Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The legendary notebook of . . .

Inspector Bucket has called on the Bagnet family on Mrs Bagnet's birthday. And he has been invited back for next year. Write it down, Inspector, so that you do not forget!

He drinks to Mrs Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day in a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it . . . .

Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
A large black pocket-book with a girdle to it? Ah, Moleskine! — the legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso, Chatwin, and Bucket.

I'm impatient with Moleskine's commercial mythology, but I like Moleskine notebooks a lot, girdles and all.

[Girdle: "something that encircles or confines" (Merriam-Webster OnLine), thus the elastic that keeps the notebook shut.]

comments: 2

Sara said...

Right on! I read through that exact chapter last night. That Bucket, good guy or bad guy? Who knows.

slm

Michael Leddy said...

Gotta keep reading.