Berol Black Beauty pencils

Berol Black Beauty pencils are George Stark’s former writing tools and the physical medium through which Thad Beaumont tries to re-establish contact with him. Put away after an earlier episode of automatic writing, the pencils return to Thad’s desk when he decides to write again. Their reappearance leads not to a controlled exchange but to an involuntary account of Miriam Cowley’s murder, making the pencils a point where authorship, bodily agency, and danger meet.

A Tool Set Aside

Thad keeps the pencils in a mason jar in the deep left-hand drawer of his desk. The jar has rolled to the back and spilled its contents, and he gathers the pencils and restores them to their accustomed place. That small act of putting the jar back brings into view how long the arrangement has endured: the pencils had been in their place through the dozen or so years when Stark lived with Thad, or, as Thad understands it, within him.

The jar’s history is tied to Thad’s first fugue. Using one of the Black Beauty pencils, he had written THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN across the manuscript of The Golden Dog. Afterwards he put the jar away and did not intend to use the pencils again. Although he had recently handled one, he had not used them for notes or writing since finishing the last Stark novel, Riding to Babylon. He regarded them as Stark’s pencils and believed Stark was dead; leaving them in a drawer had delayed, rather than resolved, what to do with them.

From Stark’s Routine to Thad’s Decision

During the periods when Stark’s writing began, the pencils served a recurring routine. For about three months, Stark would emerge at ten each morning, weekends included, take a Berol pencil, and write the fiction that earned money when Thad’s own work could not. When the book was finished, Stark would disappear again. The pencils thus belonged not simply to a past episode but to a repeated division of creative work between Thad and the figure he had treated as a separate self.

When Thad finally chooses to write with one again, the jar is no longer just a remnant of that routine. He has spent more than a day gathering the courage to act. He turns to a fresh page in his journal, sets aside his pen, and takes a pencil from the jar; his hand trembles, and the pencil seems unpleasantly warm. At the top of the page he prints THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN in large block letters. The phrase recalls the earlier fugue, but this time Thad is deliberately using the object associated with it to reach Stark.

Contact and Loss of Control

The pencil’s return to use sets off an episode Thad cannot govern. As sparrows gather at the study windows, his body enters a trance and the pencil begins to write. It produces the opening words of a Stark-like passage, then continues in Thad’s handwriting while he has no sense of where the words are coming from or of feeling in his writing hand. The movement carries on from one journal page to the next.

Thad recognizes what the pages contain: a coherent account of Miriam Cowley’s murder, narrated with the effectiveness of Stark’s popular fiction. He understands that his attempt has made contact with Stark’s mind, just as Stark seems to have reached into his. The pencil has therefore done more than recall an earlier episode or supply a tool: it has given Thad access to writing he did not choose and knowledge he did not want. The scene turns the ordinary act of writing into evidence of a dangerous connection.

The Pencil as a Material Link

That danger becomes literal when Stark’s control over Thad’s writing hand turns against him. The pencil is driven into the web of flesh between the thumb and forefinger of Thad’s left hand, and it breaks. The force controlling him then ends. The incident establishes the pencil’s double role: it carries Stark’s words, yet it is also the means by which the struggle between them reaches Thad’s body. The tool cannot be treated as neutral when the act of writing through it is bound to an exchange of control.

Stark’s own dependence on the pencils is also revealed through his later efforts to write in New York City. He had bought a Bic pen and notebooks after arriving there, deliberately leaving Berol pencils behind because he needed to learn whether the connection between his mind and the hand that held them could be broken. With the pen, he could write only his own name, repeating George Stark until the words dissolved into scribbles; at a public-library electric typewriter, he likewise typed his name repeatedly. Later, at half-past ten, a stationer on Houston Street sells a man matching Stark’s appearance three boxes of Berol Black Beauty pencils. Stark’s return to the same make of pencil marks a renewed dependence on the instrument he had tried to avoid.

Recurrence and Significance

The pencils form a material pattern across the story: an earlier automatic-writing episode, Stark’s regular periods of authorship, Thad’s attempt at contact, and Stark’s later search for a way to write. The same object is connected both to work that brought in money and to words associated with murder and the sparrows. Its familiar place in a desk drawer does not make it harmless; each return makes the boundary between Thad’s writing and Stark’s harder to maintain.

After the encounter, Thad understands that contact with Stark has a cost beyond the injury to his hand. The sparrows, which he increasingly associates with death, make the prospect of using the pencil again more than a question of authorship. The pencils remain a concrete reminder that Thad can reach Stark through writing, but cannot assume that he will control what comes through.