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More on the topic of typewriters :

The Guardian blog responds to the news of McCarty's auction with a piece about other authors and their typewriters. Julian Barnes says :

I think you need the technology that suits the way your brain works. Sometimes you need your thoughts to go down your arm in what feels like a direct feed via pencil or felt-tip to paper, sometimes you require a more formal "sit up and address a machine".

When I tried writing on a computer, it felt an inert business. I had no relationship with the machine; whereas my IBM 196c makes a nice hum, as if it's saying quietly: "Come on, get on with it" or "Surely you can improve on that."

I also found that, while the myth of the computer was that it made everyone write at greater length, and under-correct, because on the screen and in neat print-out it looks more finished than it is, I found that I was constantly over-correcting, ending up with something too tight and unflowing for a first draft.

Another piece on the blog lists Will Self, Don DeLillo and Frederick Forsyth as more authors who use a typewriter.

Says Self :

Writing on a manual makes you slower in a good way, I think. You don't revise as much, you just think more, because you know you're going to have to retype the entire fucking thing. Which is a big stop on just slapping anything down and playing with it.

And Fredrick Forsyth definitely has a point when he says :

I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again.

Worth browsing is the site myTypewriter.com :

Authors A-Z is an ongoing project featuring the lives, works, and typewriters of the most outstanding authors around the world. Created in 2004 by Kevin McGowin and Charles Gu for myTypewriter.com, the project is both a celebration and an exploration of writers and their writing machines. Consisting of more than 80 contemporary authors from Mark Twin to Ayn Rand, Authors A-Z is a growing project documenting the important role of classic typewriters played in the formation of literature master pieces.

May i just add the note, I used typewriters for many years ... and was Typex's best customer!

BTW, the image at the top is a sculture using old typewriters by Jeremy Mayer. More can be found here.

Postscript :

Worth reading also is George Tannebaum's post Tools vs Toys [via] :

Today, of course our tools are more sophisticated than typewriters. We can do sophisticated motion graphics and editing at our desks or on a plane. We can make type dance like Isadora Duncan on LSD. We can compose and record music. We can buy a $49 video camera and shoot stuff.

These are all things Mr. McCarthy can't do on his Olivetti. But they don't make us better than McCarthy. Because Mr. McCarthy's trade involves ideas.

So far no one has built a desktop app that produces those.

The Incredible Shrinking Book

Was reminded of one of my dad's favourite jokes:

I learned speed reading and managed to complete War and Peace in half an hour. ... It was about Russia.

It seems that readers are less patient with long books these days and now shorter versions of some classic tomes look set to hit the bookshops. The first book to receive this treatment is Tolstoy's War and Peace in a new translation by Anthony Briggs. Later, a shorter and less theoretical A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkins is due for release: a sort of dumbed down versions for dummies like me. I've attempted this book three times and always seem to disappear down a black hole halfway through.

I was surprised though to read that Susanna Clarke's fairly recent award-winner Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is to receive this treatment as well. I must confess though that I am among the readers who have been put off the book by its size. That's not to be pathetic: a big book claims too many hours of your life! We are living in the age of ficiton overload with more titles being published than ever before while our attention spans get ever shorter.

On the other hand I have mixed feelings about the other titles on the list for the shortening treatment: I've been meaning to get round to reading Moby Dick and Clarissa for years, but always something newer and more happening gets in the way. (My cheeks are burning with shame.) Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon has been sitting on my "to-be-read-shelf" since last year (More bookguilt!) when I felt it was a gap in my own education that needed filling.

But I have read Underworld by Don DeLillo and think it quite brilliant. I gave it five stars on Amazon and wrote gushingly:

'Underworld' requires time and effort on the part of the reader, but is immensely satisfying. The story of ordinary lives lived in the shadow of the cold war, fits together like a chinese puzzle : it is left to the reader to discover all the interconnections of plot and character. I found myself rereading whole sections to enjoy the beauty of the language. Worth reading a second time!

Not that I think I will ever have time and patience to read it a second time. And I'd love to know whether anyone in Malaysia has managed to even get past the very difficult first chapter?

Wonder if Vikram Seth or Paul Anderson will find themselves getting chopped in the fullness of time! A painful thought, no doubt.