In Search of Lost Ink

Marcel est mort.

For a long time I believed Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu to be the pinnacle of French literature. Were it not for Don DeLillo's White Noise, I would have gone so far as to call it the greatest book written in any language. Until yesterday, that is. Marcel and Don have lost their crowns. There's a new kid on the block.

I reported on 27 November that a reader of Ink Quest had just brought to my attention a series of books by Éric Sanvoisin that begins with a volume entitled The Ink Drinker. Because the titles, which are translated from French and aimed at children, are published in the USA, it has taken Amazon.co.uk a little while to track down a copy of the first instalment for me. I had almost given up hope, in fact, but yesterday afternoon the postman pushed a slim package through the letterbox of Ink Towers. The Ink Drinker had finally arrived.

It is, in short, the greatest story ever told. The narrator is a small boy whose father owns a bookshop. One day he notices a strange customer 'with a gray complexion and bushy eyebrows' take a book from the shelf, insert a straw, and begin to drink. When the boy inspects the volume as soon as the visitor has left, he discovers that the man has sucked all of the ink from the pages. Puzzled, he follows the ink drinker to a cemetery, where the curious character slips into a tomb in 'the shape of an ink bottle'. Descending a flight of stairs to an underground chamber, the boy finds the ink drinker lying a fountain-pen-shaped coffin. Yes, dear readers, our narrator has been following a vampire.

A vampire with a difference, though. It turns out that the mysterious figure has taken to drinking ink because he has, after five centuries, become allergic to blood. 'Ink is the only food I can digest without difficulty', he reveals. 'And, believe it or not', he adds, 'it really is quite nutritious.' When the boy asks why the vampire does not simply sip from bottles of ink, the latter replies, 'Bottled ink is as bland as salt-free food. But ink that has aged on paper, well, it's the ultimate gourmet dish.' The tale ends with the vampire -- whose name, the final page reveals, is Draculink -- biting the boy with 'his niblike teeth' and turning him into an ink drinker. 'And for the first time in my life', concludes the narrator, 'I relished being the son of a bookstore owner.'

Génial, non, chers lecteurs et chères lectrices? Who needs Marcel Proust when we have Éric Sanvoisin? Why go in search of lost time when you could go in search of lost ink? Think of how much time and space we could save in our lives and on our bookshelves? (The Ink Drinker is just 35 pages long and 4mm thick, whereas my six-volume edition of Proust runs to 3254 pages and takes up 16cm of my bookcase.) I hereby declare Sanvoisin to be the greatest author of all time. He is in a league of his own, unique, peerless -- sans voisin, perhaps. I will be ordering the remaining titles in the series and slurping them down in a single gulp. I would throw Proust in the bin -- from publication to poubelle-ication, as the old joke from Jacques Lacan has it -- but it's just occurred to me that 3254 pages means a lot of ink to drink...

Ink being sipped today: Diamine Blue-Black.

Travail

I hate travelling and explorers.

I wish I could claim authorship of that line, but it's actually the incipit of Claude Lévi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques. I've made it my inkipit today because I feel the same as Lévi-Strauss. While many people make exploring the world one of life's priorities, I'm much happier staying where I am. Yes, I've been to some wonderful places when I've temporarily suspended my anchoritic existence, but by the end of the trip I'm always eager to come home. I prefer my own space, my own food, my own coffee, my own rituals. Travel derails all of these things; it's no accident that 'travel' and 'travail' share the same root in English, and that there's also a link to the Latin trepalium, a three-pronged instrument of torture. I also dislike the experience of being a tourist and constantly making glaring mistakes in a culture and perhaps a language alien to me. One of Don DeLillo's characters is right to call tourism 'the march of stupidity'; I feel awkward, stupid, and out of place in my own culture, so why would I make things worse by travelling?

All of this might be about to change, however, for I am, since Festivus, the proud owner of a Visconti travelling inkpot (pictured alongside my Visconti Van Gogh midi fountain pen in the first image displayed above). The science of this miraculous object is too complicated for me to explain, so I will simply refer those interested to the account given on official Visconti website.

Travelling with ink is a constant travail in the modern world. A fountain pen that is neither entirely empty nor completely full is likely to leak at high altitude. A writing instrument with a particularly sharp or long nib could easily be confiscated at the airport as a potential weapon. Bottles of precious ink could be broken in transit. These are the anxieties that overshadow any journey by plane that I take.

Inkthusiasts on the move in earlier times had it just as hard, of course. In the days before ink went inside the pen, it was necessary to make arrangements for carrying a separate supply of fluid during even the shortest of journeys. Thomas Hobbes, a keen walker, had an inkhorn built onto the side of his walking stick so that he would never wander away from the ability to make notes. I like to imagine that Leviathan was composed in precisely this way in the mid-seventeenth century. Many years later, soldiers fighting in the trenches of the First World War didn't have to worry about carrying breakable bottles of ink in their bags, for they were provided with packages of powdered ink. Another Festivus gift, Joyce Irene Whalley's Writing Implements and Accessories: From the Roman Stylus to the Typewriter, has taught me, inkidentally, that powdered ink was also widely used in British schools following the introduction of compulsory primary education in 1870. Whalley's wonderful book also reveals that it was common to see travelling inksellers on the streets of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. The second image posted above shows how these vendors solved the problem of transporting ink by getting a barrel-laden donkey to do all of the work. (I mentioned in a recent post that I'm currently thinking about a change of career. Perhaps, now that I have my new inkpot, I could become a travelling inkseller.)

Thanks to my inkpot, I can voyage without anxiety. Well, without most anxieties. Checkpoints at airports in the UK require all liquids carried in hand luggage to be stored in a separate, transparent plastic bag. Bottles of milk for a baby must be tasted in front of security staff by the adult carrying them. This is presumably to prove that the liquid within really is milk, but I'm not sure that I could maintain a normal facial expression if forced to sip Baby Ink's rather unpleasant formula. He likes it, but he'll put just about anything in his mouth. I have to fly to Paris in February and to Montreal in March. What will the security staff make of my travelling inkpot? They're probably used to seeing containers of shampoo and perfume, but will they recognize the strange device pictured above? Should I ask my local pen shop to write an explanatory letter, much as a doctor would for a patient needing to travel with a syringe and needles? (What would the note say? This person is a lunatic. By all means let him leave the UK, but please prevent him from returning?) Will I called upon to taste the ink? Might I be required to demonstrate how the inkpot works? And would my display be so captivating that it persuaded other passengers in the queue to cast off their ballpoints and switch to fountain pens? Thus ends my traveller's tale.

Ink in use today: Mont Blanc Racing Green.

PS: It has come to my attention that the Festivus Address announced in the previous post was saved in a format that some users might not be able to play. I have, therefore, converted the file to mp3 format, and inkterested parties can download it by clicking here.

Festivus Address

It’s nearly here!

Longtime readers of Ink Quest will know that I celebrate Festivus instead of Christmas. Festivus, for the unacquainted, is a non-denominational event held annually on 23 December. First made famous in an episode of Seinfeld entitled ‘The Strike’, the celebration is there for those who feel excluded by the general merriment of 25 December; it is a festival ‘for the rest of us’.

Festivus is not marked with a decorated tree; a bare aluminium (or aluminum, as our dear American readers know it) pole stands in the corner of the room instead. At the centre of the day lies a family meal that opens with ‘The Airing of Grievances’, in which each individual tells all of the others present at the table precisely how they have disappointed him or her in the past year. Many Festivus folk choose to use Frank Constanza’s inimitable ‘I’ve got a lot of problems with you people’ as a way of breaking the ice. After the meal come ‘The Feats of Strength’, where the head of the household selects another member of the family to take part in a wrestling match. Festivus is not over until the head of the household has been pinned to the floor. (For genuine footage of Festivus, please click here.)

One of the worst things about celebrating Festivus in the United Kingdom is the terrible imminence of the annual Christmas television and radio broadcast in which the Queen addresses her subjects. Matters are made even more miserable if, like me, you celebrate Festivus and are firmly opposed to the existence of the monarchy. And now that she's discovered YouTube, there's no escape.

With this in mind, I have chosen this year to beat her majesty at her own game. By clicking here, dear readers, you can download a recording of the 2007 Ink Quest Festivus Address. (You may need QuickTime to be able to play the file.) Save it to your iPod, insert your headphones, and select ‘Repeat Play’. Blast it from your car stereo with the windows wound down. Use it as the ringtone for your mobile phone. Set up a pirate radio station and broadcast the file on an endless loop from sunrise to sunset. Whatever you do tomorrow, dear readers, enjoy the miracle of Festivus.

Inks in use today: Diamine Indigo; Mont Blanc Racing Green.

Breaking news: Man, 36, stabbed by own pen

I suppose I had it coming.

I was driving from the city centre to Ikea yesterday evening, dear readers, when I nearly ended up in the great inkwell in the sky. As I approached the large roundabout before the Butetown Tunnels, I moved to the left-hand lane, checked that nothing was approaching from the right, and entered the roundabout. Any readers of Ink Quest familiar with Cardiff's road system will know that the lane swerves, thanks to some poor planning, sharply to the left at this point. (As many of you will not be familiar with the area that I am describing, I have posted an aerial photograph above. I was coming onto the larger of the two roundabouts shown from roughly the 6-o'clock position.)

Suddenly I noticed a huge flatbed lorry in front of me. It was not moving. Its hazard lights were flashing, but the layout of the road meant that I could not possibly have seen the vehicle as I entered the roundabout. (I had, moreover, looked briefly to my right, as traffic tends to come racing out of the tunnel and onto the roundabout.) I hit the brakes and waited for the airbag to activate.

Somehow, I stopped just short of the back of the lorry. Somehow, there was nothing travelling behind me, even though this stretch of road is usually quite busy. Before anything could make the same mistake and come crashing into me from behind, I switched lanes and sped away, beeping my horn furiously. As I drove on through the Bay, thanking my lucky stars, I started to notice a vague pain in my ribs. Wondering if the whole event was a JFK-style set-up by the Biro corporation to get me to slow down for a sniper's magic bullet, I reached inside my coat, expecting to find blood and an exit wound. I found only my pen.

Because I had been into work to drop off some books and to sign some papers, I had my Aurora Talentum loose in my inside pocket. When I braked, the seat belt locked, and it must have done so at a moment when the pen was pointing into my ribs. As my body lurched forward, the pen was driven by the belt into my chest. My toned six-pack obviously did its best to defy the laws of physics, but, as the old song has it, something's gotta give.

Fret not, dear readers: I will live to see and complain about another day. Had the pen been uncapped, however, and had the nib been pointing towards my heart, I would not be writing these words, for my stylish stilografica would have struck like a stiletto. When it has a point as sculpted as that of an Aurora Talentum, the pen is far mightier than the sword.

I checked my chest for bruising when I got home. In J.G. Ballard's brilliantly disturbing Crash, one of the characters who has come to see cars and car crashes in erotic terms proudly bears upon his body the collision-produced imprint of part of a car's dashboard. (I don't have my copy of the book here at home with me so I can't check the precise details. I have a feeling, though, that it's a mark left by the medallion in the centre of the steering wheel.) Would I find a similar mark left by my object of desire (but not sexual desire, dear readers; Ink Quest hasn't reached that stage yet)?

Pens do this all the time, of course: don't most people have a small bump on the middle finger of the hand with which they write? (Is there a technical/medical term for this lump? And what has actually happened to the finger? Has a groove been worn into the bone? Is it simply toughened skin?) But it's not that common for a pen to leave its mark upon its owner's chest. Would I, once my shirt had been removed, find a kind of tattoo made, in the most stabbing of ironies, without ink? Would the mirror image of the 'AURORA' emblazoned upon the cap of the pen be flesh of my flesh?

I am somewhat saddened to report that my skin was entirely unmarked. And I could barely feel where the pen had struck me by the end of the evening. This is perhaps the first time that one of my fountain pens has failed to make an impression upon me.

Inks in use today: Mont Blanc Racing Green; Noodler's Lexington Gray.

PS: Today's entry is dedicated to Arty, who sadly failed his driving test this morning. He chose to drown his sorrows with a bottle of Visconti Sepia, and it seems only fitting that this gesture earn him the title of honorary Penquod crew member. Who needs a car when you have a ship as fine as this in which to voyage?

Spinning Plates

I've been spinning plates.

Ink Quest's silence for eight days is explained by the fact that I have been lost in the final week of teaching before the Christmas break (or, as I like to think of it, the Festivus withdrawal). Universities are always chaotic at this time of year, but things seemed to be worse than ever last week. The emails kept coming, the students kept knocking on my door, the deadlines kept looming, the plates kept spinning. By 5pm on Friday I could do little but think of Armstrong and Miller's infamous teacher sketch. (Click here and here to be reminded of their finest hour.)

Spinning plates, in fact, is how I've come to think of life with ink. Because I have something like forty or fifty different bottles on the go (I can't face actually counting them), and because I tend only to have four or five fountain pens inked up at any given moment, I find myself constantly trying to keep the colours in rotation, revolving like spinning plates.

This perpetual motion means that I never actually finish a bottle of ink. I may obsessively use a certain shade for a couple of weeks -- Mont Blanc Racing Green found itself in favour a couple of months ago, for instance -- but my flitting from colour to colour prevents me from ever reaching the bottom of a bottle. Some items in my collection, ink fact, have been used just once. They sit in my ink box, wondering if they've done something to offend me, dreaming of the day when they will once again brush up against paper.

But all that has changed: one of the plates has spun so much that it has worn out. On Friday morning I held my empty Sailor Sapporo pen in my hand and looked at the array of inks before my eyes. Time was running out; the train would soon be leaving, so I needed to choose my colour for the day quickly. Suddenly seized by the urge to write with a dusty, vintage blue, I reached for the Diamine Indigo, but found barely a millimetre of ink in the bottle. Thrown into a panic, I toyed with about six other shades before settling upon Noodler's Aircorp Blue-Black as an alternative.

This crisis -- unknown until now upon the deck of the Penquod -- meant that Sunday afternoon took me, accompanied by an eerily compliant Baby Ink, to my local pen shop for a replacement bottle. I found the whole experience strangely flat (platus, as the Greeks would put it). I have become accustomed to buying ink a state of frenzied anticipation, precisely because the bottle in my hand contains a colour that is new to me. And the journey home is usually one in which I can do nothing but dream of unscrewing the lid and dipping my nib for the very first time. Sunday's shopping trip, however, was devoid of excitement. The whole affair was dull, familiar, empty. I have been writing with the new Diamine Indigo this morning, and I still adore the colour, but I can't help feeling a little deflated. The new isn't new any more.

More than ever it is clear to me that the quest for the perfect ink will never end. I am, as I have stated in previous posts, far too fickle and shallow ever to find a shade with which I will settle down happily ever after. I need the constant thrill of the unknown, the untested, the unfamiliar. Ezra Pound's 'Make it new' should be emblazoned on the side of the good ship Penquod. The plates will continue to grow in number. My collection of colours will never stop expanding. When it comes to ink, I can never have too much on my plate.

Ink in use today: Diamine Indigo.

Fillip: Broth

I finally know how to soup up my life.

I have felt for some time that I need a change of career. With the exception of a few wonderful people (this is as close to philanthropy as I get), I detest the world of academia, so everyday working life in a university has become something of a chore. And now a fillip has come my way.

I happened to read in Saturday's Guardian newspaper that the famous Seinfeld character of the Soup Nazi is based upon the real-life owner of New York's Soup Kitchen International, which can be found at 259 West 55th Street. (If any readers of Ink Quest are not familiar with the Soup Nazi, they can watch him in action by clicking here.)

Intrigued, I emailed honorary Penquod crew member Stefan, who lives in New York, to ask if he has ever visited the soup outlet in question. In his reply he said that he hasn't, but he did suggest that I might consider setting up a branch in South Wales by pursuing the franchising option outlined on the Soup Kitchen International website.

I have always loved soup. A restaurant, for me, lives or dies by what it serves in its soup bowls. Every trattoria needs a masterful minestrone; a French bistro is rien without a decent soupe à l'oignon; and a Chinese restaurant will be in the soup if it doesn't serve a balanced hot and sour soup. And I think that I have what it takes to be a Soup Nazi: I make a spectacular carrot and coriander, and I share the Seinfeld character's misanthropic contempt for those who do not see and do things my way.

But what does this have to with ink? Is there even a soupçon of a connection? Well, dear readers, I'm souping up Soup Kitchen International into Soup Kitchen Inkternational by also selling ink to take away in small polystyrene containers. Alongside the vats of the day's lunch offerings will be inkwells filled with shades that neatly match the soups for sale. (Tomato=Noodler's Antietam; Pea and Mint=Private Reserve Spearmint; Lentil=Omas Sepia, and so on.) Hungry office workers will be able to scurry back to their desks, warm their souls with soup, and then refill their pens for the afternoon's scribblings. Drink it and ink it will be my motto.

Ink fact, as part of my work towards the renaissance of the nib, it will be compulsory to accept ink with each lunch order, and every customer will be required to show his or her fountain pen before being allowed to step up to my counter. Should anyone dare to wield a ballpoint, I will shout 'No soup or ink for you!' and send the imbecile away. I don't care how gruel this sounds; if people don't like it, they consommé for damages.

Inks in use today: Diamine Indigo; Noodler's Walnut.

Un Chien and 'Allo'

I'll be dog-goned.

After Friday's encounter with a stranger in Ikea (see previous entry), I thought that I'd be safe from unknown members of the public for a while. How wrong I was.

While I was sitting in the station waiting for my train this morning, a man came in with his dog and took up residence on the bench opposite me. I've seen him around on various occasions. He never actually catches a train, and he's often carrying a large collection of plastic bags. I think he comes to the station for warmth and conversation. His dog, an exuberant little creature, bounds over to me and places its paws on my knees. I initially assume that it can smell traces of my three cats and that it is about to maul me to death. But it's a friendly soul and wants only to have its soft head patted. And it turns out that the dog's owner is just as sociable, for he then strikes up conversation:

'Do you write with a fountain pen?'.

I assume that I've misheard him. How could he possibly know that I adore fountain pens? I don't have one in my hand; I'm simply reading the newspaper. Is this some kind of set-up? Am I being filmed for a special episode of Candid Camera devoted to writing instruments?

'Sorry?', I ask.

'Do you write with a fountain pen?'. There's no doubt about it this time. He really is asking me about fountain pens.

'Uh, yes, I do'.

'Here you are, then', he replies, reaching into his pocket and removing a Parker Vector, which he hands to me. 'I found it over by the church yesterday, and I've been trying to give it away ever since. No one else has been interested'.

I can see why, to some extent. As the first photograph posted above shows, the clip is bent outwards from the cap, and the body has taken a bit of a battering. (Are the teeth marks the work of the dog?)But the nib is absolutely fine, and the pen even came with a blue ink cartridge already installed.

My train arrived soon after I had received this strange gift (I'm not making any of this up, inkidentally), so I didn't get chance to find out more about the man's attempts to give it away. (How many people refused before I accepted? What reasons did they give?) As the carriage pulled away, I glanced back into the waiting room. The man and the dog had disappeared. Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Do I wake or sleep?

When I arrived home at the end of the day, another gift was waiting for me. I have often stated here, dear readers, that one of my great heroes is Roland Barthes. But I don't that I've ever mentioned a magnificent, little-known work of his -- unavailable in English, sadly -- entitled 'Variations sur l'écriture', in which he discusses, among other things, the significance of different colours of ink, the pleasures of paper, and the development of cursive handwriting. Until recently I have always believed that this text is only available in the Oeuvres Complètes, but I discovered some weeks ago that Seuil published in 2000 a new edition of Le Plaisir du texte with 'Variations sur l'écriture' included as a companion piece. More importantly, I learnt that this version included a series of illustrations not printed in the Oeuvres Complètes.

My local bookshop has been involved in long and extremely complex discussions with Paris ever since. When the wrong edition of Le Plaisir du texte arrived a couple of weeks ago, it looked for a moment as if the inkwell had run dry. But then the Inkette received a crucial phone call from the bookshop yesterday. 'Allo, Madame L'Inkette', said the voice. 'L'inquête est terminée. Le livre est ici'.

There are too many pleasures in 'Variations sur l'écriture' to mention here. I could rave about the pictures of different types of writing. I could celebrate the image, reproduced from Barthes' L'Empire des signes, of the calligraphy brush leaving a sumptuous trail of ink. I could become delirious about Carlo Ossola's introduction to the book, in which the numerous shades of ink used in Barthes' original manuscript are catalogued. But I will confine myself instead to the delightful sub-section entitled 'Couleur', where Barthes writes the following:

A interroger: les écritures colorées – le peu qui en existe. La couleur, c’est la pulsion; nous avons peur d’en signer nos messages; c’est pourquoi nous écrivons noir; nous ne nous permettons que des exceptions réglées, platement emblématiques: du bleu pour la distinction, du rouge pour la correction. Toute saute de couleur est particulièrement incongrue: imagine-t-on des missives jaunes ou roses, voire grises? des livres en brun-rouge, en vert forêt, en bleu indien? Et pourtant: qui sait si le sens des mots n’en serait pas changé??

[To be examined: coloured writings – the few of them that exist. Colour is impulse; we are afraid to sign our messages with it; that is why we write black; we only allow ourselves well-ordered, flatly emblematic exceptions: blue for distinction, red for correction. Any change of colour is particularly incongruous: can you imagine yellow, pink, or even grey missives? books in red-brown, in forest green, in Indian blue? And yet, who knows if the meaning of the words would not be changed?]

Sacré bleu (indien)! It really doesn't get any better than this, does it? I now know why Seuil has reprinted 'Variations sur l'écriture' alongside a piece that discusses the pleasure of reading. Ink fact, this goes beyond mere pleasure, for 'Couleur' comes in a section named 'Jouissance'. Oh, la, la!.

Inks in use today: Parker Penman Sapphire; Parker Penman Mocha.