CARL’S CHOICE

Carl thinks of his manual typewriter the way others think of their vintage automobiles.  There are similarities between the machines.  Many car manufacturers no longer exist: Dusenberg, Franklin and Hudson, for example.  Similarly, typewriters manufactured by the names most familiar to Carl: Royal, Olympia and Underwood had long disappeared when Carl bought his Royal typewriter at a garage sale for five dollars.

He likes the fact that his typewriter, like a vintage automobile, is built to withstand punishment.  It is made of steel, not fiberglass, plastic or aluminum.  It has weight like a good machine should.  Carl cleans and oils his typewriter as regularly as he services his car. But repairs are difficult, requiring Carl to perform many of them personally.  Finding replacement parts is an art in itself.

Carl who could have been a threat as a linebacker is built like a grizzly bear and has really big hands. That garage sale find reminds him of the model assigned to him in school when his large hands and heavy touch caused numerous problems with the electric versions popular with the other students.

According to Carl, “Modern keyboards are made for women’s fingers and the dainty touch of a woman’s hand.”

He appreciates the Royal’s mechanics just as he enjoys the feel and maintenance of a car’s engine. Using its metal tabs stops and manual margin controls, and feeling the movement of the carriage from right to left add to his sense of accomplishment as he types. Most of the time, he even values the bell that warns him near the end of a line, though there are times when he disconnects it.

The ringing of that bell and the jerk stop of the carriage he says, “Gives me a moment to think about the next words to be typed.”  This is good, too.  Yet often, his left hand is too fast for Carl to do any musing.  It flies up to hit the carriage return lever, with a movement as automatic as changing gears with a stick shift, while he races toward the finish of his thought.

Carl tried computers, and thinks, “They are okay for saving my final draft.  Rather like pouring a final casting into a mold and keeping the mold, so that more castings might be made.”  His personal foundry for these castings is at the local library where he can hire the use of a computer when the work is finished.

But computers are too quiet, too subliminal for Carl.  Too like the silent airborne flight of a glider.  He admits the CPU does hum like an engine, but “You might as well listen to a circling insect.”  And the clicking of the keyboard is, “Irritating as a woman’s nails tapping on a hard surface.”

Then, too, page changes on a computer can easily be missed, and a writer can’t hold them in his hands until the printer spits it out.  “If you don’t like what you have just typed, you can rip it from the machine.  Can’t get that using a computer,” he says without feeling a fool for pulling out an unfinished page.

The printer paper is auto-fed, another thing Carl doesn’t like.  “A writer can’t get the same feeling of accomplishment you get when you roll yet another sheet into the typewriter.”

Other people praise the computer for the ease of making corrections, but Carl likes to ‘X’ out the parts he doesn’t like.  Substituting the strike through feature of the computer doesn’t compare to, “Repeatedly pounding an X through all the garbage.  Like using a punching bag to blow off steam.  It just feels good. The black scar it leaves on a page is like a black eye that proves the writer has fought for what he believes.”

Carl wants nothing to do with lift-off tapes, white fluid or electronic erasing.  According to Carl, “They just hide the work and make it look too easy.”

“If you are going to work at writing,” he says, “It ought to sound like work.  It ought to feel like work.  And it bloody well ought to look like work.”