MOST of the writing was done at home, where there was always a study. Though I remember vividly coming home to our first apartment once and finding Bud in the middle of the living room shuffling around dozens of 3×5 cards spread all over the floor. I think he was outlining one of the last chapters of the dissertation.First drafts were written by hand, in ink (with a special pen), on non-shiny yellow paper attached to a clipboard. (It was the same paper on which he drew his doodles, much to the delight of his granddaughters.) These hand-written paragraphs were then transferred originally to an ordinary typewriter, later to an electric typewriter and finally, after much hesitation, into a computer. He never learned to touch type, but used two fingers, which quickly began to move quite fast—though often with some mistakes. Undoing those went from whiteout, made especially for the purpose, to correcting tape, and finally to a word processor, which though learned late and with difficulty, came to be seen as a pretty good advance. Envelopes, however, continued to emerge from the typewriter for many more years. And everything was printed out: e-mail, letters, texts. He never read anything on the computer except Hollis and very occasionally Wikipedia. But all of that was only the beginning.Even the original pen-filled yellow pages had corrections on them, often with sections scotch-taped at different places But the real refinements came after that first typescript or printout, again, first by hand, then with typed inserts. There were arrows to the back of the page, to pages numbered with the letters a, b, c for other inserts, and many word corrections. Each word and each sentence had to be just right. All of this led to more typing and more scotch-taped insertions. And this process repeated itself multiple times. And, I should add, letters, also initially written by hand, went through almost as many versions as did articles and books. Words were very important to him. When he wrote it was not only the content that guided, but the aesthetics. Sentences had to sound right; paragraphs had to flow. And that took time. It was a process he very much enjoyed. At one point I usually got the chance to read something. And if I occasionally suggested that a sentence that spanned a paragraph might be broken up to make it easier to read, occasionally it was.When he had an assistant, life was easier. At first he made an audio tape from his inked scribbles and his assistant produced a text ready to be revised. Later on, he could hand over a handwritten set of corrections and miraculously a clean typescript appeared. How they were able to make out his handwriting I will never know. Some genius there. When on occasion I was called on to type something, he typically had to dictate.His lecture notes and talks often did not proceed to a full script. They were still written by hand, on the same yellow paper, though not always in complete sentences. And before being presented, he would underline certain parts in different colors to alert himself to key points. I have given these lecture notes and some unpublished talks to the Harvard archives—with immediate access—since his undergraduate lectures are almost as “famous” (notorious?) as his graduate seminar.As I write this, I can still see him wandering up to his study on the third floor to make some more revisions. His audience was not only his historian colleagues, but the general public. He wanted his work to be accessible and he wanted to make it available. As he was contemplating his next project, after the publication of Illuminating History, I suggested he write a personal memoir meant only for his sons, which they would have so much enjoyed. But that was not his style. What he wrote was meant to be published, and a personal memoir he would never have made public. So we are left with his oral stories, which were part of our conversations almost to the very end.One of the last things he dictated to me is a revised paragraph for the paperback edition of Illuminating History: It was in 1946 – my twenty-third year [it was actually his 24th] – that the contours of my intellectual life changed radically. Thereafter, the study of history became a passion and the center of my professional life. It was the beginning of seventy-plus years of concentrated study, teaching, and writing about history. It was the dominant tone over all those years and my enthusiasm has never relented.He had a passion for writing history, history in the way he thought it should be written, and he never lost that.
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Sep 30, 2022
Ansh Purohit + 2
Open Access
