From Roland Allen’s “Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era” (The Walrus ), a brief commentary on the the prose in the little leaflet that comes with every Moleskine — which apparently ran to seventy-five words in the original Italian. The leaflet’s prose, in translation:
The Moleskine is an exact reproduction of the legendary notebook of Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse. Anonymous custodian of an extraordinary tradition, the Moleskine is a distillation of function and an accumulator of emotions that releases its charge over time. From the original notebook a family of essential and trusted pocket books was born. Hard cover covered in moleskine, elastic closure, thread binding. Internal bellowed pocket in cardboard and canvas. Removable leaflet with the history of Moleskine. Format 9 x 14 cm.Allen’s commentary:
The leaflet opened with a lie (the new Moleskines were not “exact reproductions of the old”) then immediately veered toward gibberish, but that didn’t matter. Pound for pound, those seventy-five words proved themselves among the most effective pieces of commercial copywriting of all time, briskly connecting the product’s intangible qualities — usefulness and emotion — to its material specification, thereby selling both the sizzle and the steak. [Maria] Sebregondi and [Francesco] Franceschi picked an astutely international selection of names to drop: an Englishman, an American, and a Frenchman encouraged cosmopolitan aspirations. “Made in China,” on the other hand, did not, so they left that bit out.This piece is an excerpt from a new book, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper . I’m looking forward to reading it.
As I have confessed in these pages, I am a prisoner of Moleskine.
Related reading
All OCA Moleskine posts : notebook posts (Pinboard)
comments: 6
Saw the new movie about Brian Eno last night. At one point, they have him reading through his lifetime of notebooks. He says it was all about "paying attention to paying attention." Although, he says they are very much for thinking and writing rather than reading.
Which raises the question, do you re-read your old posts?
Sometimes, in random ways. Some, I have no memory of writing. But often, they don’t seem old at all. I think that keeping a blog tends to collapse time. I remember, for instance, writing a post about Geoffrey Pullum and The Elements of Style as if it were a few weeks ago, but it was in 2009. And I know it was on a Tuesday morning, when I could take the time because I wasn’t teaching.
I only use Moleskine weekly calendar books now. Most of my notetaking has shifted over to Field Notes pocket memo books and whatever notebooks Archie McPhee has in stock, because I like a dash of whimsy in my note taking (https://mcphee.com/pages/search-results-page?q=notebooks).
I like that Fresh Rants item — Field Notes for the irate! Right now I have a Kokuyo Sketch Book (green cover, grid pages) for jotting things down and a large Moleskine for lengthier stuff. But I also do a lot of jotting in my Moleskine pocket daily.
Michael, thank you for the post. The book does look interesting.
Coming soon to a mailbox near me. I’ll report back.
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