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Ryan (Ryan, what happened to your Twitter account?) mentioned that there was an article in a recent Poets & Writers magazine about typewriters. Well, here it is. I'd like to add that there is a lot of good stuff in Poets & Writers magazine, and darn it, I am going to subscribe. Subscribing to print magazines is a political act.
Matthew Solan has great things to say about how writing with a typewriter is not something digital tools can replace: "Typewriters make me a more focused and disciplined writer. They don't forgive. It's like firing a gun with every stroke." 
I realize this post is hypocritical, BTW.
Colorcasting Redux
18 minutes ago
10 comments:
What a great article! I'm especially glad that I read it, considering my penchant for dismissing blog entries that are basically walls of text. Usually, anything that can't be read in the discrete moments when my boss is not trolling the halls is right out. But this one was pretty great. Unfortunately, it did once again pique my interest in shopping for a new machine. It's a sickness, I tells ya.
Word Verfication: "Fectic" - The reddish spots that appear on one's cheeks when one is experiencing an illness (see also: feverishly hectic).
Buying (and reading) the daily newspaper has also become something of an act of defiance- and a humble vote of confidence toward newspapers.
Yes, that IS a great article! Writers posing with their typewriters resembles the intimate portraits of virtuosi with their instruments.
Hooray! I don't care if this IS hypocritical, that was a great read. I feel the same way about my collection. It's never JUST a machine, it's a machine with a story.
I spent several months trying to track down a Remington No. 5 after reading/hearing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" for the first time. In this search I did not succeed however I later found a Smith Corona Electra XT which he also used, albeit for much later works. I still can't bring myself to sell that machine even though the ribbon system is next to worthless.
Mike: I too want to go buy another one. Damn. I'll be getting a job soon, but these kinds of whims must wait until then.
Strikethru: thanks for sharing that! It may be hypocritical, but I never would have read it otherwise...
Wierd how they didn't have this article online. But also poignant.
Nice find, Strikethru! Just in time for Nanowrimo,too. I'd like to think that the shades of Hemingway or Faulkner will be looking over my shoulder as I attack this year's opus with my Olympia. Hope Ann Sexton shows up. What a knockout!
Fun article, nice find.
I enjoy reading stories about how we all come about our typewriters and what drives us to get more. I know that my first one came by way of hunting down one that Hemmingway had used. And I was certainly in a phase of reading about what other great writers had typed on.
But after that, I kind of just let what came to me come. I keep my eyes peeled for stuff that is close by and if its one I'd like to play with, I tend to get it.
I have considered getting a subscription to that mag...
Wonderful--thank you for sharing this with us. My favorite part of the article was his description of the writing process...makes me all anxious to start NaNo and start seeing the pages piling up again. Woo-hoo!
That said, some of the desire to have the exact same make and model typewriter as the greats strikes me as rather like the musicians who want the exact same guitar or mandolin or pick or strings or what-have-you as X uses, as if that alone will make one sound great. I totally understand it, (and speaking of musicians and such, I hypocritically admit to a thrill when I came across a video awhile back of Joan Baez singing with Bob Dylan typing away on an Olympia SG-1 in the background), but it seems at least partly like a quest for a silver bullet, as if inspiration and ability will magically appear with just the right instrument (of either variety). It *can* be inspiring to share something in common with a hero, but at some point, you still have to put in the work. So some of the "must find the typewriter so-and-so used" stories rub me the wrong way. Wanting to know what they liked is one thing, but wanting to own copies is a little different. Obviously for the author of the article, though, it was a gateway into actually using them extensively, and you gotta love that.
And maybe part of my rant is just my lousy-day-at-work orneriness talking.
And I still would like to know what kind of typewriter(s) Rex Stout used. Just...you know...to know.
US magazines are, on the whole, much better than what is (decreasingly) available in the UK---the journalism itself also. Wish I still lived near a Borders bookshop. I've never seen anything to equal 'Orion' or 'Sun' magazines, or 'Harper's' even, over here.
Have you seen this, I wonder, on children's authors and typewriters:
http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/2009/08/typewriter-cemetery.html
Thanks all for not trashing me over the obvious hypocrisy of posting this article. I mean, if anyone needs to see it, it's y'all, so I went ahead and risked mockery.
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