Return
to the Typewriter
1.
My return to the
typewriter began suddenly, with a feverish compulsion to acquire not just one
but a handful, beginning with the machines I used in college—a Hermes 3000 and
a Royal desktop. But I didn’t stop
there. I developed a pornographic
interest in early typewriters with glass keys, and purchased a 1940’s era Smith Corona Sterling portable and
a Royal Arrow. The touch of a fingertip
on that Sterling’s black keys gave me a sensual thrill. A few weeks later, a West German Olympia SM3
portable arrived from an eBay seller, and I left it on my desk—to write on, I
thought—but I spent much more time simply staring at it, running my hand over
its graceful metal curves, tracing the chrome trim with my finger, and
remembering when, a very long time ago, a car could give me the same kind of
thrill. My wife, observing all of this,
suggested I mention this typewriter business to my therapist. She wasn’t joking.
A few weeks later
I did.
“This is probably
silly, but Karen said I should mention that I recently developed this sort of
typewriter obsession,” I told the therapist.
“I’ve bought a bunch of them over the past few months, and she thinks
it’s a weird kind of nostalgic thing.”
In my case, nostalgia is an affliction, a
warning sign that I’m looking backwards for something that I can find right that
is right in front me and I just refuse to see it. But I didn’t think the typewriter obsession
was this kind of pathological nostalgia, and I told the therapist that, and he
smiled and nodded in agreement.
“How many
typewriters do you have at the moment?” he said.
“I think I have
seven,” I said. “Or maybe eight.”
“Don’t you think
that’s enough?” he said.
“Oh yes,” I
said. “I don’t think I’ll be buying any more.”
But a few weeks
later I did. I spent way too much money
on a replacement for the first Hermes 3000—another Hermes but in “mint” condition (and it was)—a move that
seemed necessary because I had attempted to “fix” the carriage return on the
first one and disassembled a part I could never put back together again. It was a situation that reminded me of the
time I tried to adjust the valves on my 1970 Fiat—the last of the machines in
my life I felt I could actually fix—and had to call a tow truck to have the car
taken to the repair shop. In 2014, there
is no one to call in Boise to fix a broken typewriter.
But one day I did
fix the Olympia, a success story that later prompted me to tackle the Hermes,
and it was a heady experience that made my love the typewriter all the
more. The Olympia SM3, a portable built
in the 1950s, exudes German engineering.
If you turn it over and look at the gleaming guts of the machine you see
an orderly regiment of springs commanding a row of shiny type bars, all rigidly
waiting for orders from the typist. There are stainless steel screws everywhere. Looking at the inside of the Olympia, I
simultaneously felt intimidated and that anything was possible.
The carriage was
jamming on the typewriter case, and after a half hour of following the logic of
connected rollers, springs, and screws, I found the screw that would slightly
elevate the carriage and it has worked well ever since. Fixing the Olympia gave me a giddy feeling,
and it wasn’t just a sense of accomplishment but the feeling that in some small
I had recovered something I had lost: a
machine that I could actually understand.
2 comments:
I can relate, Bruce. Too many machines I do not understand. Though I do not pine for multiple typewriters I do remember the satisfaction of heaving the carriage-- the heft felt worthy of another completed line. Mostly though, As I begin my umpteenth year teaching college writing, I thank you for all you have taught me over the years as a curious, compassionate and elegant writer, teacher, researcher and human being.
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