TypeTown #6: “Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
🧙♂️ Terry Pratchett, Dolly Parton, a typewriter suit and more...
Hello and welcome.
Settle down at the back please.
So, 2022.
Things can only get better. Surely.
While we wait, let’s spend some time with the late Sir Terry Pratchett, a fantasy author and satirist capable of raising a laugh out of even the bleakest of circumstances.
Pratchett, of course, was the kind of man who could produce profound observations at the drop of a hat. Here are two of his finest.
1.>
“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
2.>
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
Both fine sentiments, I’m sure you’ll agree.
By the time of his death in 2015, Pratchett had long since transferred to computers.
But he began his craft on typewriters, buying his first with the £14 he earned from the sale of his debut story.
“If I still used a typewriter, it would be an old Imperial 58. That’s the one I had most fun with… You felt you had control of the Imperial 58; it was purely manual.”
READ:
25 Fun Facts About the Late, Great, Terry Pratchett
- The Portalist, April 2021
Pratchett’s gadgets that helped mould the Discworld
- Mail & Guardian, March 2015
Terry Pratchett exhibition offers peek into writer's own world
- The Guardian, September 2017
PS: If you’ve read any of Pratchett’s Discworld series, you’ll be familiar with the character Death.
This extraordinary tweet, written in Death’s voice and announcing Pratchett’s passing to Alzheimer’s Disease, is part of a series of three described as “
heartbreakingly final
”.
Alas.
The show, as they say, must go on.
Raise the curtain.
Jolly Dolly
It takes just five seconds before the sound of clacking typewriters appear in Dolly Parton’s classic
9 To 5
(
listen here
).
It was written, it turns out, after Parton realised her acrylic nails sounded just like a typewriter. Watch the full story here:
They don’t make ‘em like they used to
Ever find yourself short of an ink spool?
Check out the wooden box on the floor of a typewriter supplies store in this 1920 photograph. It probably wasn’t a problem this lady ever encountered.
Worth pausing the platen
📬
Turning Pages: Fascinating stories of famous writers' typewriters
—
The Sydney Morning Herald
📬
Fact of Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard
—
Smithsonian Magazine
📬
A Visual History of Typewriter Art from 1893 to Today
—
The Marginalian
📬
Five reasons to still use a typewriter
—
BBC
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
On this rather weird
suit jacket
…
In compelling TV drama
Once Upon a Time in Iran
…
And on the wall of the spectacular
Press Hotel
in Portland, Maine…
Until next time
PS: New here?
TypeTown
is a fortnightly celebration of the typewriter’s place in modern (and not so modern) culture.