PAPER'S BACK Moleskine mania

In the instant-information age, paper and pen make a comeback.
By DAN MORSE
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- 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 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.
Literary throwback
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, driven in part by a subculture of tech-savvy people otherwise electronically gadgeted to the hilt.
They bond online about Moleskines. "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 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!"
Users employ different pronunciations: 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."
Going up
Americans are expected to buy 2.2 million Moleskines this year, up from 970,000 in 2004, according to Modo & amp; Modo, the notebook's Milan-based designer.
"It is a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem," said Ken Britz, 34, an engineer with Dynamic Animation Systems who develops software for training simulators used by the U.S. Navy.
He explains why: At work, things come so fast that the best way to note something important often is to write it down. Britz keeps a 5-by-8-inch Moleskine (there's also a 3.5-by-5.5-inch version) at hand; it doubles as a mouse pad. Should he need to take notes during a call or sketch a flow diagram of a graphical user interface, he slides off the mouse and grabs a pen.
Britz keeps two other Moleskines for personal use. In these he writes scenes for his screenplay, which involves manipulated human genetics and King Arthur living in modern times.
Online Moleskine postings started popping up about 2004. One early reader: Jerry Brito, 29, a policy analyst at the Mercatus Center, an Arlington, Va., think tank.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," he said of Moleskines, "but I really think they're beautiful."
A former Web site designer, Brito has blogged about dividing Moleskines into color-coded, tabulated sections. That struck a chord with Omar Shahine, 29, a Microsoft project manager. Inside his office, Shahine keeps a PC, two 19-inch flat-screen monitors, a laptop, a Web cam, a wireless weather forecaster, a hand-held e-mail device -- and his Moleskine. The Moleskine allows him to think on paper.
An analog gadget
"It's kind of like a gadget in itself. It's just an analog gadget," he said.
In a blog titled "How the Moleskine Rocked My World," Shahine recommends Brito's blog.
Brito has written on such heady topics as domestic eavesdropping, Iraq and Internet copyright issues. But his Moleskine advice gets the most hits. At least 20 sites link to it, including ones in Spanish, Portuguese and German. "I'm going to go down as the Moleskine guy," Brito said.