26 Writing with fountain pen
These days many more people write by tapping on computer keys than by writing on paper with a pen, and a simple pen – a ballpoint pen for example – is so inexpensive that many people do not have a personal pen but grab one from a bunch lying on any table and use it. An elegant ballpoint pen is already a kind of declaration and some people regard it as superfluous. And if that is true regarding the ballpoint pen, what about the fountain pen?
Many of us are convinced that the fountain pen is obsolete, a dinosaur that belongs in a museum. Although we know that writing with steel point has a unique character, in that the line of ink is flexible, its thickness is variable and that its many shades are determined by the degree of pressure, the angle and speed in which the point goes over the paper. But all this does not persuade those who think that writing with a fountain pen is fated to go the way of writing with a quill or calligraphic writing with a brush – practices that belong to vanished esoteric cultures or to artists that are interested in former techniques. None the less the fountain pen survives and one of the reasons that it does is that it is regarded as an item of prestige and is manufactured as a piece of jewelry for the wealthy customers. In stores that specialize in them, it is not rare to find expensive fountain pens that cost thousands and sometimes even tens of thousands of shekels.
But my simple fountain pen cost me only a few hundred shekels (which in the long run is cheap because the life span of a pen like this is decades and the cost of ink is minimal). It is not a prestigious item or an anachronistic trinket. It is simply the best writing instrument, the pleasantest and most reliable one. Before I returned to writing with a fountain pen I struggled with every simple pen I bought and more than once I had to buy dozens of pens before I found one that suited me. Not any more. This pen, which I have been using now for two years, will continue to serve me many more years.
