Ted Bishop - Ink: Culture, Wonder, and Our Relationship with the Written Word

I nk binds us. We are surrounded by ink, immersed in ink, a substance so common it is invisible. From cave walls to quill pens to laser printers, ink has traced the line of our culture. For millennia it was our social medium, and writing in ink used to mark our entry into the adult world. It was a rite of passage as memorable as that first drink, first drive, first kiss. But now children keyboard in kindergarten, pixels have replaced pigment, and pens will soon be as quaint as pocket watches. Even our signatures are electronic. Are we at the end of ink? This is the question I set out to explore.

We dont really see a technology until were moving beyond itthe steam engine, the sailboatbut what was once utilitarian returns as a leisure activity and a luxury, like horseback riding, or taking the train, or using candles instead of electric light for dinner parties. As an English professor Id spent my life surrounded by print, and hadnt concerned myself much with the material book until rumours of its demise began to circulate. As for ink, it hardly figured in the equation, as long as it was readable.

A writer at Edmontons nonfiction literary festival remarked, The theme of all narrative nonfiction is the Quest. Playwrights write their endings first. With nonfiction you dont know how the book will end; youre writing to find that out. That may not be a universal truth, but it proved so for me. My quest began in a rare book library. I had some question about ink (now forgotten) that my sources on printing didnt answer, so I asked the curator, What is the book on ink? She said there wasnt one. I immediately decided to write a crisp little commodity biography, with the required one-word-title-plus-elaboration (INK: The Fluid That Changed the World!); Id wrap it up in a year. Writers notoriously dream up whole books in half an hour that take them the rest of their lives to complete. My one year turned to five as the clean line of ink Id conceived became an ever-expanding blob, drawing me further and further into the social life of ink.

The project became a pilgrimage, taking me to Budapest and Buenos Aires, the home of Lazlo Br, inventor of the ballpoint pen. To Chinas Anhui province, where theres a factory that still makes inksticks from Ming dynasty patterns. To the border of Tibet and the worlds oldest Buddhist print shop. To Samarkand to see the first Quran, soaked with the blood of the caliph who was assassinated for creating it. On the road I met characters whose stories threatened to take over the book: Brs daughter, who hid students during Argentinas Dirty War; Timor, the Muslim guide who washed his pork chops down with vodka; Mr. Chi, the earnest grad student who tried to save me from a drunken lunch at a Chinese ink factory; the two Steves, one who made me grind sheep bones in Texas, the other who taught me how to flame linseed oil in the Utah desert; Aung and Cheng, the two calligraphers who mocked and revered ink; Nathan, the Willy Wonka of ink, who railed against the government and produces inks that melt fountain pens. Closer to home, I discovered a great-great-uncle whod been a printer in the California Gold Rush, learned how my mother-in-law resembles Ming emperors, proved myself a failure at calligraphy, inked type, crushed gallnuts, and ground inksticks. Friends began to avoid me at dinner parties. I joined the FPN (Fountain Pen Network); I was invited to present at Nerd Nite. I saw ink everywhere.

Im convinced that even scientific projects, no matter how arcane, from thermodynamics to string theory, are rooted in the personal, even if the writer isnt conscious that it is so. I never knew my grandfather, Edward Thomas Bishop, and aside from a graduation photo from Osgoode Hall I have no idea what he looked like, but I inherited his library. There are no letters, no diary, but he signed all his books, and while the stiff photo holds the viewer at a distance, the ink on the page always made me feel a connection. He exists for me as a signature.

In my professional life, the experience thats had the greatest impact was an encounter with ink. As I wrote in