Last weekend, I bought a new notebook from Leuchtturm 1917: A5, dotted pages, hardcover, in beautiful Forest Green. I bought it with the intention of using it as a commonplace book, something I’d heard about only recently. A commonplace book is used to collect and record the thoughts of others, as opposed to writing and reflecting on your own thoughts in a journal or diary. The concept is nothing groundbreaking or original, nor is it a new idea—some of the oldest examples date back to antiquity. Despite this, I had somehow never heard of one.
I first heard of them through this video by Jared Henderson (here!) and was immediately interested in keeping one myself. After watching Jared’s video, I was reminded of a few quotes that I liked and wanted to remember from a novel I recently finished. The two quotes I wrote down are from Ernst Jünger’s The Glass Bees (1957):
“His apparatuses soon became irreplaceable, not only to industry and science but also to the housewife. They saved labor and introduced a human atmosphere, unknown until now, into the factory. A resourceful mind had discovered a gap which no one had seen, and had filled it. This is the best way to do business, the best way to make a fortune.”
Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees (1957), page 8
“My query is this: Why are those who have endangered and changed our lives in such terrifying and unpredictable ways not content with unleashing and controlling enormous forces and with enjoying their consequent fame, power, and wealth? Why must they want to be saints as well?”
Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees (1957), page 92
The first quote reminded me of the concept of “zero to one” (written about extensively by Peter Thiel in his book Zero to One) in which entrepreneurs provide a service for people who didn’t know they needed it in the first place, they see a void and fill it, “…a gap which no one had seen.” This idea isn’t inherently bad, but it’s tempting to zoom on in on some of the terrible things that have seemingly come out of nowhere in the last two decades: Social media giants like Facebook growing to a global scale, smartphones changing from luxury to necessity, new and highly-addictive platforms like TikTok appearing out of thin air and skyrocketing in popularity. Innovations like those are ones that we have happily accepted as cool new gadgets without seriously questioning (1) the costs vs. the benefits, (2) if we actually need this new technology and (3) if using it is overwhelmingly positive and serves our best interests, not just the interests of shareholders and suits. The second quote (“Why must they want to be saints as well?”) could be applied to just about anything, but like the previous one, my mind jumps to the same train of thought as before.
What’s interesting to me is that somebody else could read this book, write down a few quotes, and they could be completely different, or the connections they made to other texts or ideas could be to something entirely unrelated to what I was thinking. The core message of The Glass Bees remains unchanged no matter who reads it, but how the reader connects it to real life examples depends on the person, what they’ve read, and when they read it.
At the time that I was reading The Glass Bees, I simply took pictures of pages I liked, but after watching the video from Jared, I took the time to write each quote down in my bullet journal (before I had my commonplace book). The act of deliberately writing the passages out by hand is a powerful one. Yes, it’s faster and easier to type it out and faster still to take a picture, but the tactility of pen-to-paper and the focused attention you have to give to the page in the novel and to the page in your journal allows for deeper reflection and retention. Copying a passage down by hand forces you to slow down and pay attention in a way you might not have before. While you’re actually reading, you might settle into a rhythm and breeze through these passages, not noticing these subtleties of prose and nuance of language unless you slow down and take a closer look.
I’m reminded now of a bit of advice from David Foster Wallace. In 1999, Wallace wrote a lengthy review of a usage dictionary, Garner’s Modern English Usage (1998). Struck by his kind words, the author, Bryan Garner, invited Wallace to dinner, where they talked about writing and language. When asked about what makes good writing, Wallace explained the importance of a usage dictionary: “To recognize that you need a usage dictionary, you have to be paying a level of attention to your own writing that very few people are doing.” Likewise, with close reading, the best rewards are reaped when you take the time to pay attention to prose on the word-to-word level.
Even if I don’t take the time to elaborate on my thoughts in the Leuchtturm itself, the act of writing quotes by hand has opened the door to more active and thoughtful reading. I find that I’m paying more attention to what I’m reading while I’m reading it, and when I find a passage that strikes me, I get to copy it down and spend more time reflecting on it. Now more than ever, I’m less worried about how many books I read in a year—or in my lifetime—and am more focused on getting even more out of the few books I do read. The novels I love will stay with me for a long time; my commonplace book ensures that the best parts of them stay with me even longer.
Ben Heels 