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BUDDHA: PCs are not always better than pens



EDWARD ROTHSTEIN: PCs are not always better than pens
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Copyright © 1996 Nando.net
Copyright © 1996 N.Y. Times News Service

(Jan 21, 1996 11:03 p.m. EST) For a change, I have been writing this column
not with Word for Windows on a Pentium 90-MHz PC with a motherboard by
American Megatrends, but using a black Mont Blanc Meisterstuecke fountain
pen filled with burgundy ink.

The slightly wet line of prose seems to glide out of the gold and platinum
engravings near my fingertips, and as I cross out and revise, a palpable
trace is left of either exasperation or quiet reflection. The words emerge
without pressure, as if they had weight as well as shape (even, on occasion,
leaving imprints on fingertips).

I feel like the character in the Isaac Asimov science fiction story who
discovers, centuries hence, that it is possible to multiply three digit
numbers by hand without using a calculator.

There is a pleasure to be taken in shedding technology, in forgetting about
interfaces and interrupts, in admiring finely wrought engravings in precious
metals rather than pixelated images on a monitor, in grasping an object
gently rather than tapping fingers according to gnomic QWERTY-induced
patterns. I am not alone in finding this pleasure.

There even may be a general law applicable here: every technological
movement inspires a less equal and opposite romantic movement. The invention
of the gun increased reverence for the sword, the Industrial Revolution
inspired pastoral utopianism, the rise of the automobile encouraged
passionate equestrian hobbyists, the invention of the compact disk
strengthened devotion to the long-playing record.

And as each newer technology has become established, the romantic
countermovement has become the province of the wealthy, who are ready to
bear -- nay, revel in -- the inconveniences of retro-tech for the sake of
its fragile pleasures. It is no coincidence this kind of market is known as
the carriage trade.

Retro-tech pens have been the beneficiaries of the latest romantic
rebellion, finding solace from a universe of hard drives and word processors
in a world of high-priced handcraft.

A glossy magazine, Pen World International, which runs stories about
celebrities who write with ink along with detailed images of
multi-thousand-dollar collectible pens, began in 1987 with a circulation of
1,000; it now has 100,000 readers and a German-language edition. In the last
two years, fountain pen magazines have also started in Italy, France and
Spain.

This reflects a dramatic change in the marketplace. Five years ago, 5
percent of the business at the Fountain Pen Hospital in New York came from
sales and repair of fountain pens and 95 percent from sales of stationery.
Now the proportions are reversed; the sale and repair of pens account for 95
percent of the $4-million-a-year business.

Mont Blanc, which has become one of the most widely advertised high-end pens
in the United States, opened six retail boutiques in the nation last year
and plans to open six more; the company will not disclose sales statistics
but the president of Mont Blanc N.A., Stanislas de Quercize, says that in
the last 20 years, fountain pen sales have increased more than twentyfold.

There's no escaping the pen's popularity even on the World Wide Web, where
the pen is less mighty than the PC. There are Web pages from pen stores
complete with sale photos, pages from pen manufacturers who list the exotic
woods they use, even a Tokyo store plying its wares, bearing the quaint name
Kawaskubo Electrical Fountain Pen Shop.

What is going on here? Glen Bowen, the publisher of Pen World, says it is a
"rebellion against high tech and against the cold aspect of computers and
keyboards." He refers to the "feel of quality" in a "high-precision
instrument" and the impression a fountain pen script can make in handwritten
correspondence. Moreover, he notes that the strongest sales of fountain pens
- -- themselves a retro-tech item -- are in "retro-style pens," designed to
look as if they were made a half century ago, bearing not even a stylistic
relationship to the contemporary world.

But there is more here than just yearning for a lost past. Consider: Omas is
offering its Jerusalem 3000 pen, illustrated with the four gates of the old
city engraved in silver, with a reddish body that is the color of the
"majesty of the desert sun setting over the great city." Stipula is offering
the Il Dono, a pen illustrated in silver with a scene of the contest between
Athena and Poseidon to see whose name would grace Attica's capital (which we
now know as Athens). These pens are being linked to sacred places or divine
powers.

Bowen also explained that many pens now are being inscribed with the number
8 or being made in limited editions based on the number 8 (like 888) because
that is considered a lucky number in Japan, a major market for fine pens.

Other archetypal signs are used as well, especially a snake motif that has
been a recurring theme in pen design. A 1913 Waterman had a silver snake
entirely wrapped around its traditional shape; a 1918 Parker had two gold
snakes slithering over its cap and body; the clip on a more recent Agatha
Christie pen made by Mont Blanc is an engraved silver snake that peers down
with its ruby eyes at the nib below. These pens invoke the staff of ancient
magicians who could, in legend, bend the liquid form of the snake to their
service.

That is, of course, what writers aspire to do as well, as the stream of
words flows between their fingers. Pens promise that sort of mythic power.

The Dante Alighieri pen is made by Aurora: "It is to go beyond the surface
of things, in order to enter the refined and exclusive world of Italian
art." Mont Blanc's Agatha Christie pen is one of a series devoted to authors
- -- the Hemingway, the Oscar Wilde, the Voltaire -- that are often being
displayed in cases adjacent to the original authors' manuscripts.

In the face of such promises, what hope does the PC have? Bettman-Archive
wallpaper for Windows? World Wide Web pages with backgrounds of fake marble
or wood? Cyberspace offers power based on speed and reach, not on depth.
Writing in cyberspace is temporal, evanescent. The pen promises something
more: a trace made in the physical world, a mark of powers the PC passes by.

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