pulpit dominic green
True to Type
I wrote this on a typewriter, a 1926 L C Smith No 8. I sup- pose my technical history is no different from that of any other writer: from first love with pencils and pens, I moved to teenage experiments with a portable typewriter, a disastrous romance with a word processor that had trouble processing my words and then marriage to a computer that doesn’t understand me.
The computer changed my brain. Instead of writing sentences, I noted fragments. As I mashed them into the pictorial image of a paragraph, I pushed the rest forward like gravel before a glacier, then ground to a stop. My line of thought was equally pulverised. I was an addict, and internet-limiting software called Freedom only reminded me of my servitude. Now I am truly free and falling in love again.
No one saw me slip into Cambridge Typewriter in Arlington, Massachusetts. The owner, Tom Furrier, gently led me towards a Royal KMM. ‘David McCullough’s,’ he murmured. ‘It needs servicing.’ Involuntarily, I stroked it for luck. Tom understood: everyone does that, the first time.
Tom asked if I was looking for anything in particular. Reposed around me like nudes in a Degas brothel sketch were Remington No 2s (used by Agatha Christie and Marguerite Yourcenar), Royal Quiet Deluxes (Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King and Véra Nabokov for Vladimir), Underwood No 5s (William Carlos Williams, Marlene Dietrich, Damon Runyon), Royal Ks (Saul Bellow, Dorothy Parker, Georges Simenon) and a bevy of Smith Coronas from the Mad Men typing pool ( Joseph Heller, Françoise Sagan). But I couldn’t stop looking at the L C Smith: the firm curves of the frame, the proudly exposed working parts, the low-slung, wide basket, and a platen so plump you could rest your chin on it. ‘Great choice,’ Tom said. ‘Light action, too.’
Typewriter design did not standardise until the 1940s, so the Smith has personality. The fourth line has no key for the number 1; you use a lowercase L. If by habit you strike the place where a modern keyboard has a 1, you hit Shift Lock, which has floated up from bottom left to top left. Margin Release, an override for the right margin, is where Delete should be. Back Space is on the fifth line, along with a row of keys that indent by various distances. The chrome baton of the return lever is on the right. Each time I hear the bell for the end of a line, I flail at the air as if leading an imaginary orchestra.
It feels good to work with my hands and to be in physical contact with the page. When the keys hit the platen, the metal punch vibrates down the legs of the desk, along the floor and into the soles of my feet. Best of all, I can do nothing on the No 8 apart from type. It may not make me a better writer – it is only a machine for words, not wonders – but it might make me more effective. The increased physical effort might make expression more concise. Retyping into the computer might force me to write proper second drafts instead of cutting and pasting.
A typewriter separates production from consumption, creativity from entertainment. No more emails, news tickers and notifications from Adobe. There is nothing Luddite about this. You can make an omelette in a microwave, but it will be different from one made in an omelette pan.
My wife caught me sneaking the Smith into the house. She already knew. For the last two weeks, all I had talked about was the relationship between form and content in the history of publishing. As D J Taylor described recently in The Prose Factory, the story of modern literature is also a history of technology and economics. The serial fattened the Victorian novel into the triple-decker, the lending library shrank it down again, and the pocket paperback shrank it further. Mass education created a reading public and mass entertainment dissolved it. Digitisation removed most of the quality control, and most of the value, from writing.
Digitisation has been bad for the economies of publishing and newspapers and worse for that of writers. Has it been good for writing as an art form? Style is a cumulative impression, created by small variations in syntax and vocabulary. The infinite run-on of the digital page encourages solipsism and flatulence. Instead of murdering our darlings, we save them using cut and paste. The temptations of too much space and too little revision dilute a writer’s personality. And that is our only unique asset. You cannot tell an Apple writer from a Hewlett-Packard writer, or a Pages writer from a Word writer, or even a laptop writer from a desktop writer. But there are clear correlations between types of writer and choices of typewriter.
Something for the ladies? That’ll be the Olympia SG1, as stroked by Danielle Steel and Jacqueline Susann. Man of action? Go to war with a Hermes Baby, beloved of Ho Chi Minh and Frederick Forsyth. Losing the plot? Self-destruct with an Underwood Portable, just like Virginia Woolf, Orson Welles and William Faulkner. Looking for a babysitter? Best to avoid letters of application that have been typed on an Olympia SM3, a favourite of Frank Herbert, Patricia Highsmith and Woody Allen.
Are the correlations causal, and if so, how? Does the typewriter make the typist, or are certain imaginations unleashed by particular machines? The answer may lie in the mysterious commonality between two novelists who wrote with a roll of paper, as opposed to sheets, the alcoholic road-tripping speedfreak P G Wodehouse and the abstemious stay-at-home Jack Kerouac.
So what about my machine? I have found four photos of the Smith No 8. Ring Lardner is banging out a quick one in a straw boater, too busy to light the cigarette that hangs from his lip. Donald Barthelme is enjoying a smoke after a steamy session with his Smith. Richard Wilbur looks furtive, even though it is impossible to look at pornography on a typewriter, unless you have just written it. The fourth image showed only the machine, not the man. But the caption alone convinced me that I was born for a No 8: ‘Typewriter from the Nixon Law Office, used by Richard Nixon.’ r october 2016 | Literary Review 1