Hermes 3000 – C.M. Mayo's Book Notes & Convos

Q & A with Philosopher Richard Polt on “The Typewriter Revolution”

BY C.M. MAYO — November 22, 2021
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

“[A]fter I started collecting typewriters in 1994, I rediscovered the pleasure of using them once in a while. My desire to use them more often led me to start “typecasting” in 2010—writing posts on a typewriter, then scanning and uploading them to a blog. It was a great decision. It connected me to the typosphere (typewriter bloggers around the world), and opened my eyes to the many uses these machines have today.”— Richard Polt

This blog posts on Mondays. Fourth Mondays of the month I devote to a Q & A with a fellow writer.

So, dear writerly readers, it is a delight and an honor to present you this month’s Q & A with none other than Richard Polt.

From The Typewriter Revolution’s catalog copy:

“Why a typewriter now? How do you find a good typewriter? How do you take care of it? The Typewriter Revolution has the answers.

“What do thousands of writers, makers, kids, poets, artists, steampunks, and hipsters have in common? They love typewriters—the magical, mechanical contraptions that are enjoying a surprising second life in the 21st century. The Typewriter Revolution documents the movement and provides practical advice on how to choose a typewriter, use it, and care for it—from National Novel Writing Month to letter-writing socials, from type-ins to customized typewriters.”

This is all a little more serious than it might appear, however. Richard Polt is a professor of Philosophy at Xavier University and the author of several works about the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, most recently, Time and Trauma: Thinking Through Heidegger in the Thirties. Heidegger is perhaps best known for his essay, “The Question Concerning Technology,” which first appeared in print in 1954.

Richard Polt, author of *The Typewriter Revolution*

C.M. MAYO: What prompted you to start using a typewriter?

RICHARD POLT: I took a typing class in school when I was 11 years old, in 1976, and my father soon found a 1937 Remington Noiseless no. 7 for me at a yard sale. I used that Remington for school, college, and grad school until I got a Mac in 1988. Then there was a period of several years when I didn’t even consider using a typewriter again. But after I started collecting typewriters in 1994, I rediscovered the pleasure of using them once in a while. My desire to use them more often led me to start “typecasting” in 2010—writing posts on a typewriter, then scanning and uploading them to a blog. It was a great decision. It connected me to the typosphere (typewriter bloggers around the world), and opened my eyes to the many uses these machines have today.

C.M. MAYO: What sorts of things do you use your typewriter to type?

RICHARD POLT: Brainstorms, fiction, poetry, letters, comments on students’ papers, blog posts.

C.M. MAYO: Which model is your go-to typewriter?

RICHARD POLT: I still love my first typewriter, the Remington Noiseless no. 7; it’s next to my laptop right now. I also really enjoy my Continental portable and my Olympia SG1. I enjoy cycling through other models as well, such as my Voss De Luxe, Torpedo 18, and Olivetti Lexikon 80.

C.M. MAYO: Which, in your opinion, is the number one slam-dunk most bodacious typewriter ever manufactured?

RICHARD POLT: I am always looking for “the perfect typewriter” and also simultaneously hoping I won’t find it, so that the exciting search can go on. But the Olympia SG1 comes close to perfect for a standard—it’s smooth and snappy, accurate, strong, and full of features. An interesting candidate for the perfect portable (though it’s still pretty big and heavy) is the Erika 20, a super-sophisticated East German machine that’s nearly impossible to find in QWERTY. And if you want an electric, the IBM Selectric can’t be beat.

C.M. MAYO: After your book, The Typewriter Revolution, was published, what surprised you the most about readers’ responses?

RICHARD POLT: The delightful response that I didn’t see coming was a dance based on my Typewriter Manifesto. The awful response that I didn’t see coming was a reader review that described the book as obscene (huh?).

C.M. MAYO: What prompted you to start Loose Dog Press?

RICHARD POLT: The idea began after I read a couple of short stories in the typosphere about the typewriter insurgency fighting the powers of computerdom, or people using typewriters in an apocalyptic scenario. I thought it would be fun to challenge people to write more stories along these lines—and to publish the typewritten texts. This project evolved into the anthologies Paradigm Shifts and Escapements, which I edited with novelist Frederic S. Durbin and English professor Andrew V. McFeaters. I didn’t think a mainstream publisher would be interested in this admittedly very specialized niche, so why not start my own publishing house?

Loose Dog Press (a pun on the name for a part in a typewriter’s escapement mechanism) is dedicated to promoting typewriting in the 21st century. The books are printed on demand, sold at cost, and available only on paper. There is more information at https://loosedogpress.blogspot.com.

C.M. MAYO: What gratified you, what frustrated you, and what surprised you about Loose Dog’s first books?

RICHARD POLT: We’ve been gratified and surprised by the amount of interest and the number of strong submissions that have come our way from around the planet. The Cold Hard Type series, which now includes four volumes, has successfully inspired people to take their typewriters down from the shelf and use their imagination both with them and about them. Honestly, although it’s been plenty of work to select contributions and use Photoshop to correct errors in typescripts, there have been almost no frustrations. My co-editors are insightful and friendly, and Linda M. Au has been a great help in producing the layout for each volume.

C.M. MAYO: If you could offer a word, or maybe a couple of sentences, of advice for anyone who is thinking of starting a press, what would you tell them?

RICHARD POLT: Do it! We are in a golden age of publishing, in the sense that you need no capital at all to begin publishing books. You just need some technical know-how to create a PDF which can then be printed on demand. Of course, it also helps to have literary and aesthetic taste. Appearances count.

C.M. MAYO: But back to typewriters: A thought experiment. Martin Heidegger, popping in from the afterlife, has offered to type his blurb for The Typewriter Revolution. What does he say?

RICHARD POLT: “What do you mean, type a blurb? I refuse to use a Schreibmaschine! The writing machine is destroying the essence of writing, which is hand-writing! … What’s that? You can’t read my handwriting? All right, I will have my assistant type it up. … OK, OK, I see the irony already. You don’t have to rub it in! Well, at least writing machines are not as devastating as thinking machines. So I’ll give Herr Polt’s scribbles some grudging credit for denouncing the cybernetic worldview.”

Visit Richard Polt’s blog at The Typewriter Revolution.
Writers take note! See also his call for submissions for the next Loose Dog Press anthology, Margin Releases: Typewritten Tales of Transgression. Deadline: March 1, 2022.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

From the Typosphere: “Right” and “Wrong”

“The Typewriter Manifesto” by Richard Polt,
Plus Cyberflanerie on Technology

Q & A with Álvaro Santana-Acuña on Writing
Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude
Was Written and Became a Global Classic

“Silence” and “Poem” on the 1967 Hermes 3000

*My writing assistant wonders…. um,* warum? (why?)

Truly, I am not intending to collect typewriters. All shelf space is spoken for by books!! Last week I brought home a 1967 Hermes 3000 because (long story zipped) my 1961 Hermes 3000 is temporarily inaccessible, and it was bugging me that my 1963 Hermes Baby types unevenly and sometimes muddily (which could be a problem with the ribbon, but anyway), and I had a deadline to type my short story “What Happened to the Dog?” for the anthology COLD HARD TYPE (~~about which more anon~~ read it here).

Well, obviously I had to buy another typewriter!

I dare not buy anything but a Swiss Hermes. The one I could find in my local office supply shop was a refurbished 1967 Hermes 3000 with a Swiss-German QWERTZ keyboard. I’ve had to get used to the transposed Y and Z keys; otherwise, kein Problem, and es freut mich sehr to have the umlaut.

A QWERTZ Swiss German keyboard
(American keyboards are QWERTYs)

Of my three Hermes typewriters, this 1967 3000 is by far the smoothest, easiest to type on, and most consistent. I venture to use the word “buttery,” in fact.

Herewith, typed on the 1967 Hermes 3000, “Silence” and “Poem,” from my forthcoming collection, Meteor:

Typed today but originally published in Muse Apprentice Guild in, *ayy,* 2002. I think it was.

If you’re going to the Great American Writerly Hajj, I mean the Associated Writing Programs Conference, come on by my reading– it’s a free event– I’m on the lineup with Thaddeus Rutkowski, Cecilia Martinez-Gil, Tyler McMahon, Seth Brady Tucker, John Domini, Teri Cross Davis, Elaine Ray, William Orem, Jeff Walt, and Joan G. Gurfield for the Gival Press 20th Anniversary Celebration Reading on Friday March 29, 2019 @ 7 – 10 PM, Hotel Rose, 50 SW Morrison St, Portland OR.

The following day, Saturday March 30, 2019, @ 10-11:30 AM, I’ll be signing copies of Meteor at the Gival Press table (Table #8063) in the AWP Conference book fair.

You can also find a copy of Meteor on amazon.com. And read more poems and whatnots apropos of Meteor on the book’s webpage here.

P.S. Tom Hanks on typing, in the NYT. And Richard Polt on typing in San Francisco. And David Rain on “Hermes of the Ways.”

P.P.S. Joe van Cleave recommends silk ribbons from Ribbons Unlimited.

P.P.P.S. Your Typewriter is Not a Bowling Ball.

P.P.P.P.S. Austin Typewriter Ink Podcast “Typewriter Justice For All.”

Typosphere, Ho! “Stay West” on My 1961 Hermes 3000

“Round N Round” on the 1963 Hermes Baby

Marfa Mondays Podcast #19: Pitmaster Israel Campos in Pecos

Visit my website for more about my books, articles, and podcasts.

“Round N Round” on the 1963 Hermes Baby

Uh oh (I can begin to see how this gets out of hand!) I just brought home a second vintage Swiss-made typewriter, a 1963 Hermes Baby, which is a sight lighter at 3.6 kilos (just under 8 pounds) and more compact than my 1961 Hermes 3000. It is in excellent working order, klak, klak!

He has not expressed himself verbally on the matter, but it would seem that my writing assistant would prefer that I use the MacBook Pro. Also, geesh, it was ten minutes past suppertime.

From Meteor, my collection which will be out from Gival Press later this month:

>More about Meteor on my webpage.

>More about the Hermes Baby at the Australian blog ozTypewriter and at the Swiss Hermes Baby Page by Georg Sommeregger (in German, but Google translation available).

On the Hermes Baby I am also typing up my story (originally written on the laptop), “What Happened to the Dog?” for COLD HARD TYPE: Typewriter Tales from Post-Digtal Worlds. More about that anon.

Meanwhile, whilst strolling about the Rio Grande outside of Albuquerque, my fellow COLD HARD TYPE contributor Joe Van Cleave ponders the Typosphere, its relation to digital media, and the ultimately analog origins of the digital:

Typosphere, Ho! “Stay West” on My 1961 Hermes 3000

From the Typosphere: “Bank”

Marfa Mondays Podcast #3: Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony

Visit my website for more about my books, articles, and podcasts.

From the Typosphere: “Right & Wrong”

Typed on the 1961 Hermes 3000, a pair of poems from Meteor:

At last, my book, Meteor, which won the Gival Press Poetry Award, is listed on amazon, et al. The official launch will be in March, at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Portland, Oregon. If you’re attending that conference, I welcome you to come by the Gival Press 20th Anniversary Celebration Reading and my book signing at the Gival Press table in the bookfair.

Apropos of typing, I am honored to also announce that my short story “What Happened to the Dog?” has been accepted for Cold Hard Type: Typewriter Tales from Post-Digital Worlds, edited by novelist Frederic S. Durbin, writer and Professor of English Andrew McFeeters, and philosopher Richard Polt, the Dean of the Typoshere, and author of The Typewriter Revolution. My own vision of the post-digital world? A mashup of a Fortean echo of Aeschylus’ death, the Galapagos Islands, an Ivy League university quadrangle, and round-a-campfire singin’ with the Girl Scouts. (Like they say about the future, the imaginal can be a beyond-strange land.) What post-digital worlds did the other contributors come up with? I for one look forward to reading…

In case you missed it, I posted here a while ago about the return to typewriters. As Andrew McFeeters says on his blog, The Untimely Typewriter:

“There’s a small, international army of typewriter users and collectors on this planet called Earth. Many share some core beliefs: 1) The typewriter inspires creative, deliberate, and thoughtful writing through its singular purpose; 2) Typewriters have no distracting social media apps. Writing, after all, is a solitary act; 3) Typewriters do not require batteries; 4) New technology is not bad, but it is inferior to the mighty typewriter; 5) If you do not think typewriters are cool, then that leaves more typewriters for the rest of us. Still, don’t knock it until you try it; and 6) If you feel the clacking call of the typewriter beneath the full moon on a windy night, check out Richard Polt’s website”

Richard’s blog is named after his book, The Typewriter Revolution.

P.S. Visit again next Monday for a fascinating Q & A with Ellen Cassedy, who has translated a brilliant, moving, and genuinely landmark book of short fiction.

From the Typosphere: “Bank”

Typosphere, Ho! “Stay West” on my 1961 Hermes 3000

Poetic Repetition

Visit my website for more about my books, articles, and podcasts.

Typosphere, Ho! “Stay West” on my 1961 Hermes 3000

My first attempt at typing on a typewriter in nearly thirty years. From: *Meteor.*

My writing assistant denies any and all responsibility for slipshod typing or head-scratching sushi poetry.

Thank you, Typewriter Techs! My refurbished 1961 Hermes 3000 typewriter has arrived in Mexico City. Typewriter Techs, the Riverside, Illinois company that refurbished it, shipped it to California in a box so well padded it could have survived a Mars landing; having discarded the packing materials and box, I then grew some new biceps carrying it on board my flight home. I’d say it weighs about the same as a wet brick. It was a loooooong way from the security screening area to the gate. Jack LaLanne, watch out.

No, not the French scarf and tie and stupendaridiculously-expensive-whatnots company. This Hermes was of Swiss manufacture of yore.

The color is just as I had hoped, a foamy celadon (although it looks gray in this photo— too strong a flash).

LIKE TIME TRAVELING

I’m old enough to have had nearly two decades of experience with typewriters, both manual and electric, before I started using a computer in the late 1980s. It was an eerie experience to type on a typewriter again… like time traveling.

My first attempts at typing on this antique were clumsy, since I am, as are we all, so used to letting fingertips fly over a laptop’s keys and making scads of corrections en medias res and whatever whenever wherever and with the benefit of, after penicillin and sliced bread, the bestest thing ever invented: CNTRL Z!

But I like the deliberateness of typing on a manual typewriter— the goose-stepping linearity of it. That is the whole point, for me as a writer now. (Why? See my previous post, Consider the Typewriter. Am I Kidding? No, I Am Not Kidding.)

Madam Mayo says, The Anti-Digital Revolution will be Youtubed! And blogged! And, when I get around to it, tweeted! Git yer iron-knee right here, on a spatula! But seriously, check out this fine trailer for philosopher Richard Post’s excellent and thought-provoking resource The Typewriter Revolution.

WHY AN HERMES 3000?

I chose the Hermes 3000 because of Richard Polt’s recommendation in The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century:

“The 3000 model is a Swiss segment-shifted typewriter with excellent alignment, smooth carriage return, and quality manufacturing, introduced in the fifties. You’ll find it in a wonderfully bulbous body, painted in a color that some call “sea-foam green”… Not the very fastest or snappiest typewriter, but “buttery” in its smoothness, as fans like to say… Users include Larry McMurtry, Sam Shepard, Eugene Ionesco, and Stephen Fry.”

A tip of the Stetson to my fellow Texan Mr. McMurtry. As for Monsieur Ionesco, voila l’entrevue:

Watch the interview with English subtitles here. No, alas, Ionesco’s Hermes 3000 does not make an appearance. *Mais nous pouvons utiliser notre imagination.*

My 1961 Hermes 3000 arrived in its original carrying case along with, LOL, total yay, a packet of jellybeans!!

Under the jellybeans, a message from Typewriter Techs…

The original 1961 Hermes 3000 instruction manual. (Ha! Will those websites and YouTubes still be available and playable in 55 years? You reeeeeeaaaaaaalllly think so…?)

The warranty, yay, from Typewriter Techs.

I WILL NOT PANIC ABOUT TYPEWRITER RIBBONS NO I WILL NOT PANIC

Although we now inhabit a consumersphere rife with such ecologically exploitative poppycock as single-serve Nespresso capsules… it is nonetheless easy-peasy to find typewriter ribbons that work for multitudinous models and makes of typewriters. I knew that from reading Polt’s The Typewriter Revolution, and a quick Google. Furthermore, Typewriter Techs included this with their shipment:

In case you cannot read the image and/or your brain, like mine, goes into blur mode WITH ANYTHING WRITTEN PLEASEGODWHY ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS, it says:

“ALL ABOUT RIBBONS

“In the 1950s ribbon sales topped 50 million annually, they were the toner of their day. But unlike toner most typewriters will take the same ribbons. There are several direct replacement ribbons available for most machines. If you cannot find one, don’t panic. The ribbon itself is identical, only the spool changes. We recommend you purchase the genetic black., or black and red ribbon and rewind it onto your current spools. This is the least expensive and guarantees a correct fit. You can also contact us we stock a large variety if replacement ribbons.

“Cloth ribbons will hold more ink than nylon. Cotton will soak up the ink, nylon it just lays on top of it. A typical ribbon should last about 900,000 characters or about 180,000 words… That’s around 500 pages. A good quality ribbon will transfer the ink without leaving excessive ink on the type bars or pages. If the entire type slug is covered in blue, it’s probably not a good ribbon to use again. Black only ribbons can be turned upside down and doubled in life.”

YE PAD

A related and most felicitous purchase was the Jackalope typewriter pad. Definitely it cuts the noise.

The typewriter pad. Land o’ Goshen, why didn’t I use one of these before?

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, YE LOVELY TYPEWRITER FABRIC

My writing assistant remains confused but pugfully blasé.

A most thoughtful holiday gift from my sister’s dog (yes, in our family the dogs give presents): this yardage of neat-o typewriter fabric and I do like it draped over the Hermes, just so. Nope, I am not going to attempt anything on a sewing machine, the typewriter is my own personal Mount Everest for the moment. Must get typing.

More anon.