TypeTown #39: “I suppose I'm a hold-out from another era.”
💷 Martin Amis, Klas Ostergren, William Bortz, and more...
Saddle up, buttercup.
After a few weeks R&R in northern Croatia, it’s time to get back on the TypeTown horse.
We ride out today with Martin Amis.
Oesophageal cancer proved too much last month, but only after half a century battering the literary establishment with work vivid, stark — and supremely stylish.
Money (1984) and London Fields (1989) were popular high points.
His memoir, Experience, also landed well.
The son of Kingsley Amis, Martin’s work revolved around the worst excesses of 1980s and 90s. His father, however, could never reach the end. Martin’s verdict? “I tell him he carries incuriosity to fanatical extremes.”
In his youth, Martin used a manual Olivetti. He eventually switched to an electric typewriter, then stood firm for longer than most.
By the mid 1990s, he was still resistant.
“I suppose I’m a hold-out from another era, but I suspect the WP doesn’t have a good effect on prose. The little mouse that vibrates away on the screen makes you think you are thinking when really you are not.”
His writing room process was gloriously mundane.
“I go in around 10 and usually clock off at seven, but I don’t write all the time. A lot of it is just reading or sitting around thinking.”
But perhaps understandably for a man of his output, compromise was uncomfortable.
“Don’t dumb down: always write for your top five per cent of readers.”
Born in Oxford, he spent time in Mallorca, New Jersey, London, Uruguay, New York, and Florida.
A life lived.
READ» Obituary: Martin Amis - The Guardian
READ» Martin Amis’s 16 Rules for Writers - Writers Write
READ» Time taps adieu to the typewriter - The Independent
READ» He’s Leaving Home - The New Republic
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A man of true Klas
In a tiny village on the south-east coast of Sweden, tilt your head the right way and the sound of a typewriter may still gently echo on the waves.
Klas Ostergren, one of his country’s most revered living novelists, only switched to the computer a couple of years ago.
Before that, he’d produced everything on a Facit Privat that gave him more than four decades of faithful service.
“Sometimes, when you’re on the final draft of something, you think the noise of the keys clicking is going to drive you mad.”
He lives in a house he built himself, far removed from the distractions of urban life.
The result has been a body of work including Gentlemen, which in 1980 secured his literary significance, and the 2007 novel The Hurricane Party, which focused on a character who makes his living fixing up old typewriters.
Perfect!
READ» Klas Ostergren - Swede Success - Peter Geoghegan
READ» Interview with Klas Ostergren - Gutkind
READ» Review: The Hurricane Party by Klas Ostergren - The Guardian
Good Will found
Finally this week, a flying visit to Iowa to check out William Bortz and his typewritten poetry — at least some of which appears to have flowed from this magnificent Hermes Baby.
Bortz’s work — which often captures fleeting, mundane moments — is attracting increasing attention.
“Isn’t writing simply wondering about things—and hoping someone else has wondered about them, too?”
Last month his latest collection, Many Small Hungerings, hit the shelves.
Foster care, shelters, and homelessness all feed into his personal story.
And it while those things will always be there, shaping his work in ways both obvious and subtle, he prefers to look forward.
“Nostalgia is great, but it keeps us from being present...”
READ» Will Bortz was homeless at 15. Now, the Iowa poet has a new book and 82,000 Instagram fans. - Des Moines Register
READ» WILLIAM BORTZ ON WONDERING, WRITING, AND THE GIFT OF RITUALS - Read Poetry
READ» William Bortz - Read Poetry
Worth pausing the platen
📬 Typing on a century-old Underwood has kickstarted my imagination - The Globe and Mail
📬 When Milwaukee was the Silicon Valley for typewriters and more - OnMilwaukee
📬 The Daily Heller: I Lost My Heart at Olivetti on Fifth Avenue - PRINT Magazine
And finally… typewriters in the wild
In a Croatian bookshop adorning Bev Vincent’s look at Stephen King’s career…
In this NPR Tiny Desk Concert submission from the always-wonderful Boston Typewriter Orchestra…
And in this 1916 portrait of composer and theatrical producer Earl Carroll…
Until next time
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Always cool to see a copy of one of my books in a shop window -- especially in an exotic place like this. Thanks for posting!