NOTEWORTHY

Alexander McCall Smith says that a lifetime of keeping a notebook has served him well – and if it's good enough for Roald Dahl and Ernest Hemingway...

Never be without a notebook. I’m not sure exactly who said that. In fact, I’m not sure if anybody actually said it. It may be that it falls into that category of advice that no particular person is credited with giving, but that forms part of what we call common knowledge, such as ‘never play cards with a man called Doc’, or ‘never eat in a restaurant called Momma’s’.

When it comes to the notebook advice, it would undoubtedly be given more weight were it to be attributed to somebody. This is certainly the case with paintings. A painting that can be attributed to a particular artist is generally more highly valued in the auction rooms than one that is ‘school of’ or ‘studio of’.

It also affects the way we read a painting: if we know who the artist was, when they painted it, and what it is called, then the painting means more to us than if it were anonymous and untitled. A Picasso or a Peploe may be worth more simply because collectors know the names of those artists: paintings are not always sought after for aesthetic reasons, even if, in the case of those artists, their aesthetic value is incontestably high.

When it comes to aphorisms or advice, if a statement is particularly witty, then it could well have been made by Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, two dispensers of memorable observations who have become default attributions for observations that would otherwise be anonymous.

Parker said a great deal, much of it in the Algonquin Hotel in New York, a place long associated with the coining of witticisms. It is there that Parker said ‘Pope elopes’ in response to a challenge to produce the shortest and most shocking newspaper headline imaginable. It is there, too, that she read out that famous telegram from Robert Benchley in Venice to his editor that stated, with a simplicity lost now that telegraphese has been rendered otiose by e-mails: ‘Streets full of water. Please advise.’

I have been in the Algonquin Hotel on several occasions and must confess that I heard nobody say anything memorable. It may have been that I was there on an off-day, or at the wrong time. Perhaps the Algonquin Hotel has a Witty Hour in the same way that lesser hotels have a Happy Hour.

Ernest Hemingway was nowhere near as witty as Dorothy Parker, but that was not what Hemingway was meant to be. Hemingway was famous for giving advice to other writers, and in particular to a young writer called Arnold Samuelson, who in 1934 visited his literary hero in Key West. Hemingway gave the young writer a number of tips on writing, and issued him with a list of books that he should read. ‘If you haven’t read these,’ he said, ‘you just aren’t educated.’

That sounds like high-handed advice, and irritating too, particularly if you examine the list and discover that you have not read all the books on it. In general, it is a good list, though, including Madame Bovary, Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, and Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. Maugham’s presence on any list is a good sign, as he has been unjustly dismissed by literary critics as a middle-brow writer. Middlebrow actually means readable, which is, in the view of some, a quality that precludes inclusion in the grander literary canons.

Hemingway gave Samuelson a number of practical tips about writing, including the advice not to write too much each day, but to pause, reflect, and let the subconscious mind do the work. He also counselled him against imitation and measuring himself against other writers.

In between all this advice, they went fishing together, and there is a striking photograph of Hemingway showing the younger man a three-hundred-pound blue marlin he had landed. Like all trophy photographs, it is a sad one. The beautiful fish is dead, hung up ignominiously by its tail, while the great writer proudly basks in its demise.

It is perfectly possible that Hemingway told Samuelson that he should never be without a notebook, and that would be good advice, because a notebook is a natural place to record those fleeting thoughts that might one day become a book. Roald Dahl once wrote in his notebook that it might be a good idea to write about a boy who visits a chocolate factory. That note proved to be an important one.

I’ve taken Hemingway’s advice to have a notebook with me at all times. I used to use Moleskine notebooks, but now prefer Smythson’s soft-covered notebooks with their characteristic blue water-marked paper. I have twenty-five and they all run concurrently, and with no regard to system, so I come across notes the meaning of which escapes me. Such as: ‘She is disappointed that he doesn’t know who Toulouse-Lautrec is – perhaps?’

That idea remains unused, and anybody who would like to write a story around it is welcome to do so. So, following on the Hemingway theme, if you discover in your notebook a note that reads ‘old man goes to sea, catches a big fish, sharks eat fish’ you are free to write something along exactly those lines.

Come to think of it ….

Parker said ‘Pope elopes’ when challenged to produce a short, shocking headline