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Chris Aldrich
I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media. View all posts by Chris Aldrich
@chrisaldrich Charles Bukowski always referred to his typewriter as his “typer.”
@JohnBrady I think this may, in part, have been the reason why Richard Polt used ‘typers’ in the URL for his page for Writers and Their Typewriters. According to it, Bukowski used several including the Royal HH, Underwood Standard, Underwood portable (ca. 1940s), Olympia SG1, and an IBM Personal Selectric. See also Bukowski’s poem “IBM Selectric”.
Reminds me that now we need a photo of @patrickrhone with his typewriter to add to that list…
@chrisaldrich I just built a side desk specifically to have a dedicated place to use my typewriters so that could be a thing for sure.
@chrisaldrich That’s an amazing list. I had trouble believing that V Nabokov would use a typewriter. Then I saw that he didn’t; he dictated his manuscripts to his wife.
Looking at Kerouac, I remembered a famous negative review of On the Road.: “This isn’t writing, it’s typing.”
@JohnBrady Nabokov may well have done at some point, but the fact that he wrote a lot of his work in three languages, sometimes simultaneously would have made it harder, especially since one was Russian.
The primary portion of his process involved researching, writing, and outlining much of his work on index cards which he did almost everywhere. Presumably after this, he dictated his typescripts to Vera. Carl Mydans documented some of his index card work in photos for LIFE Magazine. He talked about some of his process in a ’67 interview in The Paris Review.
That review quote is priceless…