Far more commerically successful than Melville, Mark Twain carried notebooks everywhere too, having got into the habit while training to become the ‘cub’ pilot of a Mississippi steamboat. One stressful night, his chief, one Horace Bixby, tested young Samuel Clemens – Twain’s real name – on the stopping points above New Orleans. When the boy failed to recall any, Bixby offered the advice which Clemens subsequently lived by. ‘My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There’s only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire
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