Commentary: Remembering the good old typewriter

By Jim Nolan

Buffalo, NY – This is a story about three typewriters.

Typewriter 1: A black Erika manual from the 1930s. Used by my grandmother Hildegard in Berlin and Stockholm. It smells intoxicatingly inky. On the inside of the leather carrying case are three worn address labels, all my grandfather's, from three countries. My uncle Heye sent me a letter about the typewriter. He writes:

"During the Great Depression in 1929 my father lost his job. It was then my mother started writing. She wrote plays for children, short stories, articles in family journals and so on. We lived with my grandparents for nearly six years and the little typewriter has earned many a garment to us children."

Typewriter 2: A 1981 Smith-Corona electric portable given to me by my mother as a college graduation present. This typewriter makes me a feel little guilty. I had every intention of writing a novel on it, but discovered I had nothing to write about. The Smith-Corona was the perfect, most meaningful present my mother could have given me, and but I wasn't ready for it. It has a sticker on it that proclaims the typewriter shop's 75th anniversary in Williamsville. I'm guessing it went out of business soon after, unless it started selling Macs and PCs.

Typewriter 3: An IBM Selectric. It weighs more than most boat anchors. I had it completely refurbished, schlepping it downtown on the F train to the repair shop. Listen to it hum. It's waiting with breathless anticipation to power your next keystroke, your next line of deathless prose. Once it warms up it perfumes the room with the scent of its new lubricating oil, nice but not up to the standards of Hildegard's Erika. The electric cord has two prongs, not three.

The thing about typewriters, in my experience, is that they don't write by themselves, even the electrics. You need to sit in front of them and press down the keys before any words appear. My grandmother did this as a way of buying her kids something without having to ask her parents for money, and perhaps to keep sane. I'm guessing the Erika held no great romantic attachment for her; it was tool, a crowbar to wrest a few moments to do something she was good at from a couple of epically bad decades.

I like typewriters. Their keystrokes sound like applause to me, the warning bell before the margin a tiny ring of approbation for my efforts. Still, they're so 20th century. I prefer another method, one that makes editing a snap and doesn't require Wite-Out.

I'm writing this by hand.

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