TypeTown #22: "You fail only if you stop writing."
📚 Ray Bradbury, Enid Blyton, street poets, Bryan Cranston, and more...
Welcome, welcome.
Two quick questions to kick things off:
First, how much would you pay for access to a typewriter?
And, second, would you get as much value as Ray Bradbury?
In the early 1950s, back when he was writing Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury had a problem many will recognise.
He had work to do. He couldn’t afford an office. And his young daughters were, frankly, a bit of pest. So 70 years before Covid-19, here he was grappling with his own WFH issues.
His solution was simple.
He gathered up his notes and headed to UCLA’s Powell Library. There, in the basement, he could use a coin-operated typewriter for the princely sum of 10 cents every 30 minutes.
$9.80 later, Fahrenheit 451 was complete and American literature had another powerhouse in its ranks.
“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.”
By the time of his death in 2012, aged 91, Bradbury had built a body of work likely to endure for decades, perhaps centuries, to come.
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
There appears little doubt this was a man TypeTowners could get behind, regardless of their views on his work.
“I don't have a computer. A computer's a typewriter. I already have a typewriter.”
Bradbury was certainly dedicated. He worked as an author and screenwriter, and embraced genres including sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery.
His passing even prompted a public statement from then-President Barack Obama, who said: “His gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world. But Ray also understood that our imaginations could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change, and an expression of our most cherished values.”
Or, to put it in Bradbury’s own succinct terms:
“You fail only if you stop writing.”
Onwards, then. Onwards.
READ» Typewriter Tuesday: Ray Bradbury - American Writers Museum
READ» Ray Bradbury Wrote the First Draft of Fahrenheit 451 on Coin-Operated Typewriters, for a Total of $9.80 - Open Culture
READ» Ray Bradbury on life, love and Buck Rogers - The Guardian
Enid Blyton: a blight on Blighty?
Across the Atlantic, it’s 125 years this month since the birth of children’s novelist Enid Blyton (1897-1968).
Her stories have circulated for 90 years and more than 600 million copies have been sold around the world.
But she is a hugely controversial author, with much of her work labelled sexist, racist, xenophobic, and elitist.
She produced almost all of it in her garden or living room, sometimes bashing out 10,000 words a day and occasionally writing 50 books (yes, fifty!) in a single year.
“I shut my eyes for a few minutes, with my portable typewriter on my knee — I make my mind a blank and wait — and then, as clearly as I would see real children, my characters stand before me in my mind’s eye… the first sentence comes straight into my mind.”
READ» Blyton, Enid (1897-1968) - English Heritage
READ» In pictures: Enid Blyton exhibition - BBC
READ» Enid Blyton exhibition celebrates prolific writer’s imagination - The Guardian
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“Why aren’t there writers everywhere?”
TypeTown is finding it hard to keep track of all the different poets and writers now pounding the pavements with typewriters at the ready.
Dan Hurley, otherwise known as the 60 Second Novelist, has certainly been around the block.
“I’ve done it for 38 years… when I started in 1983, very few people had a computer. To have a typewriter was no big deal. (Now)… it’s turned into this retro typewriter and I’m going to just do this old-fashioned thing called talking.”
Here are two others following in his footsteps:
WATCH» Instant Poetry: Typewriter Tarts Create, Type Poems For You in Just A Few Minutes - NBC Chicago
READ» A literary art feels the love - Daily Inter Lake
Worth pausing the platen
📬 In a world of digital distractions, these Kansas City wordsmiths embrace analog typewriters - KCUR
📬 Scot Ross wants to send you a letter - Tone Madison
📬 This museum is unique in having typewriters in many languages in many countries - News WAALI
And finally… typewriters in the wild
In this short video about Indian typewriter artist AC Gurumurthy…
In this still from the 2015 film Trumbo…
And at the Shout Gallery in Hong Kong, where TypeTown favourite WRDSMTH is exhibiting…
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Until next time
PS: New here?
TypeTown is a fortnightly celebration of the typewriter’s place in modern (and not so modern) culture.
TypeArt! I never dreamed of using a typewriter for portraits.
Another excellent post. Thank you.