serve more people with a smaller staff, keeping our costs lower.”

Technology helps, too. With new self-check-out and check-in machines, customers can perform these clerical functions themselves, saving librarians for more meaningful interactions with customers.

Lower shelves, higher customer satisfaction

When Courtright’s group outfitted their Dewey-less library, they bought fixtures not from library-supply companies but from retail-supply companies. They made the shelves lower and put more of the books facing out, optimized for browsing, rather than spine out, typical for high-density libraries.

“When we opened we didn’t know how customers would react, so we sent extra staff over there on opening day just in case. By lunchtime, we sent them home,” said Courtright.

Turns out that customers were quickly comfortable, even if librarians were not.

After their initial success, the MCLD librarians began rolling out the redesign to other branches.

“We were nervous about our Robson Branch, which mainly serves seniors,” said Courtright. “We thought they wouldn’t like change. When we re-opened, the high shelves were gone, along with about half the books. We set out comfortable chairs and better signage and more books face out, at eye level. One customer said, ‘Where did all the extra room come from?’”

Once again, circulation and customer satisfaction went up.

The Innovations in Reading Prize helped them gain legitimacy for breaking the rules, said Cindy Kolaczynski, the Library District’s deputy director. “It helped convince some of our own librarians who were unsure that the re-designs were the right thing. And the publicity attracted other librarians from around the country to visit Arizona to figure out how to change their own libraries.”

Innovating from the ground up

The first Dewey-less libraries were converted conventional libraries, but soon the librarians had a chance to design a building from scratch in the far reaches of their district, out at the edge of the Sonoran Desert and the White Tank Mountains.

The librarians teamed up with the Maricopa Parks and Recreation Department to locate a nature center inside—and outside, along walking paths. They brought in the local firm of DWL Architects+Planners to help further rethink what a library could be.

The result is known as the White Tank Library & Nature Center. The design embraces green technology and received the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Going green in the burning desert is something of a hat trick, given normal air-conditioning requirements. The library’s roof is blanketed with solar panels. Deep roof overhangs and structural fins in the architecture deliver both panoramic views and protection from the savage heat and blinding sunlight.

Fully 27 percent of the library’s energy is supplied on site. When facility energy demand is low, this place for quiet contemplation supplies energy back to the grid.

An oasis of wisdom

CEO Laura Roberts, who uses the principles of Conscious Capitalism to help business leaders think more broadly, praised the librarians.

“I love that our librarians stole some ideas from businesses,” she said. “Businesses can steal some ideas from good government, too. Business leaders might think of service the way it’s taken to heart by our best emergency-response and military outfits—service to our country, service to the world.”

For myself, I wish I could sit for a while in the White Tank Library and contemplate the refreshing oasis of wisdom it represents. Far from the Washington din over government waste and corporate malfeasance, I’d like to sit, appreciating the view, and relish for a moment this example of things going very right in a small but beautiful piece of the Arizona desert.

How about you, dear reader—do you know of a library that’s changing the look of libraries? 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).

Well-Read Life meets Muscle Beach…Object of reflection: how 475 pounds of aluminum can get readers thinking

He is quite possibly the most impressive example of body building on Miami’s famed South Beach. An imposing six-foot-six and a crushing 475 pounds, the Wrestler stands silently, impassively—and imposingly—in the lobby of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach’s wonderfully quirky  and quietly astonishing museum (“the Wolf,” for short).

Head-to-toe aluminum, sculpted by an American in 1929, the Wrestler looms as a symbol of modernism and America’s burgeoning industrial strength. He is the metal with intellectual mettle.

I first encountered the big guy 10 years ago and was instantly intimidated. But I was also intrigued. Here was Greek Olympian and geeky robot all welded into one. When I encountered him again, about a year ago, I saw my chance to share his mysterious and shiny aura with our customers. Both Cathy Leff, the museum’s visionary director, and Micky Wolfson, who literally is The Wolfsonian (it’s his collection), were enthusiastic about Levenger’s creating the Wrestler in miniature, as a mighty bookend.

But….just what is this creature, and why does he exert such a power? In excerpts of the interview that Mim Harrison, editor of Levenger Press, conducted with them, Cathy and Micky tell you the story of the Wrestler and the Wolf:

Levenger: What does the Wrestler symbolize for you?

Micky: It’s an example of American futurism due to a combination of artistry, engineering and a new material—aluminum.

Levenger: What drew you to the sculpture in terms of acquisition?

Micky: My colleague, Lea Nickless, fell into the Wrestler’s arms at the Modernism show held in New York’s Seventh Regiment Armory and was attracted by its power. This was in November 1990. By the following February, The Wolfsonian was the new owner of the Wrestler.

Levenger: Why is he a good fit for The Wolfsonian?

Cathy: He embodies many of the themes addressed by our collection. He was exhibited at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, and worlds’ fairs and expositions are well represented in The Wolfsonian collection. They were national and international encounters that brought together peoples and nations, and through these events, you got a pretty good sense of who had the political and economic power, where innovation was coming from, what new ideas might transform our world.

Levenger: Why does he resonate so strongly?

Cathy: The Wrestler is an expression of the promise of the machine age, a new material—aluminum—and the rising interest in sports and physical culture. So this lightweight heavyweight is emblematic of the time in which he was created and exhibited. Now he has amassed a new following as an icon at our museum—very fitting in the context of The Wolfsonian’s own interests and South Beach’s fascination with body culture.

Levenger: Is he man…or machine?

Micky: He is Machine Man.

Levenger: Lots of objects in The Wolfsonian are from times past—the candlestick phone, the propaganda posters. And yet the museum has a very modern vibe. How do the two work together?

Cathy: While our collection mostly dates from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, we try to look at objects through the lens of contemporary culture.  We are interested in promoting the study and appreciation of the persuasive power of art and design. So, while the objects and images in our collection derive from a certain period of time, the issues and concerns they address hopefully resonate with audiences today.

We live in a time when the ability to disseminate objects and images makes it important for us to understand that design both shapes and reflects all aspects of everyday life.

Levenger: The Wolfsonian’s sobriquet is “museum of thinkism.” How do you want people to think about art when they view the collection?

Cathy:  We merely want people to come prepared to think—about the objects that surround them, where they were made and how they were used, the powers or agendas that motivated their design, and how they played a role in changing society’s values and behavior.

Levenger: How have some visitors felt when they’ve met the Wrestler?

Micky: Pinned down.

Levenger: If the Wrestler asked you out on a date, Cathy, would you go?

Cathy: Why not! If he were capable of asking, I would definitely be capable of going. We already have intimate relationships with our machines—so this would not be so novel. And he is quite the hulk, no?

And now to you, dear reader: what object or design has influenced the way that you think about the world? 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).