Not My Type

By Gordon Hopkins As you may already have noticed, this column is a bit different than my usual fare. The witty and erudite observations are still here. It is the manner of production that makes this missive different. You see, I recently acquired a fabulous new device on which I composed this column. It is an amazing technological breakthrough. Writers such as myself will no longer have to go through the tedious ordeal of creating a document, formatting said document, saving that document to a computer's hard drive and then sending that document to a printer. All the while hoping there is no glitch along the way. With this miraculous machine, all I do is type a letter, such as a letter "A" for example, and the letter instantaneously appears on the page. There is no delay. No buffering, no spooling, no queuing and no disruptions by sun spots. Best of all, it is the most energy efficient device ever made. It uses literally no electricity at all. You can’t get much greener than that. This miracle of modern science is called a typewriter. Maybe you've heard of it. Calling my new typewriter new is probably misleading. It is new to me but it is certainly not new. The typewriter I am now using is an Olympia Traveller, a manual, port-able machine. It was built in 1974 in Japan and purchased by a California State University student in Fresno. That one-time student who sold me this typewriter told me he used it to complete his master’s thesis. I am hoping there is still some smart left inside this machine for me to use. This column is taking a lot longer to write than usual. There is no spell check and not edit function, so I have to be sure about what I want to say before I hit the keys. I cannot cut and paste unless I go get scissors and a pot of glue. I suppose you can make the case that knowing what words you ultimately want to appear on the page before you write is a more thoughtful approach to writing. The print seems a bit faded. I don't know if it is the ribbon or if I am just not hitting the keys hard enough. I’ve typed just one page and my fingers already ache. Real energy is expelled typing on this machine. I am reminded of the words of. Harlan. Ellison, who refused to use a computer and only composed on a manual typewriter, "Art is supposed to be hard." So why am I making it hard on myself? In my never-ending search for subjects for this column, I got it into my head to write about type-writers. I don’t know how the thought first got there. I only know that it is not much of a stretch to go from writing about typewriters to deciding to write ON one. It has been many moons since I last used a typewriter. I learned how to type in high school. The typing classroom had four long banquet tables, each holding a row of those massive IBM Selectrics that buzzed when you turned on the power. When I went off to college, my folks got me a word processor and I never looked back. Until now. I suppose the big question is now, once I have finished this column, will I ever use this typewriter again? Will I ever need to? Or will it just sit on a shelf, gathering dust, like an exercise machine purchased after a sincere but unlikely to be followed through on New Year's resolution. Time will tell. There is something to be said for the tactile experience and immediacy of giving form to thoughts on a typewriter. On the other hand, as a newspaper reporter, deadlines are king. Speed and the ability to edit make a typewriter a somewhat impractical extravagance these days. The more pressing question is this: since I used it to write my column, will my boss approve the purchase on my expense account.

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