Montblanc Generation

Find myself a little surprised, but why that is doesn't really make a lot of sense. What’s so surprising about a Montblanc fountain pen that writes like a dream? Obviously, I misread the simplicity of the Montblanc Generation design, thinking it couldn’t be anything like the higher end models, the Meisterstück, the Doué and the Famous Name series.

The Generation is a hard pen to find information on. I clicked through a long list of websites trying to find something more specific than what I can see for myself by looking at the fountain pen, but came up dry in the end. I was even unable to learn what year the design was introduced, and when it was discontinued, if that is the case.

First look, first impression—

Unlike some of the Montblanc models, especially those in the Famous Name series, the Generation has clean lines and uncommon sleekness, appearing smaller than other fountain pens by the same maker. Cap and barrel are smooth and uncluttered, with nothing except simple gold cap bands to interrupt the flow of burgundy precious resin from top to bottom. There is a thin band and a thicker one at the bottom of the cap, but the double band somehow simplifies the look even more. The wider of the two bands is engraved with MONTBLANC-GENERATION. The pocket clip too, seems slimmer, simpler than most. As you would expect, the top of the cap has the black disc and trademark white star inside a gold band. The very top of the barrel has a thin gold ring, adding the final touch of trim.

Cap on, the Generation measures 5.5 inches, and posted is only slightly longer at 5.75 inches. Removing the cap reveals another two thin gold bands separated by a narrow black band. The thinner of the two gold bands has four raised ridges at the cardinal points. These tiny ridges, similar to the design of the Lamy 2000, hold the cap on. The 14k gold nib has a sculpted look that is different but extremely handsome. In what I think is a nice touch, the bottom of the barrel where it joins the nib is cut away at a forty-five degree angle.

The pen is light and comfortable in the hand, very probably a perfect balance for those with smaller hands. My hand is not small, but the Generation isn’t at all lost in my grip. I could write with it comfortably for hours.

It comes in black or burgundy, and though I saw photos of models in blue and gold, I think those may be few in number. Even the burgundy model I have is difficult to find on Internet pen sites. The nib is offered in either fine or medium, and for those who prefer, the Generation is also available (and more common) in either ballpoint or rollerball. The fountain pen uses either cartridge or converter.

Writing…

You should not make the mistake I did in thinking that this lower priced Montblanc pen does not come up to the level of the more expensive models. The feeling is now, I may have a hard time letting go of this Generation. It has a smoooooth flowing medium nib, with never a hint of skip. The width of the line is consistent with what is standard for medium nibs, and dead on target with my own preferences. There are two or three pens and nibs in front of me here that I call favorites and this Montblanc Generation jumps right into line with those. A solid pleasure to write with this pen, and just by chance I loaded the converter with an ink that makes both nib and paper sing—Caran d’Ache Sunset.

Think I just may be writing with this pen and this ink for the next stretch of days. It’s an impressive fountain pen.

The Venetian’s Wife

‘The year is 1469. Niccolo Dei Conti stands atop the steep hill that overlooks his villa on the outskirts of Venice. He clenches his fists, raises his arms to the heavens and bellows with anger and frustration at the storm raging around him. He demands that the lightning strike him down and rid him of his old age and loneliness. The storm is unobliging…

He’s considering the solitude and his wifeless bed when a visitor arrives. She moves like Mercury, circling the room, touching with golden fingers the pots, pans, candle holders and all things metal. She discovers the knife that Niccolo Dei Conti’s hand rests on, and because his feet are firmly planted on the floor she burns his heart out… But his journey is not over. He has been a traveler all his life and he still has far to go.’

Thus begins an odd and fascinating quest, a collaboration between the 15th century Venetian and a 20th century art restorer.

Yet again a Chronicle book has caught my eye, almost calling out to be held again, if nothing else, to admire the design and artful publishing. The book is The Venetian’s Wife, by Nick Bantock, a name familiar to many from the series of Griffin & Sabine books published some years back. This book is a little more complex, certainly longer, but having that dreamlike, otherworldly style which characterizes the writer’s other books. The story’s main character, Sara Wolfe, works for a London museum restoring paintings, thoroughly bored with ‘conserving’ mediocre Victorian portraits, feeling her talents are wasted. But… ‘Sara Wolfe is about to fall backwards. The thick walls that separate the past from the present are crumbling, but she doesn’t know it yet…’

The truth is, many details of the story are not clear in memory, since it has been five or six years since I read the book. Turning the pages of the book today, reading a paragraph, a page here and there was stimulus enough to assure me I could read the book through again with first-time pleasure. The virtuosity of Bantock is his rare eye in combining of text and image, his ability to bring a tactile sense to his story. The images or graphics serve to heighten the phantasmagorical quality, the illusory nature of what is happening to the young woman, Sara.

The pleasure of reading The Venetian’s Wife derives from a collaboration of writer, graphic designer and publisher, complementing each other in a seamless flow of beauty. There is a quality to this book that suggests a fuller dimension in both storytelling and publishing, and if you’re looking for a good read, then I heartily recommend you explore the exotic world of Nick Bantock books and his collaboration with Chronicle.

Onion Dip & Mailboxes

When they chiseled the words from Herodotus over the entrance to the James Farley Post Office on 8th Avenue in New York, the US Postal Service was perhaps hoping to emulate the mail couriers of ancient Persia — ‘Neither snow nor rain not heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.’

Jump forward 2,500 years to the USPS television commercial that followed the 9/11 attacks. Text cards on an otherwise blank screen, Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” playing in the background. ‘We are mothers and fathers. And sons and daughters. Who every day go about our lives with duty, honor and pride. And neither snow, nor rain…’

Maybe I’m spoiled. Maybe I spent too many years abroad enjoying the kind of service described in these words. Or maybe the postal service is not what it should be, not at all like it describes itself in inscription and television commercial. I wrote something about the post office back in May, saying that bumps and snags will crop up at the PO. Nothing has changed in five months, and the situation in my neck of the woods at least, has nowhere to go but up.

I went to the post office today to mail a letter, forgetting that it was Columbus Day and a holiday for government employees. Our little one-woman post office was locked up tight, even the post office boxes beyond reach. I looked around for a letter drop and found nothing. Asking next door, the lady said the nearest mail drop was a couple of miles away. Two miles away? At first, I thought she might be joking. After driving those two miles to the mailbox, I saw that there was one pick up a day at 3:00 p.m. Not certain, but I think the pick ups are more frequent at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Here, in a city of 23,000 people there is one pick up a day.

One day last week I had again gone to the post office, knowing that it closed from 1:00 until 2:00 for lunch. I got there at 2:00, but found the door still locked. By 2:20 there were eight people lined up outside waiting for the postmistress to return from lunch. A few minutes later she arrived, pulling her car into a parking space out front and sitting behind the wheel for another five minutes talking on her cell phone. The eight people in line stood watching while she waxed on about onion dip and blueberry crumble—at 2:25 p.m.

Waiting at home for mail delivery… Apparently there is no fixed schedule regarding delivery. The mailman arrives, hopefully each day anywhere from 2:30 to 4:30, maybe early on Monday and late on Tuesday. It’s a guessing game.

I suppose times have changed, and post office employees as well. Maybe I'm spoiled. Maybe I spent too many years abroad being pampered—or is it well-served?—by a postal service that takes some pride in doing a job well, and at least provides drop boxes outside each post office, as well as all around town.

What About Language?

At a conference or gathering of writers, Stephen King once asked Amy Tan what the one question was that no one ever asked during the Q and A following a talk. She gave the question some thought and told him that no one ever asked about language. King agreed that his fellow writer had hit the nail on the head—they never ask about language when the writer is a popular novelist, and one set apart from such as Don DeLillo, John Updike or William Styron.

Soon after that conversation Stephen King wrote a book in which he answers the question about language. The book is called, Stephen King on Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and it is dedicated to the friend and writer who brought the thought to life in his mind, Amy Tan.

For reasons I’m not sure I understand, despite his huge and enduring popularity, too many of Stephen King’s readers pass over the layers in his books and stories, focusing rather on the horror or his simple genius for storytelling. No question that his books can be bone chilling, and only a slab of concrete could resist the pull of his stories, but there is a depth of craft to King’s writing that would impress even William Faulkner.

Probably less than the truth to describe myself as a devoted fan of Stephen King, as one who eagerly awaits each new book, but I have read a fair number of his books, and in each of those King rarely fails to bring some illumination to the human condition, while also offering provocative comment on a society so vulnerable to technology and its addictions. His characters are never one-dimensional, and his themes go far beyond horror and the macabre. Look at Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, or The Body, a novella that inspired the movie, Stand By Me. For a violent look at the extremes of technology-addiction look at Cell.

But my point here is not to review one or any of Stephen King’s many books, rather to point fans toward one of the lesser celebrated of his books, the one written in 2000 and dedicated to Amy Tan. It is a 284 page answer to the question in King’s mind of ‘What about language?’ For my money the book could fill out a six month course on how to write.

Thanks to my friend Shelby for inspiring the subject of this post.

Visconti Voyager

Have in my hand here another fountain pen that belongs to a friend, a Visconti Kaleido Voyager in red marble acrylic resin. It’s definitely a good-looking pen, and worthy of the name Visconti has given it. The root of ‘kaleido’ is in two Greeks words, ‘kalos’ and ‘eidos’ which put together have the meaning, ‘beautiful form.’ And while it certainly does boast a beautiful shape, it is a big fountain pen, or at least what I call a handful. The best thing about the size, in my mind at least, is the pen’s balance. It’s hard to imagine anyone complaining about a clumsy or uncomfortable feel or grip in writing with a Visconti Kaleido.

The pens measures 5.7 inches closed, and 7 inches posted. The diameter is 0.5 inches, and the fine balance might just be in these proportions. It is made of an acrylic resin called Acryloid, a resin considered tougher and more flexible than ordinary acrylic resin. In the ‘red’ marble finish I have here the Acryloid is a beautiful burgundy, not red at all, and handsomely highlighted by the silver cap band and pocket clip. The band is broader than usual, at least an eighth of an inch and repeats a pattern of cut-out ‘V’ shapes, alternating up, then down. The pocket clip has an unusual shape or design, the top portion set back from the cap. Interesting design, for sure. The top of the cap carries the trademark Visconti silver disc showing the name, Visconti Voyager.

My favorite part of the pen’s look is the very large 18k gold two-toned nib. Here again Visconti has hit upon an unusual design. It’s a little hard to describe, but looks almost like golden drops of ink fountaining out of the ink hole, resembling up and down fleur-de-lis. Again, beautiful. But here’s the rub; the nib on this Voyager is a B, and what I have to call only eighty percent of what we all want in a nib, and that’s one that doesn’t skip. Too often the downstrokes on this pen skip. In a test I found that it skipped seven times in the space of six lines, ignoring even the smaller skips. I consider that number much too high, and were the pen my own I would quickly have the problem investigated. Not being my pen, I can only recommend in this case. Who doesn’t like a beautiful fountain pen? As it happens, a nib with a problem can spoil it all. Especially on a pen as expensive as the Visconti Kaleido Voyager no one expects nor wants a nib that skips seven times in six lines.

Handsome, comfortable in the hand, but the nib problems on the Kaleido knock down my overall evaluation. A nib change seems in order this time.

Ole Man River

Always a good feeling to come across a book and a writer you like, but it’s made even better when you know there are other books by the same writer that you can follow through with. This was exactly my experience with Elise Blackwell and her 2007 novel, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish. The book was recommended to me by a friend whose opinion I respect, and not long after our conversation the book landed in my mailbox.

Pretty much a habit for me to open a book and read the first paragraph, or first page, a way of helping determine where to put the book in my to-read stack. Ms Blackwell’s first paragraph in The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish was such that I reread it three or four times and then put the book on top of my stack. It’s what I call an opening you see only once every year or two in the course of daily reading.

“I am a man far removed from his origins—by miles, by years, and by more intangible measures. Every piece of wood, no matter how refined and sanded, is marked by the conditions where the tree was grown. The mix of nutrients in the soil and air, the shifts in temperature and humidity, high winds and lightning, the damage from insects and wood-boring birds, and cultivation—the human history of the land—leave their evidence. Who I am remains intimately gnarled with where I came from. And where I came from is the place making the news, the place in the line of fire, soon to be the eye of the storm. Though I’ve pruned from my speech all traces of accent, I’m from south of south. I am from Cypress Parish, Louisiana.”

On the eve of Hurricane Katrina, an elderly Louis Proby, recalls the great flood of his small Louisiana town in 1927, the year he crossed from boyhood to manhood. Louis is the son of Cypress Parish’s superintendent, William Proby, a man who after climbing the ranks in local logging finds himself forced by circumstance to compromise himself in deals with laborers as well as casinos in order to please the wealthy barons of power. A dutiful son, Louis is a reluctant witness to his father’s deals. The boy’s understanding of life is green, while at the same time his senses are blurred by first love for the French girl, Nanette Lançon. Louis is offered the job of driving lumber company official Charles Segrist to and from New Orleans, and thereby given entree into the posh but seedy clubs of New Orleans. Through Segrist his eyes are opened not only to prostitutes and hard drinking, but to back deals with Isleños bootleggers and plans to blow up a Cypress Parish levee, thus flooding the area in order to save New Orleans. He learns too that his father is not unaware of this plan that threatens the lives and homes of Cypress Parish residents. As an old man, Louis is still haunted by regrets from that year in his life, still trying to understand clearly and proving that the old adage, ‘hindsight is twenty-twenty’ is not always the case.

As I read the novel, one of the first questions that arose was the meaning of ‘unnatural’ in the title of the book. It takes a good part of the novel, but it becomes clear that the life and property of Cypress Parish were unnaturally sacrificed to protect business interests in New Orleans. We learn near the end that the loss of life and property brought on by dynamiting the levee was unnecessary in saving New Orleans. Exploding the levee prevented a natural, less costly outcome of the Mississippi River’s swollen threat of inundation. There were no blasted levees with Katrina seventy-eight years later, but the parallels are obvious.

The major character in the book could almost be called the Mississippi River. The story is heightened by the writer’s coloring of the mighty river, and what is almost an endowment of personality. The currents, the magnificent house-swallowing whirlpools, the muddy churning highlighted by colors you least expect, and the geography-shifting behavior of alluvial silt violently, magically thrusting newly created islands to the surface.

The young narrator Louis is a burgeoning naturalist who keeps journals on the natural setting he lives in. One of his favorite writers is Pliny the Elder, and Blackwell enriches her story by juxtaposing Pliny’s writings on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD with the building ‘eruption’ of the Mississippi upon Cypress parish. It is skillful interweaving of natural histories, ancient and modern.

The boy Louis has a faulted character for which we have the greatest sympathy. He is a young man who takes pride in his understanding of the natural world, but in his youth possesses minimal and immaturely skewed understanding of why his father and others do the things they do. Blackwell has given her narrator a host of dichotomies to deal with—torn between city and country, art and science, family vs the girl he loves, home and the world outside, and finally past and future.

As readers, we all like a good story with richly layered characters. Most of us also look for a style or prose that stands apart from the bland narrative of too many ‘bestsellers’ touted by booksellers and celebrity reviewers. Elise Blackwell writes in an elegant, yet natural style that propels her story, enlivens her characters, and yet at the same time stops her reader on occasion with a need to reread a particularly well-wrought passage of plain unadorned beauty. Briefly said, the woman can write. Like those on Pliny the Elder, the interludes of history about the leprosy hospital in Carville, Louisiana are shimmering in Ms Blackwell’s hand.

As one who grew up in Louisiana, I am drawn to stories about the state, with all its mistakes and foibles and crooked politicians. The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish however is a story I would encourage any book lover to read, with a guarantee that the chances of disappointment are slim.

I Dream of Rivers

Poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, essayist and columnist, Langston Hughes, was unfortunately for me, a long time coming to my attention. The name was familiar, as was his great stature as a spokesman for the African American, but I did not begin reading his work until six or seven years ago. It didn’t take me long to realize that Langston Hughes was a spokesman for much, much more than the people of his own race.

Born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, Langston Hughes spent a year at Columbia University before hopping a tramp steamer for West Africa and Europe. As a crew member on the ship, he traveled up and down the coast of West Africa for six months, and then settled in Paris for some time. Back in the US, and after earning a degree at Lincoln University, he moved to Harlem in New York City where he remained until his death in 1967.

He lived in New York during the period of years known as the Harlem Renaissance, spread across the decade of the 1920s. This was a time and a movement that ultimately redefined how America and the world viewed African Americans. In short, the Harlem Renaissance created a new black identity. One concern of the poet at this time was racial pride and the creation of what could be called purely African American poetry. Jazz was an important part of Harlem culture during those years and Hughes sought to adapt that musical genre to his poetry. He used the syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases common to blues music and jazz. From his work and the work of other black writers of the time emerged what came to called jazz poetry.

The following five poems are not necessarily what one might call classic examples of jazz poetry, but rather a representative selection of poems over a span of twenty-six years in the work of Langston Hughes.

I Dream a World

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn.

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom’s way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind—

Of such I dream, my world!

(February 1945)

Birth

Oh, fields of wonder

Out of which

Stars are born,

And moon and sun

And me as well,

Like stroke

Of lightning

In the night

Some mark

To make

Some word

To tell.

(May 1947)

Blues on a Box

Play your guitar, boy,

Till yesterday’s

Black cat

Runs out tomorrow’s

Back door

And evil old

Hard luck

Ain’t no more!

(February 1947)

Feet o’ Jesus

At the feet o’ Jesus,

Sorrow like a sea.

Lordy, let yo’ mercy

Come driftin’ down on me.

At the feet o’ Jesus

At yo’ feet I stand.

O, ma little Jesus,

Please reach out yo’ hand.

(October 1926)

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I danced in the Nile when I was old
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

(June 1921)

Five poems from: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes