It was on this day (June 23) in 1868 that the typewriter was patented, by Christopher Sholes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1873, he sold the patent to the Remington Arms Co., a famous gun maker, for $12,000. There had been typewriters before, but they weren’t very practical — it took longer to type a letter than to write it by hand. The first commercial typewriter based on Sholes’ design, a Remington Model 1, went on the market in 1874.

Ernest Hemingway, loved his Royal typewriter. He kept it in his bedroom so it would never be too far away, and he put it on top of a bookshelf and wrote standing up.

Hunter S. Thompson, wrote on a red IBM Selectric. One of his first jobs was as a copy boy for Time, and while he was supposed to be working, he used a typewriter and typed out, word for word, all of The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms, in order to learn something about writing style.

Jack Kerouac, was fast at typing, and it frustrated him to have to change the paper so often. So he took long sheets of drawing paper, trimmed them to fit in the machine, and wrote all of On the Road that way. When he taped them together at the end, the manuscript was 120 feet long.

Ted and I are slowly unpacking into our new home– a lovely, bright, full of windows mid-century modern home, and today Ted set up my desk in my own little office alcove. As I arrange my things, my books, my bookshelf, I’m thinking of places to put my own vintage typewriter–a beautiful gray Olympia in an olive green case–a gift from my dear dear friends Dawn and her lovely wife-to-be Adriana and their kids Lorelei and Noah (thank you!!). I think it’s from the late 1950s or early 60s, based on this fab website about typewriters: Typewriter Database. I only have the serial number (1753872) but can’t tell what the model number is.

If anyone knows about vintage typewriters give me a holler!

]]> http://www.robwilliams.org/2009/06/23/the-typewriter/feed/ 0 http://www.robwilliams.org/2009/06/19/questions/ http://www.robwilliams.org/2009/06/19/questions/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:00:21 +0000 rob http://www.robwilliams.org/?p=1498 Dear Blog,

I’m so sorry for neglecting you, but, you see, we are moving (Ted and I) to a new home– a real house with a yard and a dishwasher and a garage! So I promise I’ll spend more time with you as soon as we get everything settled there (this weekend).

In the meantime, here’s a lovely poem by Stephen Dunn.

Questions by Stephen Dunn

If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself in love with only one woman in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman therefore is clad in radiance while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis, then what does he do with a world suddenly so small, the once unbiased sun shining solely on her? And if that afternoon turns dark, fat clouds like critics dampening the already wet sea, does the man run– he normally would–for cover, or does he dive deeper in, get so wet he is beyond wetness in all underworld utterly hers? And when he comes up for air, as he must, when he dries off and dresses up, as he must, how will the pedestrian streets feel?

What will the street lamps illuminate? How exactly will he hold her so that everyone can see she doesn’t belong to him, and he won’t let go?

“Questions” by Stephen Dunn, from Local Visitations. (c) W.W. Norton & company, 2003. Reprinted with permission (from the website The Writer’s Almanac).

PS–It’s Salmon Rushdie’s Birthday today–happy bday!

John Cheever would have been 97 today. This year saw the publication of Cheever: A Life,  a comprehensive (and well reviewed) biography by Blake Bailey. It’s next on my list of books to read– I’ll start it this weekend while we’re in Cincinnati visiting Ted’s mom.

Cheever said, “A page of good prose remains invincible.”

Cheever once described the writer’s task as to evoke “the perfumes of life: sea water, the smoke of burning hemlock and the breasts of women.”

And he wrote, “The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky.”

I used this beautiful, thin Japanese paper and then various clippings/ads from a Life Magazines from 1954. (inspired by Lia‘s wonderful art).

Yesterday he asked us

“what makes dangerous

writing?”

Write about what scares you, what surprises you. Go someplace secret, full of pain, and you talk about it. It’s what makes us human.

To step up to the table with our

humanness–that’s Dangerous

Writing.

And to commemorate the day I made these postcards.

I mean, Just for Men? Gray hair? Seriously?

This was a joke, right? Right?

I’m already imagining the crafty things I can do to these two cards:

Guys: Gay hair’s not your style. Let them see the real you.

Go gay? No way.

Speaking of dirty old men, here’s a bookmark I made this weekend. It’s part of a new craft thing i’m on (similar to postcards but everyone needs a bookmark, right?).

I swear I did not change the wording at all. This is the exact sentence from the Dick and Jane coloring book.