"[L]et us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. Here we have written down the names of great writers in their order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink." Virginia Woolf, “Hours in a Library,” Granite and Rainbow: Essays by Virginia Woolf (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1958), p. 25.
I treasure this quotation. Stashed and shoved away around my house I have many notebooks, just as Woolf describes. In college I was taught that some people are predisposed to journaling and others are not. I belong emphatically to the latter group. Yet, I have a passion for collection and compilation. In folders and on napkins and various scraps of paper are scribbled quotations and I have a shoebox full of images ripped from magazines. It is only within the Victorian style of the Commonplace that my twinned hatred of journaling and passion for snippet-squirreling find an accord. I tend to agree with those critics who claim the modern blog is merely the most contemporary iteration of the commonplace.
Here I attempt to compile thoughts, recollections, quotations, research, and various intellectual detritus. Perhaps technology can impose order on what would be an otherwise unruly gumbo of study and reflection. And when my steam runs out, I will not have to avoid the sheaves of accusingly blank pages.
I treasure this quotation. Stashed and shoved away around my house I have many notebooks, just as Woolf describes. In college I was taught that some people are predisposed to journaling and others are not. I belong emphatically to the latter group. Yet, I have a passion for collection and compilation. In folders and on napkins and various scraps of paper are scribbled quotations and I have a shoebox full of images ripped from magazines. It is only within the Victorian style of the Commonplace that my twinned hatred of journaling and passion for snippet-squirreling find an accord. I tend to agree with those critics who claim the modern blog is merely the most contemporary iteration of the commonplace.
Here I attempt to compile thoughts, recollections, quotations, research, and various intellectual detritus. Perhaps technology can impose order on what would be an otherwise unruly gumbo of study and reflection. And when my steam runs out, I will not have to avoid the sheaves of accusingly blank pages.
