Fountain Pens In Fiction

[Blade Runner]

Have you seen fountain pens mentioned in fiction? Share them here.

 

From Summer House by Wiiliam Trevor.

"The first thing I remember in all my life was my father breaking a fountain pen. It was a large black and white pen, like tortoise shell or marble. That was the fashion of fountain pens then: two or three colours marbled together, green and black, blue and white, red and black and white. Conway Stewart, Waterman's, Blackbird. Propelling pencils were called Eversharp. The day my father broke his pen I didn't know all that. I learnt it afterwards at Miss Pritchard's primary. I was three the day he broke his pen. 'It's just a waste of bloomin' money!' he shouted. He smashed the pen across his knee while my mother anxiously watched. Waste of money or not, she said, it wouldn't help matters to break the thing. She fetched him the ink and dip pen from the drawer of the dresser ......"

 

From the English Patient by Michael Ondaatje:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/jelb/MISCELLANEOUS/ralph_fiennes.jpg

"I worked in the department of Egyptology on my own book. Recentes Explorations dans les Desert Libiqyue, as the days progressed, coming closer and closer to the text, as if the desert were there somewhere on the page, so I could even smell the ink as it emerged from the fountain pen."

 

 

 

Not fiction, but The essay on the fountain pen fetish is "Penography" by Aristides (Joseph Epstein). Originally published in the American Scholar and can be found in his fine collection of essays, Middle of My Tether.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Blade Runner

[AnUprightMan]

In the FX series Archer Cheryl Tunt used a fountain pen to take down notes.. I might have a picture of it somwhere

[Jadie]

We need more stories with fountain pens. =\ Here's an excerpt from Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy L. Sayers, that made my inner pen-fangirl giggle. It's a mystery series starring a gentleman detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, set in the golden years between WWI and WWII. This part of the book focuses on the investigation of the victim's study....

 

".....The general impression was that he didn't write much. The housemaid said she never found anything to speak of in the waste-paper basket."

 

"Well, that's uncommonly helpful. Wait a moment. Here's his fountain-pen. Very handsome---Onoto with complete gold casing. Dear me! entirely empty. Well, I don't know that one can deduce anything from that, exactly. I don't see any pencil about, by the way. I'm inclined to think that you're wrong in supposing he was writing letters."

 

I'm thinking it probably looked something like this one:

http://www.writeherekitenow.co.uk/acatalog/Onoto-Magna-Classic-Solid-18ct-Gold-Pen.html

 

I do believe fountain pens and blotting paper make occasional cameos in other books in the series---with a slightly more important role in The Unpleasantness of the Bellona Club in particular.

[anaximander]

I was recently re-watching some episodes of Smallville. In season 6, there is a scene where Lana Lang (played by Kristin Kreuk) is writing a letter to Lex Luthor, telling him that she can't marry him. It's hard to get a good look at the pen she's using, but it is clearly a fountain pen, I think a Lamy Studio.

[regid99]

In the movie "1984", the character Winston Smith finds a notebook and a fountain pen and starts to write, hidding from the telescreen

 

In the movie "a single man" Colin firth wakes up from a nightmare. He has left his FP uncapped on the blanket and ink has leaked on it.

 

There is no real close up on the pens so it's hard to identify

[pradhith]

This scene did not occur in real: In A Beautiful Mind, there was an extravagant pen ceremony at the end, including some nice Montblancs.

[Craiglea]

There are few instances of pens mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes canon. In the rather nasty story The Cardboard Box the following occurs:

 

 

Address printed in rather straggling characters: ‘Miss S. Cushing, Cross Street, Croydon.’ Done with a broad-pointed pen, probably a J and with very inferior ink.

 

And in The Hound of The Baskerville Holmes complains of the poor standard of hotel pens:

 

 

If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else.

 

Finally it’s a pen that takes us as close as we ever get to “Elementary my dear Watson”:

 

both glove and finger were stained with violet ink. She had written in a hurry and dipped her pen too deep. It must have been this morning, or the mark would not remain clear upon the finger. All this is amusing, though rather elementary

 

[Blade Runner]

From Virgins by William Trevor

 

"They paused by a window full of exercise books and bottles of Stephen's ink, which Margaretta said was her favourite shop of all. The window was strewn with packets of nibs and pencils, packets of rubber bands, rulers, pencil sharpeners and Waterman fountain pens in different marbled colours."

[Jadie]

Not mine, but...a link to an earlier thread in 2010, "Pens in Literature", offering examples that fit this topic.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/155075-pens-in-literature/

[bitterwonder]

I believe I have seen a fountain pen mentioned in every book by Ha Jin.

[brunico]

Reaching into his pocket, he [Gen. Gerald Templer] took out his fountain pen and carefully laid it on the Periwig codebook. 'I caught you looking at this with more respect than you've ever shown me. Hope you'll make better use of it than I do.'

[...]

I wrote the first draft of Peeping Tom with his fountain pen.

From Between Silk and Cyanide, Leo Marks' account of his time as a cryptographer in the Special Operations Executive. A highly compelling read, in an engagingly idiosyncratic and epigrammatic prose.

 

If you didn't know of Leo Marks, 84 Charing Cross Road might ring a bell (he was the son of the bookshop owner whose correspondence with Helene Hanff became a book, a play and a film), or perhaps 'The Life That I Have,' a code poem he wrote and issued to the heroic Violette Szabo.

 

Edited September 3, 2013 by brunico

[inkstainedruth]

I don't have the book to hand, but pens and ink figure prominently in one of Agatha Christie's novels, _Hickory Dickory Dock_. The initial victim runs out of ink in her pen (she specifically says something like "I need to buy a bottle of Quink) and snags a refill of green from one of the other residents of the youth hostel where she lives. Later, she is believed at first to have killed herself -- until the manager of the hostel remembers the girl putting the green ink in her pen (thus proving that the supposed suicide note is a fake, since it's *not* written in green).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Blade Runner]

Regarding the English Patient, I posted a photo of R. Fiennes as Count Lazlo de Almasy in my original post writing in his treasured copy of Histories by Herodotus used as a commonplace book with tipped in pages filled with notes, maps, drawings, It's one of the most interesting sounding notebooks in fiction.

[Blade Runner]

I don't have the book to hand, but pens and ink figure prominently in one of Agatha Christie's novels, _Hickory Dickory Dock_. The initial victim runs out of ink in her pen (she specifically says something like "I need to buy a bottle of Quink) and snags a refill of green from one of the other residents of the youth hostel where she lives. Later, she is believed at first to have killed herself -- until the manager of the hostel remembers the girl putting the green ink in her pen (thus proving that the supposed suicide note is a fake, since it's *not* written in green).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

If memory serves green ink features in a fairly recent (foreign?) movie, where a protagonist uses a deceased person's green ink to forge a letter similar to your story! Does anyone remember the title?

[Daisy25]

Regarding the English Patient, I posted a photo of R. Fiennes as Count Lazlo de Almasy in my original post writing in his treasured copy of Histories by Herodotus used as a commonplace book with tipped in pages filled with notes, maps, drawings, It's one of the most interesting sounding notebooks in fiction.

And one of my absolute favorite novels -- stunning writing.

[Blade Runner]

From the Image Trade by V.S. Pritchett -

 

"Zut looked at the largest table. It had a clear space among pots of pencils, ashtrays, paper clips, two piles of folders for the execution block -- a large blotter embroidered with pen wipings, and on it was a board with beautiful clean white paper clipped to it.

 

.....What fun you have in your branch of the trade. I have paper clips, pipe cleaners, scissors, paste. I try pens, that's all -- to save me from entering the wilderness, the wilderness of vocabulary."

Edited September 3, 2013 by Blade Runner

[ethernautrix]

The book is at home, so I can't quote from it (and I've only begun reading it) - Jonathan Carroll's A Child Across Time. (1989)

[nomadhacker]

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafron, has a fountain pen, which had (dubiously) previously belonged to Victor Hugo, and plays an interesting connecting device in the story.

 

"In the absence of the pen, my father lent me a Staedler pencil, a number two, with which I scribbled in a notebook. Unsurprisingly, my story told of an extraordinary fountain pen remarkably similar to the one in the shop, though enchanted. To be more precise, the pen was possessed by the tortured soul of its previous owner, a novelist who had died of hunger and cold. When the pen fell into the hands of an apprentice, it insisted on reproducing on paper the author's last work, which he had not been able to finish in his lifetime."

[Geordielass]

Re "1984", as a book rather than as a film though (I've read it but not seen it). No-one is allowed privacy and that includes keeping a personal journal/diary but Winston Smith, the protagonist, has bought a beautiful old book with lovely paper to keep a journal and then later finds himself a fountain pen and a bottle of ink to use with it. They become part of the incriminating evidence that eventually lead to his downfall:

 

"The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil."

[Blade Runner]

Re "1984", as a book rather than as a film though (I've read it but not seen it). No-one is allowed privacy and that includes keeping a personal journal/diary but Winston Smith, the protagonist, has bought a beautiful old book with lovely paper to keep a journal and then later finds himself a fountain pen and a bottle of ink to use with it. They become part of the incriminating evidence that eventually lead to his downfall:

 

"The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil."

 

Good one, Thanks!