A reader from Texas has a great idea for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, and he’s looking for advice:
I want to give journals to both my daughter and her fiance to record their thoughts and feelings while their hearts and brains are still mushy and creative. To be read at their anniversaries and low points. Do you have any suggestions?
What kind of a journal would you recommend? Something with a bit of structure, like a daily diary, or a more free-form notebook like the Habana or the Webbie? Any other ideas?
We just got a couple new images from Christian Skagen’s “Horizontal Fields” series, which we blogged about last week (with my apologies for having flubbed the title; sorry — it’s “Horizontal Fields,” not “Horizontal Lines” as I first wrote).
Anyway, click through to see some pieces Christian made with J. Herbin Rose Tendresse and Bleu Azur and a Pelikan M250 EF:
Karen sent me a few sheets of Clairefontaine DCP paper in the fall. DCP (which stands for “Digital Color Printing”) is a thick, white, glossy, A4 printer paper, and it’s apparently designed for printing photographs and other color graphics. It comes in ivory, too, and can also be used, Karen told me, for bookmaking.
I don’t have a color printer, and I haven’t tried to make a book since the 3rd or 4th grade. Frankly, I found the A4 size a little awkward at first, since it’s thinner and longer than standard American paper and didn’t really fit into any of my binders. So I stuck it in a folder and forgot about it until this weekend, when I needed to customize an old tea box for a present and didn’t have time to go out and get the proper supplies.
DCP, it turned out, was just the thing for the job. I wanted something I could write on (so decoupage was out), but I also needed paper that was thick enough to hide the images on the box I was reusing:
I just finished Janet Malcolm’s awesome work on the relationship between authors and their subjects, The Journalist and the Murderer, whose smart analysis of the story behind Fatal Vision is relevant to both fiction and non-fiction writers. Before that, Rebecca Goldstein’s Mind-Body Problem. I’m not sure what I’ll read next.
Karen recently struck up a conversation with Norwegian artist Christian Skagen, who shared some of the vibrant ink-and-hot-pressed-paper drawings he’s been making for a series entitled “Horizontal Fields.” Here, for example, is a drawing Christian made with a Sailor Sapporo EF, 300gsm Arches HP, and J. Herbin’s Rose Tendresse:
Here are close-ups of the three works that are framed at the top of this post (be sure to click the image to see a larger version and appreciate the full intricacy and texture of the lines):
NY Times writer Patricia Cohen had a fascinating article in the Arts section on February 11, 2010. It was titled” “Where Faulkner Found His People: Characters’ Names Are Inside a Plantation Diary the Writer Knew Well.”
“The climactic moment,” the article begins, “in William Faulkner’s 1942 novel “Go Down, Moses” comes when Isaac McCaslin finally decides to open his grandfather’s leather farm ledgers with their ’scarred and cracked backs’ and ‘yellow pages scrawled in fading ink’ –proof of his family’s slave-0wning past.”
The diary that was a source for Faulkner for names, incidents and details was penned in the mid-1800s by Francis Terry Leak, a wealthy plantation owner in Mississippi. His great-grandson, Edgar Wiggin Francisco, Jr., was a friend of Faulkner’s since childhood. Mr. Francisco’s son, now 79, recalled the writer’s frequent visits throughout the 1930s, and said Faulkner was fascinated with the diary’s several volumes. Mr. Francisco said he saw them in Faulkner’s hands and recalled that he “was always taking copious notes.”
Sally Wolff-King, a scholar in Southern literature at Emory University who discovered the connection between Faulkner and the journals, called it “a once-in-a-lifetime literary find.” A short preview of her findings was available in the fall 2009 issue of The Southern Literary Journal; her book “Ledgers of History: William Faulkner, an Almost Forgotten Friendship, and an Antebellum Diary,” is due out in June from Louisiana State University Press.
Has a chance find of a diary in a friend’s house, a yard sale, flea market, antique store or junk shop given you a character or inspired a story?
See more of Sophie’s work on her blog and at her Flickr page. Also not to be missed: Stephanie’s vibrantmandalas, and this lovely whisper of a drawing by Gentian.
Tree Riesener came to our attention through her charming recent poem about J. Herbin ink. She is the author of three poetry collections, Inscapes, Angel Poison and Liminalog (each available for purchase on her website), and has published widely in literary magazines. Read more about Tree at her website and blog.
Tell us a bit about yourself — where are you from, where do you live, and when did you start writing?
I live in Philadelphia, in a small village just outside the city, so I have the best of both worlds. I know some of my family lived here in the early 1800s and after a brief foray into Ohio, we returned.
I’ve been writing all my life. I have a copy of my first story, “The Tiny Party,” about a fairy named Flash who told her sister Tiny to arrange a birthday party for her. Tiny did so, and invited Jane, Mary, Sally and Bubble. There was a chocolate cake with white icing and pink candies. Flash collected birthday loot of flowers, ribbons and socks. At another time I will tell you about The Fairy Wedding, when Glisen got married and Bubble played the organ. These exciting tales are written in pencil on yellow tablet paper. No idea of Clairefontaine paper and Herbin inks then! As I grew up, I whipped off a poem for every event, some of which my mother saved for me. There was never any question in my mind that the main purpose of life was to write about it.
When and how did you get into fountain pens and ink? Do you have a favorite pen or ink, either generally or for specific purposes?
I got my first fountain pen, a Waterman which I still use, when I was in my early twenties, a gift from my husband. I’ve been passionate about inks for about five years but I’m a lifelong diarist and I’ve collected notebooks all my life. Recently I discovered the colony of those who love pens, inks, and notebooks on the internet, where I spend happy hours reading reviews of inks and comparing colors.
A favorite color, no. Not just one. I keep a dozen or so pens in an old moosehead cream jug beside my favorite chair, where I have my morning coffee and start writing. Poets sometimes speak about the duende, invisible spirits who bring us writing. I think they help me choose which pen and ink is right for the day or for a particular task. I tend to keep a special pen for each color, as much as I can. For example, I have Herbin Vert Olive in a vintage green marbleized Shaeffer with gold accents. I might put another green in that pen but never another color. I just realized — this sounds a trifle obsessive, doesn’t it? My blues go in a blue Cavalier Pilot, my favorite just now. I write very small so I like fine or very fine nibs and these Cavaliers are very smooth. Karen Doherty (your colleague, I know) just very graciously gave me some Rose Cyclamen, which I lovelovelove. I bought a special pen for it, a silvery-pink Cavalier.
Anyone else remember spinning pens during high school math and science classes? A simple, around-the-thumb loop was the only trick I ever came close to mastering (and I daresay I’ve since lost all aptitude), but there was a period in, like, 9th and 10th grade when pen spinning seemed to be everywhere.
Of course, nobody at my school had anything on the spinners at this Hong Kong tournament, some of whom even use special weighted pens and practice at home for hours. Apparently, you can’t actually write with those pens, but one mother’s comments may nontheless strike home for us fountain pen collectors. “The only thing I don’t like about it is he wastes a lot of money because he spends a lot of money on pens,” she says of her competitive son. As for the practicing, she continues, “I think it is a spirit that should be encouraged.”
Like many people, I often have ideas about work or writing projects right as I’m falling asleep. I know I won’t remember them when I wake up, so I keep a little notepad and pen next to my bed to jot them down.
Here’s the thing: If I use a regular pen, I run the risk of not being able to decipher my groggy, sleep-blind scrawl when I wake up. I thought I’d solved that problem a couple years ago at the Museum of Natural History gift shop, where I found an inexpensive ball-point pen whose barrel had a light in it. It was perfect—it gave me just enough light to see what I was writing without disturbing anyone or jolting me awake.
But the light bulb broke after a couple of months, and since nobody had any idea where I could replace it, I ended up consigning the pen to daytime use and buying another like it on eBay. That pen, too, has since fallen apart, despite my best efforts to keep its inexpensively made pieces in line.
In the age of cheap manufacturing, is there anyone out there who makes a high-quality version of this pen? I realize it’s a novelty item, and it’s not like I’m about to shell out big money for it. But I can’t, in good environmental conscience, buy another cheapie with the expectation that it’ll last a few months or a year, then break and be thrown in the trash.
