TypeTown #5: "I'm only myself in front of my typewriter."
🗒 Joan Didion, clacking journalists, Banksy, and a women's prison
Psst.
You.
Yes, you.
Take a
break from the wrapping. It can wait.
Relax two minutes instead and stroll with us through issue 5 of TypeTown.
We’ve kept it brief this week and we start, as you might expect, with
the passing of Joan Didion
.
“You know, sometimes I think I can’t think at all unless I’m behind my typewriter.”
Didion, who wrote her 1963 novel
Run, River
on an Olivetti Lettera 22, was renowned for her acute observations on modern life.
READ:
Joan Didion’s new collection of old essays holds the key to her ‘shimmer’
- Los Angeles Times, January 2021
Joan Didion on Learning Not to Mistake Self-Righteousness for Morality
- The Marginalian, December 2016
A peerless prose stylist: American journalist and author Joan Didion dies at 87
- CBC News, December 2021
--
RIP, Joan.
Ready for the rest of this issue?
Let’s go ho ho.
Clacking ‘til the end
A video profile of Texas sportswriter William Forrest ‘Blackie’ Sherrod in
TypeTown #4
generated a good response.
As a young reporter in the early 2000s, every day I passed an unused and unloved electric typewriter in the corner of the office.
I’m not sure what happened to it. Landfill, most probably.
So kudos, then, to these two departed gents for adamantly clacking until the end of two glorious careers.
Meet the Italian cycling writer who still uses a typewriter at the Tour de France
- The National, July 2014
“Listen, I’m not a small car that you can park anywhere. I’m an old truck, with its habits. And my career has earned me this privilege.”
A journalist and his typewriter
- BBC News, January 2014
“I think sometimes gadgets get in the way of clear use of the English language."
Read all about it! A $10m typewriter...
Last issue was also heavy on art.
So news that British artist Banksy is selling a typewriter stencil on the wall of Reading prison to fund more culture struck us as particularly appealing.
READ:
Banksy will sell jailbreak stencil for £10m to turn Reading prison into art centre
— The Art Newspaper
Worth pausing the platen
📬
The Eternal Allure of the Typewriter
—
AnOther
📬
Don’t throw out your typewriter just yet
—
The Jerusalem Post
📬
Buying a typewriter in a parking lot taught me sometimes it’s best to pay full price
—
Chicago Tribune
📬
Tom Hanks: 11 reasons why I love my typewriter
—
The i
Share the word
If you’re enjoying this issue of
TypeTown
, please do share it by social media, email, carrier pigeon or even in a good, old-fashioned, typewritten letter. Thank you!
And finally… typewriters in the wild
In
Love Actually
, this exiled Brit’s favourite Christmas film…
In this November 1962 image of first offenders taking typing lessons at Ingleside Women's Guidance Centre in Brampton, near Toronto…
And in this collection of
15 Weird Personal Items of Celebrities That Got Auctioned Off
…
Until next time
PS: New here?
TypeTown
is a fortnightly celebration of the typewriter’s place in modern (and not so modern) culture.
Great articles. Thanks.