Friday, October 10, 2014

Archives: Paper History and Balzac

After this week’s discussion I began to develop a new perspective on a book that I have been reading intermittently for the past few months, Honoré de Balzac’s Lost Illusions. This book tells the dual stories of David Séchard in his attempts to manufacture cheap paper and David’s brother-in-law Lucien who dives into the world of journalism. For archivists, especially those concerned with preservation, historic paper types and manufacturing is often a technical discussion. Alternatively, Lost Illusions illuminates the social context of the technical development of paper production and the social implications of abundant and cheap, albeit poor quality, paper.

 In Lost Illusions David gives a detailed description of history of printing and paper making, giving particular attention to the transition from linen to cotton paper. Lamenting the fragility of cotton paper that easily falls apart, David acknowledges that the expense, and literal weight, of linen makes it impractical to printers publishing newspapers and pamphlets in massive quantities. David’s interest is to decrease the cost of production and increase productivity. Lucien, on the other hand, depends on the fast paced newspaper market where paper, and the accompanying writing, is digested, gossiped, and disposed on a daily basis. For the newspaper printers, the quality and longevity that David desires are not important.

Throughout the book Balzac created a parallel between the poor quality of paper and the poor quality of journalism. The materiality of paper became grounds for harsh social criticism. Currently, archivists take special precautions to take care of the types of mass printed newspapers that Balzac detests. Analogously, people today quickly complain about the abundance of digital material that will somehow, in some way, be a part of the archival record of the future. Though Lost Illusions is a work of fiction the themes within the book are relevant to archives, and provide food for thought for historians working in archives.


Reading

Balzac, Honoré. Lost Illusions. Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2007. Originally published between 1837 and 1843. (There are a few sections of the book that directly discuss papermaking, commercial printers, and the histories of paper. In this edition, pages 97-101, 336-338, and 452-453 are particularly useful.)



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