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A man, an instrument that helps him write. The story of Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter is a story pared down to its essentials. What’s becoming steadily more difficult is staying focused on the tasks in front of us.
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It’s easy to get fixated on the tools we use to do our work as authors and publishers. Isn’t that a good reason to get out the Visa card? I mean, it will help you with your work, right? Stop, in the Name of Work You start to think just how productive you could be if only you had one of those MacBooks.
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It takes a while to load your browser, it won’t run the newest games or image editing software, and it “hiccups” once in a while if you’ve got too many programs running at once. You look at your old machine a bit wistfully. You know it’s twice as fast as your old laptop, has a bigger screen, runs all the new software. The girl at the next table has a new MacBook Pro. You wait to connect to the WiFi signal, and glance around. You’ve got your trusty iBook, a big cup of coffee, and you’re ready to work. Perhaps you are an author, working on a rewrite on your manuscript.
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Turn your attention to the local Starbucks. I could always tell when I’d been writing something that made me angry, or passionate, because the letters would almost punch through the sheet. But sometimes I miss the visceral relation to the writing machine, the physical force it took to drive the keys, through their levers, to hit the page. I don’t want to go back to the days of erasable paper, white out, and carbon copies. Okay, it’s not quite the same as No Country for Old Men, but still.įrom experience I can tell you that this little Olivetti typewriter actually took a fair amount of banging to get through a page. And, as it happens, it’s exactly the same typewriter I’ve owned for 30 years, and on which I wrote the first drafts of Body Types. It came in a neat zip-up case with a handle to make carrying it easy. In fact, the Olivetti was the laptop of its day. Since Olivetti specially designed this typewriter for travelers and correspondents, it was ideal. Note that McCarthy estimates he typed about 5 million words on the Olivetti, and bought it originally when he was headed overseas and wanted a light machine. Books like “Blood Meridian,” “All the Pretty Horses” and “The Crossing” have propelled him to the top ranks of American fiction writers. McCarthy, 76, has won a wagon-full of honors including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award and the MacArthur Foundation’s so-called genius grant. McCarthy paid $11 for a replacement typewriter of the same model, but in newer condition.Īnd here’s how the Times characterized McCarthy’s output on the Olivetti: In 2009 the typewriter was auctioned by Christies to benefit the Santa Fe Institute. Here’s how Wikipedia cited the Times story:Ĭormac McCarthy used an Olivetti Lettera 32 to write nearly all of his fiction, screenplays, and correspondence over a fifty year period from 1960 to 2009. The laptop of its day, still going strongToday’s New York Times carried an interesting story about the author Cormac McCarthy and his decision to sell his trusty typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 32.