Putting Pen to Paper Anew

List-Makers, Note-Takers, Engineers and Playwrights Discover Contentment and Community Using Moleskines

(Linda Davidson - The Washington Post)

Sitting in a coffee shop, Eric Henning, an occasional but aspiring cook, asked himself: What dishes do I want to learn to make over the next year?

It was the kind of welcoming thought that can drift into the mind of someone leading a hectic life. Before it drifted out, Henning had two options to record his answer.

One was a hand-held digital assistant, rigged with an extra 128-megabyte memory card. The other, a little black notebook called a Moleskine, the style similar to those used by Hemingway, van Gogh and others who hung out in Paris cafes.

The 44-year-old Laurel businessman didn't hesitate. He opened the Moleskine to two fresh pages. He jotted down 20 dishes: oyster stew . . . grilled fish tacos with dill-lime sauce . . . Maryland red crab soup . . . pecan pie.

That urge -- to take command over a tidy, small expanse of paper, to quickly write in your own hand -- has turned the smartly marketed literary throwback into one of the odder trends of the instant-information age. Moleskine use has erupted in Washington and elsewhere, driven in part by a subculture of tech-savvy people otherwise electronically gadgeted to the hilt.

They bond online about Moleskines, often sharing their need for order. "I know some of you, like me, are multiple-Moleskine nerds," wrote one, setting off a chain of 118 responses. "It's sad, but this is how God's made us." He offered a way to keep them all straight: label the spines with an icon for each Moleskine style.

Another person, with computing and engineering degrees, touted the Moleskines filled with graph paper: "A godsend to tech/engg guys!"

When talking about their notebooks, users employ different pronunciations and joke that there are several: Mole-skin . . . Mole-skeen . . . Mole-skin-ee. But Moleskineus, an online retailer, calls it a mol-a-SKEEN-a.

Discussions on which pen to use can go on and on. "At the moment I have three pens in my jacket along with my Mole," an Internet systems engineer wrote. "Pigma Micron 01 . . . Uniball Vision Exact . . . Bueche-Girod ball-point."

The notebooks have their fetishistic qualities: stitched bindings that allow fully flat opening, thick paper that savors ink. At $10 to $15 apiece, they are what Henning, a vice president and director at Cornerstone Asset Management, describes as a low-entry luxury good. Like a pint of Haagen-Dazs.

"If you really want to stand out, you can't do it with technology," said Henning, who has hardly forsaken his hand-held digital assistant, which tracks his appointments and houses a digitized copy of the Bible. "This is something else," he said of Moleskines. "It's retro. It's making a statement."

And one that Moleskine devotees constantly make online. They've posted more than 2,400 photographs of Moleskines. Even Henning's wife, Betsy Mitchell Henning, the liturgical arts director at a local church, uploaded two images with a caption: "Eric's Moleskine contains the notes and chapter headings for his next book . . . and, as you can see, the list of dishes he will be learning to cook."