no delete buttons,
no cut-and-paste, just the click
clack of history
Fun but unsatisfying is what I thought after reading, You Can Buy Hemingway’s Typewriter. But Would You Use It? by David Waldstein in the New York Times.
Unsatisfying because Mr. Waldstein did not tell the story on how this feller, Steve Soboroff, tracked down all the typewriters of famous people that he now plans to offer at auction.
Fun because it was fun to think about owning such a machine.
This past summer I was able to sit at a desk with one of James Thurber’s typewriters.
Maybe a musician sitting at a piano used by Stevie Wonder would feel something.
Mr. Leonard Bernstein is on film describing what it was like to direct an orchestra and standing what had to be standing somewhere near the spot Ludwig Beethoven stood when his 9th Symphony was debuted.
Something about a typewriter.
I haven’t owned one in years but I have a bunch.
The last one I got was a gift that had a small computer screen and could store up to three lines of text.
You could set it to type each letter or to wait and type out each line.
I never caught the rhythm of the line by line.
A funny thing, but the last typewriter I ever bought was vintage manual Royal typewriter I got at the Salvation Army.
The machine worked fine, but finding typewriter ribbon was a problem.
The place where I worked had just thrown out all there old adding machines, along with boxes of adding machine ribbon and with a little winding, these ribbons could be retro-fitted onto my typewriter.
Friends and neighbors let me tell you that when the time comes to move cross country, a 20lb manual typewriter quickly makes it on the list of things you don’t need to bring.
Mr. Waldstein writes, The machine has no delete buttons, no cut-and-paste. Just the click-clack of history.
Sitting at the Thurber machine, I imagined his fingers on the keys and a story coming out, letter by letter, return by return.
I could hear the click-clack and the bell and the grrrrrrrr of the carriage and the thump when the the next line came into place.
John Steinbeck said, “Sometimes just the pure luxury of long beautiful pencils charges me with energy and invention.”
There is much to be said for those pencils.
I cannot remember the source of line, but someone pointed out that the American Space Programs spent millions developing a pen that could insure the flow of ink and write in zero gravity while the Soviet Union sent their astronauts into space … with pencils.
I use a comuter.
I hear the rattle of my keyboard.
That qwerty keyboard that connects my typing with the old machines.
But I back space.
I delete.
I highlight and copy and paste.
I print multiple copies.
And …
I miss that old Royal typewriter.
no delete buttons,
no cut-and-paste, just the click
clack of history
No Haiku For You 