Thread: Razors in literature

I'm currently reading Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad (Reader's Digest Association, 1990), and came across the following very interesting (to me, anyway) passage, which is part of a commentary on Americans' inability to know when and how to truly relax:

In America . . . when the day's work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. . . . [but] When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear across the continent in the same coach he started in--the coach is stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated machinery alowed to cool for a few days; when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold an edge, the barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects, but none upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves upon the shelf occasionally and renew our edges (Twain, 116; italics mine).


I bring this to your attention not because of the philosphical issues contained therein, but because of the case of the razor's edge restoring itself. This was first published in 1869, written by a man who shaved with or had been shaved with a straight razor (since that was the only wide-spread option for shaving then) to be read by men who shaved with or had been shaved with a straight razor (yes, women were also the intended audience too)--so many of Twain's readers would have been familiar with that experience. I find it interesting that there's no mention of honing the razor, even with a barber's hone, to bring back the edge. Certainly, Twain was using the example to make a point, but as an astute observer of human nature, he would not have used this example if he had felt it would not ring true for his readers.

So, has anybody ever tried this method of bringing back an edge?

I rest every razor until the next time it is up in rotation. I don't think it brings the edge back. Dull is dull. But the once one of my razors is ready to go I generally don't need to hone it for a while since it only gets used about 20-30 times a year when it's turn comes around.

I think it is very interesting. I'm not convinced that a razor in need of a touch up could be put down for two weeks and it shaves better but then again I've never tried. Either way this is interesting. Thanks for postings.

I love Mark Twain, and he's still right about Americans' inability to relax, but I think this is a myth.

Could he be talking about a barber's razor? One that got used ten or twenty+ times a day for months on end? You go into a barber's, sit down, the razor pulls like crazy, or just doesn't cut, so the barber says, 'sorry, this one probably needs a rest'. Or perhaps just a blanket term for describing improperly maintained edges.

When you look at working habits in Europe and Japan and compare them to the U.S there is little relaxation here.