In his book The Songlines, Chatwin tells the story of the little black notebook: in 1986, the manufacturer, a small family-owned company in the French city of Tours, went out of business. “Le vrai moleskine n’est plus” are the lapidary words he puts into the mouth of the owner of the stationery shop in Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie where he usually purchased his notebooks. Chatwin set about buying up all the notebooks that he could find before his departure for Australia, but they were still not enough.
In 1997, the company known today as Moleskine brought the legendary notebook back to life.
