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?

Snail mail, human kindness

Above and below are Silent Type thank-you cards from Jonathan & Helen, and Cajun Cleary, respectively, and I wanted to use them to point out the kind of sincerity and artistry that you aren't going to find in online correspondence. That's what the whole typecasting thing is about. (Cue violins.) Preserving some ephemeral record of writing and exchanging ideas. This kind of thing is slipping out of the world--we all know that. It's why we stubbornly insist on typing our Nanowrimo novels on a 50 lb. SG1, or taking the time to type up an afternoon conversation with a friend. I could link to every last typecaster out there to make this point, which is: we're all creating a collective and physical record of human exchange.



And with that, I want to aptly end on the typewritten note on the back of Joe's photograph of the Silent Type magazine, a photographic print designed to last for generations, something that today's petabytes of e-mails, Tweets, and cell phone pictures can't confidently hope to achieve.