Of late I have become an enthusiast of typewriting— the machine I am working on these days is a refurbished Swiss-made 1967 Hermes 3000, and quite the workhorse it is! (Ribbons? Kein Problem.) Of course I do most of my writing on my computer using Microsoft Word; WordPress for this blog; not to mention multitudinous hours spent with ye olde email program. But for laser-level attentional focus–and percussive energy!– the typewriter is something special, and as time goes by, the more I use it, the more I appreciate it. In fact, I now use my typewriter for one thing or another (drafts, notes, letters, recipe cards) almost every day.
Though I have yet to meet him in person, my mentor in the Typosphere is none other than Richard Polt, professor of philosophy at Xavier University and the author of some heavy-weight tomes on Heidegger, and, to the point, a practical manual I often consult, and warmly recommend to anyone thinking of buying a typewriter, or, say, hauling Grandpa’s out of some cobwebbed corner of the garage: The Typewriter Revolution. As “Richard P.” Professor Polt also maintains a blog of the same name. And now he, Frederic S. Durbin, and Andrew V. McFeaters, have put together a pair of anthologies, both just published, the second of which, Escapements: Typewritten Tales from Post-Digital Worlds (Loose Dog Press, 2019), includes a story of mine: “What Happened to the Dog?”
Herewith, “What Happened to the Dog?” (Caveat: undoubtedly the photographs in the book itself are of better quality; these I just snapped with my smartphone, too quickly, I daresay, in a rush to make the PO with the originals.) May this entice you to buy the ridiculously low-priced anthology of a cornucopia of wildy-imagined stories by many other writers, now available at amazon.com— and better yet, have a go at typing your own pre-/post-digital fiction.
My writing assistant answers the title question: She was having a perfectly reasonable morning siesta when, suddenly, this book appeared on her back. She reports that this reminded her, mistily, of a previous life as a dimetrodon.
Those of you who follow this blog may be wondering, what perchance, and by jumpingjacks, does this short story about a typewriter have to do, and by the way what has happened with, the book in-progress on Far West Texas? The question of technology has turned out to be central to what I am writing about Far West Texas. (Darkly: there will be Heidegger quotes.)
Fingers crossed that I can finally get the next Marfa Mondays podcast up Monday after next.
Next Monday, the second of the month, I post here for the writing workshop. More anon.
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 anonread 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.
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 the Hermes Baby at the Australian blog ozTypewriter and at the Swiss Hermes Baby Page by Georg Sommeregger (in German, but Google translation available).
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:
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…
“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”
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.
Viva, Richard Polt! He says that if you send him your address he will send you this postcard.
One of the themes in my work-in-progress
on Far West Texas is the nature and pervasive influence of
technology, especially digital technology– but also other kinds of industrial
and military technology.
So what’s with the typewriter poem? The poem
pictured above, “The Typewriter Manifesto,” is by philosophy
professor Richard Polt. I’m a big fan of his blog and his book, The Typewriter
Revolution.
My 56 year-old Hermes 3000 works fine, no need to update the OX! (Yes, ribbons are easy to score on eBay).
Nope, I am not a Luddite, but yep, I use a typewriter on occasion. When needed, I also use a Zassenhaus kitchen timer, a 30 year-old finance-nerd calculator (I used to be a finance nerd), and a battery-operated alarm clock. Yes, I know there are apps for all of those, and yes, I actually have downloaded and previously used all those apps on my smartphone but, e-NUFFF with the digital! Too many hours of my day are already in thrall to my laptop, writing on WORD or blogging, emailing, podcasting, maintaining my website, surfing (other blogs, mainly, and newspapers, plus occasional podcasts and videos), and once in a purple moon, making videos. Most days my iPhone stays in its drawer, battery dead, and I like it that way.
But kiddos, this not a writer-from-an-older-generation-resisting-innovation thing. Back when I was avid to adopt new technology. I had a cell phone when they were the size and shape and weight of a brick. I started my website in 1999! I bought the first Kindle model, and the first iPad model. I was one of the first writers to make my own Kindle editions (check out my latest). I started podcasting in 2010. I even spent oodles more time than I should have figuring out the bell-and-whistles of iTunes’ iBook Author app… and so on and so forth.
From Charles Melville Scammon’s “California Grays Among the Ice” Whales! Magnificent outside! Digestive juices inside!
In short, with technology, especially anything
having to do with writing and publishing, I dove right into the deep end… and
I have seen the whale. And it was not, is not, and will not be on my schedule
to get swallowed whole.
(The original pretzel-brain inducing essay by
Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” with its handful of
profound points coccooned within copious noodathipious deustcher
Philosophieprofessor flooflemoofle, is here.)
And here is the Lilly interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, for “Thinking Allowed” (the one where Dr. Lilly wears his earrings and Davy Crockett hat). Um, you will not eat your popcorn during this one.
#
Delighted to have surfed upon Tadeuz Patzek’s
blog, LifeItself. Patzek is a professor of petroleum engineering,
recently chair of the department at University Texas Austin. He
is co-author with Joseph A. Tainter of Drilling Down. I
read Drilling Down on Kindle this week, then bought the paperback to
read it again.
“Cryptocurrencies are a new
asset classthat enable decentralized
applications.“
In other words, “cryptocurrencies” are
not currencies as we know them. “Crypto” is too sexy a word for what
these actually are. So let’s call these puppies NACTEDAs. Rhymes with
“rutabagas.”
Ludwin’s most interesting quote? Buried deep in
the middle of his explanation of the nature of NACTEDAs is this colorful
explanation of how NACTEDAs are generated or “mined”:
“Now we need an actual contest… On your mark, get set: find a random number generated by the network! The number is really, really hard to find So hard that the only way to find it is to use tons of processing power and burn through electricity. It’s a computing version of what Veruca Salt made her dad and his poor factory workers do in Willy Wonka. A brute force search for a golden ticket (or in this case, a golden number).”
This is not a point Ludwin makes (he sails on,
with utter nonchalance): It is just a question of time– maybe a loooooooong
time, albeit perchance a seemingly out-of-nowhere-pile-on-Harvey-Weinstein
moment– until people recognize the environmental and social justice
implications of such extravagant electricity use for generating NACTEDAs.
Can you say, opportunity cost?
As it stands, most people don’t or don’t want to
grok where the magic invisible elixir that always seems to be there at the flip
of a switch actually comes from…. which is, uh, usually… and
overwhelmingly… coal. And neither do they grok that this flow of power is not
never-ending, but a utility that can be cut off. Ye olde winter storm can do it
for a day or so. More ominously, the grid itself can fail for lack of
maintenance, or any one of one a goodly number of events– it need not
necessarily be some cinematically apocalyptic cyberattack or epic solar flare.
Can you say Puerto Rico. Can you say Mexico City after the earthquake. Can you
say what happens when you don’t pay your bill. Or if the electrical company
makes a mistrake. Lalalalala.
In any event, I wouldn’t recommend a camping
vacation on some random mountaintop in West Virginia any time for… the rest
of your life.
#
And
herewith, hat tip to Root Simple,
Lloyd Kahn demonstrates his low-tech dishwashing method. The duck part at the
end is charmingly weird.
Perhaps, dear writerly reader, you have heard of Freedom, the app that blocks the Internet so you can focus on your writing (or whatever offline task). It is not cheap; prices have gone up more than a smidge (ayyyy!) since I purchased it some years ago for a mere USD 10. Nope, I don’t use it. End of review.
[UPDATE: As of March 2019 I use the latest version of the Freedom app and can recommend it. I plan to post about my experience with the Freedom app on one of the second Monday of the month workshop posts in 2021.]
Of course, a more economical alternative for
those who work at home would be to simply switch off the wi-fi signal.
But never mind, there you are, glued to your
computer, same screen, same keyboard, same desk, same chair, and whether
you’re using the Freedom app or you’ve turned off the wi-fi signal, either can
be reversed (that is, the Freedom app turned off, or the wi-fi switched back
on) in a matter of the slight inconvenience of a moment. Staying off-line when
you’re working on a computer is akin to trying to diet with an open box of
chocolates within reach! As they say, Don’t think about the pink
elephant. Or, elephant-shaped chocolates with a cherry in the
middle! Or, for a more au courant Internetesque analogy, Don’t think about
cats! And certainly not cats wearing hats!
YE OLDE NONELECTRIC TYPEWRITER
Yet another strategy for diminishing the pull of
the Internet, at least for some writers some of the time, would be to get up
from the computer, aka the distraction machine, and hie thee over to ye
olde typewriter.
My typewriter went to Goodwill years ago. But
now, with a book to complete, I am seriously considering going back to using a
typewriter. I am old enough to remember typing up my papers for school and
college, that satisfying clackety-clack and the little ding at the end
of the right margin… The calm. The focus.
Speaking of analogerie, I am also, as those of you who follow this blog well know, massively, as in an-entire-parade-ground-filled-with-dancing-pink-elephants-and-cats-in-hats-all- under-a-rain-of-chocolates, massively, relieved to have deactivated my Facebook account. That was back in August of 2015. Yes indeed, having eliminated that particular bungee-pull to the Internet, I have gotten a lot more writing done, and I am answering my email in a more consistently timely manner.
So, typewriters. I spent an afternoon of the
Thanksgiving weekend doing some Internet research. Herewith:
WHERE TO FIND A GOOD OLD (AND MAYBE REALLY OLD)
NONELECTRIC TYPEWRITER
Why nonelectric? It might be nice to type in the
tipi! But also, it seems that some of the best workhorse typewriters are
nonelectrics made back in the mid-20th century. The only nonelectric
typewriters currently being manufactured are from China and although cheap,
they’re crap, so if a nonelectric typewriter is what you want, think
vintage.
For a rundown on vintage brands and models, both
nonelectric and electric, Polt’s The Typewriter Revolution is an
excellent resource. On his website Polt also maintains a list of
typewriter repair shops.
You could start combing through the cheapie
listings on EBay
and Goodwill,
and if you have the time and can stand the skanky vibes, peruse the stalls in
your local flea market. You might even grab a typewriter for free– perhaps the
one gathering cobwebs in your parents’ garage…
But it seems to me that, if you want to start
typing ASAP on a good vintage machine, the best strategy would be to shell out
the clams to a dealer who specializes in refurbishing or
“reconditioning” quality typewriters, and who offers his or her
customers a guarantee. I should think you would also want to confirm that it
will be possible to source ribbons.
UPDATE: Behold! My 1961 Hermes 3000 Pica from Typewriter Techs
A few US dealers who look like promising
possibilities:
Olivers By Bee Oliver Typewriters Manufactured from 1890-1930s. An Etsy shop for antique typewriters.
