Writers and Their Typewriters, #2

     My fascination for typewriters––their intimacy, and the famous writers who have used them in unwavering loyalty––continues to grow. To type a poem or manuscript requires a slower pace with a  typewriter. It also enhances better thinking––stimulating the brain to be mindful of what matters, resulting in fewer mistakes.
     Steve Leveen, founder of Levenger (purveyor of fine reading and writing tools), reproduced in bookend form, the typewriter of historian, David McCullough. For today's post, I've excerpted a portion of what Steve Leveen and Levenger Press Editor, Mim Harrison shared on Steve's blog Well-Read Life on December 3, 2009. It speaks for itself.


“I don’t want to go faster,” writes David McCullough. “If anything, I probably ought to go more slowly.”

The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author   (Truman, John Adams) and recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation may be talking about the way he types, but David McCullough is revealing how he thinks.

“When rewriting, I’m not just typing it all over again, I’m thinking through it again, rethinking, rewording where need be, saying it a little differently on second thought.”

And David McCullough is not typing on a computer. He’s using the pre-digital dinosaur that requires a considerable force of those digits called fingers: the typewriter. Not even a zippy electric version, but a 1940s vintage Royal manual typewriter that he bought second-hand in the 1960s.

So if you want to know how it is that David McCullough’s books always hit the New York Times bestseller lists, capture Pulitzers, and have never gone out of print, it just may be this old machine.

The mind of the machine

When Mr. McCullough graciously agreed to let us reproduce his typewriter as a bookend, we thought the story would be about the machine. But the real story is how an accomplished mind works—not at the speed of a computer, but at a pace that’s thoughtful, deliberate, contemplative. The machine helps set the pace.

And so you have to wonder: What would happen if we all slowed our thinking down a bit, if we dialed it back to the point where we were actually thinking rather than scrolling and texting, and cutting and pasting? Would we all trade in our laptops/notebooks/smart phones for a typewriter?

Probably not. But it would do us good to remember that machines are supposed to make our lives better, not faster. Perhaps we should unplug just a little before we become undone. Such decompression is why we think so many Levenger customers savor the pensive pause of the fountain pen (which David McCullough also uses).

In fact, Thomas Mallon, who just wrote a book on the letters famous people have written through the centuries, maintains that pens and typewriters have more in common than do typewriters and computers. Typewriting reveals its own quirks of the writer, much like penwriting. Computers can make us all look the same.

Here’s how David McCullough looks on his typewriter; he takes the typed sheets and edits them by hand:

Another writer, Carl Honore, realized the value of slow when he found himself contemplating 60-second bedtime stories to read to his toddler. He caught himself in time. “The secret is balance: instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed,” he advises.

 For David McCullough, that means typing “at a pretty good clip,” as he says. And then typing it again, because what he’s really doing is thinking about it some more.

He and his typewriter are, in fact, currently at work on his new book about Americans in Paris. What do you want to bet that as soon as it’s published, that slowly written book will hit the New York Times bestseller list in no time flat. 

I hope I've continued to pique your interest on typewriters with this second in a series (see Writers and Their Typewriters #1).
Do you have a typewriter? If not a typewriter, what do you do or use to achieve a slower pace for better thinking? And last, did you know you can blog with a typewriter? The technique is called "typecasting," but more on that later.

Marginalia

Marginalia: marginal notes or embellishments in a book. Annotation fits the bill, too. In any event, I mark the margins of my books with lines, words, asterisks and stars. Petite asides in the margins of the books I read is meaningful, especially since I reread books in my library. Many times when I reopen pages, I look first for my cryptic messages, or the definitions to new-found words, or straight-lined edges of a section to remind me something here is important. Finding them is like coming across sweet morsels strewn on a wooded path.

In Chapter Two of The Little Guide To Your Well-Read Life, Steve Leveen reasons why readers should mark up their books. Leveen described "those who write in books as Footprint Leavers and those who do not as Preservationists."Important writers, even mathematicians, have contributed significantly to the role of marginalia, he notes. For examples, visit www.yourwellreadlife.com/footnote.

Local libraries frown on personalizing reading material, and in deciding which donated books to shelve in their collections––annotated copies will, most likely, go elsewhere. You need to know this if you intend to donate books filled with notes and comments. On the other hand, consider the largesse of meaning those scribbles and notes might hold for an unassuming reader––cryptic thoughts, feelings, and opinions, or Aha! moments waiting to be discovered by a fresh eye.

One verse from Billy Collins's poem, Marginalia, www.poemhunter.com sizes it up:
      We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
      and reached for a pen if only to show
      we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
      we pressed a thought into the wayside,
      planted an impression along the verge.

Consider, also, Harvard University's open collections' program on reading and marginalia: http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/marginalia.html

Marginalia provide unique records of the reader’s experience. Offering insights into how and why a reader reads, marginalia take many forms. These range from glosses on difficult words or passages and lengthier notes on the meaning of a text, to illustrations and personal marks used to denote passages of particular interest. While marginalia are often highly systematic, they are also as individualistic: every reader’s engagement with a text is unique. Marginalia shed light on the mental, emotional, and intellectual process of reading, as well as changing historical patterns of reading practice.