(originally printed, in a slightly different version, in Seattle's free weekly The Stranger.)
Full page ad from the 40s in a yellowing magazine: a young woman in three-quarter profile sits up in bed in a simple satin nightgown, her breasts are large, her thin eyebrows arch like comets. With dark clawed fingers she's holding a Parker Vacumatic pen and pencil set. Her huge lipsticked smile reveals a mouth bursting with white teeth, and a thought balloon emerges from her cheek, "OH! ONE OF THOSE GORGEOUS PARKER SETS . . . HE DOES LOVE ME!" A cartoon cupid in the upper left corner is shooting a Parker arrow clip into her heart. Beneath her bed the copy reads:
"This June air is filled with Gift-time Jubilation, Romance, Adventure and tender parting.
"For now come Commencement, Weddings, Father's Day, and fond Farewells, as Boys and Men hike off to camp or join the Army and Navy, and Debutantes don trousseaux, while sweet Girl Graduates travel vacationward or start their cherished careers.
"Hence, now more than ever will letters be exchanged! So now more than ever--don't forget their Parkers, and they won't forget you. Besides this, giving the Jewels of Pendom is just about the nicest thing you can do."
There's a bit about the Vacumatic's "lubricated Point," then: "Hold its Television barrel to the light and SEE the level of ink--thus see why it never runs dry unexpectedly."
I pick up my double-jeweled Parker Vacumatic Junior (1939), close my eyes and rub its golden brown barrel. Pendom shimmers in the distance, a magical realm where things never run dry unexpectedly. Only the pure at heart can get there. I wish and I wish--for such assurance, such safety.
Letters to the Editor section of Yoga Journal, a billboard for Wells Fargo Checking, the cover of the Weight Watcher's food tracker, advertisement for a datebook in The New Yorker, the logos for Word Perfect and Microsoft Word, an ad for the Summer Writing Program at Naropa in St. Mark's Poetry Project Newsletter: what do all these items have in common? You guessed it--all of them prominently feature fountain pens. Fountain pens are so prevalent in print that you'd think we'd stepped back in time, that the ball point, let alone the rollerball and the felt tip, had never been invented. The pen business is burgeoning in the U.S. Last winter The San Francisco Chronicle reported that in 1994 Americans spent 1.67 billion dollars on pens. In the computer age, why are more and more people turning to fountain pens? According to M. De Quercise, the president of Montblanc, "The handwritten letter sends the message that you are taking time for this person because you like them, you appreciate them."
This got me thinking. I wonder if the resurgence of fountain pens is, indeed, a primal response, a regressive clinging to the body, to the personal, the physical. Subliminally perhaps, postmodern survivors harbor a terror of computers, of faceless technology--the sensually-deprived internet, where there is no smell save the lingering pinch of keyboard cleaner and your morning coffee, and the screen is so flat. New models of fountain pens quote the staid styling of the 20s through the 40s--not the streamlined modernity of the pens of the 50s and 60s. People buy these retro-fashioned pens with a pang of nostalgia, most of them for a past they are too young to have ever known--a past where each person owned one pen and disposable diapers were unimaginable. A Parker Duofold, or its modern imitator, is a shard, a broken bit unearthed from the magical Pendom of 1927. Here, squeeze it in your hand . . . hard rubber . . . plastic . . . gold. So solid, so beautiful!
Modems are terrible when you need to be alone--there's this outside vagueness that threatens to come rushing in--not the real world of chair, ass, pressure, window--but a world of ghosts who squawk and hypnotize. My current "novel" is a long meditation on internet relationships. Normally (though I scribble notes from time to time) I write my first draft on the computer; but for this book, I wrote the entire first draft longhand in six notebooks, which I'm now transcribing. I think this is a reaction on my part to the amorphousness of the internet--I needed to hold a notebook and pen to save me, to ground me. My number one rule in writing my internet romance: never use the word "cyber" --which reminds me of the time I was waiting in line at the Vancouver airport, and standing right in front of me was William Gibson! I said hello to him--with batting eyelashes--just like a nagging fan. Thank god I was too shy to bring up the cyberfiction panel I'd recently attended, where during the question and answer period some guy said that Gibson composed Neuromancer on a manual typewriter--a comment that so riled John Shirley he challenged the audience to a fistfight for being anti-computer. William Gibson, so tall and thin and mild-mannered, indeed, seems like a citizen from another era compared to his macho successors. Using a fountain pen to write my cybertext, I feel I've taken half an evolutionary step backwards beyond Gibson's alleged typewriter.
"These pens are as unnecessary and irrelevant as are dolls, teddy bears, toy trains, baseball cards, comic books and dozens of other things appreciated not for any inherent value or purpose. The very uselessness of such things is what makes them important. Their true function is a fundamental part of what makes the human experience worthwhile." --Frank Dubiel, Fountain Pens: The Complete Guide to Repair & Restoration
Fountain pens were developed through a laborious process of trial and error that extends back to the early 1700s--as an improvement on the dip pen. Writers were tired of stopping every few strokes to dunk their nibs in inkwells. Though the ingenuity of early pen inventors is laudable, none were able to control the flow of ink in their pens. John Scheffer's Penographic (1819) is one of the first workable fountain pens. Its secret was a flexible tube made of a goose quill and pig's bladder. Pressure was exerted on an lever and a knob to force ink onto the nib when desired. Fountain pens as we know them were finally invented in the 1880s when several people, all at once, got the brilliant idea of channeling air into the ink reservoir and thereby breaking its vacuum. No vacuum equals a smooth flow of ink. Some people on the internet claim that progress has its price, that no fountain pen nib matches the flexibility of the old dip pens. What does flexibility mean? The pen responds to variations in pressure as you write--thin on the upstroke, thick on the downstroke, that kind of thing. My Pelikan 400, one of the most flexible modern pens, is like dipping into a cloud. I've never tried a flexible vintage nib, never sank that deep into heaven. The thought of it excites me.
The hours I have spent at my computer immersed in the teeming world of internet fountain pen collecting! I've lusted at websites where you can purchase both vintage and new pens--often at substantial discounts. At the homier websites, collectors' "beauties" are scanned and displayed for the whole world to see, sometimes accompanied with personal anecdotes, as in Rick Connor's "Penopoly" site: "I consider the Parker 75 to be one of the best U.S. pens of recent years; it is just the right size, very well balanced, an excellent writer, and has a very luxurious appearance. My high-school algebra teacher used one of these, inspiring my interest in fountain pens. Years later, while in college, I spent a few weeks' pizza and beer money to buy a new 75 like this one; the pen worked its way loose from the cap and fell out a hole in my shirt pocket (heartbreaking!)." I've shared my own fountain pen history and concerns with other penophiles through live chat sessions, web and e-mail discussion groups, and the newsgroup alt.collecting.pens-pencils.
There I found the hierarchy of any internet list, the typical testosterone-infused jockeying for position, the usual cast of characters--the authority, the jokester, the facilitator, the grouch, the covert flirt--all engaged in heated discussions about the pros and cons of ultrasonic cleaners and the correct way to polish a nib--as well as more fanciful gossip, such as Bob Dole's use of a Montblanc 149 ("effete, expensive, overrated, foreign-made") as opposed to Bill Clinton's choice of a Parker Vector ("inexpensive, hard-working, unpretentious, made in the good ol' US of A"). One of my favorites is Debbie, who told us that once her fountain pen sprayed black ink all over a white satin bedspread! I imagine Debbie, with Doris Day spit curls, lounging on that satin spread in a diaphanous peignoir, languorously fondling her Waterman Phileas, but I quickly revise the image to high-necked babydoll pajamas--they seem much more Debbie. Debbie also introduced the topic of whether pens were male or female. She decided they were androgynous: male because of their--well, you know, shape-- and female because they hold ink in a sac or womb. Did I mention that ink cartridges are considered declasse? True nibheads either use converters or piston-filling pens. You dip your nib in a bottle of ink and either squeeze or twist the other end, and your pen sucks up its lifeblood. Slurp. Visconti sells traveling inkwells for a mere $60-$75 so you can fill your pen on the road. And speaking of traveling, if you're going to fly with a fountain pen you're supposed to carry it either filled to capacity or empty--otherwise the cabin pressure will cause it to burp up on you like an unruly baby.
Novelist Bruce Benderson: "Even new fountain pens fuck up. The mechanism is like nature, gravity, osmosis, etc. and thus far from fool-proof. Depends on weather, ink evaporation. That's what's so life and death exciting. It's like a love affair that can't be depended upon. (Is there any other kind.)"
I bought my first Vacumatic from one of San Francisco's upscale pen stores. The clerk who sold it to me was rangy and slightly hunchbacked, like Lon Chaney Jr., in his 50s with graying hair pulled back into a ponytail. His thick glasses, attached to a cord, rested on the tip of his nose. He stood, arms folded, behind a glass case of 20th Century fountain pens, which were laid out on velvet in even rows like minature caskets. I asked him what would happen if the 60-year-old nib went bad. He peered over his glasses mischievously, stroked his goatee. "This nib won't wear out," he intoned. "It lasted one woman's lifetime--and now it's ready for another's." Creepy! I felt shivery yet enthralled, like the heroine in some cheesy Vincent Price film (The Pit and the PENdulum?), her exposed cleavage heaving as she spots the crypt at the other end of the counter.
I still haven't figured out where all these antiquarian pens come from, but I've heard of collectors finding them at flea markets, thrift stores, in the backs of deceased relatives' drawers, and in the dusty forgotten recesses of old jewelry shops. More often than not the pens are chipped, cracked, tarnished, clogged, or faded, with their bladders rotting. It takes a lot of work to transform old pens from junk into jewels. The internet is a great source of repair tips. I'm awed by the ingenuity of pen restorers, how they reinvent the most ordinary materials: coffee filters (for cleaning nibs), car polishes, rubber hose, wide rubber bands, "those little cocktail napkins that come with the peanuts" for mopping up leaky ink on airplanes, a smooth shafted screwdriver, talcum powder, super glue, clear fingernail polish, Q-tips of course, utility knife, a old pair of rubber boots ("a lifetime supply of rubber strips can be cut from a pair"), mini-torches, plain old hot water (to soften plastic in stuck pen parts), cool water (to flush out pens), empty ink cartridges, fine grade wetdry sandpaper, dental picks (the rounded handle end), WD-40, black shoe polish, toothpaste (to clean hard rubber pens), motor oil (to polish pens cleaned with toothpaste), tweezers wrapped with masking or electrical tape, thumbnails, and multi-grit emery boards. Allan notes that "Hawaiian Shine" by "Kiss" is the ideal emery board for polishing nibs.
Editing this piece on the computer, I'm filled with longing, rush back to my bedroom, take out my Pelikan and my journal. My pen's razor-thin point scratches against the paper. The paper is talking back to me. It's like listening to the bubbling of the molecules around me, no meaning, but still a mirror. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Writing in my notebook I know I can hold this moment, these thoughts forever, no matter how slight. On the computer they'd be edited away in a snap. Pen and ink is a commitment that the computer, that fickle heartless machine doesn't understand. "I ink, therefore I am."
While vintage fountain pens can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, there are many great pens available for $50 or less. An often-cited best buy is the Parker 51 (1941 - mid 1970s), which, at 20 million pens, is the best selling pen ever made. The 51 was a radical revisioning of fountain pen design. Sleek, with a hooded nib, it looked like a jet fighter from the side--and it was made from Lucite, the same material used in the nose cones of some wartime planes. $40 to $50 will buy you a nice one. My lovely Vacumatic cost $90, my workhorse Parker 45 a mere $20. The 45 arrived in a bubble envelope from Indiana, wrapped in a paper towel printed with blue and pink geese. Touching the pen's gleaming chrome cap I flash back to my college days . . . it's 1972, I'm in a booth at the Hour House, a 24-hour diner in Bloomington, Indiana, the bars have closed, and a group of us are eating waffles oozing with canned blueberry pie filling and a mountain of whipped cream. Sitting across from me is this really cute guy who's writing in a journal with a slim dark fountain pen with a chrome cap. His words are meticulously formed, their strokes thin as the hairs that curl gently to his shoulders. The next day I raced to an office supply store and bought my own Parker 45. From the beginning fountain pens have been tinged with eros for me. I wrote with that pen for fifteen years, until my fingers eroded indentations in the plastic. Whenever I hold its replacement, I wonder if that boy is still cute, if he still uses fountain pens, if he writes about them on the internet.
(used with permission of the author)