By JOHN DARLING
for the Mail Tribune

One of the hottest books in America has no words in it. But that’s the beauty of it, say fans of Moleskines, a collection of sleek, sturdy notebooks employed for every manner of writing, jotting, poetizing and sketching.

"They’re such a classic old thing, a treasure in and of themselves," says John Mullowney of Ashland, who fills his with writing and memorabilia. "They’re indestructible, and they allow you to collect your own writing. It’s great to have a collection of them, with your life as a journal."

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The legendary notebooks were made in France for 200 years — and used by such luminaries as Hemingway, Matisse and van Gogh — but the maker eventually went out of business, throwing literally millions of writers and sketchers into a state of crestfallen apoplexy, says Lynn Laramore of Medford’s Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

Then in 1998 an Italian firm, Modo&Modo, began making the books again. Now Moleskine use has erupted, driven in part by a subculture of tech-savvy people otherwise electronically gadgeted to the hilt. Modo&Modo expects to sell 2.2 million of the notebooks this year in the United States, more than twice the number of last year.

What’s the attraction?

"It’s the feel and the look. They’re classy and basic black. The cover and the paper feel good," says Karen Chapman, co-owner of Bloomsbury Books in Ashland. "We can’t keep them in stock. They just keep going out of here."

The oilskin-covered books — variously pronounced Mole-skin, Mole-skeen, Mole-skin-ee and mol-a-skeen-a — have their fetishistic qualities: firm, acid-free pages, string bookmarks, built-in elastic bands and stitched spines.

The books come in 3.5-by-5-inch or 5-by-8.5-inch sizes for a spectrum of purposes — a music journal with staffs, a lined journal, a book with boxes for movie storyboards, a journalist notebook in a vertical format, an artist’s sketchbook with stiff paper for watercolor, an engineer’s notebook with graph paper, an address book and a book containing just six pockets for holding who knows what. Prices are $10 to $16.

"They (the smaller ones) go right in your back pocket," says Laramore, an Eagle Point resident. "I love them and use them all the time.

"I do a lot of journaling in them — also collages. They’re very popular in Europe and catching on fast here."

With Moleskines, Mullowney says he has found the perfect solution to all gift problems. He doesn’t just give one, he fills the multi-pocket versions with all manner of keepsakes, letters (from the person), newspaper articles, a poem or postcard, tickets to that special play. "It becomes kind of a mini-museum," he says.

"It’s a gift that shows thought, rather than, just going and buying something," Mullowney says. "It’s something that gives a sense of history and the generations, something you can imagine will be passed down. It’s the old fashioned way to keep track of things, rather than with a Palm Pilot or BlackBerry."

If you don’t think Moleskine can become obsessional, just surf the Web.

"I know some of you, like me, are multiple-Moleskine nerds," writes one fan, setting off a chain of 118 responses. "It’s sad, but this is how God’s made us."

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 writes. "Pigma Micron 01 ... Uniball Vision Exact ... Bueche-Girod ballpoint."

In a blog called "How Moleskine Rocked My World" (www.shahine.com/omar/), Microsoft project manager Omar Shahine propounds his discovery of these amazing "analog gadgets."

"It’s so weird how a small black book and a nice pen can change things," he writes. "Since graduating from college I have increasingly gone ‘all digital.’ No more paper, vacuum tubes, tapes, etc. However, in this process I have tried to cram the needs of my life into a set of rather restrictive tools, at least when compared to paper."

Other bloggers note how, yes, a laptop can grab all the information you hear at a meeting, but what if you need to draw a flow chart, a map or a building design?

"It is a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem," says 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 Moleskine 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.

Moleskine fans started appearing online in 2004. One early reader of the posts: Jerry Brito, 29, a policy analyst at the Mercatus Center, an Arlington, Va., think tank.

"I can’t believe I’m saying this," he says of Moleskines, "but I really think they’re beautiful."

John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org. The Washington Post contributed to this story.