Although this book focuses on Kirkpatrick's career as an editor of music, his work as an author is an important part of the story of his relationship to the printed page. He was a fine, vivid writer on music, yet disliked placing his own opinions, particularly about Ives, in the foreground. Kirkpatrick's reluctance to state his opinions should not, however, be interpreted as a lack of them. He wrote numerous shorter essays throughout his life: he was one of the first to write about Aaron Copland, and during the 1940s he contributed several reviews and short essays to Notes, Modern Music, and Musical Courier. He contributed a few articles to the Cornell University Music Review in the 1960s, and in the 1970s offered a smattering of reviews of new books on Ives.

This chapter traces the genesis and reception of his two book-length works—A Temporary Mimeographed Catalogue and Memos. The first was impressive by any measure: an inventory of Ives's manuscripts, assembled in a scant five years. Memos, a compendium of Ives's autobiographical writings and twenty-one appendixes of biographical information, was published in the years immediately leading up to Ives's centennial, as well as the American bicentennial. Kirkpatrick did not describe himself as the author of either book: the Temporary Mimeographed Catalogue was “compiled by” him; he is listed as the editor of Memos, even though his appendixes are lengthier than the actual autobiographical writings by Ives by some 100 pages.