The Golden Thread

Starred review from November 25, 2013
Clayton, a former monk and renowned calligrapher, as well as a professor at the University of Sunderland, England, takes the reader on a grand tour of writing. While the book’s focus is the concept of writing itself, Clayton’s approach has depth and breadth, tackling calligraphy and typesetting, handwriting and printing, literacy and correspondence. He examines the development of different fonts and writing styles with an experienced, artistic eye, putting things into social, historical, and cultural contexts. From papyrus scrolls to illuminated manuscripts to Gutenberg Bibles, from novels to graffiti to computers, he traces the evolution of writing as a fundamental building block of civilization. He even waxes poetic on the geometry of the pen itself. Clayton’s style is easygoing and accessible, the dense flow of information carrying readers down through the centuries. “In some sense,” he notes, “this book is a history of craftsmanship in relation to the written word.” He concludes that “writing, at its best, can celebrate the whole way we explore the material world and its sensuality to think and communicate.” Clayton reawakens readers to the versatility and nuances of something so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible (the act that makes this very review possible). It’s a book no bibliophile should miss.

December 1, 2013
British calligrapher Clayton (Arts, Design and Media/Univ. of Sunderland) embarks on an enormous undertaking: the history of the written word. From Egypt circa 1850 B.C. to Xerox PARC in California, where the author lent his typographical expertise in the early days of the computer, Clayton's narrative is necessarily both mind-numbingly specific and vastly general. Moreover, he mostly ignores all but the Greco-Roman tradition from which our own writing descends, devoting very little space to early printing in China and Korea. As a calligrapher, Clayton waxes rapturously on the craft of writing and how cultural shifts have informed the "concept of an alphabet as an interrelated system of proportional forms." This proceeded from the era of the Greeks' trading with Phoenician cities, when they adapted their writing from syllabic to the latter's simpler alphabet. Eventually, Greek "monoline" (all letters having the same thickness) dovetailed into Roman inscription, which used fuller, more sophisticated forms. Everyday writing emerged from official documents, giving way to quicker, cursive scripts and rounder uncials, the precursor to lowercasing. Clayton emphasizes the importance of literacy to the rich periods of writing development--e.g., in the A.D. fourth century, citizens of Rome enjoyed a wide variety of libraries; the early Christian monks and scholars like Eusebius created a new method of book production; Charlemagne instituted a new era of administrative discipline in which the influential "Carolingian minuscule" was adopted; and Johannes Gutenberg's printing press helped spur the Protestant Reformation. Hand in hand with the evolution of writing went paper and quill pens, and Clayton spills plenty of ink over these devices. He dwells fondly on the craftsmen who created the gorgeous fonts that bear their names and how periods of rich letter writing gave way to the ascendancy of newspapers, advertising and the "mechanical interventions" of the Industrial Revolution. However, even as the digital age took off, the computer continued to require elegant topography. A four-millennia trajectory that nearly overwhelms with its incremental magnitude.

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Starred review from February 15, 2014
Clayton has lived the very history he chronicles. His poor penmanship as a schoolboy inspired wise adults to introduce him to calligraphy, thus turning a problem into a passion. After becoming a renowned calligrapher and, for a spell, a monk, Clayton, now a professor, served as a consultant in the 1980s for a pioneering high-tech lab seeking ways to bring writing into the digital realm. Clayton builds on his far-reaching experiences in this avidly researched and enthusiastically told history of writing in the West, in which he pairs exacting analysis of the materials, technology, and skills involved in the ever-evolving craft of writing, from papyrus scrolls to scrolling down a computer screen, and fresh perspectives on the social contexts, from ancient Rome to the New World, within which literacy took hold and shaped every human endeavor. Along the way, Clayton, who will delight fans of Simon Garfield and Nicholas Basbanes, profiles calligraphers and typographers, assesses the impacts of various forms of correspondence and publishing, and discusses in eye-opening detail the expressiveness of diverse styles of handwriting. Though computers are allencompassing, we should not underestimate the value of handwriting, Clayton reminds us. We do need it, and the very act itself, an arcing from mind to body, has profound resonance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)