I’ve been taking it back to the very old school for quite some time now (I’m still looking around for a typewriter), not just in life, but in writing too. While the internet has allowed us to make a living and beyond, there is something about the personally written word that will still live on forever, no matter how technologically advanced we get. If we run out of energy in the world, all our documents stored on computers will be useless.

But the written word will still live on.

If you’re a lover of all the finer things in life such as old notebooks, writing with pencils and fountain pens, hand written and signed letters, typewriters and cigars while penning your memoirs, then you will love moleskine notebooks. I’ve been using them for many years now and you will always see me carrying a small one in my pocket wherever I go. There is something about a notebook that is just so much better than writing notes on your phone. You can draw sketches, write and then file all your old notebooks when they are full. You can keep clippings in them and stubs of concert tickets, and anything you please really.

Then you open them a few years later and immediately they transport back to the day you wrote the notes, which does not happen with digital accessories. Notebooks have a way of preserving a moment in time, and allowing you to access it anytime you please. Notebooks have been the accessories of all the worlds elite, including Richard Branson, Hunter S. Thompson, Hemingway, Picasso and Van Gogh.

People of distinguished character carry notebooks and pencils, hammer away at typewriters, play records, write with fountain pens and are known as the thinkers of their generation. And now you can experience this too with the Moleskine notebook.

This is what the Moleskine website has to say:

“Moleskine is the heir and successor to the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin. A simlpe black rectangle with rounded corners, an elastic page-holder, and an internal expandable pocket: a nameless object with a spare perfection all its own, produced for over a century by a small French bookbinder that supplied the stationary shops of Paris, where the artistic and literary avant-gardes of the world browsed and bought them. A trusted and handy travel companion, the notebooks held invaluable sketches, notes, stories and ideas that would one day become famous paintings or the pages of beloved books.”

“The notebook was Bruce Chatwin’s favorite, and it was he who called it “moleskine.” In the mid 1980′s, these notebooks became increasingly scarce, and then vanished entirely. In his book ‘The Songlines’ Chatwin tells the story of the little black notebook: in 1986, the manufacturer, a small family owner company in the French city of Tours, went out of business. “Le vrai moleskine n’est plus” are the lapidary words he put into the mouth of the owner of the stationary shop in the Rue de l’ Ancienne Comedie, where he usually purchased his notebooks. Chatwin set about buying up all the notebooks that he could find before his departure for Australia, but there were still not enough.”

The Moleskine Notebook

“In 1997, a small Milanese publisher brought the legendary notebook back to life, and selected this name with a literary pedigree to revive an extraordinary tradition. Following in Chatwins footsteps, Moleskine notebooks have resumed their travels, providing an indispensable complement to the new and portable technology of today. Capturing reality in movement, glimpsing and recording details, inscribing the unique nature of experience on paper. Moleskine notebook is a battery that stores ideas and feelings, releasing its energy over time .”

An interesting point is that Moleskine notebooks are printed on acid free paper. It’s a pity really as I’ve always thought that the idea of writing on acid paper would be a novel one. You’re first couple of lines would be a bit rubbish, but as your hands moves over the paper, inspiration would absorb into your body and make you a regular Hemingway. I’m pretty sure that’s why all the great writers of our time were back in the old school, when acid seeped through the pages.

Anyway, Moleskine notebooks truly carry some history to them, and they make excellent gifts. They are great for anyone of any age (Well I guess unless you’re 2 and can’t write) and will be treasured for many years as they capture notes and ideas, times, places and memories.

Moleskine notebooks are available at all Exclusive Books stores in Cape Town.

Sean Lloyd

Editor