The Field Guide: Olivetti
Last week, typing on the manual Olivetti I inherited from my father, I learned what I never imagined about writing. Not the craft or creative part. The manual labor.
If I had to write a guide about how my father produced several books on this mean machine, one or two sentence chapters are the most Olivetti will get out of me because my patience isn't close to the length of it's red and black spool of typewriter ribbon.
If I had to write a guide about how my father produced several books on this mean machine, one or two sentence chapters are the most Olivetti will get out of me because my patience isn't close to the length of it's red and black spool of typewriter ribbon.
Prologue
Don't hunt for these keys on a manual typewriter. They don't exist. a) Italics, b) Em dash, c) Bold, or d) Center spacing. Keep your pages peppered with letters of the alphabet and punctuation.Chapter One
The machine slides around the desk from punching the keys hard just to get a good ink imprint. Allow time every third sentence or so to re-align the typewriter on your desk.Chapter Two
The 's' key sticks.Chapter Three
Best of all: A bell rings when you get a few letters away from the right margin, then the keys lock, a forced decision to either hit the return bar, or the big save: use the release key to by-pass the margin.Chapter Four
Part I
A hazard: The eraser. Its shredded rubber bits fall into the typewriter guts. That can't be good.Part I
Chapter Four
Part II
Would you want the shredded evidence of your mistakes tossed as gummy bits into your guts? No, I didn't think so.Part II
Afterword
Apple devotes billions of labor hours and dollars and beads of sweat to improve its processor speeds from i3 to i5 and now the new generation, i7. Where's Olivetti in all this? What happened to their marketing and branding campaigns, and why not a release of O7? It's time to capture a new generation of typewriter writers.Reader's Guide for Book Clubs
When you last produced writing on a typewriter, if you've ever done so, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise -- for either one. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm, the sex or the typewriter? Discuss.Acknowledgments
Praise to Mr. and Ms. Olivetti and their sons. Sons, because in those days only sons took over family businesses but today…come on, Daughters, step up and step in. Let's rekindle the typewriter business.
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Author's Note
This is the second of stories about the Olivetti I inherited from my father.
Here's the previous story on Fictionaut http://bit.ly/the-olivetti
Other stories by Deborah Jiang-Stein
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Before.
Loved this. fave
Thank you, MaryAnne. Glad it worked for you!
Before ... and because of the hope thereof.
Fave
(Note: You could spill coffee on an Olivetti and not have a nervous breakdown. You never had to hit 'save.')
James, funny about the spill. I never thought of this. I wonder if the gears rust.
Only if you use a garden hose to clean up ...
Laughing. We need a 'Like' button over here.
Garden hose with spray power.
During, but that was a weird time.
Loved this. It's about time someone wrote some good fiction about writing with a typewriter.
i typed on an ancient typewriter that i kept in a car i kept parked in DC, while i was part of the vigil on the sidewalk, for months. i had to wake up off the sidewalk at a crazy early hour and move the car all the time.
once, i was typing about the car being part of the vigil and being ticketed repetitively, as i was looking down at the typewriter, and the car was being ticketed, without my knowledge.