'The Manual Typewriter ideal,' or why Linda Holmes thinks you are a moron

Just read an interesting article in The UK Guardian Observer by Tim Adams about the pitfalls of our general cultural movement toward the "always on" model of personal digital engagement. Some interesting quotes:

Slowly all the aspects of the world that were formerly external to us, out there – friends, shops, newspapers and now books – are being accommodated into this space, so that they can be contained almost entirely on our personalised screens.

We are quickly moving toward an era that will allow each of us to become the editor of our own newspaper and director of our own television schedule; our computers will help us in this process, listen to our histories, define our likes and dislikes and recommend accordingly; they will be our personal shoppers and cultural critics, reinforcing our tastes...This new solipsistic power, however, is unlikely to be without consequences.

Will anyone who is "always on" have the concentration to read the great social novels – those ultimate "interactions" with the world – on a screen? Will anyone be able to see far enough beyond themselves to write one?

If those seem like reasonable points, The Manual Typewriter Ideal, a rebuttal of sorts by Linda Holmes at NPR.com, is likely to annoy (if not solely because of the title, which implies that people who value traditional methods of reading and writing are, well, morons).

Linda Holmes fancifully calls the Guardian article "a distilled version of what people who hate the Internet believe about it," and goes on distort most of the original's points to support her curiously strident thesis. When I finished her piece, I remain unconvinced that we read the same article, but then again, I value traditional methods of writing and reading, and therefore, am likely a moron.

Rhodia Meeting Book, and Blue Diamond stamps

Rhodia, it's official. You are better than e-mail.

This weekend I went to the Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle and bought the two Blue Diamond stamps that you see on this page. I've always been a skeptic of the acrylic style stamps, being that your traditional wood and rubber stamps seem a tad more old school to me, but I'll say this: the Blue Diamond stamps seemed to make cleaner impressions than rubber stamps, plus, you can see exactly where you place them on a page (because they are applied with a transparent acrylic block). So for any stamping types out there, I would say give them a try.

Typewriter tales, before its too late

I don't know about you, but every time I read a story about an old typewriter repairman like this, I immediately want to grab a microphone or video camera and get his story recorded. I am no documentarian (as the poor iMovie editing maneuvers in this clip demonstrate) but I hate, hate to watch these stories fade out of the world. I mean, 100 years of writing machines. 100 years! A few years on Facebook, and it's like a century never occurred.

I want to get these stories down. Typewriter lunatics, we have an obligation to do this. If not us, who? If not now, not ever. Because every day it's already a little too late.

I'm signed up to take a class on storytelling/video production next quarter in graduate school, and hope to tackle typewriter storytelling in some way, amateur though it may wind up.

What are you going to do?

Typecast: "Like new"

Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter manual and warranty card. Oh, and a typecast.

Here's the post that talks about the first Lettera that joined my typewriting fleet. It could be yours for the low, low price of telling me you want a Lettera, and could probably fix the ribbon advance thingymabob.

Oh, here's that Tippa.

Olivetti Lettera 22 warranty card and manual

Note: I know the text is hard to read. The manual is actually a tiny playing card-sized booklet and this was as big as it would scan.



















PS-- We Made This also has a post about a Lettera instruction manual...

Review and drawing: Kiki James Tuscan leather wrap journal

The folk of Kiki James, London-based purveyor of leather goods, kindly sent me a free Tuscan Wrap journal to review here on the site. I want to let the Kiki Jamesians know right off that they should have sent this journal instead to Spiritual Evolution of the Bean, for no one writes better paper and pen product reviews than she.

First off, I don't know where you stand on leather. Vegetarians, you're probably not in the market for a product like this. But as leather goes, this is clearly well out of the $16.99 purse from Target quality range. It's smooth and smells subtle, like a nice wallet, and closes with a leather... well, wrap.



The notebook itself is firmly affixed to the inside of the leather notebook jacket-- no swapping out paper refills once you've filled this thing with grocery lists and Kilroy Was Here's. No sir (or madame), bring on the Big Thoughts. (That said, KJ offers similar notebooks that do in fact have refills). Kidding aside, I'd recommend this to people who aren't afraid to write in notebooks.




The lined paper is quite sturdy and has a nice texture to it (not discernible in this awful, florescent lit photograph). I have no doubts it would stand up to a fountain pen. Why didn't I test this out? Well, that's where you come in. Welcome to the Second Official Strikethru Drawing For A Random Prize (SOSDFARP)*, in which you enter a drawing to win this journal by leaving a comment on this post. In your remarks, I hope you will consider sharing an experience in which you struggled with the dilemma of defacing a pristine notebook by actually writing in it. This is, I suspect, a universal dilemma among the pen and paper set.

There is a catch: if you win the drawing, you need to write in the notebook, and then provide me with the missing piece of this review -- how the paper stood up. I've got a good feeling about this thing-- it looks pretty major league-- but I need data to back this up. So promise you'll do that if you enter the drawing. I want to see some writing happening in this notebook. It doesn't deserve to be a trophy journal, tucked into your bookshelf next to other intimidating projects like Don DeLillo's Underworld.

Drawing will happen on December 15th. Journal will be mailed out end of that month. Hoping to see your notebook tale of woe down there in the comments.

For a proper review of this product, see the venerable Office Supply Geek Web site.


*Some time ago, I held the First Official Strikethru Drawing For A Random Prize (FOSDFARP), (note that due to an image overwriting snafu, you're seeing some entirely unrelated buttons in that post) in which was given away a set of typewriter buttons from The Regional Assembly of Text (ok, the typewriter buttons aren't specifically pictured in the Regional Assembly link either, but you get a better idea of what they looked like).

What is 'literary' in the post-typewriter age?

HomeShoppingSpy declares trendy the motif of the typewriter as an element of design. (Easy, now. I know there is a keychopped ring in there. Let's set that aside for a moment.) This windy tome, as I recall, discusses typewriters as writerly talismans, accenting jewelry, soundtracks, and book covers to impart the fine mist of literary nostalgia upon the watcher or wearer. It's becoming a cliche, in fact, this notion of what is "literary:" Lone writer at a desk. Mid-20th century. America, or Europe, perhaps. Typewriter. Cigarette. A certain stylish cut to the clothes. It is something more than words.

Can one be 'literary' in sweatpants, writing on a Macbook? Can one be 'literary' tapping flash fiction on a T-Mobile Sidekick? I'd argue that the word is rooted in the now-romanticized idea of a writer in a sportscoat at a desk, 1950-something, typing away at a Smith Corona. Whatever we're doing now with our microblogged soundbites or .docx files or Skyped conversations is not literary, even if the result is literature.

Or is it?