Meet the author: Philip Hensher

A book about handwriting that makes you laugh out loud? That seems unlikely, but Man Booker Prize finalist Philip Hensher brings the same wit and intelligence to "The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting" (Faber and Faber, $26) as he has to seven critically acclaimed novels. (Faber will publish his latest, "Scenes From Early Life," next month.) Despite the medicinal-sounding conclusion that "handwriting is good for us," his book is not some dour screed but a warmhearted call to "let handwriting maintain a special place in our lives" as a means of self-expression and communication. Visiting New York from his native England, Hensher explained why he doesn't want texting to replace putting pen to paper.

What prompted you to write about handwriting?

A couple of years ago I realized that I was unusual in carrying on with writing by hand, and I think that those moments when you notice some previously unobserved detail of your life, they're worth taking a closer look at. As a novelist, I'm interested in things that reveal something about human beings, so I've always wanted to explore graphology . I was between novels, and it all just came together.

Graphology is one of many subjects here, including the history of writing implements and methods of handwriting instruction; the book is quite eclectic.

Because handwriting sits in the corner in all sorts of aspects of our lives -- even in mental health, when you get to graphology. I thought the best homage to that modest but crucial role was to chop up the texture of the book and approach the subject from a number of different angles.

You advocate teaching handwriting in school, but you're quite funny about some of the older, authoritarian teaching methods.

I think in the past handwriting has been taught very badly, in a controlling and restrictive way. When it's taught as a means of self-expression, in a way that suggests that you might enjoy it, I think people get a lot of pleasure from it. I think we have to get away from all questions of, "This is the correct pen hold," or, "This is the correct way to form a letter." We ought to offer children the basics stated in quite simple ways. Cursive should be optional, after the introduction of the print hand. The main thing is that handwriting be readable and that it isn't painful to write.

You mention a study that found children who improved their handwriting also had improved reading and compositional skills.

Isn't that interesting? The researchers suggested that if you have a sense of constructing each letter -- capital A: down stroke, down stroke, cross stroke -- you have more of an investment in it than if you just see a button, press it, and there's an A. That study has been replicated many times, and they all came to exactly the same conclusions: children who were taught properly to improve their handwriting ended up being better in all sorts of ways. They even made more sense in conversation! People who say, "We can do away with this; we've got keyboards now," really ought to look at the scientific evidence.

Some readers may expect this to be a polemic against electronic communication, but that's not your intent, is it?

What I'm arguing for is a mixed practice of writing. No one can deny that email and texting are marvelous things, but to say, "We now no longer need writing by hand," I think is a great mistake. It's a lovely, human, warm thing that we can resort to at different points. The analogy I keep using is with food, which very few people approach in a single way. They eat in restaurants, they cook in a casual way, sometimes they reheat or phone out for delivery. But occasionally they will start from scratch and cook a delicious meal, with slicing and scraping and all the rest of it, for someone they love. Now, why can't writing be like that? As well as all those useful emails, why don't we send postcards from holiday, or sit down and write a letter when we are falling in love?

Do you think your book might wean people from the culture of email and texting?

My hope of changing the culture is zero. My hope of changing somebody's mind is a little higher. I would really like readers to think, "You know what? I'm going to write a postcard to my mum."