I love this collection of notebooks, which have been used to record hundreds or even thousands of haiku. (The original post at Notebookers.jp is in Japanese, so I am relying on Google translate.) I don’t know much about Japanese writing and only know the most basic structure of haiku, but short poems with this kind … Continue reading Haiku Notebooks
The National Library in Jerusalem, Israel has just revealed to the public for the first time a collection of Franz Kafka’s papers, including some notebooks. The writings themselves have been published before, but without access to the original papers, people couldn’t see how he wrote, and doodled and sketched, as in the example below! Trove … Continue reading Franz Kafka’s Notebook
When I posted recently about most of my notebooks being stuck in a storage unit, a sympathetic commenter named Anna replied: “I feel your pain! Just remember–Anais Nin kept her diaries in a bank vault. Somewhere there’s a photo of her (perhaps in the vault?) surrounded by notebooks in a disorganized pile.” I had no … Continue reading Anaïs Nin and Her Journals
A wonderful passage from Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert: I found an empty notebook, opened it up to the first page– and only then did I open my mouth and speak those words into the air, letting them free. I let those words break … Continue reading A Notebook in “Eat, Pray, Love”
More notebooks from the world of literature, this time from Henry Miller, the author of the sexy and scandalous (at least for their time) Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. I think I read both books when I was in college, but now I can’t remember a thing about them! But it does look … Continue reading Henry Miller’s Notebooks
Here’s a quote from one of the best books I’ve read recently, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. We went on to discuss the definition of intelligence and he asked me if he could write down my formula in his moleskine notebook: “It is not a sacred gift, it is a primate’s only … Continue reading A Notebook in “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”