Thanksgiving typing

Several years ago, I gave this repainted early Quiet-Riter to the next-door neighbor boy who was eager for a typewriter. 

When attending the neighbors’ Thanksgiving feast, I was glad to see that they had the typewriter out for guests to write a collective poem. The kids were especially enthusiastic. 


This young boy needed help finding the right keys. 

The result began with a rhyme scheme, but ended up … otherwise. 


Try this at your next gathering!

Author Ed Park on typewriters

I've known writer and editor Ed Park for some 25 years, thanks to our mutual interest in eccentric mystery writer Harry Stephen Keeler. He's just published Same Bed Different Dreams, a delightful and multilayered novel about Korean (alt-)history, a Korean war vet who writes SF, a tech company called GLOAT, the assassination of President McKinley, and the Buffalo Sabres hockey team, among other things.

Ed was recently interviewed on Mark Hurst's "Techtonic," a show on WFMU that's appropriately suspicious and critical of the influence of Big Tech on our lives. You can listen here (I recommend clicking on "Pop-up Player"). At 34:10, Ed describes his use of a typewriter.

(Transcribed on my Royal FP with Patrician type.)

Mark is certainly right: typewriters are technology too.

Ed kindly shared this portrait of himself at his Lettera 22, along with a couple of typescript pages for Same Bed Different Dreams. 

No, Ed did not compose his entire 500+-page novel on a typewriter, but it is a valuable part of his drafting and brainstorming process. As he says, you don't have to be a Luddite to appreciate a variety of technologies and benefit from the opportunities they offer us.

Patrician font: a neater version

Download here.