St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing

“The history of bookmaking hasn’t been without its challenges, but never was its craft as painstaking as during the era of illuminated manuscripts,” says Maria Popova. Well, try laying out an ebook that has art in it. But Popova makes a good case in a commentary for Brainpickings.org, citing a recent Lapham’s Quarterly article (not available online) that lists complaints written by monks found scribbled in the margins of those medieval illuminated manuscripts.

Some examples:

This parchment is hairy.

Thank God, it will soon be light.

New parchment, bad ink; I will say nothing more.

Now I’ve written the whole thing: for Christ’s sake give me a drink.

St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.

Think of that, modern day publishers, the next time you find yourself working late at night on one of those tedious requirements of modern-day publishing, like, say, blogging. At least your keyboard isn’t … hairy ….

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

2 Comments

Sophie at 5:31 pm on May 15, 2012

Well, il a past life, when I worked in a publishing house, I was given the horrendous job of establishing the index of the translation of a 700 ages essay (the index itself almost 30 pages, two columns a page). At the letter “I”, I found an entry that went something like: “Index, awkward self-reference to, p. *** “. I’m sure I’m one of the very few human beings that had the pleasure of noticing this funny cry for attention. I’m sad to say that I didn’t have the guts to include it in the translated version of the book…
Sophie at 5:32 pm on May 15, 2012

*in a past life*…