Of course, McMurtry can get away with typing away on his old Hermes because he can get away with it. If he were just getting his start, no one would want to look at his typescript. So his attachment to the typewriter is actually a kind of status gesture.
Me, I like working at a computer. I can correct my typos (the ones I catch anyway), print out what I've written and see what it looks like on the page. I do write poems by hand, because they come to me in snatches and I write them down piecemeal. But I finish them at the computer, where I can see better what they look like.
Me, I like working at a computer. I can correct my typos (the ones I catch anyway), print out what I've written and see what it looks like on the page. I do write poems by hand, because they come to me in snatches and I write them down piecemeal. But I finish them at the computer, where I can see better what they look like.
It's a form of snobbishness, egocentricity, like some writers who can only write on paper of a certain color and weight with a a whole mugfull of razor-sharp No. 2 pencils to hand. Why doesn't he go the whole hog and write with quills that he plucks and sharpens himself? Evelyn Waugh, who WAS a full-blown snob, managed to write two of his novels while serving as an active Royal Marines officer in the middle of World War II, sometimes in combat zones.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Frank, except I want to start a movement to remove the word "out" when following "print."
ReplyDelete"Print out" has always struck me as a waste of three characters that can more effectively used elsewhere (does anyone "print in")? But I love semi-colons; yes, I do.
Never thought of it before, Jim, but I think you're right. "Print" would do, wouldn't it?
ReplyDeleteUsing a typewriter for McMurtry has nothing to do with snobbery. In interviews, his writing partner says he's basically a techie troglodyte. He can barely use a phone answering machine :-). After someone has written on a manual typewriter for 50 years, I'd think it would be difficult if not impossible to switch. Some writers live strictly in their heads. I think he's one of those.
ReplyDeleteErm, what does that suggest about Kerouac, then? Didn't he write On The Road on toilet paper or a roll of paper towels or something? For post-neo-Luddites, there will always be Steampunk (which makes a computer keyboard with a typewriter look and "feel") . . .
ReplyDelete