On Cursive

& Getting a Grip

Mrs. Schultz told us repeatedly we needed to learn it. “Your 4th-grade teachers aren’t going to accept work that’s done in print!” (She did yell a lot, but it was a happy kind of yell.)

Learning cursive stressed me out. I barely figured out how to read and you want me to write in fancy? But I persevered, as if I had a choice, and completed 3rd-grade with the assurance that I now possessed a skill required for admittance to civilized society (Middle School).

Of course, it wasn’t true. To my recollection, cursive writing was never brought up again except by the younger teachers who actively discouraged it. Mostly, I continued to write in cursive outside of testing. I found I could write more quickly in cursive. This realization was cemented in Mr. Cousins’ class (7th grade) due to an ongoing, and at times furious, note-taking competition/race between myself and my social studies comrade Fritz. There is also the sudden child-like joy in the sweep of the pen as one is in the throes of slashing off a good sentence.

I started thinking about cursive again after I finished my debut Substack article: Human Conversion in The Digital Age. In it, I spent a good deal of digital ink focused on digital technologies and how they impact almost everything, particularly our communication.

I had considered writing the whole thing by hand but, after taking notes, decided it would take too long, and obviously, this piece was so important I had to get it out there ASAP.

SPEED. EFFICIENCY. COMPRESSION OF TIME.

Undoubtedly, it would have been a different article if I had written the first draft by hand. As it stands, the first world is communicating with its fingertips and thumbs. Most writers today should really be called tappers. We tap and click. Contact is reduced to minimal, fleeting strikes.

The human hand is marvelous and multi-faceted; this reduction to clacking on keyboards, or worse, spastically thumb-wrestling one’s phone at all hours of the day, also reduces human dignity. The next time you go to a restaurant, just look at the people texting. 

Recently, a Twitter mutual of mine, Adam Van Buskirk, remarked that great novels haven’t been produced since the introduction of the word processor. I haven’t read many living novelists, but this struck me as true (Cormac McCarthy uses a typewriter, by the way). Stepping into my wheelhouse, can you imagine John Keats plopping himself down at his computer desk, firing up Microsoft Word, and composing Bright Star? Or sending his famous letters to Fanny Brawne via text?

Get a grip!

The pen is mightier than the sword, but the word processor might not be. You can still stab someone with a pen.

There are, of course, fine utilitarian arguments for the word processor. But utilitarians are, to the man, buffoons, and I’m not about to give them a fair shake.

In contrast to the processor or its slower, albeit still uniform forefather, handwritten print, cursive allows a capable hand to keep up with one’s flow of thought without descending into crackhead levels of digital dexterity, while maintaining the natural human flourish and idiosyncrasy of the individual (I once had my handwriting analyzed by a Colombian sorceress—I only recall it was vaguely flattering, which was entirely the point). 

Aside from the act of writing, contending with the page instead of the screen is another obvious benefit of a return to handwriting. There is a particular satisfaction in crossing out whole sentences or even sections and either moving on or cramming a word or phrase above, below, or to the side of one’s rejection. After a good writing session, one can look back over the battlefield of the page and survey the carnage, as opposed to the nuclear devastation of the keyboard’s delete key.

As the inevitable and justified reaction against The Machine continues to unfold, it is of course necessary to build intentional communities and parallel institutions centered on the human family, not the borg. But we must be faithful in the little things, as well. As the poet Jack Gilbert said, “We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight.” And the false sense of urgency that undergirds the current mania for efficiency and optimization is antithetical to delight.

I’ve never written a poem I liked on a computer. I’ve never received a letter that delighted me that was not handwritten.

Pick up your pens.

P.S. Colin, if you're reading this, I will write you soon.