Fountain Pens In Fiction

[UDog]

 

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.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es6NIt-Oye8

 

 

 

Leo Mark's poem "The Life that I Have" figures in the novel Return of the Falcon (set in 1946, on Amazon) as a code poem from a London MI5 operative, and there's mention of the Eversharp Skyline as well. There is even a coded message for the reader.

 

Thanks for the well-researched post.

[inkstainedruth]

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

 

"Four streets south of ours, I saw Omar, the son of an engineer who was a friend of Baba's. He was dribbling a soccer ball with his brother on the front lawn of their house. Omar was a pretty good guy. We'd been classmates in fourth grade, and one time he'd given me a fountain pen, the kind you had to load with a cartridge. "I heard you won, Amir," he said. "Congratulations.""

 

I remember this novel quite fondly as it was my self study English piece in the 11th grade (Junior).

Interesting. I read this a few years ago and didn't remember this scene, but of course at the time I just had the one FP (and then only used it for my daily journal).

*This* was your self study book for 11th grade? Yikes! I read it when I was around 50. And found it sufficiently intense in places that I did NOT want to see the movie for fear it would be too graphic....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[androids.conundrum]

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

 

"And Miss Brush went out, came back; laid papers on the table; and Hugh produced his fountain pen; his silver fountain pen, which had done twenty years’ service, he said, unscrewing the cap. It was still in perfect order; he had shown it to the makers; there was no reason, they said, why it should ever wear out; which was somehow to Hugh’s credit, and to the credit of the sentiments which his pen expressed (so Richard Dalloway felt) as Hugh began carefully writing capital letters with rings round them in the margin, and thus marvellously reduced Lady Bruton’s tangles to sense, to grammar such as the editor of the Times, Lady Bruton felt, watching the marvellous transformation, must respect."

[jameswatts]

It may not show the hobby in the best light, but the pursuit of antique eons drives the plot of Paul Griner's "Collectors"

[b8amack]

The View From Saturday, by E.L. Konigsburg, has a lot on fountain pens and calligraphy in it. I believe it calls the ballpoint the "end of Western Civilization". Of course, they're wrongly called "calligraphy pens", but the description of drawing the ink into the converter marks them as fountain pens, rather than dip pens.

[Blue_Moon]

It's not fiction, strictly speaking, but wasn't one of the entries in Anne Frank's Diary all about her broad-nibbed fountain pen? Hang on - google coming up...

 

It's a long one and with a certain amount of nasty irony:

 

 

Dearest Kitty,

I have a good title for this chapter:

Ode to My Fountain Pen In Memoriam

My fountain pen was always one of my most prized possessions; I valued it highly, especially because it had a thick nib, and I can only write neatly with thick nibs. It has led a long and interesting fountain-pen life, which I will summarize below.

When I was nine, my fountain pen (packed in cotton wool) arrived as a 'sample of no commercial value' all the way from Aachen, where my grandmother (the kindly donor) used to live. I lay in bed with flu, while the February winds howled around our flat. This splendid fountain pen came in a red leather case, and I showed it to my girlfriends the first chance I got. Me, Anne Frank, the proud owner of a fountain pen.

When I was ten, I was allowed to take the pen to school, and to my surprise, the teacher even let me write with it. When I was eleven, however, my treasure had to be tucked away again, because my sixth-form teacher allowed us to use only school pens and ink-pots. When I was twelve, I started at the Jewish Lyceum and my fountain pen was given a new case in honour of the occasion. Not only did it have room for a pencil, it also had a zip, which was much more impressive. When I was thirteen, the fountain pen went with me to the Annexe, and together we've raced through countless diaries and compositions. I'd turned fourteen and my fountain pen was enjoying the last year of its life with me when . . .

It was just after five on Friday afternoon. I came out of my room and was about to sit down at the table to write when I was roughly pushed to one side to make room for Margot and Father, who wanted to practise their Latin. The fountain pen remained unused on the table, while its owner, sighing, was forced to make do with a very tiny corner of the table, where she began rubbing beans. That's how we remove mould from the beans and restore them to their original state. At a quarter to six I swept the floor, dumped the dirt into a newspaper, along with the rotten beans, and tossed it into the stove. A giant flame shot up, and I thought it was wonderful that the stove, which had been gasping its last breath, had made such a miraculous recovery.

All was quiet again. The Latin students had left, and I sat down at the table to pick up where I'd left off. But no matter where I looked, my fountain pen was nowhere in sight. I took another look. Margot looked, Mother looked, Father looked, Dussel looked. But it had vanished.

'Maybe it fell in the stove, along with the beans!' Margot suggested.

'No, it couldn't have!' I replied.

But that evening, when my fountain pen still hadn't turned up, we all assumed it had been burned, especially because celluloid is highly inflammable. Our darkest fears were con­firmed the next day when Father went to empty the stove and discovered the clip, used to fasten it to a pocket, among the ashes. Not a trace of the gold nib was left. 'It must have melted into stone,' Father conjectured.

I'm left with one consolation, small though it may be: my fountain pen was cremated, just as I would like to be some day.

Yours, Anne

 

Not fiction, but excellent piece.

[MusterMark]

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

 

"And Miss Brush went out, came back; laid papers on the table; and Hugh produced his fountain pen; his silver fountain pen, which had done twenty years’ service, he said, unscrewing the cap. It was still in perfect order; he had shown it to the makers; there was no reason, they said, why it should ever wear out; which was somehow to Hugh’s credit, and to the credit of the sentiments which his pen expressed (so Richard Dalloway felt) as Hugh began carefully writing capital letters with rings round them in the margin, and thus marvellously reduced Lady Bruton’s tangles to sense, to grammar such as the editor of the Times, Lady Bruton felt, watching the marvellous transformation, must respect."

I love that moment in Mrs. Dalloway!

[callyjones]

I believe there is a reference to a fountain pen in The Great Gatsby. There is certainly a mention of Gatsby's 'Majestic Hand'. Posts like these really interest me, I might be really sad and start a journal of references to fountain pen in film/literature!

[inkstainedruth]

 

Not fiction, but excellent piece.

And in retrospect, given Anne Frank's fate, chilling and eerily almost a premonition. Thanks for posting this (it's been a long time since I've read it).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Blade Runner]

"Hot towels were brought, the pink tape around the sets of papers undone, the transcripts spread...

And he got to work with his fountain pen and a block of folio, and was soon blind, deaf and oblivious to all else."

 

from The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam

[Blade Runner]

"Train called the Brighton Belle. Beautiful train....Pink linen table cloths and table lamps even in second class which I think was still called third. What the first class was like - maybe solid silver and bits of parsley on sandwiches - I don't know. Veneering and I sat at one table and aristocratic Filth sat as far away as possible from both of us at another, with his back to us, fountain pen poised. Small glass of dry sherry..."

 

from Last Friends by Jane Gardam

[Blade Runner]

"Fred Fiscal Smith is writing a letter with a fountain pen (ink Swan, blue black)." Circa 1955

 

From Last Friends by Jane Gardam

[AustinMalone1999]

To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee

''he unscrewed the fountain pen cap and laid it on the desk'' She refers to a fountain pen twice on this same page, and the detail struck me. It was left out of the movie

[Blade Runner]

"I took pleasure in the pile of glossy exercise books I bought and in my clear handwriting covering the pages. I wrote page numbers in red ink and underlined in green. Then as time passed I discovered the satisfaction of footnotes. These I also wrote in red with an inked black line between text and note."

 

from Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam

[inkstainedruth]

Don't have the book to hand, but I've been reading the Richard Hanney series by John Buchan (think _The Thirty-Nine Steps_). In the first sequel to that book, called _Greenmantle_, the hero has gone undercover behind the German lines (time period, WW1 -- the book was first published in 1919; I think the book is set in 1916 or 1917) by masquerading as a Dutch mining engineer. He is brought before a German army officer, Colonel Stumm, at one point; the colonel is sitting behind a desk writing notes with a fountain pen.

I thought that it was interesting that the author specifically said that it was a fountain pen, not just "a pen", given the date the book was written. It seems to me that this is a little before the "Golden Age" (i.e., 1920s-1950s), so mentioning the type of pen might be significant as perhaps an unusual sight that early (i.e., as opposed to dip pens). There is mention of real people, such as the French General Pétain, and the German flying ace Baron von Richtofen (they aren't major characters, but their inclusion sets forth a realism to the rest of the plot; amongst the author's other works were a 20[?] volume history of the War, often published shortly after a battle -- months, if not weeks).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[ravantra]

"According to her wishes, there won't be a funeral," Oshima continues. "She was quietly cremated. She left a will in a drawer in her desk upstairs. She left her entire estate to the foundation that runs the library. She left me her Mont Blanc pen as a keepsake. And a painting for you. The one of the boy on the shore. You'll take it, won't you?"

 

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

 

"I brought my face up to the mirror and examined the mark with the utmost care. Located just beyond the right cheekbone, it was about the size of an infant's palm. Its bluish color close to black, like the blue-black Mont Blanc ink that Kumiko always used."

 

The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

[Blade Runner]

"According to her wishes, there won't be a funeral," Oshima continues. "She was quietly cremated. She left a will in a drawer in her desk upstairs. She left her entire estate to the foundation that runs the library. She left me her Mont Blanc pen as a keepsake. And a painting for you. The one of the boy on the shore. You'll take it, won't you?"

 

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

 

"I brought my face up to the mirror and examined the mark with the utmost care. Located just beyond the right cheekbone, it was about the size of an infant's palm. Its bluish color close to black, like the blue-black Mont Blanc ink that Kumiko always used."

 

The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Love that second one.

[MusterMark]

"On his smallest finger Orlick screwed the cap of his Waterman fountain-pen, the one with the fourteen-carat nib; when he unscrewed it again there was a black circle about his finger.

 

Symbolism of the foregoing: annoyance."

 

-Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds

 

Just finished teaching this novel today. I don't think my students understood why I started laughing when we got to this part.

[Blade Runner]

"... there was a list of Latin names, beside each, a neatly penned drawing of a fossil. Several times the nib of the pen had caught on a rough bit of paper and spat a shower of minute ink dots which, in one place, the writer had turned into a little figure ..."

 

A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively

 

 

"You know", he would add, tapping his pipe or a fork or his fountain pen on an ashtray, or a plate, or edge of a book, "this type of Paulinism is a recurrent strain in the church."

 

A Month of Sundays by John Updike

Edited October 13, 2014 by Blade Runner

[jdllizard]

I happen to be friends with a rather famous sci-fi author. I'm going to show him this thread and see if I can get him to include fountain pens in the novel he is currently writing. I bet he'd do it.