A Writerly Type of Revival

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Image of Smith-Premier typewriter via WikiCommons
Image of Smith-Premier typewriter via WikiCommons

There’s a revival going on - our favourite type of revival, the type that appeals to old-fashioned types like us. Just as the technology that brings us music has passed from vinyl to CD to downloadable file in the space of a generation, so too has the technology under the keys stroked untold times by untold fingers that make up the written word. But it seems that - just like vinyl - the humble typewriter is making something of a comeback. We’ve covered the subject in the Dailies before, touching on the Sticky Institute’s I Am Typewriter festival as well as the deep attachment writers like Cormac McCarthy and Gunter Grass have for their machines.

The revival consists of Type-Ins such as this one in Philadelphia, where typewriter lovers get together to do what what typewriter lovers do best. Collectors buy and sell antique typing machines on coolly-designed websites and in bricks and mortar stores. Other sites devoted to the typosphere are not quite so coolly-designed but no less enthusiastic. Lately we spotted not one but two compilations of photographs of writers sitting at and working on their fandangled writing machines. And here’s a lovely photo gallery of typewriters being bought and sold at the Brooklyn Flea market. Of course, some writers never stopped writing on a typewriter.