While there are practical advantages and an elegant appeal to slim and skinny pens, I’m not keen on acquiring super-slender fountain pens.
A lot of people with average-sized and large hands would say ALL of the fountain pens I write with on the daily (Parker Vectors and a Sonnet mostly) are slim, but for sure there is a class of skinny pens even smaller in girth than my basic faves. Even with my very small hands, I don’t find skinny pens pleasurable to hold (and with my aging joints, I don’t even think I could comfortably wield one for three whole non-stop morning pages, for example).
Some of the skinny pens are really tempting (the Faber-Castell Design Neo Slim Aluminums, for example, really appeal to me – especially the Olive Green, and if I had the resources to justify getting one, I’m pretty sure I would derive a great deal of pleasure from owning one of the Caran d’Ache slims, for example this one).
There is something exquisitely delightful — almost to a taboo level — about holding something very weighty and shiny, but tiny. You know it is worth money, and somehow it feels like a dirty secret to put your hands on it. Like if you combined a metal Z scale model train engine with a futuristic capsule you could carry singly in a special pill bottle and swallow to be transported through a private wormhole to another dimension where sexbots in 100% nylon stockings smoke intoxicating skinny cigarettes with ridiculously looooooooong shiny holders … that’s the feeling I think I would have if I could carry a clever little clutch and open it in the back of my limo to see a silver pen like that lying in splendor against obscenely pink silk.
As seductive as some slim pens look, I don’t feel moved to put any near the top of my wishlist because I don’t think I would actually get a ton of pleasure from WRITING with them. Unless I were playing a femme fatale in a privately-funded custom movie where I wrote blackmail letters on really fine stationary at a really expensive desk in a really lush penthouse with a huge apartment-sized walk-in closet stuffed with a total fantasy wardrobe and super-expensive luggage.
Skinny pens are like James Bond gadgets for dangerous dames. And I just don’t have the lifestyle to support that so it would be kind of gross and pointless to get one. At the very least I’d need to be able to afford manicures on the weekly and never do any housework that would chip my ultra-red polish.
… but then the Neo Slim Aluminums DO beckon with a more manageable fantasy …
