Machine Loving

The spring my ex was falling in love with someone else, I drove to the middle of the country with Pupik and my pink typewriter. I had a one-month position as the writer-in-residence at Wichita State University. Rather than fly, I decide to drive. That way I’d have a car, and I could bring the essentials: namely, Pupik (whose vet bills my subscribers help cover, thank you thank you thank you) and my Olympia SM9.

The place where I stayed in Wichita—a city that to me smelled oddly of dog food—had a backyard where I would draft stories about people falling out of love on my Olympia SM9. That’s the thing about a typewriter. You can bring it anywhere. Camping, cabin, backyard, couch, bed, roadtrip. Wherever I stopped along the route to Kansas—Las Vegas, southern Utah, northern Arizona, the Navajo Nation, the New Mexican Rockies—I took a little time to write.

Here she as at the Taos Goji Berry Farm near Taos.

Should you get a typewriter? Yes. They are beautiful, sturdy, repairable (boo planned obsolescence), and a sensory delight (clicky clack clack clack). But the best part about a typewriter is that you can’t edit as you write.

Once I begin fiddling with syntax, I lose my momentum when generating new material. (I’ve yapped about the difference between writing and generating in the past.) It’s all too easy to get pulled into revisions when you’re using a word processor, because you can edit, cut, delete, paste, undo, redo, endlessly. I remember Joyce Carol Oates giving remarks at a writer’s conference maybe ten years ago. She said, as I recall, that programs like Word had made us “addicted to a certain kind of perfection.” For this reason, I write my first drafts either by hand or (increasingly) on a typewriter.

She was one of the few possessions I took with me when I fled LA during the fires.

If you’re looking for a typewriter that’s pleasing to type on and relatively portable (if a bit heavy), consider an Olympia SM9. People who know more about typewriters than I call it a “workhorse.” I loved mine. I bought it from the good people at Berkeley Typewriter in the Bay. It’s a great shop. As you can see below, they have a long table where you can try out typewriters and then, perhaps, impulsively buy one.

It was love at first type!

Although it’s not exactly true that I bought my Olympia. I actually traded in a Brother manual typewriter that someone had given me. A poet, who actually promised I could have all her typewriters one day. (I don’t know if she remembers saying that.)

I wonder who loves her now.

The typewriter the poet gave me was very charming—and I knew for a fact very good books had been written on it. However, it was a little cumbersome to use, because it had what is called a carriage shift, which means the entire heavy roller apparatus had to move up with the shift key when typing a capital letter. My pink Olympia, by contrast, had a basket shift, which means that instead of the whole carriage, the basket (the part with the keys, much lighter) moved when striking capital letters.

If you’re noticing that I speak of the Olympia in the past tense, it’s because I must confess that I traded her in. The truth is, I found it hard to type more than 2-3 pages at a time on her before my hands got tired. For a while, this was enough. Then it wasn’t. And so, at the absolutely iconic Rees Electronics in West Los Angeles, I traded my pink Olympia for an electric Nakajima WPT-150.

Electronic typewriters have some processing circuitry, as opposed to an electric typewriters, which have motors.

Despite the drastic aesthetic shift, I am in love with this typewriter. My fingers fly when I type, very little force is needed to depress the keys, the clacking sound is super satisfying, and she’s just so cute. I cranked out four pages the first time I used her!

Rees Electronics might just be my favorite shop in LA. Despite the name, it is from what I can tell primarily a store for typewriters. They also do repairs. The owner, Mr. Schulze (who consented to the photo below) knows everything there is to know about typewriters. Also about C-Span, his other great passion.

Through a nondescript door in West LA, up stairs, past a few random offices, through another door, and you’re in Mr. Schulze’s wonderland.

Currently, Mr. Schulze is repairing an estate-sale treasure gifted to me by my dear friend Jamie: a Hebrew typewriter. (“And you don’t want to sell it?” Mr. Schulze asked again just in case. I did not.) These are rare machines. I’ve dreamt of owning one.

Next week, I’ll have to return to Rees Electronics to pick up my repaired Hebrew typewriter. And who knows, while I’m there I just might find myself checking in on a certain pink ultra-portable I met last time…

As Gallway Kinnel said, “the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.”