#logbooks

In the shack with Robert Caro

He bought the prefab shack, he says, from a place in Riverhead for $2,300, after a contractor quoted him a comically overstuffed Hamptons price to build one. “Thirty years, and it’s never leaked,” he says. This particular shed was a floor sample, bought because he wanted it delivered right away. The business’s owner demurred. “So I said the following thing, which is always the magic words with people who work: ‘I can’t lose the days.’ She gets up, sort of pads back around the corner, and I hear her calling someone … and she comes back and she says, ‘You can have it tomorrow.’”

Caro first composes in longhand, then types up everything triple-spaced, with a carbon copy, in the old newspaper manner. He insists on cotton rather than synthetic typewriter ribbons, because the letters come out inkier and darker, but they’re no longer in regular production. “Ina found somebody out in either Pittsburgh or Cleveland who said that he’d make the cotton ribbons for me if I ordered, I think, a dozen gross, which — I have enough typewriter ribbons to support the entire …” He laughs, breaking off the thought.

That Caro’s work is still done on paper, with no digital backup to speak of, marks him as one of the last of his kind. (He had never seen a Google doc until I offered to show him one. He was mildly startled to discover that, in a shared document, the person on the other end can be seen typing in real time: “That’s amazing. What’s it called? A doc?”) 

In Working, Caro writes:

I can’t start writing a book until I’ve thought it through and can see it whole in my mind. So before I start writing, I boil the book down to three paragraphs, or two, or one—that’s when it comes into view. That process might take weeks. And then I turn those paragraphs into an outline of the whole book. That’s what you see up here on my wall now—twenty-seven typewritten pages. That’s the fifth volume. Then, with the whole book in mind, I go chapter by chapter. I sit down at the typewriter and type an outline of that chapter, let’s say if it’s a long chapter, seven pages—it’s really the chapter in brief, without any of the supporting evidence. Then, each chapter gets a notebook, which I fill with all the materials I want to use—quotations and facts pulled from all of the research I’ve done.

To “pumps carefully attended to”:

To “pumps strictly attended to”:

And back to “pumps attended to”:

A collection of delightfully imperfect doodles from the first several pages of George E. Folger's logbook of the whaleship Mariner from 1840-44

Starting off strong with a lovely bird and an American flag right on the inside front cover, under where his name is written out in big block letters (not pictured).

...and immediately cutting to this funky little man. We've got a little bit of Picasso going on.

Here's a lovely 18th century gentleman. I’m not sure who he is but he’s actually quite... proportionate (I mean no offense to some of his other drawings, but... well, you'll see) and the shading is excellent! I feel like he must have had a reference.

Another 18th century gentleman. If he looks familiar to you, I’m pretty sure this is just Thomas Jefferson—he looks remarkably similar to George Healy's portrait of him. Once again I feel Folger must have been working from reference.

(More under the cut)

As archivists and historians know all too well, the most surprising documents are often the least obviously important ones. They lurk in plain sight, but they lack that “oh wow” brilliance of a “Day of Infamy” speech draft. The import of these less sexy documents (yes, I used the word “sexy”) grows with every turn of the page and unexpectedly revealed detail. In total, they are less about one specific moment and more about the experience of moments, the natural unfolding of everyday life.

Three such Roosevelt Library administrative documents have recently snagged our attention: the Library Daily Diary (1940-1948); the Visitor to Building Log (1940-1945); and the Workmen in the Building Log (1940-1959). On quick perusal, these dry administrative documents reveal nothing more than the daily routine of operating a Presidential Library. On closer examination, through individual entries alone and in combination, they provide deep insight into multiple aspects on a host of topics, both humorous and tragic, personal and historical.

“Slushing the spanker gaff”