24 December 03
Pen Fetish
I have often felt frustrated when going to stationery stores in the United States. It seems they are full of junk and contain very poor, mediocre selections of, well, stationery. Lots of rotten pens, some of which end up costing quite a bit. I won’t go so far as to blame the decline of Western civilization on the abandonment of the fountain pen, but I do cling obstinately to my belief that the world would be a better place if people WROTE better—and for this the fountain pen is the ideal tool. (Of course it would be better if they wrote at all, but that’s another piece.) I’m bleating in the wilderness, on this, to a world of keyboardists; to a world where children can routinely get to be almost adults without being able to read cursive; to a world of the ballpoint superseded by the rollerball superseded by the next miserable effort. Baaah, baaah.
Spain has, on the other hand, no shortage of good stationery stores—tiny closet-type spaces packed to the ceilings with unknown treasures in boxes. My guess is that this is one unintended but excellent result of the Napoleonic invasion of 1808 (the French REALLY know stationery: whoever has not had the sybaritic pleasure writing in fountain pen on Clairefontaine paper, papier velouté [velveted paper], should definitely try it; it will cure all manner of woes, aches, pains, and even warts).
Anyway, there was this tiny closet stationer downstairs from the apartment with the Oxford Spanish Dictionary which kept Numenius so busy for hours (we now own a copy, and a splendid thing it is too). We popped in to see what they might have in the way of fountain pens.
I don’t want something fancy. I don’t want laqueur, mother of pearl, bakelite, ebony; I don’t want a venetian glass dip pen which looks elegant on a female executive’s desk but can’t write for toffee; I don’t want a collector’s item to be stored in a vault or even just a drawer. I want something that can WRITE, by golly. It’s all in the nib, the nib, the nib. The rest of the pen is simply a vehicle to hold the nib; to facilitate smooth, even transfer of ink to the nib; and to permit the hand to HOLD the nib (balance is the next thing I look for; good pens are designed to be balanced when the cap is on the body, and to write best like this).
A happy curiosity: the RETRACTABLE fountain pen, made by Stypen (French, bien sûr). I bought one immediately. We went back a few days later and bought one for Numenius. It made writing in our travel journal a pure joy; we did lots of sketches on buses stuck in traffic; and, of course, we made sure to remove the cartridges before getting on the plane home to avoid the dreaded blue-black menstruation, where ink gets all over everything you ever owned and everyone else’s too.
I keep this pen in my pocket all the time; it fits into even the smallest pockets. It’s my current favorite. Good, fine nib. Great balance. Great price: 12 Euros.
Postscript: some readers in England read this post and did some research (thanks Clare and Alan). The Stypen-Up is available at a fabulous shop in Brighton called Pen to Paper. The fact that this pen takes small standard cartridges means that there are many colors of ink from which to choose.
I am contacting these people to see if they ship to the United States…
Further postscript, January 23, 2004: The fabulous Pendemonium, based in Iowa, stocks the pens, the inks, and the paper, along with a huge number of collectibles. They seem to be out of stock of several items but are very prompt in responding to inquiries; even though they’re at the Philadelphia Pen Show this week I heard back the same day. I have bought pens from them before but didn’t realize they ran to what in France is a typical supermarket brand…
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My promise to myself is that if I ever get my first book published I will go out and buy myself a nice, fat Mont Blanc with 24 karat gold nib.
I hadn’t used a fountain pen in a little while, but your post made me rummage through my tomato cans filled with pens for all my old fountain pens, including a Senator (the ink well screw no longer functions), two Rotring Art Pens, a Rotring technical pen, and my favorite old pumping, green marbled Waterman. I spent the whole morning cleaning them all out in hot soap water, and then wrote an entry in my journal with the Waterman.
And of course I went out and tried to find a Stypen! (Japanese stationary shops are dream palaces) I couldn’t find one, but found instead a beautiful, fat, black wood-shafted and machined aluminum A.G. Spalding & Bros. fountain pen that cost $22.00. Now I’m going to have a hard time deciding between the Spalding or the Waterman!
I did not, however, see the Stypen … so after reading your post, I searched for it online, and every online store I checked, seemed to be out of stock. My husband is off to Rome in January, so he’ll have to do “penance” for leaving me home with the kids by getting me some fountain pens….
I have been catching up on Wild West Yorkshire and Richard Bell has a new toy also: see http://www.wildyorkshire.co.uk/naturediary/docs/2003/12/19.html. His is for sketching but I’ll bet he has a fountain pen or two among his stuff…
Everything I write in any way creatively starts out with pencil and paper. A modern pencil that doesn’t need sharpening, but a manual instrument nonetheless.
It surprised me to discover it, but words can flow from a pencil (or a fountain pen for that matter); what sort of flow can come from a staccato hammering of keys?
From time I can remember, I have always fancied stationery items and pens top the list! Even today, more than the trendy ball point pen, I adore the ever elegant fountain pen – more commonly called ‘ink pen’ during school days. I still relish the habit of writing with an ink pen and I still do buy ink pens. I know fountain pens are hardly in use these days other than in schools.