So, my father and I both loved Carlos Ruis Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, the labyrinthine Spanish bestseller in which a young bibliophile attempts to track down the elusive novelist Julián Carax, whose (brilliant but rare) books are being systematically destroyed by a man with no face. Early in the book, the teenage protagonist pleads with his father to buy him, as a birthday gift, a beautiful pen he stares at in the antique shop window each day: a Mont Blanc Meisterstück 149. (The pen, like damn near everything else in the story, proves to have an occult connection to Carax…)
Appropriately enough, that’s precisely what my father decided to send me as a birthday gift, and it’s gorgeous. It’s such an incredibly pretty object that you’d be tempted to just sort of hold it and look at it, except that it’s a minor religious experience to actually write with. I think it may have precognitive powers, because it seems like the ink starts flowing about a nanosecond before you’ve actually even touched the paper, but it nevertheless produces a smooth, clean line with no blotching or leaking or other ills the fountain pen is heir to. If blogging was slow yesterday, it was because I was doing a lot of superfluous longhand writing. So: Thanks dad. The half-a-genome was a pretty cool present too, by the way.
5 responses so far ↓
1 LP // Mar 15, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I myself am a fan of ‘superfluous longhand writing.’ Reasons: Writing with high-quality ink on fine, ideally old, paper provides a unique sensuous (and sensual) pleasure, akin to listening to a dusty vinyl record over HD audio equipment, or using a very sharp knife to cut mushrooms. Plus, writing or drawing loops and looped figures lowers blood pressure and reduces neural overstimulation.
2 Anthony C // Mar 15, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Although presumably the book stands on its own merits (I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy for a while but somehow haven’t yet got round to it), do you have bibliophilic leanings that particularly drew you to it? It seems to me that there’s a definite constituency that gets a particular thrill out of books about books.
3 Julian Sanchez // Mar 16, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Well, I don’t think it’s that I have any special fondness for books about books, as such… but I guess to properly identify with the protagonist, it probably helps if you’re the kind of person who can empathize with being as consumed with a novel or author as he becomes.
4 Anthony C // Mar 18, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I see – I suppose that’s a shame, I was all set to recommend Nick Basbanes’ books as a possible avenue of exploration (specially his latest on the historical impact of various books). But hey, it’s far better that you don’t go the full blown bibliophile route. I’m pretty well on the way to calling my books my “children”. It’s not pretty. If I end my days with my feet protruding from beneath an overturned bookcase, Wicked Witch of the East stylee, I don’t think it’ll come as a big surprise to anyone.
All that said, I increasingly find it the case that being in an occupation that involves reading enormous amounts of non-fiction written material all day, my tolerance for serious fiction is far lower than it used to be. I find myself not reading fiction for long periods and then going through a werewolf-like periodic frenzy in which I end up ploughing through mindless pap with serious gusto. But that’s probably what comes from an education that largely involves reading Clausewitz and writing about the missile gap and naval strategy in the Baltic.
5 Anthony C // Mar 18, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Incidentally, I’m fascinated by the inclusion of Bernard Williams’ book on opera in your sidebar (and also The Hustle – didn’t know that got and circulation outside of the UK). Is the big draw there the opera or the author?