THE KEYS TO MY HEART

by

PAUL T. EVANS

"This book is my own work, typed by me at home on my trusty word processor."

Former President Jimmy Carter wrote this in the Introduction to Keeping Faith: Memoirs

of a President, his 1982 book about his term in office. Mr. Carter was doing two things when

he wrote this sentence--he was reassuring the reader that the book had not been ghostwritten,

and he was showing off his use of the newest and hottest invention.

In the 1980s, using a word processor was considered a radical step. Writers' magazines

almost stopped printing articles about plot, character development, and historical accuracy to
print articles about how to buy and work with this new contraption.

Using them for writing was considered daring, and horror stories abounded about garbled

and unintentionally deleted files.

Allin Cottrill, now chairing the Department of Economics at Wake Forest University,

published a heavily footnoted article called "Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient".

A quarter century later, we have come full circle and then some. It is almost a given that

authors' manuscripts, from rough draft to publication itself, were composed on computers.

Newspaper reporters have long since ceased to work with the incessant clatter, ringing, and

pounding of typewriters and Teletype machines as background noise. Newsrooms are now as

quiet as the data entry department of an insurance office.

My job requires the use of a computer eight hours per day.

I have a computer at home.

I have owned four laptops.

Despite (or because) of these facts, I have rediscovered my manual typewriter. One night,

I retrieved my long neglected Smith Corona Galaxie XII, purchased for 80 cents at a thrift

store, from my basement.

 I had been working on a writing project for months. Using a computer was not yielding

any results, so I continued the manuscript using a ballpoint pen in a stenographer's notebook.

It made me more productive, but at a pace too slow for me.

Doubting my luck would change, I sat down at the typewriter, put on a compact disk of

Leroy Anderson's instrumental song of the same name, and rolled a blank sheet of white

paper into the carriage.

The "thwack!" sounding through the room when I struck that first key transformed my

potential energy into kinetic energy. The momentum was instant, and my writing block was

history. I keep writing because seeing letters magically appear on the foolscap in the carriage

mesmerized me. The sound of keys striking paper so intoxicated me--it felt just like reuniting

with an old friend--that I didn't want to quit and leave the keyboard. I was soon typing with
such force that there were several punctures where an o or an e belonged.

Taking a page from Western author Louis L'Amour, I kept an extra typewriter, this one a

Royal Royalite, in my office, because if I was stuck on one project, I could go to another. It

maybe was not as efficient as closing one word processing document and opening another,

but it works perfectly for me.

Now I understood why Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining typed "All work and no

play makes Jack a dull boy" on an entire ream of typing paper. Suffering writer's block while

working on a play, he was so enamored of the typewriter sounds that he typed this sentence

incessantly just so he could hear the sound. It wasn't the Overlook Hotel's demonic spirit at

all!

My love for the typewriter began before I could walk. Scotch-taped inside the front cover

of one of my diaries is a black and white photo of me, aged one year, kneeling on the floor

with my little fingers touching the keys of a big, black manual typewriter.

Mark Twain's novel Life on the Mississippi was the first typewritten manuscript. Soon, there

would be a time when typewriters were considered as much a symbol of authorship and

writing as the trowel and hammer was for stonemasonry. Cincinnati-born novelist and artist
Robert Lowry, one of many talented authors to emerge in the post-World War II era, began

his creative writing career when he received a typewriter for his eighth Christmas in 1927.

Soon, there was no doubt about his perseverance. Santa Claus had brought him a toy

Simplex. To use it, young Lowry had to turn a rubber wheel, strike the machine's single key,

and then turn the wheel for the next letter.

Mystery writer Cornell Woolrich was so enamored of typewriters that he dedicated his

novel The Bride Wore Black thusly: "To Chula and Remington portable NC69411 in unequal

parts." Woolrich's life was so empty and solitary that he could feel close only to the portable

in his home. (Chula's identity--and gender--remains a mystery.) A priest once reassured a

discouraged and severely depressed Anne Sexton by telling her, "God is in your typewriter."

Louis L'Amour soon became as familiar at the typewriter as in Western garb or on

horseback. One of his favorite stories about himself was: "One day I was speeding along at

the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are

you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!"

When Peanuts' Walter Mitty-ish beagle Snoopy is in the persona of an author, he is portrayed

sitting on the roof of his doghouse with a small red typewriter in front of him. This was how

he composed his magnum opus, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. All though the 1980s and

'90s, I feared that Charles M. Schulz would decide to give Snoopy a computer or a laptop.

He didn't. So strongly did he resist the urge to bring Snoopy into the modern age that the

final Peanuts strip, published in newspapers on February 13, 2000, featured Snoopy, trusty

manual typewriter in front of him, looking meditative while surrounded by the words of

Schulz' farewell to his readers.

Like a newly minted religious convert, or a novice 12-Stepper, I began searching for other

people who still used typewriters. (I did not include Jessica Fletcher, the heroine of Murder,

She Wrote because she was a fictional character.) I felt betrayed when 60 Minutes' Andy

Rooney allowed a laptop computer to sit alongside the manual typewriters in his cluttered

office.
 I found that I was not entirely alone. Writer Don DeLillo wrote all his novels, including

the highly successful White Noise and Mao II, on a manual typewriter, as did Tom Wolfe

when he wrote one of the 1980s' definitive novels, The Bonfire of the Vanities and one of the

non-fiction books that defined the 1960s, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

My (and their) penchant for using manual typewriters still put us in the minority,

unfortunately. Among creative writers who eschewed the use of computers, the IBM

Selectric was the preferred tool. Political satirist P.J. O'Rourke swears by this model. The

late "Gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson faithfully used a Selectric, as did Uncle Duke,

his comic doppelgänger in Doonesbury. Thompson used a Selectric for the final document

he ever wrote--his suicide note. Writer David Sedaris, of SantaLand Diaries fame, writes on

a Selectric.
And then there is Stephen J. Cannell.

The bearded author (Vertical Coffin and Cold Hit) and television producer (Silk Stalkings,

The Rockford Files, 21 Jump Street) takes such pride in using a Selectric that each of his

shows ends with a film clip showing him industriously typing in his award-lined office. With

a flourish, he pulls the page out of the carriage and tosses it in the air, where it animates into

the trademark of his production company. (Cannell uses computers only for Internet access.)

This is as common to TV viewers as the roaring M-G-M lion is for moviegoers.

While I knew that few people still used typewriters, I took for granted that everybody knew

what they were.

I quickly learned that I was wrong about that. I was volunteering as a reading tutor at an

elementary school, and one of the books my little charge selected was Doreen Cronin's Click,

Clack, Moo: Cows That Type. She knew what cows were--she had chosen the book because

she loved animals. However, she looked at me, totally uncomprehending, when I first

mentioned "typing" and "typewriters." The title came from the onomatopoeia that

represented the cows' typing. Without her understanding the sounds, I would say, "Click!

Clack!", and she would reply with a very forceful, "MOO!"

"What's a typewriter?" she asked me, puzzling over the cartoonish drawings in the book.
 "That's one," I told her, pointing at the venerable machine in the illustration. This didn't

make her any less puzzled, so I said, "People used to write with them in the days before

computers." I pantomimed typing on a keyboard and throwing the carriage. I was not a good

enough mimic to recreate the sound of a typewriter in action--indeed, there is nothing like it.

I thought about taking her up to the school office so the secretary could demonstrate one

to her, but I realized that would be a fool's errand. They were all computerized as well.

I'll bet she knows nothing of turntables and LPs, either.

Since my rediscovery of the typewriter, I have become quite scornful of typographical errors
occurring due to photo composition in newspapers and magazines. Although I am a former

typesetter (and I did use computers and offset presses), I still shake my head in dismay when

I see an error--especially one involving an incorrectly hyphenated word. (How can anyone

forget a story about a missing woman last seen wearing a pair of faded je-ans? Or the article

about a carpenter using a sa-whorse in his workshop?) No conscientious Linotypist, I would

think righteously, would allow such errors to get to the front page.

Whether the typewriter will be in authors' toolboxes is unknown. The typewriter's most

recent semi-renaissance was during the tail-chasing paranoia about the coming of the year

2000 and all the Y2K horror scenarios that were presented. Many prophets of doom were

advising people to bring their old manuals out of retirement just in case power grids had

stopped working. Nonetheless, a typewriter repair person in the early 21st century must feel

like a blacksmith in midtown Manhattan or a computer programmer in the days of King

Henry VIII. Buying ribbons usually requires doing business over the Internet. The 50-foot

roll of cheap paper on which Jack Kerouac typed On the Road might as well have been

created at the same time as a Gutenberg Bible or an illuminated manuscript. Author Truman

Capote had dismissed the same On the Road by saying, "That's not writing, that's typing,"

possibly (but improbably) referring to the single-spaced scroll on which Kerouac had

composed his manuscript.

 There are, however, two advantages to typewriter use that will never be surpassed. One is

that if you use one for writing the sound demonstrates you are truly working, and not playing

mah-jongg on the computer.

The other is that I have never touched an incorrect key on my typewriter and had my

project disappear forever before my eyes.

Author's footnote: This article was composed in pencil and pen in a stenographer's

notebook. It was typed in Google Document.

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