Dear bibliopathologist,
a few days ago I hesitated to buy a book because it was printed in a typeface (Palatino) that I hate: disproportionate, sloppy in the selection of ornamental glyphs, too round__. It is not just a matter of personal taste, I think, rather a result of a lot of publishing and advertising in recent years: the flattening (even of costs?) On trivial characters, from standard Word equipment (Times New Roman and Book Antiqua above all …), with little care for the final result in terms of proportions and legibility. So now more and more often I happen to judge a book also by this and for this reason not to buy it. I err? Am I the only one? I am writing this email in Adobe Caslon pro, the font of the New Yorker, which in this period manages to give me some peace.
– Serena
serene face,
you will certainly know Dino Risi’s joke about Nanni Moretti’s somewhat cumbersome self – director, actor and not infrequently a character in his own films: “Step aside and let me see the film”. On the contrary, Risi was so used to shrinking and disappearing behind the camera that even in the autobiographical book My monstersciting that joke about Moretti – so perfect that anyone would have dreamed of making it his name – attributed it, with infinity understatement, to “a spectator”. Well, my philosophy regarding typefaces is simple: I want Dino Risi fonts, not Nanni Moretti fonts (which in the Characters not typographical but human of Theophrastus corresponds roughly to the garrulous, the one who “prevents, if he attends a show, to see”). Step aside and let me read the book.
In other words, for me, ideal fonts must be beautiful enough for their elegance to be appreciated, but subdued enough not to draw attention to oneself by diverting it from reading. I must like them right away, and if I find them repulsive it happens that I don’t even start reading; but after that first glance they must no longer attract attention, and I will return to admire them only when, finished the book, I weigh it in my hands and dismiss it. The art is to conceal art, art consists in hiding art, the ancient rhetoric prescribed; but from the oratory art the principle extended over the centuries to the art of being in the world (the contempt by Baldassarre Castiglione) and to art proper. The Japanese have a category that comes very close to our contempt, and it is theto. His best-known theorist, Shūzō Kuki, said that “in principle, I never am to motifs that are too complicated “, and that” when the decoration becomes sumptuous, all traces ofto“. On all these things I recommend the beautiful book by Paolo D’Angelo.
However, the Risi / Moretti alternative does not fully hit the mark, because there are great directors who conceal art (Lubitsch, Ozu, Bresson) and equally great directors who show off it (Welles, Ophüls, Fellini). The same goes for novels and their authors. But in this context my predilection is not just a matter of taste, and perhaps the most correct cinematic analogy is the one with the characteristics of the room – the comfort of the armchair and its position, the isolation from lights and noises, the quality projection. An annoying font – whether it is due to excess or lack of beauty – is like a croaking sound that creeps into the entire soundtrack preventing you from listening to the dialogues, like an armchair on which you cannot find peace, like a scratch in the center of each frame.
If I insist on this analogy, it is because the book and the film are two more similar illusionistic apparatuses than they may seem, which only work on condition that we forget sufficiently about their material supports. The more we remain nailed to the surface of the page, scattered with visual obstacles and impervious characters, the less we will be able to penetrate it to access the third dimension.