Today (24 May 2015) at 11AM Pacific, 7PM GMT, I will be joining up with Stephen Brown for a live stream Q&A. This will be our first test of this system, and if all goes well, may become a regular thing. Join on in!
May 22 marks one year since the military coup in Thailand led by now-Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power from Prime Minster Yingluck Shinawatra. Since the coup, rights to free expression have been widely and scathingly curtailed by Chan-ocha’s government, as have a number of other human rights, including association and assembly. According to Freedom House, Thailand classifies as “Not Free” in regards to media freedom, and its global ranking has plummeted from #141 to #166 worldwide in the past year.
Adding to the deteriorating state of freedom of expression in Thailand, on April 1, 2015, Chan-ocha issued Order Number 3/2558, formally ending martial law. But under the Order, invoked under Article 44 of the junta-imposed interim constitution, the military junta will remain in power and new rules will allow for continued official censorship of the media, outlawing of political gatherings, and expansion of the military’s extrajudicial powers to search, arrest, and detain individuals for up to seven days without a court warrant or any formal charges. The vaguely worded Article 44 calls for “the prevention, abatement, or suppression of any act detrimental to national order or security, royal throne, national economy, or public administration.” Article 44 also provides the Prime Minister with unlimited powers, including authority over the judicial and legislative branches of government as well as total legal immunity.
The formal end of martial law in Thailand is merely a veneer covering up, among many other attacks on civil rights, extensive restrictions on free speech and widespread censorship implemented from the start of the coup throughout the time Chan-ocha has been in power. At the onset of martial law, the ruling junta arrested several journalists and shut down numerous websites and broadcast media outlets. Later that year, the military junta issued Order 103, which outlawed any criticism of the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), and Order 97, which prohibited criticism towards the military authorities. In Thailand, defamation is a criminal offence, and Chan-ocha’s government has convicted writers and human rights activists on charges of defamation. Charges of defamation—particularly lèse majesté, or defamation of the monarch—have often been used against political opponents or those citizens advocating for human rights as a way to silence and intimidate critical voices and activists. Thus, it is clear that Order 3/2558 ending martial law is a brazen ploy to lure overseas business dollars back to Thailand while permitting the military to continue to violate the rights of the Thai population both within and outside the borders of Thailand.
Less than a month after martial law was "lifted," Thai authorities shuttered Peace TV, a station aligned with the elected government ousted during last year’s coup, for “airing content that leads to conflicts.” The secretary general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), a government regulator, also announced that the NBTC would move to suspend or withdraw the licenses of nearly 200 radio stations for airing news critical of the government. Exacerbating the situation in Thailand have been General Chan-ocha’s recent remarks about executing any journalist that does not report “the truth”—his truth, which is highly subjective and depends on the whims of the regime.
These restrictions and threats posed by the military regime have caused a number of dissenting Thais to flee into self-imposed exile in fear of their lives and personal safety. Spread out among neighboring countries, as well as much further in Europe or the United States, these exiles live in defiance of the military junta’s restrictions on free expression. Some have even banded together to create the Free Thais for Democracy and Human Rights movement to discuss strategies and actions that would help unify their goals for democracy and human rights against the junta. Others, like filmmakers Wanchelearm Satsaksit and Neti Wichiansaen, are trying to combat restrictions on free speech in Thailand by interviewing Thai exiles in countries like the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, and Germany with the aim of creating a film to raise awareness about the challenges facing pro-democracy Thais inside and outside of Thailand today. However, the resolve of these exiles has been tested by many obstacles. Some have had their passports revoked by the military regime and therefore cannot obtain visas for entry into other countries that maintain ties with the Thai military regime or that appease of the Chan-ocha government, leaving many in residential limbo and yet unable to return to Thailand, their families, and their old lives.
The outcomes of the oppressive Order Number 3/2558—the ongoing crackdown to free speech within Thailand, the precarious situation of Thai dissidents in exile, and General Chan-ocha’s threatening verbal rhetoric—illustrate the extremely limited environment for free expression in and about Thailand since the military coup occurred a year ago. Continued advocacy by rights groups and individuals, as well as diplomatic pressure from governments, is needed to reverse these negative trends and help return Thailand to its earlier position as a beacon of openness in South East Asia.
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Material: Acrylic & Brass
Nib: 18k Gold
Appointments: Brass
Filling System: International Standard Cartridge Converter
Length (Capped): 141mm
Length (Uncapped): 123mm
Length (Posted): 163mm
Section Diameter: 11.3mm
Barrel Max Diameter: 14.5mm
Cap Max Diameter: 15.9mm
Weight, Uncapped (with ink and/or converter): 22g
Weight, Capped (with ink and/or converter): 32g
Although it may seem otherwise, I do actually have something of a personal limit to the amount of money I am willing to spend on a single fountain pen. Most people would look at my pen-spenditures and think I had lost my mind. (Frankly, I think that way half the time.) But even I am taken aback by some of these modern fountain pens that cost several thousand dollars, and are so delicate in construction that they could never actually be used as writing instruments. At that point, they become works of fine art, not writing instruments. And while there’s nothing wrong with collecting fine art, it’s not where my interest lies.
My personal budget limits play a large part in why I had never heard of, let alone used, a fountain pen from the company Krone. Named after the founder, Robert Kronenberger, most of the pens in Krone’s line are highly elaborate, hand-painted works that look more at home in a curio cabinet or under glass than in the board room. Some call them ornate. Others call them lurid. I generally fall somewhere closer to the latter camp. Despite my preference for flashy pens, I find most Krone designs to be too over the top even for me…especially at prices of up to and including $2,500.
When Fountain Pen Hospital had its semi-annual pen frenzy a couple of months ago, I came across what looked like a “production line” Krone fountain pen at a comparatively reasonable price. Plus, I really liked the unique design and decided I’d give it a try.
The Krone Continuum comes in three finishes: black with silver rings (Abyss), brown with brass rings (Aladabra), and blue with brass rings (Atmosphere.) I picked the Atmosphere version, although the Aladabra certainly intrigues me. The design features acrylic cylinders interspersed of ever-decreasing length with brass rings. The acrylic of the Atmosphere floats effortlessly between a rich, royal blue, and a shimmery, metallic sky blue with a lovely dose of chattoyance. The barrel of the pen tapers to a ridged brass finial with a flat terminus.
The cap of the pen has a flat top with a bevelled corner. The cast brass clip is chunky, but streamlined, and features a shield with the Krone crown logo and a twisted rope motif around the edges. The clip attaches by a small slit cut into the cap and is firm while still being a bit flexible. I find it very easy to clip this pen to either a shirt pocket or the pocket of my jeans. At the base of the cap is a brass band with the same ridges that decorate the finial.
The cap threads are superbly manufactured, and are both smooth and tight. It takes approximately 3 turns to uncap the pen fully. Upon removing the cap, you find a tapering section which leads to an attractive two-color 18k nib featuring some clean-lined scrollwork and the Krone logo. The plastic feed employed on the pen is a bit unusual, with vertical slits instead of the far more common horizontal fins usually seen on a feed.
The pen is a cartridge/converter pen, and comes with a fairly unimpressive (read: cheap) twist-style converter. (Mine got ink behind the plunger the first time I used the pen, and completely fell apart the first time I tried to clean it.) Fortunately, it does take standard-international converters and cartridges, so I was able to replace the lackluster included converter and get right back to writing.
The pen can be posted, although I would not recommend it. With a heavy cap and heavy metal finial, the pen feels unbalanced. The metal of the cap band meshes with the metal of the finial, making for a very secure posting that is difficult to disengage. And posting the pen exposes a small design flaw. For some reason, the brass finial and some of the acrylic unscrew from the end of the barrel as though it was a piston-filler. By itself, this wouldn’t be a problem, but when coupled with a full-length converter, unscrewing the finial also manages to twist the converter’s piston, dumping ink on your hand. I discovered this first hand (pun intended) when I tried to un-post the pen for the first time, and had to twist the cap to get it to disengage. It was a very unfortunate premature ink-jaculation. At least the ink I was using at the time left a lovely sheen on my hands…
The Continuum’s nib is a good, if not glorious, writer. It has a forgiving sweet spot, but writes with a pretty significant amount of feedback. The tines on my pen were fully in alignment, but the nib felt as though it had corners almost like an italic nib. If you like feedback, you may like the nib as it is. I will probably smooth it out a bit more. The ink flow is moderate, but it handles long writing sessions with aplomb. It is a fairly rigid nib, but you can coax a decent bit of line variation out. Unfortunately, the feed doesn’t seem to be able to keep up, and the pen railroads quite easily if you do try to push the nib. Clearly it wasn’t designed for any sort of “flex” use.
One minor pet peeve I have is that the Continuum’s nib tends to dry out really quickly, even when the pen is capped. If I stop writing for 15-20 seconds, it will give me a hard start or two on the first letter before the ink starts to flow. After that, I have no issues with ink flow at all, even on long writing sessions.
I quite like the looks of the Krone Continuum. It is pretty comfortable in my hand, and features a unique design with lovely materials. Right now, I have a strong case of like for the Continuum. Once we start getting into the $250+ range, though, simply liking the pen isn’t quite enough for me. I have to love it, and it has to be a great fit. I suspect with some nib work, my case of like may turn into a case of love. I’m going to give it a bit more time to continue growing on me. Thus far, the more I use it, the more I like it. I hope that’s a trend that will continue.
This week in the Guernica/PEN Flash Series, we feature a piece by Randall Horton, who participated in this year's PEN World Voices Festival. Subscribe to the series and get new flash delivered to your inbox twice a month—no spam or news, just stories.
Answer the phone at 10:00pm EST. Offer a reserved hello on a nebulous night filled with pallid snow in Harlem. Be attentive when you learn he died in a hail of gunfire at the intersection of Minnesota Avenue and East Capitol Street in the nation’s capital. Hang up. You can and you can’t believe the truth. Write D-I-S-C-O in your leather journal. Maybe this will immortalize the image. You will never forget him, but you have already forgotten Hook.
Remember the cell doors opening after being closed for 18 months in Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. Five hours after that release you met Disco wheeling an ATM through your basement on a handcart. Out of the wall with metal chain and pickup truck he pulled the money machine. He did that. This was your introduction.
Turn on the computer. Type Theodore Blanford in the search box. Click the magnifying glass. Expect to be surprised even though you know what the results will bring. Don’t be surprised when you scroll to MARYLAND DOUBLE HOMICIDE SUSPECT SHOT, KILLED IN DC. One lone bird outside your window flies backwards at an indeterminate rate of speed while the world moves forward. The bird is red. Look for balance in the oddity. Note double-homicide is five syllables. Five deliberate pauses before damn. Remember you knew the suspect/shooter/killer. Suspend court in your imagination. Add four indeterminate words to formulate the phrase hold court in the streets. This is how he will die: holding court in the streets. Prophetic. After reading the now-deceased wife wanted a divorce, deduce it was because of drugs. Visualize the wife and sister just before death in their doublewide. Try to make sense of blood spilled on the carpet. The red is deafening. Scream. Wait for the buzz to stop because someone rung the wrong buzzer. There is always an echo after the buzzing. Even after it buzzes again, don’t answer. Keep reading the online article, specifically the phrases “forcible entry” and “protective order.” Acknowledge your friend was a suspect in his first wife’s murder, too. A dead body in the trunk.
Two days later while driving to New Haven to teach two classes, call Greg because it takes that long to find someone to talk about tragedy. Tell Greg, who is a barber and has ten years behind the razor wire tucked in his memory, what happened. Agree in unison prison will turn the brain into a hum. Agree again prison taught you to be a better criminal though you both digress. Both of you understand the term “anomaly” but admit Disco is a composite of many men who never learned to be a man. You will then ask the question for the first time. Why?
Teach The Black Arts Movement: Don’t Cry, Scream! and Poetic Form at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, return back home to Harlem, New York, before rush hour traffic bottlenecks the Cross County Parkway. Dig through the closet for the first version of your hope-to-be-published memoir. Disco rolled the safe out of the department store, the first lines of the paragraph read. Go to the next page to where he loves to pull the trigger of a gun more than he loves touching the torso of a woman. Flip to the page where Disco and his sister appeared at the right side of the car where Randy sat and fired, in rapid succession, eight gunshots into the windshield, the red and blue flames punctuate each shot fired. The body a question mark.
He tried to run over the wife with his truck and then threatened her with a claw hammer. She told the police. Ask yourself why this sign didn’t signify violence. What theory would Ferdinand de Saussure classify this as? Put the manuscript back in the closet. Don’t beat yourself up because you knew he was a killer and said nothing to nobody. Justify your silence. That’s why they called you Hook. Don’t block Audre Lorde’s your silence will not protect you from your mind. Pretend this is penance.
Wake up the next morning. Go back to the computer. Press any key to erase the black screen. Ignore the blackbirds outside your window while telling yourself this is the last time. Click INMATE VIOLENT DEATHS IN THE NEWS. A flutter of blackbirds appear suspended in animation at the top right corner of the webpage, ignore them but then don’t. Tell yourself this is not karma. He didn’t want her to leave. She wanted him to go. Said he needed treatment. Think back to 12-Step Literature, which cautions of the 13th Step, meaning: sexual fraternization with people inside the circle. Feel confident in assuming she was a recovering addict and understood addictive behavior. Two addicts don’t make a right. Tell yourself this.
Review the interaction with police who failed to notice the inevitable. Admit the judicial system is failing to protect women. I AM VICTIM was tattooed on her forehead, yet she remained invisible. Ask yourself, does his death matter more than the victim’s death? Convince yourself the race never stops running, that memory will eat you alive. Say I am a changed man but no one will hear you. Get back in the bed. Pull the covers over your face. Remember to dream. Forget Hook. Wake up tomorrow and feel guilty again.
A slightly different version of this piece is forthcoming in Randall Horton's book Hook: A Memoir through Letters (Augury Books, 2015).
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PEN American Center condemns the extension of Azeri investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova’s imprisonment. On May 14, an Azeri court ruled to extend Ismayilova’s detention period to August 24. Ismayilova was arrested on December 5 of last year on the spurious charge of inciting a co-worker to commit suicide (her accuser has since asked that this charge be dismissed by the prosecutor); a slew of additional charges, including operating an illegal business and tax evasion, were added on in February. As she started her sixth month of imprisonment, Khadija was recently honored with the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award for her audacious and dedicated journalism, which exposed corruption at the highest levels of government.
“The extension of Ismayilova’s detention is a brazen move by the Azerbaijani government to further attempt to silence and intimidate Khadija and other investigative journalists,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, Director of Free Expression Programs at PEN American Center. “With less than a month to go until the European Games open in Baku, the government’s fear of those who speak truth to power has never been more apparent. We urge President Aliyev to reconsider this approach and to end the crackdown on free expression and human rights in Azerbaijan.”
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Material: Aluminum and Plastic
Nib: Steel
Appointments: Steel
Filling System: International Standard Cartridge Converter
Length (Capped): 129mm
Length (Uncapped): 121mm
Length (Posted): 151mm
Section Diameter: 11.3mm
Barrel Max Diameter: 11.8mm
Cap Max Diameter: 15.7mm
Weight, Uncapped (with ink and/or converter): 28g
Weight, Capped (with ink and/or converter): 34g
When it comes to entry-level fountain pens, it seems as though the same two choices keep popping up over and over again: The Lamy Safari and the Pilot Metropolitan. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I just don’t care for either of those pens. Both provide an inexpensive, consistent writing experience. Consistency is all well and good, but that’s not why I go through the extra hassle of using fountain pens: I want a little zazz with my writing. And I just don’t get that with those two starter pens.
When I purchased the Faber-Castell Loom fountain pen, I suspected I would feel similarly about it as I do about the Safari and the Metropolitan. I was expecting a decent writer, but nothing of particular note. My previous experiences with the brand led me to expect a modern design and a pretty good nib. But at $40 USD, what I did not expect was a pen that would shoot to the top of my list of “entry-level” pens. Color me surprised!
(To be fair, there are many who would not consider a $40 pen an entry-level pen, and that’s understandable. For my purposes, I consider any pen less than $50 to be entry-level.)
The Loom is a silver-colored metal-bodied pen that comes with caps in a wide variety of colors, including some pretty bright, neon offerings. I opted for the more subdued “Metallic Silver” finish. Due to the nature of the matte finish of the pen, it can be a little difficult to tell at first glance which parts of the pen are metal and which are plastic, leading to a very uniform, clean-looking design.
The cap is made of a silver plastic that is treated to look like Aluminum. It has a slightly bulbous profile, with a deep swell toward the center. The clip, which feels hinged (see the video for what I mean by this) is chromed metal, and quite chunky, with a modern-looking shape. The top of the clip is inset into the top of the cap, and was cast with the Faber-Castell jousting knights logo.
The rest of the barrel is made of metal (likely aluminum) and is completely cylindrical. The end of the barrel features an unusual, concave finial.
Removing the snap-on cap reveals a silverized, plastic section that tapers toward the nib. This appears to be fairly unusual for Faber-Castell pens, which often feature perfectly cylindrical sections. The section on the Loom features five slightly raised rings set at regular intervals which both provide a bit of textural interest on what would otherwise be a sparse design, and help the smooth plastic section from getting too slippery. It’s also of note how perfectly and smoothly the threads of the metal barrel mesh with the threads of the plastic section. The precision manufacturing which Germany is known for is very much in evidence on this pen.
The pen posts nicely, with the light cap slipping onto the barrel deeply and securely without throwing off the pen’s balance. I actually prefer to use this pen posted—an usual choice for me—and find it a touch more comfortable with the extra length provided by the posted cap. The pen can be used without posting, but I find it on the short side.
The Faber-Castell Loom takes standard international converters and both long and short standard international cartridges. Unfortunately, as is common for the lower-end Faber-Castell pens, it does not come with a converter, which I find to be greatly unfortunate for any cartridge converter pen. Just throw in the $0.30 worth of plastic and stop trying to nickel and dime us. (I’m talking to you too, Lamy!) So, you’ll need to make sure to purchase a converter if you aren’t drowning in extra standard international converters like I am.
Then, at last, we come to the nib. Simply put, the steel nib on this Faber-Castell Loom is superb. It is one of the most perfectly-tuned steel nibs I have ever used. The nib does not have a breather hole, and features “golf ball” dimpling across the nib’s face. It is quite smooth, with a wide, forgiving sweet spot. There is almost no feedback, and the nib is the perfect level of wetness to use as a daily workhorse writer on most types of paper (i.e., not too wet, not too dry.) The nib’s medium point sits right smack-dab on the middle of the “medium” spectrum. It’s not as wide as one of those giant Pelikan mediums, nor as fine as a Japanese medium. It’s “just right.”
Writing with the Loom is a joy. It’s comfortable in the hand, and its textured, contoured grip fixed the only real problem I had with the Faber-Castell Ambition or Basic pens. The pen has some heft, but it is not so heavy as to be tiring. Ink starvation through this pen’s plastic feed has been completely non-existent. I have never had to prime the feed with cartridge or converter. It just writes. Every time. Without any problems. Much like the other most-recommended entry-level pens, the Loom is a consistent writer. It’s well-built, and very solid. But the nib on the Loom is so enjoyable, that the Loom gives me the “zazz” I am missing in the Safari or the Metropolitan.
I could not be more impressed with Faber-Castell’s Loom. It is a superbly-manufactured pen that looks nice, writes wonderfully, and feels good in the hand. At $40, this pen feels and writes as well as many more than three times its price. These days, when someone asks me what type of pen I recommend for a new fountain pen user, I tell them about the Loom. Yeah, it’s more expensive than a Lamy Safari. But for less than $50, this pen is a rockstar in my book.
Washington, D.C., May 11, 2015 - The Campaign for Reader Privacy, a coalition including PEN American Center and booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors, is asking the House of Representatives to quickly pass without weakening the bi-partisan USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 and is urging the Senate to rapidly take similar action. The House Judiciary Committee recently approved the bill, H.R. 2048, by a vote of 25-2, and it is expected to come up for a vote on the House floor this week. The legislation would restore some privacy safeguards to the government’s surveillance activities and would, among other things, end the bulk collection of data under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The Campaign for Reader Privacy, comprising the American Booksellers for Free Expression, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center, was created in 2004 to safeguard the integrity of the library and bookstore records of ordinary Americans from unwarranted government intrusion under the PATRIOT Act. To this end the Campaign has sought to change the standard under which the government can seize sensitive records under Section 215 from one of “relevance” to an ongoing terrorism investigation to an individualized standard of suspicion, i.e., requiring the government to show a connection to a suspected terrorist or spy.
While the FREEDOM Act retains the “relevance” standard, the new legislation greatly reduces the danger that Section 215 can be used by the government to conduct “fishing expeditions” in bookstores and libraries by requiring that all Section 215 orders include information identifying a specific person or account. In addition, the FREEDOM Act contains other privacy and free speech safeguards, including added protections for non-disclosure orders associated with Section 215 and National Security Letters.
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“I won’t read long,” Australian novelist Richard Flanagan promised the audience. “Otherwise, like Dostoyevsky said, ‘It’s no longer literature, but corrective punishment.’” This audience member would beg to differ in the case of Flanagan’s masterful and absorbing reading of his Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He read two portions from the last third of the novel, each dealing with the lingering impacts of trauma in the wake of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps during World War II. Traumas, Flanagan explained, “are communal, and they’re not fixed in time. The traumas pass into families and societies.”
Flanagan’s words come from his own experience: his father was interned at a prisoner-of-war camp and built railroads under the supervision of Japanese guards. “Man survives by his ability to forget,” he continued, “but at a certain point, it must be confronted in order to live. That sometimes falls to others to confront the darkness.”
Confronting his father’s darkness, in the form of writing The Narrow Road to the Deep North, took Flanagan twelve years. At times, he didn’t want to write the novel because it frightened him. “I felt the novel as a stone within me. It became like a catch in the throat.” But it was perhaps “illogical reasoning” that pushed him to put his pen to paper: if he didn’t write this novel, he’d never write again, and he had to write it while his father was still alive.
The process included drafts in longhand and manuscripts that eventually found their way into fires. “Old manuscripts are gangrenous. You have to have the courage to create anew,” Flanagan noted. Along the way he also realized that, at its heart, the novel needed to be a love story: only focusing on the darkness would not be true to the human experience, because hope plays a huge role in our lives.
It was, perhaps, this hope that led Flanagan to travel to Japan and visit three of the guards who encountered and, in some cases, tortured his father. While all three asked Flanagan to tell his father that they regretted what they did, each encounter was different. The former medical orderly recalled seeing “skeletons crawling in the mud.” When Flanagan asked him if he thought to help these prisoners, the orderly told him that he understood the prisoners to be “less than human.” The second guard, nicknamed “The Lizard” by the Australian prisoners, did not seem to remember the violence of the camps; but he did remember how to slap. Flanagan asked the elderly guard to slap him as he had slapped the prisoners in punishment. “He arched his body like an athlete,” Flanagan recalled. “He understood the human labor that goes into violence.” After the third slap, the room began to spin due to a sudden earthquake. Flanagan turned to the guard: now he was just a frightened old man. The third guard lived in a remote village, and the mayor apologized to Flanagan in the middle of the town. While photographers took pictures, Flanagan stood next to the guard with their arms around each other. When the photo-taking ended, Flanagan dropped his arm, only to realize the guard still had his arm around him, as if trying to make a connection.
Flanagan returned home, and told his father of his experiences. Later, his father could no longer remember what happened to him in the camps; he could remember his life before and after but only had a faint recollection of his time there. Flanagan’s sister told him she believed their father was finally free. The darkness had been confronted.
View the full video and photos from the event here.
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2015 PEN World Voices
There is a difference between an autobiography and a memoir, poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje noted as the “Memoir and Memory” panel opened on Thursday night in the Sheen Center. Each participant—Ondaatje, Luc Sante, and Tracy K. Smith—were asked to read a selection from a memoir that influenced their own. Ondaatje read from Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time: “It takes place when Conroy was twenty-five, when nothing has happened to this man, but then again, everything has.” Memoir, as discussed by each writer, is a freeing, less-constricted form than autobiography, which relies on a strict chronology to communicate its narrative. Realizing this difference was critical for Ondaatje in writing Running in the Family, which delves into his family’s history and experience in Sri Lanka. His inspiration came when he returned to Sri Lanka at thirty, after having lost the “landscape of his childhood.” There, the people he met told him the most “fantastic stories that turned out to be lies.” His memoir lies here, somewhere between nonfiction, lies, and truth.
Poet Tracy K. Smith noted how it was important for her to write poetry first before tackling her memoir Ordinary Light. When she first began to think about writing a memoir twenty years ago, she said, “I thought writing was saying what you knew. But through writing poetry, I learned it was about asking questions and seeing if your language and the metaphors used can teach you.” She had opened the panel with her reading of an excerpt from Richard Wright’s Black Boy, adding that Wright’s use of “adult language to express a child’s perspective” proved most influential for her when it came to writing around the sometimes purposeful “silences” of her life, such as race. Her pregnancy provided a sense of urgency for writing about her mother’s death: “I wanted to tell myself that story and find a way of affirming that that life had been real.” Instead of writing a straight, non-fictional account, using the form of the memoir allowed her to explore the subjective truth of her memory and “the stories we take as fact.” “Subjectivity invites us to understand the story and teaches us how to live,” she added, echoing Joan Didion’s famous first sentence in her essay “The White Album.”
Memory, and its shortcomings, played an important role in Luc Sante’s The Factory of Facts; his inspiration was similar to Ondaatje’s, spurred by a return to his home country of Belgium at thirty. “When I arrived, I had a massive Proustian orgasm all over the place,” he noted. Everything was familiar, though he described the experience of finding his way around the country as “being led by spirits.” When he set out to write his memoir, he had to reconcile the lack of his family’s record beyond his parents: “I had to regard everything from my parents as flawed and fallible. Everything beyond them was speculation.” In his memoir, he tried to conceal himself in “the shrubbery,” focusing more on the forces that formed him. His approach was inspired by Vladmir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, which didn’t focus so much on Nabokov’s development but the environment that made him who he was.
But the memoir isn’t written in a vacuum. The lives of relatives are often included, and there is a question of how to approach their depiction. This is where Ondaatje’s distinction between the memoir and autobiography is key: the memoir allows for an unreliable narrator, who can paint a relative’s cirrhosis of the liver as simply liver disease. Or, the position of the unreliable memoirist can allow for varying interpretations of events, as Smith realized when she spoke with her siblings about her mother’s illness: each had been entrusted with varying levels of information and fact, but together, even if contradictory, each account painted a truthful portrait. The memoir is also an act of forgiveness. While Sante wished his parents could have forgiven him for writing The Factory of Facts, he ended up forgiving them by writing the book.
There is, of course, the matter of readers and what each will take away from the text. Author A.M. Homes, who moderated the panel, described it best: “People find their history in your history.” This is perhaps what makes the memoir so important and ultimately more relatable than autobiographies, which as Sante noted, often languish unread: it is possible for the reader to find themselves in the exploration of truth and memory, in the author’s act of putting remembrance to the page, instead of a faithful documentation of their life as lived.
View the full video and photos from the event here.
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2015 PEN World Voices
On Wednesday evening, a group of renowned artists and writers gathered on stage in the Sheen Center’s Loretto Auditorium to read original prayers. Yusuf Komunyakaa read “A Prayer for Workers”; Colm Tóibín read “A Prayer for Clytemnestra”; Atticus Lish read “A Prayer for Rockers”; pianist Nico Muhly accompanied artist Maira Kalman; Rachel Kushner read “The Sacred Family”; Bob Holman read “The Hammer of Justice” as Salieu Suso played the kora; Jackie Wang led us in a meditation exercise.
The performers were arranged in a semi-circle, and the audience sat in darkness in the cozy room. Muhly and violinist Yuki Numata intermittently played out into the space. I had entered the event thinking about an AWP panel I’d attended on the Catholic writer Thomas Merton about a month before. “Merton’s capacity to live in place allowed his spirit to roam the world,” Gregory Wolfe had said. An apt sentiment: this event was about being present. The desired effect—of evoking a religious service—was, by my accounting, achieved. As I sat, I felt my pulse slow. The setting, and the task at hand—giving ourselves over to the writers’ words—were as important as the content. We were meant to be there. To be still, which might help our minds be free. Isn’t that exactly where art and spirituality meet?
At the AWP event, Wolfe had described “the beingness of being,” which is “the kind of thing the chanting of songs enables oneself to do.” At “Prayer and Meditation,” I was particularly affected by the meditation Wang led. It was one of Pauline Oliveros’s “Sonic Meditations,” called “Teach Yourself to Fly.” We observed our breathing, which we gradually allowed to become audible; then we introduced our voices, humming with increasing intensity. I was sitting in the balcony, where those around me mostly seemed content to listen to the participants below. But after a few minutes, a fellow began humming softly to my left, and I joined in. It was as moving as any meditation I’ve done; the humming was calming—as though I was singing myself a lullaby—and lent an unusual sense of companionship with the seekers around me. It was just as Wolfe said: we made music together, so we were there, together. Present.
At the close of the event, Edwidge Danticat read “Prayer Before Dying”: what she imagined her mother silently prayed in the moments before she died. Before she read, Danticat shared that, growing up in Haiti and then Brooklyn, her family had prayed twice daily. “Yet it was very hard for me to write a prayer for this evening,” she said. “I think this is in part because I was taught that our prayers are meant to be private.”
The piece Danticat read was an act of mourning and empathy. “Please let me now accept all of this. As I have already accepted this world and all that is and has been,” she read, as her mother.
Please let my children remember me. Both the good and bad of me. Let them not forget one thing about me that could help them be better women and men…Please make my daughter stop crying. Please let it be a sunny day when they bury me. Please let my children find the five hundred dollars I left in the tin can in the freezer—I really should have told them about that when I still could. Please don’t let them throw out my good blender. All it needs is a new blade…Please let them say nice things about me at my funeral. Things I’ve never heard them say before, things I would never imagine them even thinking about me…
We laughed. Danticat cried. We cried, or at least I did. We were with Danticat, and with her mother, through these imaginings. We were with our own mothers, too, and with everyone we’d lost and mourned. Everyone we had yet to mourn. By sitting still and listening deeply, we were able to at once be present and let our minds—our spirits—roam free.
World Voices
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2015 world voices festival
On 27 April 2015, the award-winning writer and activist Enoh Meyomesse was finally freed from Kondengui Prison in Yaoundé, Cameroon, after almost three and a half years in prison.
‘It’s funny to see the prison from outside’ said Meyomesse shortly after his release to writer Patrice Nganang who, along with friend Bergeline Domou, spearheaded the campaign for his release since his arrest back in November 2011,
‘They practically threw me outside. It was quite forceful. But if it is kicking me outside to freedom then there’s nothing to complain about. I don’t have the words to thank you for your unswerving support over all these years.’
PEN first received news that Meyomesse was to be freed on 16 April 2015. Eleven days later, on the morning of his release, he issued an open letter to President Biya and the Ministry of Justice urging them to intervene in his case.
‘President of the Republic – once again I come to humbly request your intervention to ensure that I can finally regain my freedom. Forty months in Kondengui [Prison], you cannot know what it does to a human being. Your life stops.’
More than three years had passed since Enoh Meyomesse was arrested at Nsimalen International Airport in Yaoundé and charged with attempting to organize a coup and armed robbery. Within a matter of months, the coup charges against him were dropped, and by June 2012 no charges remained. Nevertheless, a judge ordered a six-month extension of his detention in order to enable the prosecutor to search for evidence. In December 2012 he was found guilty of armed robbery and illegal sale of gold and sentenced to seven years in prison, charges that were widely believed to be politically motivated.
It had also been two years since Meyomesse’s lawyers first succeeded in having his case referred to a civil court for appeal in April 2013. During this time more than 20 appeal hearings were postponed, apparently due to legal technicalities.
Meyomesse’s appeal hearing finally began on 30 March 2015. According to Meyomesse and his lawyer, on 16 April, the Appeals Court (Cour d’Appel du Centre) acquitted him of the charge of illegal sale of gold but found him guilty of handling stolen goods (recel aggravé), for which he was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Since he had already served more than this term, the court ordered his release. He was finally freed 11 days later, on 27 April.
Meyomesse has now lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court seeking his complete acquittal. He is said to have aged considerably in prison, and he is in need of medical assistance.
‘Enoh Meyomesse has been a major focus for English PEN’s Writers at Risk Program and we are overjoyed that he has finally been released from prison,’ said Cat Lucas, English PEN’s Writers at Risk Programme Manager.
‘PEN and our supporters stood with Enoh throughout his detention – lobbying the Cameroonian authorities; sending books and messages of support; providing writing materials when he was prevented from accessing the computer rooms; securing and delivering relief grants and other essential funds; staying in close contact with his friends and supporters on the ground; urging British representatives in Cameroon – successfully – to attend trial hearings; and by translating, crowd-sourcing translations, and publishing his extraordinary writing. In turn, Enoh added his voice to our Books for Prisoners Campaign, which called for UK prisoners to be allowed to receive books from loved ones in the post, writing a piece in support of the campaign directly from his prison cell. We will continue to do what we can to provide him with the support required as he rebuilds his life over the coming months.’
‘We’re thrilled that Enoh Meyomesse has been finally released. PEN International and its members around the world have campaigned continuously for him since his arrest in 2011, via letter-writing, international advocacy, medical and legal assistance and messages of solidarity,’ said Tamsin Mitchell, Africa Researcher and Campaigner at PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee.
‘We will continue to support Enoh to recover his health, which has suffered as a result of more than three years’ imprisonment in poor conditions, and in his fight to clear his name. We urge the Cameroonian authorities to expedite his Supreme Court Appeal and to ensure that he remains free to write.’
Enoh Meyomesse was a featured case in PEN’s annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer in 2014, for which reknowned author Alain Mabanckou wrote a moving open letter to Enoh to highlight his plight.
Thank you so much to everyone that has taken action for Enoh Meyomesse over the last few years – and there are lots of you! We are hugely grateful for your support.
Read a Guardian article on Enoh Meyomesse’s release here.
Read PEN American Center's statement on Enoh Meyomesse's release here.
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Founded in 1922, PEN American Center is an association of 4,000 U.S writers working to break down barriers to free expression worldwide. Its distinguished members carry on the achievements in literature and the advancement of human rights of such past members as Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, and John Steinbeck. www.pen.org
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Enoh Meyomesse
Material: Acrylic
Nib: Steel (Goblet Nib Replacement)
Appointments: Steel
Filling System: International Standard Cartridge Converter
Length (Capped): 135mm
Length (Uncapped): 130mm
Length (Posted): 153mm
Section Diameter: 10.7mm
Barrel Max Diameter: 13.2mm
Cap Max Diameter: 15mm
Weight, Uncapped (with ink and/or converter): 18g
Weight, Capped (with ink and/or converter): 28g
When I first began my journey though the ink-stained world of fountain pens, I approached every pen with wide, innocent eyes. I had very little experience with different brands. I delighted in the first-hand learning that came from inking up a pen from a manufacturer I had never heard of before. I still love getting a pen from a brand I have never used before, inking it up, and putting the nib to paper for the first time. There is a tender awkwardness the process, not unlike that of a first-time lover, stumbling through unfamiliar territory and just learning to explore a new, but wonderful, world.
That first-time experience is more difficult to come by than it used to be, which is both good and bad. While I may not be able to feel those same, exciting first-time jitters I used to when I inked up a new pen, I am now more experienced—more sure of what I like and what I don’t. I have more fully-formed opinions about what I can expect from certain brands, even before I have dipped the nib into a bottle of ink for the first time. And for better or for worse, each interaction with a brand tends to color all subsequent interactions with that brand. Such is the case with pens from the U.S.-based company, Monteverde.
My first Monteverde pen was also part of my very first pen order from an online retailer. It was the Goulet-exclusive Invincia Deluxe Nighthawk. This pen was, and still is, a nice writer. Since I first got the pen, a touch of the black finish chipped off, but it is only a minor aesthetic flaw. Otherwise, it’s a nice pen.
My next Monteverde pen was an Impressa with the Gunmetal and Red finish. I loved this pen so much that it made my Top 5 of 2014. I regularly and vociferously recommended this pen to many people, and even bought/gave a couple Impressas as gifts. Between the Invicia Deluxe and the Impressa, I saw Monteverde pens as solid, moderately-priced pens with interesting designs that tended to write very well.
As time went on, however, I began to see complaint after complaint popping up about the brand in the online pen communities that I frequent. People complained about the finish coming off their pens, or the pen writing poorly. Monteverde discontinued the Invicia Deluxe Nighthawk due to manufacturing issues. Even my father, to whom I had gifted an Impressa, opened his pen case one day to find that the finish on his Gunmetal and Red Impressa had bubbled and flaked off the pen.
Despite these whispers, when I was gifted my first Monteverde Prima, I was excited to get my hands on the pen, and to try it out. I fully expected to have another good experience with an attractive workhorse pen. The Prima was a pen that I had sitting in my online wishlist, and was pretty high up on my list of next pens to purchase. So, when I was gifted the pen by a long-time friend of the Pen Habit (Thanks, Rob!), I was thrilled.
Made from a lovely, swirly, sherbet green, semi-tranlucent acrylic, the Monteverde Prima is an attractive pen deep with sheen and shimmer. The body of the pen feels solid and well-made. The cap’s rounded, black finial features a stamped, white Monteverde mountain logo.
The folded-metal clip is very stiff (almost too much so), but will hold the pen securely in place if you can manage to get it over the edge of your shirt pocket. The chrome cap band features an inset black stripe, along with the words “Monteverde” and “Prima” laser-etched in the chrome.
The pen’s barrel tapers toward the black, injection-molded plastic finial, which is separated from the green acrylic by a chrome washer. The washer also assists with the posting of the pen.
Removing the cap (which takes 2 1/4 turns) reveals a black plastic-covered-metal section which tapers to a chrome metal flange. The section reminds me a bit of the type of sections that you find included with a pen-kit that a wood-turner might use—generic but usable enough.
The Prima uses standard international cartridges and converters, and will accept both short and long cartridges. It also accepts SI converters that are threaded on the outside. Even though I have never had a converter come unattached inside the pen to any serious detriment, I do generally like the feel of the screw-in converters; it’s a nice bit of security.
Before having inked up the pen, the Prima struck me as being solidly built and of good—albeit mass produced—quality. Contrary to what many might think due to my love of higher-end pens, I don’t mind a “mass-produced” pen at all. In fact, I really appreciate a mass-produced pen for its quality-to-value ratio, even if not “wowed” by its craftsmanship. The Prima is clearly intended to be a moderately-priced pen that fits at the upper edge of the entry-level tier of fountain pens.
When you get to the nib, though, that’s when things really begin to fall apart.
The Monteverde-branded steel nib that comes with the pen is a fairly generic #6-size which features the Monteverde mountain logo design. On my gifted Prima, the nib was a little rough, and the tines were slightly out of alignment, but both of these issues are easily fixible for me. Nib issues aside, however, the main problem was with the feed. This pen had the worst case of ink starvation I have ever seen. I would write a sentence or two, and before long the ink flow would dry up completely. I could prime the feed using the converter, and it would write again for only a couple of sentences before it stopped.
I tried many, many things to resolve this issue. I flushed the pen with clean water, water with dish soap, and pen flush. I disassembled the pen and ran the whole thing through my ultrasonic cleaner. I tried using different converters. I tried several different inks. I tried using cartridges instead of converters. I even tried swapping out the Monteverde nib with a Goulet nib. None of these solved the issue.
Before taking more dramatic actions, I contacted the retailer. I emailed twice and received no response. I then called Yafa’s repair department. (Yafa is Monteverde’s parent company.) They offered to send me a new nib unit, and took down my address. That nib unit never arrived, and voicemail left on a follow-up phone call was never returned.
So, in the end, I was stuck with a completely unusable pen, and no means of getting it fixed. In a last-ditch attempt to resolve the issue, I used an exacto knife and attempted to widen the ink channels in the feed. Even that didn’t help. And eventually, the Prima found its way into the trash can.
I thought that, perhaps, I had just gotten a rare dud of a pen. The Prima was still on my to-buy list, and I really did like the design of the pen. So, I purchased a new Prima from a different retailer (one in whose customer service I had far more faith.) This new pen also had pretty serious nib issues. The nib should never have made it past any kind of basic quality control. It was tremendously scratchy, and very roughly polished. Under magnification, I discovered that it had been so poorly ground, one tine was actually longer than the other!
The only way to fix this nib would have been for me to do grind down the too-long tine and then do a pretty aggressive smoothing. It’s work I know ho to do, but by this point I was fed up. I reached out to the retailer, and they offered to help. In the end, though, I decided to swap out the Monteverde nib with a spare Goulet nib I had floating about for just such a purpose. At last, I had a pen that would write!
With the Goulet nib in place, the Prima is actually quite a nice writer. It’s one of the few pens in my collection that I actually prefer to use posted. It is light enough and well-balanced enough that I am able to write long sessions without cramping up or tiring. The Goulet nib is smooth and the inkflow is consistent. The starvation issue I saw on my first Prima doesn’t appear to be present in this pen, fortunately. Now, it’s a nice pen…a pen I would actually use.
It is also, likely, the very last Monteverde pen I will ever purchase with my own money. Like its sister brand, Conklin, Monteverde seems to have figured out the manufacturing of its acrylic pieces (barrels, caps, finials, etc.), but is sorely lacking when it comes to nibs and feeds. I have seen far too many complaints online, coupled with my own experiences, to be able to recommend the brand—especially not to new fountain pen users.
My Prima is a good pen, which now writes quite nicely. But if I, as a new fountain pen user, had to jump through the hoops I did just to get this pen to write consistently, chances are this blog wouldn’t exist. I have tossed the pen in the trash and gone back to my gel rollerballs. Because, as Kimberly “Sweet Brown” Wilkins so eloquently said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
I’ll end this review as I ended the above video: with a message to Yafa and Monteverde: I think you have some truly lovely pens, especially for the price. But I would rather spend an extra $5-10 for a pen with a nib and feed that have been properly QC’d than save that much but have to play the writing instrument lottery. If you can figure out these consistency issues I have been seeing across your brands, you’ll have some very competitve (and highly desirable) pens in this price range. Until then, I can’t recommend this pen to anyone unless they really like the design and they’re comfortable working on/swapping out nibs. And that’s unfortunate. If you can get your QC figured out, you’ll have some truly killer pens.
Thanks to the good folks at Kaweco, I will be giving away this Black Kaweco Liliput with a broad steel along with 20 Kaweco Ink Cartridges in various colors. You can see my review of the Liliput here.
I’m trying something a little different for this giveaway: to enter, simply leave a comment below indicating how you use (or would use) such a little pen on a day-to-day basis. Only one comment per user will be counted as an entry, so commenting multiple times won’t help. I will assign a number to every entry and use the random number generator at Random.org to pick a winner.
While I’m not giving additional entries for Facebook Likes or Twitter Follows as I have in the past, I would still encourage you to visit The Pen Habit in these various social media locations, and follow/like as you see fit!
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/penhabit
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Pinterest Fountain Pens: http://www.pinterest.com/drchumley/fountain-pens/
Pinterest Ink Swatches: http://www.pinterest.com/drchumley/fountain-pen-ink-swatches/
Instagram: @DrChumley
Terms and Conditions: Giveaway ends on May , 22 2015 at 11:59PM PDT. No purchase necessary. Contest is open to all countries. Winner will be responsible for paying any applicable customes dues or taxes on winnings. Winner will be chosen at random via the random number generator at Random.org. Only one entry per person. Prizes included in this giveaway do not indicate sponsorship for PenHabit.com, nor do they indicate PenHabit.com’s endorsement of or sponsorship for the manufacturer. Winners will have 7 days to respond to email notifying them of a win. Failure to respond within that time will result in forfeiture of the prize, and another winner will be chosen. I will not sell, distribute, or utilize any data gathered from this contest for any purpose other than selecting and notifying the winner.
New counter-terrorism legislation passed by the lower house of the French Parliament today would dramatically expand the government’s surveillance powers and directly conflicts with France’s international legal commitments to freedom of expression and privacy, PEN American Center said today.
A wide array of civil liberties groups and internet service providers have expressed alarm at the bill’s provisions, which permit the bulk collection of internet metadata, offer a broad range of justifications for government surveillance, permit the use of tactics such as bugging and keylogging software in order to spy on citizens, and give scant protection against surveillance for journalists and their sources. Moreover, the bill provides for very little judicial oversight of these sweeping powers, allowing the prime minister to effectively exercise them at his will. The bill now moves to the French Senate for debate and a vote.
“This bill authorizes sweeping surveillance powers that reach far beyond what is acceptable in a democratic society, and threaten the rights to privacy and free expression,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, Director of Free Expression Programs at PEN. “It is unfortunate to see France using U.S. mass surveillance programs as a model just as the U.S. is engaging in a critical debate over reforming and reining in those programs. PEN urges French lawmakers to reject this bill and to put forth legislation that allows for the government to ensure national security while continuing to protect the rights of its citizens.”
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The pen for this review was provided by Kaweco, and will be part of a Giveaway after the publication of the review. No additional compensation was provided. All opinions expressed are solely those of the reviewer.
Material: Metal
Nib: Steel
Appointments: N/A
Filling System: International Standard Short Converters
Length (Capped): 96.4mm
Length (Uncapped): 87.5mm
Length (Posted): 125.7mm
Section Diameter: 7.8mm
Barrel Max Diameter: 9.3mm
Cap Max Diameter: 9.9mm
Weight, Uncapped (with ink and/or converter): 6g
Weight, Capped (with ink and/or converter): 10g
Little pens. I admit: they’re not my thing. Never have been. I’ve gotten over my dislike of the little pen in a couple of instances (e.g., when the nib is particularly special, or when the material is especially lovely.) But usually little pens are a big fat “no thanks” in my book.
Perhaps the littlest of all the little pens that I’ve reviewed this season is the appropriately named Kaweco Liliput. It’s a tiny pen, about the size of one of those half-pencils you get at the miniature golf course. It is almost entirely without surface features, looking like a black, enlongated Tylenol. Clearly, if you’re naming a pen the Liliput, it’s, well, Lilipution style is probably the main selling point. And it is that. Unfortunately, from a design perspective, small is about all it is.
Made of metal, the Liliput comes in a whole variety of colors including Black, Copper, Brass, Steel, and the newest addition to the line, the very popular “fireblue.” (I’ll admit, that fireblue finish is pretty dang sweet. Put that on a human-sized pen, and I’d be first in line to order one.) The design of the pen is simple and streamlined. There is a small Kaweco logo stamped onto the rounded top of the pen. There is no clip. The cap screws onto the body about mid-way down its length. The barrel keeps its cylindrical shape, and has threads toward the end of the barrel which are intended to be used to post the pen.
The Liliput comes with a steel nib, slightly smaller than the nibs that come on their other pens (so I do not believe they are interchangeable.) The pen is too small to accept long cartridges or regular converters. Short cartridges are fine. I don’t know if any of Kaweco’s smaller converters will work with this pen, as I don’t have any to test.
Clearly, using a pen this small unposted is next to impossible, even for folks with very small hands. This is a pen that’s meant to be posted. When you screw the cap onto the back of the barrel, the pen becomes an eminantly usable length. The only real downside to this is that there’s no way to post the pen without screwing in place. This is fine if you plan on using the Liliput for a long writing session, but if you need a pen to take intermittent notes during a meeting or a presentation, constantly having to screw and unscrew the pen on the barrel will get to be tedious.
For me, though, the biggest issue is not with the pen’s length, but with its width. It’s a very narrow pen—far narrower than I prefer to use. I don’t have any wood pencils in my house, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this pen is narrower than a standard #2 pencil.
As for the writing experience itself, the pen is a Kaweco and it shows. Every Kaweco steel nib I have tried has the exact same characteristics: It’s a little dry, but very smooth, and runs finer than you would expect for a European-made pen. The wetness factor can be adjusted, which is generally would I would do with the pen were I to keep it.
It’s clear to me that the Kaweco Liliput is a well-made pen. Despite its diminutive size, it is light but feels solid. The threads are smooth, despite being metal-on-metal. The nib is a smooth, if somewhat dry, writer. It’s just too small for me. I can’t think of a single good use for this pen: it’s too small to put in your pocket. It’s not sized for long writing sessions, but isn’t convenient enough for using intermittently for notes because of the method of posting the pen. It’s clear that there are folks out there who really love the cute little Liliput. I’m just not one of them.
Material: Cotton Resin
Nib: 18k Gold
Appointments: Gold
Filling System: International Standard Cartridge Converter
Length (Capped): 145.4mm
Length (Uncapped): 132.4mm
Length (Posted): 174mm
Section Diameter: 11mm
Barrel Max Diameter: 13.6mm
Cap Max Diameter: 15.4mm
Weight, Uncapped (with ink and/or converter): 16g
Weight, Capped (with ink and/or converter): 28g
I have been a fan of OMAS pens since my first entry to the brand early in my collecting days, when I purchased my OMAS Notti di Bologna (still in regular rotation). Since then, I have acquired a couple more OMAS pens, and the Italian brand has been one to which I regularly turn when searching for a new high-end pen to add to my collection.
The OMAS Milord is part of the company’s Arte Italiana series, and comes in a few regular flavors (Black, Maroon, and “London Smoke” grey, plus their well-known Brown Arco celluloid). The model also comes in a whole variety of limited editions. The pens can be fitted with a rigid 18k nib in EF, F, M, B, or EB. OMAS also offers 14k Extra Flessibile nibs in EF, F, or M. Many of the models come in either Gold or silver-color “Hi-Tech” trim.
The black Milord lent to me for this review (Thanks, Rob!) is made out of OMAS’ “Cotton Resin,” which is manufactured from the seeds of the cotton plant. I can’t tell you the specifics of how the cotton resin differs from any other resins available in the pen world, but it is a term that OMAS’ marketing department throws around a lot, so it must mean something to them. It, apparently, is difficult to manufacture, and can take over a year to complete a single batch.
The Milord’s design centers around its 12-sided cap and barrel. The top of the cap tapers to a point, and the top of the cap is inlaid with a perfectly round gold ring. The clip, which is extremely stiff, features a graceful, swooping curve and a roller wheel which servers as the “ball” of the clip. At the base of the cap there is a wide gold band which follows the 12-sided design, and has a Greek key design engraved.
The pen’s 12-sided barrel also tapers slightly toward the pen’s finial, and is broken up with two gold washers.
Under the cap, the section tapers toward another gold-colored, 12-sided washer at the very end of the section. In what is a fairly common (yet strangely baffling) design for OMAS pens, the cap’s threads sit smack dab in the middle of the section. This generally shouldn’t be a big issue if you tend to hold your pens close to the nib on the section. But if, like me, you hold the pen a bit further back, you may find yourself holding the threads. Fortunately, the threads are not very sharp, so it’s not uncomfortable to hold the pen on the threads if you do.
The pen feels well-made and solidly built, with one exception. On this edition of the Milord, the barrel finial twists freely, as though this pen utilized a piston-filler mechanism, rather than the standard international cartridge/converter system it actually uses. In fact, I was able to unscrew and remove the finial completely before I realized that I wasn’t actually inking up the pen. I suspect the reason for this is that some versions (especially the Brown Arco and limited editions) of this pen actually do come with as piston fillers, and they wanted to make the design a bit more flexible. It’s a minor thing, but for the C/C versions of the Milord, I wish they’d shellac the barrel finial in place. It just feels cheap to have the finial screw all the way off. Of course, now that I know it isn’t a piston filler, I wouldn’t often be fiddling around with the end finial…
The broad 18k nib that came with the pen is large and attractively engraved. It is quite a rigid nib, and lays down a very broad line, even for an Italian pen (1mm, according to the OMAS website). Unlike nearly every other OMAS nib I have tried prior to this one, the nib on this Milord had some issues. The nib is quite sooth, and doesn’t display any signs of “baby’s bottom,” even under magnification. But on close inspection, it appears that the grind on the nib was not quite round. The nib’s foot has very slight edges which appear to result in a slightly problematic sweet spot. Add to that an inkflow that runs on the dry side, and I found I was getting minor, yet frequent (and annoying), skipping and hard starts. This problem was exacerbated somewhat with certain, drier-running inks.
In the course of writing the first draft of this review, I also found that I had to prime the feed a couple of times to keep up with my pages of faster writing. Were this my pen, I would disassemble it, give it a very thorough cleaning, and attempt to open up the tines of the nib just a touch to increase the ink flow. If that increased ink flow didn’t help eliminate the skipping and hard starts, I would probably do a bit of smoothing and polishing to round out the nib just a touch.
(Although I note this in my video review, I also wanted to mention it here as well: this pen was purchased used, so I am unclear as to whether these issues are due to the manufacture of the pen rather than the previous owner. Having three other OMAS pens in my collection, none of which behave this way, I suspect it’s probably a combination of both.)
As for the in-the-hand writing experience, the Milord is a mostly-comfortable pen to hold. I am able to write with it unposted or posted without any issue. When posted, I find it a bit longer than I normally like, but at no point did it feel unbalanced or back-heavy. Due, in part, to the fact that the ink flow wasn’t as consistent as I would like, I occassionally found myself death-gripping the pen or applying more downward pressure than I normally would when writing with a fountain pen. (It is, unfortunately, one of my automatic reactions to a fountain pen with a drier ink flow.) That death grip did cause my hand and wrist to cramp up a bit on long writing sessions.
Overall, the design of the multi-faceted Milord is nice, and I like the clip design as well. Personally, I prefer the sleeker design of the OMAS Ogiva to the more ornate profile of the Milord. I’m just not quite as enamored with the Milord design, but I do still like it a lot. Assuming that the nib problems are specific to this pen and not a problem with all Milords, this is a pen that I would probably consider adding to my collection. Especially in one of the more interesting finishes.
The PEN Ten is PEN America's weekly interview series. This week, we talk with Zoe Pilger, who was born in 1984 in London, where she still lives. She is an art critic for The Independent and winner of the 2011 Frieze Writer’s Prize. Eat My Heart Out is her first novel; it is published by Serpent’s Tail in London and will be published by The Feminist Press at CUNY in May 2015.
Zoe Pilger will be participating in A Literary Quest on May 8 at the PEN World Voices Festival.
When did being a writer begin to inform your sense of identity?
When I was 23, I moved to a small seaside town, where I had never been before. I lived there alone for six months and wrote hundreds of thousands of words. It was experiment; instead of doing a creative writing course, I wanted to teach myself how to write. Many of the ideas and images in my first novel, Eat My Heart Out, come from that time.
Whose work would you like to steal without attribution or consequences?
I wouldn’t like to steal anyone’s work because what I love about writing fiction is the free expression that it allows.
When, if ever, is censorship acceptable?
I’m not sure when or if censorship is ever acceptable. I think the censorship (and self-censorship) of writing by women in the West is now subtle and insidious. As Eileen Myles wrote in a tweet last year, “shaved pussy is the new fig leaf.” It seems that total exposure is now a form of concealment, especially in regards to women’s sexuality. We can show everything and nothing at once.
Writing by women is heavily policed by different structures—publishing, women’s magazines, etc. I began to understand this more fully when Eat My Heart Out was published in the UK in January 2014. The Bookseller called it “a romantic comedy without the romance.” It borrowed some of the conventions of that genre, but sought to disarrange them.
My second novel, which I’m writing at the moment, is inspired by my experience of publication. It’s about a romance writer who gets locked in a mental asylum for pushing against the bounds of the genre.
Have you ever been arrested? Care to discuss?
No, I’ve never been arrested.
Obsessions are influences—what are yours?
Eat My Heart Out is a novel about obsession—my main character Ann-Marie is obsessed with Beyoncé and falling in love. She becomes the prodigy of a second-wave feminist writer Stephanie Haight, who’s written a book, Falling Out of Fate, which argues that many of our cultural representations of love are designed to keep women in a submissive position. Stephanie’s book is excerpted throughout the novel; it draws on my PhD research into feminism and romantic love. I was particularly influenced by “The Woman in Love” chapter in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949)—she explains how women are culturally encouraged to be obsessed with love, to view finding a man as the central goal of their existence, while men are given a wider freedom. So I suppose I was obsessed with the subject of romantic obsession.
What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever put into words?
Eat My Heart Out scared me while I was writing it. The novel is not autobiographical; I’ve always described Ann-Marie as my alter ego. I wanted to create a female character who didn’t care about the rules of femininity. She doesn’t care about being passive and pleasing; she wants to be free, though she says constantly that her freedom is a burden. I also wanted to give her this existential dimension. She is not primarily concerned about love; the language of love, the framework of the love story, is how women are permitted by culture to express their inner conflicts, which are often far more complex. Ann-Marie is caught between the old myths of patriarchy and the gains of second-wave feminism. She is angry. To write female anger itself felt like a taboo—far more so than the sex in the book.
What is the responsibility of the writer?
I can’t make a statement about the responsibility of writers in the abstract, but I feel strongly about writing by women and the restraints of genre. I’m published by Serpent’s Tail in the UK and The Feminist Press at CUNY in the U.S.—both independent. I was given complete creative freedom, including designing the UK cover myself, which is important to me, and rare. Most writing by women is corralled into market-driven categories, which underestimate female readership, and contribute to a culture of regressive ideas of what a woman should be.
While the notion of the public intellectual has fallen out of fashion, do you believe writers have a collective purpose?
I think public intellectuals are very important—it depends on what kind of intellectuals. The culture of academia demands that ideas, which are often quite simple, be articulated in absurdly convoluted jargon, which ghettoizes those ideas—encrypts them, and kills their radical potential. This process of encryption is possibly why academia is allowed to exist—on the condition that no one can understand it except an elite few. It’s a great shame if the notion of the public intellectual has fallen out of fashion—we need intellectual rigor to counteract the willful stupidity of so much of the mass media. I think this is particularly true in regards to feminism.
I’m not sure if fiction writers have a collective purpose—fiction writing is an inherently solitary activity, an expression of the individual imagination, which of course is not separable from society. I’ve always tried to explore political ideas in my writing, but hopefully without assuming any moral absolutes.
What book would you send to the leader of a government that imprisons writers?
If This Is A Man by Primo Levi.
I just reviewed an exhibition, Encounters and Collisions, at Nottingham Contemporary Gallery in the UK. It was curated by the African-American artist Glenn Ligon, and showcases his influences, from photographs of the Black Panthers to abstract expressionism. An essay by James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village” (1955), is included in the catalog: it is a beautiful and damning comparison of racism in a Swiss village and the U.S. It’s also an interrogation of the psychology of oppression; I would send that essay too.
Where is the line between observation and surveillance?
I can talk about those ideas in relation to creativity. Observation is the skill of the fiction writer; it’s about looking. Surveillance is more sinister—it implies control.
My PhD is a monograph of the French conceptual artist Sophie Calle, who often explores themes of surveillance in her work. Her earliest project was The Sleepers (1979), for which she asked strangers to sleep in her bed for eight-hour shifts. She sat by the bed and photographed them. What is striking about the project is that it comes in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, which was supposed to unleash our Dionysiac sexual energies and break down the old structures of repression. By contrast, the project is chaste. Calle controls and sterilizes by looking.
In Suite Vénitienne (1979), she followed a man, Henri B., around Venice during carnival time. She uses her longing for him, and her distance from him, as a means to create her art. She is the artist, the voyeur; he is the muse. This is a reversal of the traditional gendered power dynamic.
Eat My Heart Out was partly inspired by Calle’s projects. I became fascinated by how female desire is often cast as predatory; a pressure remains for women to be pursued, the object of desire. The relation between Ann-Marie and her lover Vic transforms over time. They shift between sadistic and masochistic, active and passive positions. I wanted to explore how hierarchy in gender works; how dominance and submission are fatally implied in one another. I think liberation would mean breaking out of hierarchical positions altogether and a striving instead for genuine equality, which must be carefully protected.
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