Converter

Call me the Great Converter.

Yes, 'Call me Ishmael' probably has the edge, but I have reasons for raising the issue of conversion today, dear readers.

I spent a good part of my morning in a meeting with a group of colleagues. At one point, we were asked by the chair of the group to divide into clusters of three for a 'breakout session'. I gritted my teeth and bit my tongue at the mention of the term 'breakout session', for it's an example of the management-speak that makes me want to break out in apocalyptic rage. As is 'sandpit' (when used to describe, as far as I can tell, some kind of collaborative workshop); I have heard this word used with great vigour in university meetings in recent times, and I always have to restrain myself from pointing out that my cats have the right idea: if Baby Ink's sandpit is left uncovered, they'll use it as a litter tray. I have yet to meet anyone who is able convincingly to explain to me what is to be gained from using such inane language in the workplace. George Orwell was wrong to imagine a future filled with monstrous 'doublethink'; 'halfthink' is closer to the mark.

For our 'breakout session', the three of us retired to the Senior Common Room, where we began to work on our allocated task. One of the two colleagues unfortunate enough to be grouped with me was the eternally sceptical Carlos, who has made appearances in Ink Quest over the years, usually sighing and raising his eyes in response to my latest fad. 'You'd better do the writing, I suppose', he said, looking with his customary raised eyebrow at the Sailor Sapporo clutched eagerly in my hand.

And write I did, dear readers. By the time we'd finished our mini-project, I'd filled two sides of A4 paper with rich Noodler's Violet ink. I placed the notepad on the table, sat back, and waited for Carlos to begin.

'What colour is it today?', he asked. 'Nibbler's Purple?'

'Noodler's, Carlos', I replied. 'Noodler's. And it's violet, not purple.'

'Looks like a funny violet to me', he said.

'Well, that might be because I didn't flush out the converter before switching from Noodler's Eternal Brown to Noodler's Violet this morning', I responded.

'The converter?', he laughed. 'What's the converter?'

By this time, I could see that my other colleague was taking an interest, so I unscrewed the barrel of the pen to show them both what a converter is.

'Oh', said Carlos. 'That's a converter. I didn't know that that is what it's called. Why is it called a converter?'

'Yes', said my other colleague. 'Why is it called a converter? What's it converting?'

'It's converting the pen', I explained.

'But from what?', asked Carlos. 'And into what?'

'Well', I continued, 'from a pen that uses cartridges to a pen that takes, er, a converter.'

'But why should cartridge be the default?', said Carlos. 'Why does the pen have to be converted from that into something else. When did cartridge become the default? And why does the converter convert the pen into a pen with a converter?'

'I don't know!', I shouted. 'Stop asking me questions! I have had enough of this sandpit!'

It was at this point that Carlos -- my colleague of ten years who has spent as long as I can remember making fun of my obsession with ink -- let something slip. He had, he said, been looking at pens in a shop recently, but hadn't been able to work out which ones were fountain pens because he'd seen the term 'converter' used, but didn't know what it meant.

Yes, dear readers, I sense that a conversion is just around the corner: Carlos has taken his first steps towards our inky faith. And I will, if he comes over to our side, be hailed as his converter.

I know very little about the phenomenon of conversion. I'm aware that it happens, but nearly forty years of stubbornly secular existence have given me very little practical information about the experience of a convert (or a converter, for that matter). Are there forms to be filled in? Does one simply knock on the door of a Catholic church, for example, and say, 'Hello, Father. I'd like to convert'? Are there exams that have to be passed? Are badges or certificates issued at the point of successful conversion? Is it possible to fail at converting? (I bet I could manage this.)

Ink fact, everything I know about conversion I know from Seinfeld. Two particular events spring to mind. In one of my very favourite episodes, Jerry takes offence when Tim Whatley converts from Catholicism to Judaism and immediately starts telling Jewish jokes. Enraged, he visits a Catholic priest in his confessional booth (is that what they're called?). 'I have a suspicion that he's converted to Judaism purely for the jokes', he fumes through the grill. 'And this offends you as a Jewish person?', asks the priest. 'No', says Jerry, 'it offends me as a comedian.' (You can watch the best bits of the episode, including Jerry's baffled engagement with Catholic rituals, by clicking here.)

And then, of course, there's the episode in which George considers converting to Latvian Orthodox to please his current girlfriend:

But these two episodes of the finest television show ever created don't really help me in my new role as converter. What is a converter supposed to do when he or she sees a victim (yes, let's be honest and use the correct language) who's ready to fall? Should I invite Carlos to a gathering of inkthusiasts in an isolated retreat, present him with a copy of Fountain Pens of the World, ask him to join in a collective reading of key passages, and refuse to let him leave until he pledges fifty per cent of his salary to the Penquod and agrees to be submerged in a symbolic bath of ink for a moment or two?

Luckily, help is at hand. I have just discovered a website entitled, quite simply, 'How to Convert People to a New Religion'. It seems to have all sorts of remarkably helpful tips to offer, so I will clearly have to study it closely before deciding how best to proceed.

But there is no time for that tonight: my new bottle of Pelikan Blue was waiting for me when I got home from work, and I would like to try it out tomorrow in my Sailor Sapporo. I am, then, about to sign off, stand up from the computer, turn around (convertere), make my way downstairs, and rinse out today's Noodler's Violet from the converter. The Great Converter's converter.

Ink in converter today: Noodler's Violet.

PS (29 July, 9.20am): I completely forgot to report in yesterday's post about my Ravens-March-inspired experiment with Parker Quink. I used it for several days in my Aurora Talentum, and I think that it's close in some ways to the colour used by Roland Barthes on his index cards, but it's a little too bright. Perhaps it needs to sit in the fierce sunlight of the south of France, where Barthes had his summer home, and fade for a while. Pelikan Blue, meanwhile, is also close (and rather appealing), but perhaps a bit too dark. (Honorary Penquod crew member Stefan has inkformed me that the formulation was changed a few years ago, so perhaps the old inkarnation would have been The One.) The search continues...

After posting yesterday's ramble, I remembered that my knowledge of conversion extends a little further than Seinfeld, but still no further than Jewish examples, for Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus contains a mischievous tale entitled 'The Conversion of the Jews', in which Ozzie, a Jewish-American schoolboy, gets into trouble for asking Rabbi Binder risky questions. The story ends with Ozzie threatening to jump from the roof of the synagogue unless the concerned Jews assembled below get down on their knees and say that they believe in Christ. I have also, since yesterday evening, received from honorary Penquod crew member Anna a link to a website that explains the process of conversion to Catholicism. I had no idea that the procedure is so complicated; it's a wonder than anyone makes it across to the other side.

PPS (30 July, 9.35am): I may have judged Pelikan Blue too quickly, for the lines that I wrote with it yesterday have faded slightly overnight, and the new colour is several steps closer to the magical blue used by Roland Barthes on his index cards. Perhaps the cards that I've seen, which must now be around thirty years old, have simply become paler as their distance from their author's hand has increased. (Barthes was hit by a van while crossing Rue des Ecoles in 1980, and died some weeks later. Is dying the key to undyeing ink, then?) Stay tuned, dear readers, for the next fascinating inkstalment of Ink Quest, in which I will report on how I have this morning ruined a silk tie with a drop of ink...

(S)hallowed

Shalom, shallowness.

A brief postscript to my last entry about superficiality, dear readers. After I typed up the ramble, I made one final attempt to become profound, but, as usual, I found only failure. Here is what happened.

Having accepted my lack of depth, I was once again on the verge of ordering a bottle of Pelikan Blue, but I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to check one of the Cross stockists in the city. And so it came to pass that I called into one of the town's well-known, long-established department stores on the way home from work this afternoon. The shop has been there since the middle of nineteenth century, so it's one of the city's true institutions. I have memories of it that stretch back as far as any of my memories: I remember getting lost in the food-hall and visiting Father Christmas in his grotto as a small child; I remember staring open-mouthed at a display of personal computers in 1982; I remember buying my first Bialetti Moka pot from the basement; I remember a tiny Baby Ink screaming for his bottle in the café upstairs while the waitress accidentally heated it to the temperature of molten lava; I remember, in the hot summer of 1990 (when my hair tumbled way down beyond my collar), busking outside the store with a friend and then putting some of our earnings towards an exotic ice cream from the food-hall; I remember smelling the heavenly Aqua di Parma Colonia for the first time in the perfume department; I remember seeking out my first silk pocket square in the vast clothing section.

And I remember the halcyon days when the pen counter was in a prominent position on the ground floor, not too far from the main entrance. Today, sadly, it's hidden away in a dark corner of the basement, next to the luggage. But I could see plenty of Cross pens in the cabinet when I arrived this afternoon, so I began to feel optimistic.

'Do you have Cross Blue ink in bottles?', I asked the man behind the counter. He looked puzzled.

'No, sir, they only ever send us the cartridges.'

'Okay, thanks', I replied, and started to walk away.

'But', the man called after me, 'I think we have a bottle of Parker ink stuffed away somewhere in the storeroom.'

'Thanks, but it's the Cross that I want', I said.

'Well, the Parker is basically the same thing', he replied. I bit my tongue and faked a smile.

'Thanks, but it's the Cross that I want', I repeated.

'But it's the same thing!', he insisted, clearly eager to make a sale.

Now, I do my best to be polite, even when faced with halfwits, and my record of the exchange with the salesman proves, your honour, that I made every effort to be civil and to walk away without causing a fuss. But the salesman's second insistence that there is no difference between Cross and Parker inks was like a red (well, washable blue) rag to a bull. I could hold back no longer.

'No', I said firmly. 'They are not the same thing at all. Cross and Pelikan are the same, but not Cross and Parker. They're totally different. I don't want Parker; I want Cross.' I very nearly added, 'Here, let me peel your name off your badge and write '"Idiot" on there. It's the same thing!', but I decided that I had said enough. I left in a huff, and I have added the shop to my list of local boycotted businesses. (It's already quite a long list. The Inkette tells me that I will have nowhere left to go before too long.)

I have had no choice, then, dear readers, but to place an online order for Pelikan Blue. I deeply regret to inkform you that my attempt at depth ran aground in shallow waters. The Penquod will continue to celebrate the inkconsequential, to hallow all that is shallow.

Ink in use today: Waterman Florida Blue.

--

PS (23 July, 9.25am): I have received a sign from an unholy book to confirm that all attempts to embrace the laudable ideology of depth should be abandoned. I've been rereading Philip Roth's furious Sabbath's Theater this week, and I stumbled across the following sentences late last night: 'Fuck the laudable ideologies. Shallow, shallow, shallow!' These, of course, are the words of Mickey Sabbath, perhaps the most monstrous creation in Western literature. And I'm making them my mantra. Sounds about right.

PPS (23 July, 8.50pm): It has come to my attention that the author of Ravens March has suggested that I try Parker Quink Blue and Herbin Bleu Myosotis in my quest to find a colour that matches the ink found on Roland Barthes' index cards. I'm touched that he's given my deranged obsession such careful thought, and his post has reminded me that I actually have some Quink cartridges that will fit my Aurora Talentum. (I have tried the Herbin ink mentioned, but it's not, sadly, quite right.) I will, therefore, be à la recherche de Roland perdu tomorrow, Quink in hand.

Shallow Ends?

I'm a sick man ... I'm a malicious man. An unattractive man, I am. Above all, though, I'm a superficial man.

But this is hardly news for regular readers of Ink Quest, a blog which has rambled and ranted for nearly four years about only the most trivial, shallow, and superficial matters. War rages in the Middle East -- and I'm worrying about my choice of ink for the day. Swine flu sweeps across the globe -- and I'm wondering if I can possibly cut my usual selection of three pens for my briefcase down to two. The world's economies are on the verge of collapse -- and I'm trying to decide if I want to shave with Truefitt and Hill or Aqua di Parma cream. A scandal about expenses claimed by British MPs erupts and threatens to bring down the government -- and I'm busy comparing Smythson paper to Clairefontaine. The fortieth anniversary of the Moon landing is being celebrated -- and I'm experimenting with new folds for pocket squares. A line from Jean Baudrillard's Cool Memories has always struck a chord with me:

The automatic carriage-return on the typewriter, electronic central locking on cars: these are the things that count. The rest is just theory and literature.

Yes, dear readers, I am almost certainly the most fickle, superficial person on the planet. I am, that is to say, superfickle. Being deep is deeply overrated, I feel. I'm interested only in shallow matters, and I become bored very easily. What seems like the perfect blue ink on Monday is forgotten about by Tuesday. The pen to end all pens slips out of circulation and goes into storage moments after my initial cries of 'This is The One' have finished echoing around Ink Towers. I fill my life with objects ... and then feel the need to fill the growing emptiness with yet more acquisitions.

But I have today taken the first steps towards recovery, towards depth, towards an emergence from the shallow end of the pool. Allow me to offer an in-depth explanation. I have been eyeing up a bottle of Pelikan Blue ink for several weeks, partly because I think that it might be fairly close in colour to the delightful blue used by Roland Barthes on his index cards. The only problem has been that nowhere near Ink Towers stocks Pelikan products, so an internet purchase has been hovering in the wings. I have nothing against buying ink online -- it's the only option in the UK where brands such as Noodler's and Private Reserve are concerned, ink fact -- but I do like to obtain my objects of desire from real-world shops whenever possible. This isn't because I like the human interaction (I don't); it's merely because I prefer to be able to select a precise bottle from the shelf, to feel its box or label before I make my way to the till, and so on.

I was, then, on the verge of placing an online order for Pelikan Blue when I discovered that Cross Blue is actually Pelikan Blue in different packaging. While Pelikan products are fairly rare in British shops, Cross pens and inks are easy to find. I could, I suddenly realized, abandon the internet order for Pelikan Blue and simply pick up a bottle of Cross ink on my way home from work one afternoon. But this glimmer of hope soon faded, for my very next thought was that I find Cross packaging ugly. I only have to glance at it, ink fact, to feel rather cross.

This, of course, was a perfect example of my superficiality. Pelikan ink and Cross ink are, it seems, exactly the same, but I found myself repelled by the latter purely because of the design of the label and the box. By way of contrast, I find the Pelikan packaging deeply attractive (but not, perhaps, quite as delicious as the old design). And there's something to be said for the superiority of the 'k' of 'Pelikan' to the 'C' of 'Cross'. They sound the same, yes, but I find the appearance of the 'k' much more endearing. (See what I mean about the endless depths of my shallowness?) Maybe it's a matter of un-Celtic novelty: Welsh has no 'k' (but it does have an 'f' that sounds like the English 'v', a 'u' that sounds like 'ee', and a 'll' that sounds like nothing that exists in English).

Yesterday afternoon, then, I was poised to place an online order for Pelikan Blue; Cross had apparently been crossed off my list. But just I was about to complete the transaction, I experienced what I believe is known as 'a moment of clarity'. Why, I suddenly asked myself, was I being so superficial? Why was I letting the appearance of a bottle determine my choice of ink? Why couldn't I simply buy a bottle of Cross Blue and focus on what really matters: the colour of the ink itself?

The clouds had parted. I had seen the light. My days of shallowness had come to an end. I switched off my computer and left work with one thing on my mind: Cross Blue. I marched into the nearest Cross stockist and asked for a bottle. 'I'm sorry, sir, but we only sell the cartridges', I was informed. Undeterred, I made my way to another stationery outlet, where I was told the same thing. I came out from a further shop with empty hands. By this point, having travelled the three ways (trivium), I could think of nowhere else to try in the city. I drifted home in defeat, and I am about to place an online order for Pelikan Blue.

I take this inkident as confirmation of two things. First, the universe is persecuting me. I have suspected this on many occasions in the past, but the sudden mysterious unavailability of bottled Cross ink in a major British city can only mean that the world really is set against me. It won't even let me buy something that I always said I didn't want. Second, and more important, it's clear that I am not meant to be a profound, well-rounded, rational individual. The universe that is conspiring against me has also decided that I am destined to be superficial and thoroughly irrational. My dramatic attempt to abandon my life of surfaces fell at the first hurdle; I have no choice but to embrace my fate, my trivial essence.

I tried my best, dear readers, to steer the Penquod into deeper waters, but it's clear that the shallow bay is what forever I shall obey.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray; Herbin Café des Îles.

Deskatology

Have desk, will travel.

I have noted in previous posts how much I hate travelling. Some in my profession like nothing better than jetting around the world to an endless series of academic conferences, but I keep that particular side of the job to a bare minimum. (My decision about whether or not to accept an invitation to speak somewhere depends very much upon the number of pen shops in the city in question. I have recently turned down three offers because there appeared to be no stockists of ink in the area.) In fact, my passport expired in January, and I have yet to renew it. Perhaps I never will, for I have been quietly enjoying life without the ability to engage in tourism (or what Don DeLillo has accurately called 'the march of stupidity').

And it's good to know that I'm not alone. Honorary Penquod crew member Arty recently reminded me about Joris-Karl Huysmans' À Rebours (usually known in English as Against Nature). I read the book as an undergraduate nearly twenty years ago, but I'd somehow forgotten all about it until Arty commented upon the relentless misanthropy of its protagonist, Des Esseintes. I revisited the tale a couple of days ago, then, and I was stunned to find that À Rebours, which I read and paid little attention to as an optimistic youth, is essentially (Esseintes-ially?) the biography of the thirty-something moi. Here's what I mean: the feeble, neurotic, degenerate Des Esseintes decides that he has had enough of human society (or, as he puts it, 'the incessant deluge of human stupidity'), and his 'contempt for humanity' leads him to abandon Paris for the isolation of a villa above Fontenay-aux-Roses. Once installed in his retreat, he devotes himself to what can only be called a series of decadent aesthetic potterings. One chapter, for instance, describes how he sits at his dressing-room table and experiments with different perfumes, while we're told at another point that his residence contains 'a glass-fronted bookcase in which a collection of silk socks was displayed in the form of a fan'. He likes ink, too, for his garden features an 'ornamental pond edged with black basalt and filled with ink', and one of his luxurious books has been 'printed for him in bishop's-purple ink'. As I reread Huysmans' words, I felt as if I were looking in a mirror (handcrafted in the East and carried by servants in a mink-lined case across the world to Ink Towers, of course).

But it was the hilarious chapter on tourism that really appealed to me. Not long after he has nearly killed himself with his perfumes, Des Esseintes decides that he will come out of isolation and travel to London. His servants pack his bags, and he sets off in 'a mottled check [suit] in mouse grey and lava grey, a pair of laced ankle-boots, a little bowler hat and a faux-blue Inverness cape'. (No pocket square, monsieur? You disappoint me.) By the time he gets to Paris, it is pouring: 'The appalling weather struck him as an instalment of English life paid to him on account in Paris'. He decides to have something to eat before continuing with his voyage, but he then finds that his stomach is too full to allow him to move. He tries to rouse himself with a brandy, but his desire to travel begins to wane. 'After all', we're told, 'what was the good of moving, when a fellow could travel so magnificently sitting in a chair?' He still has time to catch his train, however, and he makes one last effort to drive himself onwards. He fails. '"If I went now", he said to himself, "I should have to dash up to the barriers and hustle the porters along with my luggage. What a tiresome business it would be!"' Defeated, he returns to his retreat, 'feeling all the physical weariness and moral fatigue of a man who has come home after a long and perilous journey'.

But perhaps my hatred of travel is on the verge of disappearing. Perhaps I am about to become a vibrant, enthusiastic, sociable globe-trotter. I say this because I noticed something rather intriguing in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement. In the corner of one of the classified pages, I spotted an advertisement for something called 'The Travelling-Desk'. (Don't ask me why it's hyphenated. Is the idea that the object allows its owner to keep everything under one -- hupo hen -- lid?) This delightful creation is a little difficult to deskribe, so I will simply direct readers to the company's website, where many photographs may be deskried. Go and have a look; I'll wait here at my desk...

Rather attractive, don't you think? I am drawn to the Travelling-Desk for a couple of reasons. First, it reminds me of the desks with which the classrooms of my junior school were equipped. Even though it was the late 1970s/early 1980s, and even though we were taught to write with ballpoint pens, we sat at old-fashioned desks with sloped lids and inkwells. (Well, I say 'inkwells', but the reality was that most of the plastic containers had been stolen, leaving gaping holes in the corners of the desks. Those lucky enough to have an original inkwell still in place often found that the object in question was caught up in a game of 'How High Can You Go?', in which the lid was lifted and a hand placed in the small gap beneath the base of the inkwell. The trick was then to slam your palm upwards to see how high the inkwell would fly.) A day did not pass without someone finding his or her fingers slammed beneath a lid. On one infamous occasion, the teacher spotted smoke emerging from the hole in the corner of one boy's desk. (His name was Royston, I think.) We were about to flee for our lives when it was discovered that he had secreted a plastic 'smoking monkey' among his books.

Beyond this nostalgia, though, I am drawn to the Travelling-Desk because it would, I feel, allow me to counter the trauma of travel with a properly equipped set of writing materials. I can imagine the scene:

'Would passengers please note that mobile telephones and other electronic devices are not to be used during the flight, as they may interfere with the plane's navigation system. Sir?'
'How about inkwells and dip pens?'
'Excuse me?'
'How about inkwells and dip pens? Am I allowed to get my Travelling-Desk out of the overhead locker, uncork the ink, and catch up on some correspondence?'
'Were you the passenger who was detained for an hour by security after an argument over whether or not a quill could be used to hijack a plane?'
'Yes. You could say that feathers were ruffled.' [Riotous laughter from other passengers.]
'And do I take it from your stained mouth that you were required to drink some of your ink at the checkpoint to prove that it wasn't an explosive substance?'
'No, that wasn't me. I just got a bit thirsty while we were waiting to leave the terminal.'
'Won't your Travelling-Desk get in the way when we serve you your in-flight meal?'
'Not at all. It's sushi today, isn't it?'
'Indeed.'
'Excellent. I have a spare inkwell with me for the soy. And these two dip pens convert into chopsticks.'
'But what about the sloped lid? Won't your food slide off it?'
'Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Do you think you could ask the captain to dip the nose of the plane by about 45 degrees during lunch? That ought to level things out.'

The word 'desk' apparently has its roots in 'discus', the Latin word for 'disc'. I don't know the reason for this, though. Did the Romans only write at round desks? Is a desk with corners a modern phenomenon? Or did the modern sport of discus-throwing emerge from an ancient ritual in which centurions proved their strength by hurling desks across a field? I will have to look into matters, dear readers. Ink fact, I hereby announce the creation of the new academic discipline (deskipline?) of deskatology. It will be the discipline to end all disciplines, no doubt.

It seems, then, that my desklike of travelling might have reached the end of the road. The Travelling-Desk has the potential to close the lid on a difficult chapter of my life. Je serai libéré d'esklavage. Future generations of students studying deskatology will find the following question upon their examination papers:

Disgust is disguised by a discus. Discuss.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray; Waterman Florida Blue.

PS: I still haven't been able to find time to get to the university library to run the nineteenth-century history of ink mentioned in my last couple of posts through the microfilm machine. I am now aiming to do this on Friday.

PPS (2.30pm): More information about the Travelling-Desk has just landed upon my, er, desk. Thanks to the Paris-based honorary Penquod member without a pseudonym -- as I have said in previous posts, elle n'est pas Trisha -- I can report that the object of desire is also available from Pen and Co. I applaud a particular line in the company's publicity: 'A l'heure du Blackberry et de l'iPhone ... voici un retour dans le temps agréable'. (I suppose that a rough translation of that could be: 'In the era of the Blackberry and the iPhone ... here is a pleasant trip down memory lane').

Hunting Done

Quest over. Hunting done.

I'm not referring to the search for the perfect ink, dear readers; that, no doubt, will continue until I breathe my last and go to the great inkwell in the sky. I am, rather, speaking of my search for a new career. Yes, dear readers, I have finally discovered my calling.

While doing some research on ink a few weeks ago, I came across a reference to a short piece by Charles A. Owen, Jr., published in the Chaucer Newsletter in 1980. It was the title that caught my eye: 'A Note on the Ink in Some Chaucer Manuscripts'. Inktrigued, I requested a copy of the article, and it arrived in an envelope from the University of Liverpool a couple of days ago.

Owen's account is no longer than half a page, but it describes in fascinating detail his scrutiny of the ink used in various manuscripts of Chaucer's work. Here's his magnificent inkipit:

One of the surprises I experienced working on the Ellesmere manuscript at the Huntington Library this past January was the color of the ink. The description in Manly-Rickert, "Uniform dark brown" (I, 148), hardly does justice to the actuality.

The author proceeds to describe how Chaucer manuscripts are characterised by 'constant variation in the color of the ink', how this variation might have been a deliberate strategy on the part of the scribes, and then concludes by calling for 'a more accurate descriptive set of terms' to which scholars could turn when discussing fluctuations in the colour of ink used in manuscripts.

Ink Towers is a long way from the Huntington Library (which lies in San Marino, California). And, although some of my colleagues have devoted decades of their lives to Chaucer, I have not read a single word of his work. (I went to the house of sceptical colleague Carlos for lunch yesterday, in fact, and another colleague who was there pointed at an elegant edition of Chaucer's work on the bookshelf while Carlos was in the kitchen and said, 'I bet that's not in your bookcase'.) But it's clear to me that I need to reinvent myself as a Chaucerian and take up residence in the Huntington, where I will, nearly thirty years after Charles A. Owen called for the development of a special inky vocabulary, be in charge of creating the new lexinkon.

The only problem is that I simply don't know where to begin. As I have noted in previous posts, I don't actually know anything about anything, and my entire career in academia has been an act of deception. But I'm particularly helpless when it comes to fourteenth-century English literature. Yes, there are modern translations of Chaucer's work, but contemporary English won't be of much help if I'm going to be working with texts such as the fifteenth-century Ellesmere manuscript.

But perhaps there's a solution. Perhaps my role at the Huntington would simply be to describe in detail the ink used in the texts. Perhaps, that is to say, I would need to pay no attention whatever to the meaning of the words upon the page; I'd simply be developing a lexinkon to describe how they look. This would be literature not as the expression of the human spirit, of eternal truths, but literature as a series of pretty colours upon the page.

All surface and no depth, in other words. A complete lack of content. Shallow aestheticism. Mindless superficiality. I was born for this job. ('I can do this [...] I've been preparing for this moment my entire life.') Ink Quest: putting the cant back in the Canterbury Tales.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray.

PS: I have not yet had chance to consult the nineteenth-century history of ink to which I referred in my previous post. I will take it with me to the Huntington and, I hope, report back in detail next week.

PPS (3.50pm): I can't let the day pass without praising the author of Ravens March for his bold decision to purchase a pocket protector for his fountain pens (and for his pockets, moreover). 'I have joined the ranks of the most risible sort of geek', he writes. I can't think of a better place to be.

PPPS (3.55pm): I also feel compelled to direct readers of Ink Quest to a delightful tribute to Michael Jackson penned by ink-loving West Highland Terrier Grover J. Askins on his blog, Hudographies. I can't claim to have been a fan of Michael Jackson, but Grover's words are a joy to read.

1776 and All That

Ink Quest will return with a full-length missive at some point next week, dear readers, partly because I will by then have had time to read the history of ink written in the 1880s and sent to me on microfilm by the British Library. (What secrets wait within? Will the narrative be as thrilling as that of David N. Carvalho's Forty Centuries of Ink? Will I embarrass myself yet again in the university library when I try to use the microfilm reader?)

I have put pen to paper and fingers to keyboard this evening, though, because it occurred to me at about 6pm that today, 4 July, is a rather significant date for Ink Quest's many American readers. I have always been a lover of the United States, partly because I spent a year of my life in Northern California, and partly because I am constantly campaigning for independence from the United Kingdom. (I still want to live here; I just don't want to be a citizen or, worse still, a subject.)

With angle of palm duly adjusted, I salute you all, then, dear American readers, whether you are (like, say, honorary Penquod crew members Stefan, Gerry, and Anna) currently in your homeland or (like Susie and Noelle, for example) exiled on this side of the Atlantic. And I urge all of Ink Quest's readers to purchase a new bottle of ink today. (I'm about to order some Pelikan Blue, hoping that it will look similar to the ink used by Roland Barthes on his index cards.) Together we can turn Independence Day into Ink-Dependence Day:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dismiss the disposable ballpoints which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We inkthusiasts hold these truths to be self-evident, that all users of fountain pens are created equal, that they are endowed by the Mighty Ink with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of the Perfect Colour.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to celebrate Independence Day and the first ever Inkdependence Day with a thoroughly American bowl of Linguine al limone. (Actually, the recipe does have an American influence, for I have stolen a little trick from Silvano Marchetto, who runs New York's Da Silvano: dropping the lemon halves into the water with the pasta while it cooks.) Maybe I'll add a drop or two of Omas Sepia and turn into Linkuine al limone ... or should I use penne?

Ink in use today: Noodler's Nightshade.