What's the Use?

This blog is useless.

I say this partly because I have apparently managed to reduce its number of readers by around 30 per cent in the last week or so. (Only another 70 per cent to go! Encore un effort!) What seems like a fall in readership may simply be Sitemeter's inability to detect those who read Ink Quest via one of the new feeds that I recently added to the very bottom of the page. Alternatively, the slump might have occurred because I have, in my endless drive towards invisibility, deleted my Blogger profile, which used to list various fascinating facts about me. I understand from my puzzled reading of anthropological textbooks that many human beings like to know things about each other in order that they may develop connections and form social groups, so perhaps my removing the personal details has alienated certain readers. (As a colleague recently said to me, shortly after I had burned several professional bridges in the course of an ordinary afternoon at the office, 'There won't be anyone left for you to alienate before long'.) Or perhaps people have simply started to lose inkterest in the voyages of the Penquod. They're a touch repetitive, after all. (Man is still looking for the perfect ink. Man complains about something. Man claims that the universe is persecuting him. Man toys with some inane puns.)

But I also note the uselessness of Ink Quest for another reason. Ink fact, I want defiantly to celebrate its useless existence.

One particular incident has led me to this point. Yesterday morning, in the blazing sunshine, I stood with Baby Ink on the beach near Ink Towers and spent about half an hour throwing stones into the water. He may be small, but he's an unstoppable machine when it comes to the casting of pebbles into the waves. After about twenty minutes, it occurred to me that what we were doing was, while amusing, utterly devoid of purpose. Our throwing of stones had no aim (a bit like my throwing of stones, come to think of it), no planned outcome, no use. We were throwing stones ... for the sake of throwing stones. ('It ain't why ... it just is', as Van Morrison once sang.)

Contemporary English uses 'useless' in an almost exclusively negative sense. If something is 'useless', it's a failure to be ignored and rejected. And we live in a world, of course, that's dominated by principles of efficiency and measurability. In British higher education, for instance, it's perfectly common to find that every course (or 'module', as they're usually now called) has a set of 'learning outcomes'. For every module that I teach, in other words, I have to give an account of the outcome before the course has even begun. Students, if I may lapse into the future anterior, must know what will have happened and what they will have learned before the meeting of the first class. I am simply not allowed to say 'Well, we will read some books, think, talk, write, and see where we end up'. There is no space for such cavalier experimentation, for not knowing the outcome in advance would risk inefficiency. Everything must be predicted, predictable, measurable, measured. I have to know in advance what use my teaching will be, what it will add to students' 'transferable skills'; I can't risk being useless by aiming to read for the sake of reading, for the sake of seeing where, if anywhere, the words take us.

When I started teaching in higher education a decade ago, I tried to preserve traces of experimentation, of unpredictability, in my courses. I would, for instance, regularly devise learning outcomes to which I then paid no attention. No one seemed to notice, and the students produced some wonderfully original work. But now, ten years on, I have given up on ever seeing British higher education rise above the level of bland mediocracy. The culture of efficiency and measurability is at work on every possible level, and it's become impossible to see a light on the horizon. The idiots have won. What once seemed like a vocation has become a job to me -- I go in at 9am, do the act, whinge, gossip, and go home at 5pm -- and I'm just counting down the days to retirement in 2030-something. I teach my courses and I write my books like I stacked apples as a sixteen-year-old weekend employee of Safeway: efficiently, consistently, and with my mind somewhere else.

In all of this, ink -- and, by extension, Ink Quest -- stands out as something majestically useless. The endless hours I spend -- no, waste -- choosing a colour with which to write, looking at samples online, or wandering around cities in search of the perfect shade are a defiant antidote to the daily demands of efficiency and predictability. Yes, ink has a use -- it allows us to write -- but when it's taken to the level found here or at a forum such as the Fountain Pen Network, it enters the realm of the wholly unnecessary, the staggeringly useless. An inkthusiast doesn't need that forty-fifth blue or every single colour made by a particular manufacturer; the bottles become increasingly useless as they amass, ink fact, and it's not common for a lover of ink to use a colour just once before moving on to something new, thus rendering the bottle quite literally useless.

But I don't see this as anything to worry about. Ink fact, I think that it's time to reclaim the word 'useless' from those who wield it only as an insult. (I caused a minor controversy when I argued some months ago that lovers of fountain pens should embrace all charges of pretentiousness; I dread to think, then, what readers will make of my suggestion that they celebrate the uselessness of their ink.) In a world where bland efficiency rules and where maximizing the input-output ratio is the name of the game, ink stands -- nay, casually leans -- as a magnificent sign of resistance. Our messing around with colours, our idle mixing of shades in the hope that the perfect tint will emerge, our sending of letters that say nothing but 'This is Omas Sepia. One of the nicest browns around, I think', our pausing at the end of a page to let the ink dry for a precious few seconds -- all of these things are a stubborn blot on the landscape over which efficiency and measurability loom. When we write or perhaps simply doodle, our pens are spokes in the wheels of mediocracy. That minute spent refilling a pen while a tedious form from the university bureaucrats awaits completion is a minute reclaimed from banality. A minor victory in a war that we've always already lost.

The French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, whose La Condition postmoderne foresaw in 1979 what principles of efficiency would do to higher education, once remarked that 'In a world where success means gaining time, thinking has a single, but irredeemable, fault: it is a waste of time'. (He's describing, not endorsing, that opinion, of course, and much of his work passionately defends experimentation and uselessness in the face of a creeping banality.) I could waste hours of your time celebrating the marvels of Lyotard's work, but you have ink to play with, dear readers. I will, then, simply say this: in a world where success means gaining time, inking has a single, but irredeemable fault: it is a waste of time. And that's why it matters. Ink for all you are worth. Waste your time and others'.

Don't use less; use more, useless.

Inks in useless use today: Noodler's Walnut; Waterman Florida Blue.

Cuff Inks

An off-the-cuff post on the cuff.

I left you in a state of suspense earlier this week, dear readers, as I reported that I was about to leave for my annual external examining trip to an unidentified university in the north of England. More specifinkally, I reported that I was trying to choose the ink that I would take with me for the signing of the forms that announce students' degree results.

I have now returned to Ink Towers, and I can reveal that I ended up selecting Noodler's Walnut. For the reasons outlined in my previous missive, I gave serious thought to Omas Sepia -- the Great Brown Whale -- but I eventually settled upon Walnut because it seemed wrong to break the Noodler's run. (Students graduating in 2007 saw their results endorsed by me in Noodler's Eternal Brown, while last year's group were treated to Noodler's Sequoia. 'Mum, dad, I got the result I wanted ... but forget about that. You should have seen the ink that the external examiner used to sign the sheets!')

Yesterday morning, then, after an evening in which my host department drank so much wine with dinner that one member of staff fell down -- or possibly up; no reliable witness could be found -- some stairs and was last seen on his way to hospital (my teetotalism seems to baffle and amuse them), we assembled for the annual ritual of determining degree classifications and, more importantly, signing the paperwork. At the end of the meeting, the departmental secretary presented me with the various pieces of paper needing my signature. I uncapped my Sailor Sapporo and unleashed the lovely dark brown ink. 'Ah', she said, 'now I remember. You use those funny inks'. She looked down at my scrawl. 'It doesn't seem to be drying', she noted.

She was right. The university in question is clearly equipped with the paper least receptive to Noodler's Walnut. It didn't look particularly shiny, but something about it was refusing to allow the ink to dry properly. 'Have you got any blotting paper with you?', asked the secretary. 'I'm afraid not', I replied, making a mental note to spend some of my examining fee on an Herbin rocker blotter for use at next year's meeting.

At this point, one of the professors in the department, who's a good friend of mine, came over to see what was happening and how I had managed to bring the entire end-of-year examining process to a halt. 'Oh, of course', he sighed. 'You and your bloody ink fetish.' 'You knew all about it when you appointed me', I replied. 'I have always been open and honest about my perverse practices. Besides, what kind of shambolic department are you running here? Where's your supply of blotting paper?'

'I think that we stopped using it in about 1964', he said. 'But I have an idea', he then added, looking sceptically at my French cuffs. (He had told me when I arrived that I was overdressed for the occasion.) 'Why don't you just use your flashy cuffs to soak up the excess ink?'

In the end, the secretary managed to dry the ink by waving the sheets in the air for a minute or two. My cuffs, that is to say, escaped unscathed. But my friend's remark started me thinking, and I spent the four-hour train journey home yesterday afternoon plotting -- nay, blotting -- the launch of a range of shirts for users of real ink, for inkthusiasts. These garments will still have double cuffs, which are one of life's absolute essentials, but, while most of each shirt will be made of luxurious cotton, the cuffs themselves will be formed from multiple layers of blotting paper. When the wearer has, say, signed his or her name (yes, dear readers, my clothing range will be available for both sexes), a cuff may be gently pressed against the ink. The marked layer of blotting paper can then be peeled away and discarded, leaving the inkthusiast with an immaculate cuff.

I must leave you now, dear readers, for I need to roll up my sleeves and get to work on the finer points of my design for the cuff blotter. There are, after all, complicated matters of chemise-try to consider. I only hope that my great scheme does not end in disaster and blot my cuffybook. I must be sure not to lose my inkvestors' money; I don't need even more people getting shirty with me.

Ink awaiting cuff today: Noodler's Walnut.

Ponderink

I lift a mode of title from Raven's March; I hope its crew will take it as an homage rather than a liberty.

Today's post will be brief, dear readers, and it is mainly intended to signal that Ink Quest will fall silent until at least the end of the week, as the Penquod is about to make its annual journey to an unnamed university in the north of England for external examining duties.

As the final part of this ritual involves my signing certificates that confirm students' final degree results, I always spend the days before my departure wondering about -- ponderink -- the colour of ink with which I will make my official mark. Two years ago it was Noodler's Eternal Brown; last year it was Noodler's Sequoia. What will it be this time around?

It would be a shame to break the Noodler's run and to ruin an inky trinity, but I'm currently considering Omas Sepia. I haven't written with this particular colour for a while, but longtime readers of this blog will know that it was the Great Brown Whale after which I chased for many months in the early days of Ink Quest. I still think it's one of the most elegant browns available, but I seem to have drifted away from it in recent times. Perhaps it's time for a renaissance.

I say that partly because I found my faith in another love restored last night. I have noted in many previous posts how Van Morrison is, along with Bob Dylan, one of my musical heroes. If I had to take just one album with me to a desert island, it would be Veedon Fleece. I've seen Morrison play live on probably something like 25 occasions, but I stopped going to his concerts in 2003. The recent albums were uninteresting, and the live performances had lost their magic. I decided to call it a day, rely upon the memories, and take refuge in the earlier recorded work.

After a break of six years, however, I went to see him play in Cardiff's Millennium Centre last night. Old friend Nixon, with whom I've seen Morrison on several glorious occasions, came over from London for the event, and, after some waterfront snacking, we took our seats and hoped for the best. I was expecting to be disappointed, but I soon found my breath taken away. The magic was back. Songs rarely performed live were unfurled. I think I'm right in saying that 'Fair Play' was played for only the second time since it was first recorded for Veedon Fleece. And I had barely recovered from the shock of hearing that song when we were treated to a sublime verson of 'In the Garden', during which Van faded the band out until all we could really hear was his acoustic guitar. He then whispered 'And your holy guardian angel' for what seemed like several minutes. That alone would have been enough to keep me happy for a lifetime, but then 'Streets of Arklow', also from Veedon Fleece, began. I've been waiting to hear this performed live for about eighteen years. Nixon, who knew this, glanced over and smiled. I nodded in shivered awe.

Before this becomes an issue of Rolling Stone, let's get back to ink, to ponderink. It seems only appropriate that, having refound my faith in Van Morrison, I should allow the Great Brown Whale back into my life and my pen. No guru, no method, no teacher; just Omas Sepia and a sense of wonder. Ink the garden.

Ink in use today: Herbin Cacao du Brésil.

Reflections

What do you see in ink?

I mean that literally, dear readers. What do you see when you gaze into a bottle or a pool of ink?

In 'The Mirror of Ink', one of the tales in Jorge Luis Borges' A Universal History of Infamy, it is told that Yakub the Afflicted, a tyrannical governor of the Sudan in the mid-nineteenth century, was shown miraculous visions by a sorcerer named Abderramen al-Masmudi. More specifically, those visions appeared in a pool of ink poured into Yakub's right palm, which had first been adorned with 'a magic square'. Initially, what Yakub sees is fairly untroubling: horses run through green fields, for instance. But soon a mysterious figure known as the Masked One begins to haunt the visions. Because his face is hidden behind a veil, his precise identity remains unknown.

On the fourteenth day of the moon of Barmajat, however, something rather dramatic happens. As usual, Abderramen pours the ink into Yakub's palm. Yakub asks the sorcerer to show him 'a just and irrevocable punishment'. In the ink, a condemned man is brought forward for execution. It is the Masked One. The tyrant demands that the veil be removed, and 'the horrified eyes of Yakub at last saw the visage -- which was his own face'. He watches as, in the scene played out in the pool of ink, the sword falls upon his own neck. At this very moment, reports the narrator, the real Yakub 'moaned and cried out in a voice that inspired no pity in me, and fell to the floor, dead'.

Borges' brief narrative is attributed to Richard Burton's The Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa, but you will not find it there. Edward William Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, which dates from 1837, has something that loosely resembles the tale, but it's far from a perfect fit. I'd always assumed, then, that Borges was, as he so often does, inkventing bibliographical sources and passing off fantastic fiction for fact. But a chance discovery has led me to believe that ink-gazing is more than imaginary.

For reasons that are now lost in mystery, I stumbled this week across an article published in 1916 in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. Its author is William H. Worrell -- the two syllables of the surname and the golden 'or' after the initial consonant curiously conjure up 'Borges' -- and the title of the piece is 'Ink, Oil and Mirror Gazing Ceremonies in Modern Egypt'. This fascinating text explains at length how the practice of seeing visions in ink (or some other suitable liquid, such as olive oil) was well known in Egypt across many centuries. (Worrell's article is nearly a century old now, of course; does the ritual still exist?)

At one point, he describes witnessing an inky seance in Cairo in March 1913. A magician sits with a young boy in front of him. Verses from the Qur'ân are written upon a piece of paper and placed beneath the boy's cap. The smell of burning coriander and resin fills the room, and sections of the holy book are read aloud. The magician knocks on the floor numerous times. A seal is drawn upon the boy's palm, and his hand is held over the smoke until the ink is dry. A pool of fresh ink is created in the child's palm. Smoke is fanned into his face, and the following conversation takes place:

Magician: See the ocean! Do you see a ship?
Boy: Yes.
After questions about the appearance of the ship.
Boy: I see a man sitting upon a chair.
Magician: Salute him.
Boy: Salâm 'alêkum!
After a pause.
Boy: I see a white appearance.
Magician: Say 'Bring coffee, O king!'
Magician: Has he drunk?
Boy: Yes.

Numerous readers of Ink Quest have collections of ink so vast that no bottle will ever be drained. Some, I know, have so many shades that they are unable to remember, when asked, if they own a particular colour. In short, inkthusiasts often have more ink than they can shake a magician's stick at. It sits there in bottles, pooling, reflecting, signifying nothing.

On reflection, then, it seems to me that we should take a leaf out of Borges' book and start looking for visions in our ink. The practice, I learnt from Worrell's article, actually has a name: scrying. The essay also reproduces the magic seal drawn in the palm of the boy who saw the ship, so we have all that we need.



Hold out your hand. Draw the magic symbol. Create a pool of ink in your palm. Gaze deeply into it.

- Do you see a ship?
- Yes. It has Penquod written on the side.
- What else do you see?
- I see a solitary figure on the deck. He looks grumpy.
- Salute him.
- I would, but he's shouting 'Go away and leave me alone'.
- Say 'Bring coffee, O king!' ... Has he drunk?
- No, he's spat it out and said that he doesn't drink instant. I think he's now shouting 'It's French Roast or nothing!'.
- We've conjured up a monster, a vile demon. Let the ink fall from your palm at once, child. Look away.

Yes, dear readers, ink-gazing has its risks. You have been warned. If you see visions that disturb you, don't come scrying to me.

Inks in palm today: Herbin Cacao du Brésil; Herbin Bleu Nuit.

Cover Story

Is there a secular way to say 'Hallelujah!'?

I ask because I've just heard a fascinating programme all about the word 'Hallelujah' on BBC Radio 4. Being devoutly secular, I usually piously switch off anything with a religious theme, but this particular broadcast was billed as a purely historical/cultural analysis of the word in question, so I decided to stick with it. I nearly lost faith when various hymns were played, but salvation came when the dicussion turned to Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' and Jeff Buckley's famous cover version of the song.

I know that what I'm about to confess is sacrilegious, but what the hell: I really don't care much for Leonard Cohen's work. Actually, that's not quite accurate. I think that he's written some wonderful songs, but I simply don't like the way that he arranges and performs them. His voice, above all, does absolutely nothing for me. (This is probably a little bizarre coming from someone who believes Bob Dylan to be one of the finest singers of all time, I know.) 'Hallelujah' is a perfect case in point. The lyrics and the melody are, in my opinion, exquisite, but I find Cohen's version of his own song virtually unlistenable.

It's become something of a cliché to note that Jeff Buckley recorded the definitive interpretation of Cohen's 'Hallelujah', but sometimes clichés are clichés because they clinch the truth. The Radio 4 programme discussed Buckley's take on the song, and someone -- the presenter, I think -- remarked that she could remember exactly where she was when she heard the track for the first time. So can I. It was the summer of 1994, and I had just finished my undergraduate studies. I had moved back to my parents' house, and I'd been eagerly awaiting the release of Buckley's first album. I bought it on a day trip to Cardiff, and I sat down to listen to it that evening. When I got to 'Hallelujah', I don't think I breathed for the seven minutes that follow Buckley's dramatic breathing out. See if it has the same effect upon you:



Almost fifteen years on, the song stops me in my tracks whenever I hear it. A colleague of mine -- let's call him Morty, shall we, dear readers? -- used to play it to a lecture theatre of around 175 first-year undergraduates to make a point about postmodern culture. I sat in on the event once or twice, and I have never heard a group of students sit so quietly.

But why am I telling you this? What has 'Hallelujah' got to do with ink? Well, dear readers, the programme's discussion of Buckley's rendition of Leonard Cohen's song started me thinking about the entire business of cover versions. I'm endlessly fascinated by the ways in which a song can change as it leaves the hands of its creator and finds itself interpreted by another musician. Bob Dylan must surely be one of the most covered modern artists of all, and some strange things have happened to his songs when others have recorded them. Jimi Hendrix's take on 'All Along the Watchtower' is perhaps the most famous example. What was a fairly quiet acoustic song on Dylan's John Wesley Harding album became, on Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, a fierce electric howl:





Less famous, perhaps, and certainly more strange, is the Neville Brothers' take on Dylan's 'With God on Our Side', in which what was originally a caustic attack upon American religious-fuelled war-mongering apparently found itself turned into something of a hymn. (That's how I've always heard it, anyway.) I can't find the studio version of the Neville Brothers' interpretation online, but I have managed to track down a live version, which you can compare at your leisure to Dylan's original 1963 recording. The crucial twist comes at the very end of the cover, when Aaron Neville throws in a line not present in the source: 'Jesus loves me, this I know':





But I still haven't told you what this has to do with ink, have I, dear readers? Worry not: the core of my sermon is coming...

It seems to me that we inkthusiasts are, when we fill our beloved pens with the latest colour to capture our attention, actually engaged in an act of interpretation -- inkterpretation, if you will -- that's a little like the act of covering another musician's song. You don't have to spend long browsing The Fountain Pen Network to see that lovers of ink often disagree about the properties of a particular shade. What one person finds slow to dry will prove immune to smudging after two seconds for another. What shades elegantly for inkthusiast X will come out a solid colour for inkthusiast Y. What flows freely for me may wither up inside your favourite pen.

It's clear, then, that we're actively shaping the outcome when we switch nibs, filling methods, brand of pen, or when we write with a different pressure. We're interpreting the ink, in other words, just as a singer might phrase a line differently when covering someone else's song. When we cover a sheet of paper with ink, we're actually covering that ink. (I don't quite know who's the original artist in this rambling analogy. Maybe ink is a cover version without an original, a simulacrink.)

All of this means, of course, that ink is constantly reinvented, reborn, reshaped, rewritten. Each new nib marks a genesis, a revelation. The soul of ink will never die. Take these words out into the world, my children, and shout them from highest mountain. Better still, use your sturdiest nibs to carve them into tablets of stone. Ink, that inkmortal substance, has survival covered. Here ends my covering letter.

Inks being interpreted today: Aurora Blue; Herbin Cacao du Brésil.

Inkarceration

Someone must have been telling lies about me. These may be the last words that I write as a free man.

Well, I say 'free', but it's all relative. Let's not forget that I am constantly persecuted by the world and that everyone is out to get me. Including my own family, ink fact, and it is here that my terrifying tale begins.

The Inkette looks after Baby Ink at home on Mondays, so I asked her if, while I was in work, she could take to the post office a package containing a vial of ink destined for Seattle-based honorary Penquod crew member Anna. 'When they ask what's in the envelope so that they can fill in the custom slip', I said, 'just tell them that it's ink and that it's worth less than a pound.'

'I'm not embarrassing myself by saying that there's ink in the package', snorted the Inkette. 'They'll think I'm a freak, an inkoid. No, I'll lie and say that it's something else altogether.'

I became rather alarmed at this point, for I know that the authorities are constantly watching my every move, waiting for an excuse to take me in 'for questioning'. And because the ink-filled envelope contained a letter signed by me, I would, I realized, inkevitably be held responsible for the Inkette's crime against Royal Mail and the customs service.

But my troubles did not stop there. Later that day, the Inkette took Baby Ink to her parents' house, where he happily played for several hours. At one point, he trotted into the living room with the cordless telephone in his hand. It was taken from him and replaced in its cradle, but it rang some moments later. It was the police. A '999' emergency call had, it seemed, been just received from the telephone, but all that the anxious operator could hear was a small child babbling away to himself.

Yes, dear readers, my own son was clearly attempting to shop me to the authorities. Although he is barely two years of age, he has clearly figured out that 999 is the number for the emergency services, and he evidently thinks nothing of naming names ... even when the surname is the same as his. All that saved me is the fact that his sentences are still relatively inkhoate. I have no doubt that he genuinely wanted to say 'My father is an inkthusiast who has committed international mail fraud', but this probably came out as 'Car ... Digger ... Clarkson ... Teddy ... Bottle ... Mummy help?' (Yes, I regret to inform you, dear readers, that he is still obsessed by Jeremy Clarkson.)

But maybe the call itself was enough to set the red lights flashing in the bunker. ('Baby Ink has called it in. Lock and load, people.') Maybe the raid is about to take place. Maybe they're just watching for a little longer in an attempt to gather more evidence to use against me. (I will inkevitably, in the light of the well-known model of Esterbrook fountain pen, be addressed as 'J.' throughout the trial.)

I will do my best to continue writing Ink Quest from behind bars, dear readers, and possibly under the name 'Antonio Gramscink', but life will be difficult. The Marquis de Sade was famously denied 'any use of pencil, ink, pen, and paper' during his time in the Bastille, and I am sure that the biro-enslaved authorities have a similar prohibition lined up for me. I call on you, then, to throw vials of ink up to me in my cell. And not merely so that I can continue to write about the quest for the perfect ink. No, dear readers, ink will also be my means of escape. As I have noted in previous posts, the word 'ink' has its roots in what is caustic, in what burns. I will, therefore, place a few drops of our sacred liquid on the bars of my cell when the guards are not looking. The caustic fluid will gradually eat through the metal, and I will be able to leap to freedom.

Who needs a nail file or a saw when ink is at hand? Because inks are serrated, I will cease to be incarcerated.

Inks in use today: Aurora Blue; Herbin Cacao du Brésil.

Bumazhnink

The Russian has been rushing in.

Not long after I posted yesterday's ramblings about my desire for a pocket book, honorary Penquod crew member Stefan informed me that Tolstoy's original text has Anatole removing a 'bumazhnik' from his pocket. 'Bumazhnik', Stefan explained, literally means 'paper holder'. Perhaps, he continued, 'billfold' would be a suitable translation, and he added that Anthony Briggs had clearly avoided 'pocket book' in his recent translation of War and Peace because the term has distinctly feminine connotations not present in 'bumazhnik'.

I'm fascinated by how complicated this apparently trivial issue has become, and I have no doubt that Ink Quest's readers will feel the same. The OED definition and Stefan's email have made me realize that 'pocket book' has shades of meaning in the United States that it does not on this side of the Atlantic. As far as I know, the term doesn't have specifically feminine connotations in Britain, but that's probably because it's hardly used at all. I've never heard of a woman carrying a 'pocket book' here. A 'handbag' or a 'purse', yes, but the latter word doesn't mean here what it means in, say, Stefan's native New York, of course. (Are 'purse' and 'pocket book' interchangeable, though?)

But back to the real question: where am I going to find a 'bumazhnik', a 'paper holder'? Once again, Stefan's email has suggested a way forward. In addition to giving me information about Tolstoy's Russian, he happened to mention that he has a special wallet that he uses when travelling by air. 'It's one of my favorite possessions', he wrote, 'with pockets, marked in gold lettering, for Passport, Currency, Landing Card, and Baggage Checks.'

When I read these words, I experienced a moment of revelation. I own a Smythson travel wallet that fits this description to an elegant gold 'T'. It's an absurdly decadent object, but longtime readers of Ink Quest will hardly be surprised by its extravagance, I'm sure. As I have noted in previous posts, I don't really like travelling, but I do get excited whenever it's time to prepare my travel wallet for a journey. I've often considered using it for the 15-minute train ride to work, ink fact.

It seems to me that the object in question would make a wonderful 'bumazhnik', for its various compartments offer plenty of space for storing letters and other ink-covered sheets of paper. The only problem is that it could never fit in a pocket -- it's 15cm x 25cm -- so its future as a 'pocket book' is a little doubtful. Will I have to carry it around in my hand, as if it were a handbag or one of those marvellous little bags that men are permitted to carry in their hands certain parts of mainland Europe? (That trend has never caught on in Britain, sadly, and I believe that the practice is technically illegal in South Wales. Viewers of Seinfeld will be familiar, of course, with what happens to Jerry when he dares to step out onto the streets of New York sporting a 'European carry-all'.)



Or could my travel wallet become a pocket book? I've often felt that men's modern jackets and coats (cue the old Welsh question, 'Whose coat is that jacket?') aren't made with sufficient attention to pockets. I am, for instance, currently looking for a new summer jacket, and I've found myself putting countless offerings back on the rail because the pockets are too small or, worse still, non-existent. There is, inkidentally, a lovely moment in Roland Barthes' Incidents where he complains about a new windbreaker that he's purchased while in New York. '[I]t fits badly', he complains, 'the sleeves are too long and there is no inside pocket, so I feel crammed with objects, at risk of losing them -- the way I lost my cigar case from this same jacket; already I am not comfortable this Evening.' (Don't ask me why he chose to capitalize the final word.) Like my great hero, I am not comfortable in a jacket if it lacks suitable pockets, and the inside pockets, I feel, are the most important of all.

I have begun to think that I will never find a suitable jacket for the summer; I am, for this reason, already eagerly anticipating the death of the leaves and the onset of winter, when I can once again dress happily (I use the term loosely) in my long coat. But perhaps I can kill two birds with one sartorial stone. I have always dreamed of having my clothes tailor-made on Savile Row, so maybe I should take my first step into the world of bespoke luxury by having a summer jacket made to measure. When the tailor asks me what kind of pockets I would like inside the garment, I will say that I need something big enough to hold a 15cm x 25cm travel wallet. ('Oh, and while you're at it, could you make space for three fountain pens, a travelling inkwell, some blotting paper, a bag of French Roast coffee beans, a bottle of Floris No. 89, and six volumes of Proust?')

Yes, dear readers, my travel wallet will, thanks to an excessively large pocket, become a pocket book, and I will be able to carry my sheets of ink-filled paper close to my heart at all times. The bumazhnink is born.

Inks in use today: Waterman Blue-Black; Noodler's Nightshade.

PS (4 June, 10.30am): Following a recent promotion at work, I have just received an invitation to a celebratory reception with the Vice-Chancellor. While I have no intention of attending, I couldn't help being intrigued by the dress code for men signalled at the bottom of the invitation: lounge suit. I'm not quite sure what a lounge suit is -- a colleague who also received the invitation has proposed that I wear a smoking jacket and slippers -- but it sounds like something that would go rather well with a pocket book. Everything's coming together very nicely, I'd say.

PPS (4 June, 12.40pm): A little internet browsing has revealed that a lounge suit is not as exotic as I initially thought. According to several websites, 'lounge suit' is essentially a synonym for 'business suit', so I suppose that it's used on invitations to make it clear that evening wear is not required. As I wear a 'business suit' to work every day, I could clearly make a seamless transition from office to reception with the V-C. Or could I? I'm a little alarmed by what Dresscodeguide.com has to say about the conventions of the lounge suit. Under 'Accessories', it declares 'Avoid novelty items'. My entire life is novelty items -- pens, inks, luxury notebooks, and so on -- and I regularly have at least one of these items in the inner pocket of the jacket of my suit. Beyond that, I find the suggestion that a watch is optional rather scandalous: a fine watch is, like a fine pen, absolutely essential (de wrist-geur, perhaps). And then there's the commandment about fastening the top button of the shirt. I'm all for crisp elegance, but I feel positively strangled if I don't have my top button undone. (I can't, incidentally, wait to hear what honorary Penquod crew member and bow-tie-defender Stefan has to say about the declaration that bow ties are 'acceptable but are very unusual and should be avoided'.) Lounging is clearly not for me, although I have to say that the term 'lounge' has a certain aptness. I have just checked the OED, and the term is possibly derived from 'lungis', which the dictionary explains in the following manner:


[a. OF. longis:L. Longnus apocryphal name of the centurion who pierced our Lord with a spear, by popular etymology associated with L. longus long.]

a. A long, slim, awkward fellow; a lout. b. One who is long in doing anything; a laggard, a lingerer.

I may no longer be slim, but I am quite tall, and I have been told on many occasions that I am awkward. I hope that there is nothing loutish about me, but I do my best to be a laggard and linger behind the ways of the modern world. Maybe, then, 'lounge' suits.

Out of Pocket

Is it possible to covet something without knowing precisely what that thing is?

I ask this question because I have decided that I want -- no, urgently need -- a pocket book. I'm not quite sure, though, what a pocket book is.

My attraction to this enigmatic object began when I read with racing heart the dramatic moment in War and Peace at which Pierre confronts Anatole about the latter's relationship with Natasha. 'Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?', asks Pierre, who has just threatened Kuragin the cad with a paperweight. We're told at this point that 'Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his pocket and took out his pocket book', from which an incriminating letter is retrieved.

Ink is mentioned nowhere in this scene, but I have come to believe that I, a defender of fountain pens and authentic ink, should be equipped with a pocket book from this day forward.

But what is a pocket book? To complicate matters, Anthony Briggs' recent translation of Tolstoy's novel has Anatole removing the letter from a wallet. (I don't know what the original Russian edition of War and Peace states; I will need to consult honorary Penquod crew member Stefan, who has a background in the field -- and who has been teaching me how to say rude things in Russian.) Is 'pocket book' merely an old-fashioned term for the rather prosaic 'wallet'? (The English edition of War and Peace in which I found the phrase was first published in the 1920s.)

In an attempt to find out more, I have consulted the Oxford English Dictionary. And what I have found (under 'pocketbook', rather than 'pocket book') is deeply intriguing:

A. n.

1. a. Chiefly in form pocket book. A small book, adapted so as to be conveniently carried in a person's pocket. In later use chiefly N. Amer.: a paperback or other small or inexpensive edition of a book.
Use of the word to denote a printed book does not seem to have been common before the 20th cent. The N. Amer. use dates from 1939, when ten titles were published in the U.S. in inexpensive paperback editions by Pocket Books, Inc., a company founded by Robert F. de Graff (1895-1981), subsequently an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

b. Brit. A book for memoranda, notes, etc., intended to be carried in a pocket; a notebook.

2. a. A pocket-sized folding case for holding banknotes, papers, etc.; a wallet. Now chiefly U.S.
In early use not always distinguishable from sense A. 1b.

b. A handbag or purse for banknotes or coins, esp. one belonging to a woman; (also) a woman's handbag for carrying everyday personal items. Now chiefly U.S.

c. fig. Chiefly N. Amer. A person's financial resources; funds.

3. U.S. slang (esp. regional (south.)) (euphem.). The female external genitals; the vagina.

B. adj. (attrib.). Chiefly N. Amer. Relating to considerations of personal finance, esp. as a factor in politics (see sense A. 2b).

Complicated, isn't it? And sense 3 does perhaps make my claim to want a pocket book rather intriguing to readers in certain parts of the United States.

I'm ruling out definitions 1a and 1b. I don't think that that is what Anatole retrieves from his pocket, partly because such an object probably wouldn't be large enough to hold a letter. Besides, I already have a Smythson Panama jotter which fits those particular decriptions:



(N.B.: The placement of my Aurora Talentum might look a little odd, but it is, in the name of anonymity, hiding my initials, which are stamped in the corner of the cover.)

Definitions 2b and 2c can also be discarded, I think. It seems to me that Anatole's pocket book is probably the kind of object described in 2a, but I'd like to believe that it's more glamorous than what we'd call a wallet in the present moment. If it's going comfortably to hold letters, like Anatole's, it will need to be larger than the standard wallet of the early twenty-first century, I think. Perhaps what I'm looking for is more like the object in which Tony Wendice, the plotting husband in Hitchcock's Dial 'M' for Murder, secretes a letter used to incriminate Swann:



But why, ultimately, have I fallen in love with the idea of owning a pocket book? Why has Cupid led me to covet such an obscure object of desire? ('Cupid' and 'covet', I have just learnt, are etymologically linked. Feverishly entwined, perhaps.) What would I do with such a thing? (I can already hear the Inkette wearily asking this last question.)

First of all, I like the fact that the object in question sounds archaic -- a pocket of the past with barely a hold on the present. I don't think that men are supposed to carry pocket books around these days, and this makes me determined to arm myself with such an item. If we start here, the theory runs, soon we'll all be wearing fedoras and cufflinks again. (And, if War and Peace is anything to go by, not long after that we'll be shooting rivals in duels and waving sabres at French soldiers.)

Beyond that, though, it seems to me that the pocket book has a role to play in the preservation of ink. Tolstoy's Anatole carries letters in his, so I see no reason why we modern wielders of the pocket book could not use ours to ferry around sheets of decadent paper covered with samples of our favourite inks. We and inky lines, that is to say, could go everywhere together, could live in each other's pockets. Ink would never be out of pocket (if I may use what the OED informs me is an American way of saying 'out of reach, absent, unavailable').

We could, of course, also carry actual letters, rather than mere scribblings, in our pocket books. And it is on these grounds that a pocket book becomes all the more necessary, for, while clearing out a filing cabinet in my office several days ago, I found a letter sent to me by honorary Penquod crew member Eileen in 1994. (We were graduate students together in those days, and we spent a great deal of time together, mainly gossiping, discussing the merits of Jack Jones' voice, and plotting a radical overhaul of British academia.)

I had forgotten all about this letter, and the events to which it refers are lost in the mists of time. It identifies an 'agenda' for a talk that Eileen was about to give in front of someone inspecting our research centre, but I have no idea what this speech was about, as the agenda itself was not with the letter when I rediscovered it. It's also impossible to date the document precisely, as Eileen has simply written the following at the top:



However, while much about the letter remains enigmatic, a certain key detail struck me as soon as I unfolded the forgotten sheet: Eileen had used a fountain pen and real ink. We spend most of our time these days discussing nibs and new colours (well, Eileen also manages frequently to change the topic to her lust for Britney Spears, Sarah Palin, and Charlotte Church), but I don't think that we ever discussed writing instruments in the early days of our friendship in the mid-1990s. I had not yet fallen under the spell of ink, for one thing; Eileen clearly had, but I think that this side of her character was still secret. She did, moreover, as she informed me a day or two ago, drift away from fountain pens into the dubious arms of rollerballs shortly after our time as students together came to an end.

In other words, the letter belongs to a time when we were not fully fledged inkthusiasts. It's strange to look at it today and to think that I would have paid no attention whatever to the ink fifteen years ago. Eileen has, of course, now asked me what shade she used a decade and a half ago, and I've reported that it's black. I can't be any more specific than that, as I find one black ink difficult to distinguish from another. Whatever it is, it's looking decidedly fresh fifteen years after being committed to paper.

But why is this historical document related to my need for a pocket book? It seems to me, dear readers, that I could carry this letter around with me at all times if I possessed an object in which to store it. I'd like to keep the sheet with me as more than just the mark of a special friendship. (Ye gods, the Penquod is sailing worryingly out of the waters of misanthropy and isolation. Must. Correct. Course. 'All hands to deck!' Oh, wait: there's no one here but me, as I've alienated everyone.) The letter is a reminder of the Days Before Ink, of my pre-obsession years. It's hard to imagine that I will ever be uninkterested in writing instruments, but Eileen's note is proof of my former inkdifference. When I first read it in 1994, my eyes paid no attention to ink; it's only now that I see form, colour, and shading alongside content.

And I feel that I need to keep the letter close in order to vaccinkate me against the easy lure of inkdifference. It's a souvenir from the dark days before I saw the light, and it marks a state to which I must never return. That way lie ballpoints...

Some wear a religious symbol or carry a holy book to protect them from the forces of evil. I, by way of contrast, am in ink's pocket, and it, if I can just find a pocket book, shall always be in mine.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Nightshade; Diamine Grey.