The Typewriter Century: A Cultural History of Writing Practices

276 Pages·2021·5.099 MB·English

by  Martyn Lyons

THE TYPEWRITER CENTURY
A Cultural History of Writing Practices

The Typewriter
Century
A Cultural History of
Writing Practices
MARTYN LYONS
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2021
Toronto Buffalo London
utorontopress.com
Printed in the U.S.A.
ISBN 978-1-4875-0824-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4875-2573-6 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-4875-3783-8 (EPUB)
ISBN 978-1-4875-3782-1 (PDF)
Studies in Book and Print Culture
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The typewriter century : a cultural history of writing practices / Martyn
Lyons.
Names: Lyons, Martyn, author.
Series: Studies in book and print culture.
Description: Series statement: Studies in book and print culture | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200304984 | Canadiana (ebook)
20200305018 | ISBN 9781487508241 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781487525736 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487537838 (EPUB) |
ISBN 9781487537821 (PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Typewriters – History. | LCSH: Typewriters –
Social aspects. | LCSH: Typewriting – History.
Classification: LCC Z49.A1 L96 2020 | DDC 652.3 – dc23
Chapter opening illustration: AVA Bitter/Shutterstock.com
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: The Typewriter as an Agent of Change? 3
2 The Birth of the Typosphere 25
3 Modernity and the “Typewriter Girl” 49
4 The Modernist Typewriter 67
5 The Distancing Effect: The Hand, the Eye, the Voice 86
6 The Romantic Typewriter 105
7 Manuscript and Typescript 121
8 Georges Simenon: The Man in the Glass Cage 137
9 Erle Stanley Gardner: The Fiction Factory 155
10 Domesticating the Typewriter 172
11 The End of the Typewriter Century and Post-Digital
Nostalgia 191
Notes 203
Bibliography 239
Index 257

Illustrations
1.1 Len Deighton and his IBM word processor 14
2.1 Malling Hansen’s Writing Ball, c. 1874 29
2.2 Sholes and Glidden typewriter, 1874 34
2.3 The Caligraph typewriter 42
2.4 Dvorak keyboard 46
2.5 Remington advertisement for models 10 and 11, 1909 47
4.1 Guillaume Apollinaire, Salut Monde 75
4.2 Guillaume Apollinaire, Lettre-Océan 77
5.1 Luigi Pirandello dictating to himself 101
6.1 Jack Kerouac, scroll version of On the Road 116
7.1 Richmal Crompton, notes on an envelope 126
10.1 Leo Tolstoy dictating at Yasnaya Polyana 176
10.2 Agatha Christie typing at home, 1952 180

Acknowledgments
The idea for this book originated in a museum. On a visit to Sydney’s
Powerhouse Museum, which is primarily a museum of technology,
I had an unpleasant shock. I spotted a very familiar item displayed in a
glass cabinet with an explanatory label for the benefit of the uninitiated.
It was a typewriter – a bright red Olivetti portable from the 1960s – and
it was familiar because I wrote my own doctoral thesis on the same
model. I was confronted by the unsettling reality that an object that had
once played an important role in my life had become a museum exhibit,
a curious survivor of a now extinct species.
It was only later that I came to realize that the real dinosaur was in
fact myself. The sight of the Olivetti behind glass was like a vision of
myself as historical artefact. My own writing practices have certainly
evolved, but slowly. I happily drafted this book and other work before
it on a MacBook, but, for some purposes such as writing cheques, I still
use a fountain pen, which today is another endangered species. When
I used to do this in department stores, it made shop assistants’ jaws
drop in amazement. Like Paul Auster with his sturdy German-made
Olympia typewriter, “I began to look like an enemy of progress, the
last pagan holdout in a world of digital converts.” But the real point of
these comments about my existential mini-crisis is that writing technol-
ogies like pens and typewriters have a history of their own, and that
their history can come to life only if it is told through the eyes of their
users. Such a history of writing materials needs to be told if we are to
have a more complete appreciation of writing practices in past socie-
ties. A chance encounter with an Olivetti in the Powerhouse Museum
had given me a new agenda for the cultural history of writing.
Having acknowledged both the Powerhouse and my MacBook, I need
to say a number of sincere thank yous to some real people. For their
contributions in the early stages of preparation of this book, I would