Potemkin Pens

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

The two or three new pens I use each week that, because no ink comes out of them (at least not continuously, in lines) aren’t really pens at all, in fact, but tributes to pens. Potemkin pens, mere props.

O Holy Crap, Walter Kirn

Background

This was a great article lamenting the poor quality of consumer goods today. Everything from washing machines to pens have suffered in quality, and the end users pay the price.

What makes it wonderful?

To understand what makes this writing wonderful, we first need to understand the reference to “Potemkin pens.”

During the late 1700s, Russia seized control of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire. Grigory Potemkin became governor of the region and was tasked with rebuilding and resettling the area after the war.

Potemkin was unsuccessful.

When the empress, Catherine II, visited the region, Potemkin had no progress to show.

To cover his tracks, Potemkin made his men build mobile villages on the banks of the river upon which the empress was traveling. Before her arrival, Potemkin's men would dress as peasants and populate the village. After the empress passed, the men would break down the village and move it down river under the cover of darkness—just in time to set it up again before Catherine passed the next day.

Since I learned about the concept of a Potemkin village, I’ve seen it referenced many times. And Kirn does it marvelously.

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I read the words “Potemkin pen.” It underscored the point of the whole article—the things we have today are junk. Fake. Props posing as the quality items we used to own.

Let's get technical

Kirn’s use of the phrase Potemkin pen is a classic metaphor. A metaphor is a figurative comparison of two things that are not literally the same.

Potemkin pens don’t actually exist. But he’s comparing the useless nature of his pens to the useless nature of Grigory Potemkin’s famous village.

To Kirn, the pen feels like a prop even though it is a functioning pen. His metaphor helps make his point about the poor quality of consumer goods today. They may as well be props, just like the river bank villages Catherine II saw on her journey through Crimea.

Metaphors are one of the most common literary devices you’ll find. They’re the backbone of wonderful writing (see what I did there?). If you can insert them carefully into your passages, your words will come alive, and your readers will return time after time.

Happy writing,

Joe