I‘m teaching summer school right now, leading some rising freshmen through their summer reading while helping them learn some of the essential skills they’ll need in English in the fall. As is my custom, I’ve also been doing some assignments with them, including one described in this prompt on The Catcher in the Rye:
Stradlater’s English teacher gives his class an assignment: write a descriptive essay. Stradlater, busy with Jane Gallagher, asks Holden to help. Holden’s good at English. He knows, according to Stradlater, how to put commas in the right place. Because reality often imitates fiction, you will write something “descriptive as hell.” Be like Holden. Just as Holden describes something important to him—Allie’s left-handed fielder’s mitt—you should describe something important to you. If you pick something that matters, your writing will matter. Your writing will be fueled by your object’s significance.
So I’m going to be lazy today and post the essay I wrote in response, entitled “My Friend Phileas”:
People don’t really get to define themselves. Most of the time they reveal themselves when they aren’t trying to, as they engage in some simple, mundane task or speak and gesture unconsciously. These moments present the observer with a sort of core sample, a random poke in the soil that reveals the quality of the field. In the case of people, a single instant can characterize the whole. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could assure those core samples were always rich earth instead of sand or manure?
Possessions are different. The things you choose to cling to are a deliberate reflection of what you value, and the thing I value most is my Waterman fountain pen. The specific model of the pen is Phileas, named after Phileas Fogg, the main character of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, and it looks like a pen he might have carried. It’s suitable for daily use, easy to care for, and—I like to think—not at all weighty or pretentious. It’s sleek and small, not bulbously self-important or anything dignitaries would use to sign legislation or treaties. It’s plastic. The marbled resin of its body looks like stone, and it has three gold bands near the top, the middle, and the bottom, but it isn’t marble or gold. The bottom band includes a decorative tab that looks a little like a crest or the sun rising, and my use of the pen has worn some of the gold away. Underneath, it’s the color of tin.
I’m always trying to convince people the pen was a bargain, perhaps because I’m worried they’ll think me extravagant or wasteful. When people ask me about the pen, I always have to tell them how long I’ve had it and how much I originally paid for it—$35. I have to tell them it has cost 2 cents a day, which—I hear myself saying over and over—is cheaper than losing a ballpoint a week. Why do I feel guilty? Perhaps I like to think of myself as a no-nonsense guy who is entirely un-flashy. I’m afraid they’ll misunderstand my wielding this weapon of the moneyed class.
Actually, I can’t tell the truth. It’s the one beautiful object in my life and, after all this time, my daily companion. Every once in a while, I’ll absentmindedly leave it somewhere—my bedside table or my desk at work or next to the copier or some other strange but at the time sensible place. Then I’m lost. So what if I’ve amortized it entirely, its loss would be a tragedy. As an emblem of object permanence in my turbulent life, it’s irreplaceable. So many other things have drifted off, broken, or become obsolete. My pen hasn’t. My attachment to it is the desperate grip of an anchor in a storm.
Grading papers would be impossible without it. I use purple ink cartridges and love to watch the pen filling margins with curly purple script. In meetings, the pen insists on formulating expansive and baroque doodles. Though, with every other pen, I press too hard, my fountain pen seems to follow lines already there. Something about it feels frictionless, its flow of ink steady and reliable. It seems overjoyed at what I ask it to do until it requests another cartridge.
Objects can’t truly be expressive. We make them do our bidding. But I do sometimes have an eerie sense that the ink in my pen really comes from me. A friend who also loves a pen tells me the particular way a writer angles the point wears the soft gold of its nib in idiosyncratic ways. Fountain pens, he says, are trained to your hand and stubborn and balky in any other.
But I wonder who has trained whom. I might disagree with my friend and say my pen is me…or, at least, a me I enjoy being.
Filed under: Autobiography, Confession, Essays, Ideas, Identity, Life, Literature, Musings, Salinger, Summer, Teaching, Thoughts, Writing
Great post. Thank you D.
Thank you. It’s funny how some of the posts I do for practical purposes turn out. I always think of myself as being bad at “assignments,” but maybe I should wander that direction more. —D
Oh, D. this is delightful. “..a random poke in the soil that reveals the quality of the field”. and “As an emblem of object permanence in my turbulent life, it’s irreplaceable.” and ” my fountain pen seems to folllow lines already there.” There is a poem here. Terrific writing, as usual. thank you for this treat!. G
Actually, there’s a wonderful poem, “Writing” by Howard Nemerov that’s sort of closed this subject for me, at least for poetry, but I was trying to show the students that personal writing can be a little poetic.
One day in class last week I asked if they think about their audience while they write and what might intrigue readers or make them sigh with recognition. They said “No,” so I felt compelled to reply. We didn’t talk about this essay. I just handed it out, read it, and then answered a couple of questions on the assignment. I wonder if I made a difference by writing it.
Thanks for your comments—it’s always good to know what reaches someone. —D
I also loved this. It read so slowly and deliciously. And so much of it I relate to, as I also love pens and especially fountain pens.
Never knew that fountain pens conform to the person who writes with it, but that makes complete sense. I also especially loved this visual:
I use purple ink cartridges and love to watch the pen filling margins with curly purple script.
I don’t know that pen really do conform to the person. It’s the sort of story that makes sense but is mainly credible as something you’d like to believe. In any case, I do notice people who borrow my pen sometimes can’t make it work. Besides having trouble getting the cap off, they are always turning it in their hands trying to put the tip down to make the ink flow. For me that’s long become unconscious…like just about everything else these days! Thanks for visiting. —D
Very much enjoyed the ruminations on the fountain pen. Just got another one myself, to supplement the others I use every day. More about it at http://www.bentpage.wordpress.com.
Thanks, I visited your site and enjoyed your piece about—and especially your photographs of—your pen. I tell myself that, someday, if I ever get published, I’ll spend part of the proceeds on a pen like yours. —D
I’m trying to remember the last time I even thought of Holden Caulfield. Ages ago. And the last time I used a fountain pen. Fountain pens are still my favorite writing utensil, but I make such a mess with them. When fine-tip rolling ball pens came out, I switched to those. But there is definitely something about the way you write with a fountain pen that’s different. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe watching the ink dry as I wrote – it made the act of writing anything, a thought, an item on my ‘to do’ list feel very real, very much in the moment.
I thought about writing about the times I’ve put the pen in my pocket point down or the days when, too busy to clean the pen, my hands are covered with splotches of purple ink, but I decided to focus on my favorite aspects. I’ve tried the fine-tips and like them, but I’m a ballpoint killer. I press too hard and, within a day or two, they complain.
With my purple ink, you have to have just the right light and angle to see the ink dry. When I find it, I get distracted watching. Maybe there’s a metaphor in that. I wish my life had more room for stopping and watching ink dry. Thanks for visiting and commenting! —D
D- I bet your sharing this writing with your class will go down as one of those remembered moments in students’ lives – for some, the sensitive ones. It was the teachers who shared something personal, like a drawing made on a trip to New Mexico, or a bit of writing made in response to the birth of a child, or an ode to a favourite vehicle with which there was a love.hate relationship – such memories are indelible, lifelong and immensely satisfying. definitely peak moments from a younger life. Teachers are foremost persons, and when they share their personhood the whole dismal aspects of the education system we all have to endure fall away and mitigate any misery one might have hoarded about school. G
How articulately put. I certainly like to think that students will appreciate my sharing my experience and that I’ll somehow elude the irrelevancy most of teachers (and adults) have in the television, movies, and media they love. Sometimes I suspect I am invisible to them—or embarrassing in my sincerity—but I do think some like to know I’m doing what I’m teaching. —D