Fair. For me the primary virtue of the fountain pen is that it hurts less to use than a ballpoint, and it is smoother and more expressive than a technical pen, and the line is more consistent in width than the pencil. This of course is the answer to the question "Why fountain pens?" But I live in a place where the summers get very hot, and the winters get very cold. I live in a place where it rains and snows a lot. If I write travel directions on a piece of paper and put it in my pocket, I learned my lesson the first time that dye based inks run even in a rain coat or winter coat. I would never take a fountain pen out with me in -20C weather. I also know when I thumb through sketchbooks and notebooks from more than a year ago, dye ink will reactivate just from the tiny bit of moisture on my fingers. That was okay when all my drawings were just practice, but I find it a little unattractive since I got a little better and started liking my drawings.
The ephemeral nature of work notes, and being able to get into a different headspace away from the computer, makes the fountain pen reasonably practical. But not more so than a two dollar mechanical pencil. The difference in tactile feeling is subtle, while the difference in price is not.
Comparing to the computer, an indispensable tool used for much more than writing, fountain pens can take up less space. But the piles of notebooks on my shelves, the drawer of ink bottles, the box of no longer used pens, the bulb syringe, ink rag, pottery specifically used for cleaning fountain pens is stuff that takes up space in my fountain pen world. Heavier, bulkier, and more difficult to transport than my computer stuff, which even if I didn't use it professionally, is not optional, unlike fountain pens. When I just used a ballpoint or pencil for poetry or ideas, I needed hardly more than a notebook or two. When I do a lot of writing with fountain pens, I amass a shelf full of them. When I write creatively on the computer, I can endlessly revise and modify and delete until I get it flowing and sounding right, and I can type at the speed of thought. With a fountain pen I don't bother, because I would have to cross out or grab a new sheet of paper and write the same things over and over, creating clutter (and while that's the way many writers worked before computers, it's never the way I worked). If I want to share my work, it's easy on a computer. Few people would read my stories if they were just scanned in, and even that would be tedious.
But you're right, it's not fair to call the fountain pen impractical. I just think its use is more narrow than I originally hoped when I first started. I think what startles me is than my 2 dollar mechanical pencil and 10 dollars for a lifetime supply of leads is competitive with $2000 worth of fountain pens, in terms of what I want to use at any given moment. I didn't HAVE to spend that amount on fountain pens, but my favourite fountain pens, the FA and the PO on the 743, were never going to be my very first purchases. A cheap pencil is all you need to write or draw magnificent things, there's something so elegant and beautiful about that which I was always enamored with as a kid, but somehow as an adult I got seduced by fountain pens. Even though a computer can be a few hundred dollars, it can do so much, it opens a huge world. I see no point in comparing the computer to the pen.
I never wonder if another mechanical pencil might be nicer, because the graphite is all that matters, and good graphite is cheap. I never wonder if a different ball point might be better, one is just like another. The beauty and the curse of the fountain pen is that the nibs are quite different, and each one costs a lot. There's no one fountain pen that makes you feel 'this is all there is to fountain pens,' and that's the gateway to the rabbit hole
I know some people get crazy about mechanical pencils and ballpoints as well, but that is a breed of people that really cares how it looks, and about the weight and material of the pen, and that sort of shamelessly takes on concerns far away from the practical points of the instrument.
In short, the fountain pen's virtues are easy to think of, but they are not in proportion to its expense, particularly when you enter into a deep exploration of its possibilities. When I see artists with fountain pens, they usually just have one or two Lamy Safaris, they don't often dig into the madness of gold nibbed pens, multi coloured inks and the like. So to bring it back to the topic of a person who has fountain pens but is not a hobbiest, that is the first category I think of. The next category I think of is a person like myself who just had too much disposable income and started looking at nibs other than a basic fine or medium steel. I am unintentionally a hobbiest, because in the pursuit of an alternative writing instrument to the computer, I became more interested in the pens themselves, or at least equally interested in them. And yet having done that exploration, half my collection is meaningless, I am reluctant to reduce it, and I do not write particularly more than I did before. Fountain pens may be practical, but they're probably the least practical things I own! I struggle to come up with examples of things less useful than my pen collection lol.
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