TypeTown #41: “Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.”

🐷 George Orwell, Milan Kundera, Ulla West, and more...

Jul 23, 2023

[Welcome to TypeTown, a fortnightly newsletter celebrating the typewriter’s place in history and modern culture. Click here to subscribe.]

Bienvenidos todos.

Just 40 minutes’ drive from TypeTown HQ is a small industrial town that has, by most assessments, seen better days.

Wigan is a strange place.

The local delicacy is a meat pie in a sandwich (google ‘Wigan kebab’).

And, despite being 20 miles from the coast, its defining feature is a pier.

Which is the kind of detail no self-respecting writer is ever going to miss.

Eighty-six years ago, George Orwell saw the obvious and ran with it.

The Road to Wigan Pier, an unflinching look at working class lives in the north of England, was met with widespread praise on its release in 1937.

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

But it was the next decade, with Orwell’s health failing while his Remington Home Portable held firm, that produced his two iconic works.

Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) are regarded as 20th-century classics.

Both examine the consequences of dictators, authoritarians, and totalitarians.

“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”

Born in India as Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell’s life was short. He died in 1950 aged 46.

Throughout, clarity was always the top priority.

“Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.”

Time at the typewriter, he thought, was an investment in your future.

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

What happened to Orwell’s typewriter is complex and unresolved.

READ» Orwell’s Typewriter - Darcy Moore

READ» The Strange Case of Orwell’s Typewriter - Arts Journal

READ» George Orwell’s 20 Quotes on Writing - Azevedos Reviews

TypeTown is free — and always will be. But it’s not cheap, in time or effort. If you have the capacity, please consider buying us a coffee.

Buy us a coffee

Write, live, repeat

Czech author Milan Kundera died last week aged 94.

Best known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, his work and activism led to him fleeing his home country for France in 1975.

Four years later, his Czech citizenship was revoked. It was returned in 2019.

“To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.”

We are confident Kundera was a kindred spirit. He once completed an interview with the Paris Review through his typewriter.

“Happiness is longing for repetition.”

Alas, he was one of a kind.

READ» How ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ enthralled a generation - The Spectator

READ» Milan Kundera obituary - The Guardian

READ» Appreciation: In a world full of lies, Milan Kundera taught us how to be free - Los Angeles Times

A minor diversion…

We’ve been producing this nonsense for almost two years now and we’ve loved every minute.

We know we’re part of a huge community busily fixing platens and drawbands and typeslugs, all while trying to spread the word about the beauty of these machines.

So we thought we’d save you a job. Let our swanky new gear do the talking instead.

There are five different designs, each available as T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, notebooks, and stickers. Browse below 👇

TypeTown
Hyping Typing
Clack Clack Ding
“I like to bang the keys.”
“Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.”

If any of you are daft enough to buy this stuff, we’d love a picture of you and your new kit. Social media will break from the sheer volume of these posts, we’re sure…