Death Of The Typewriter

Hemingway’s first typewriter
Was a Corona #3
Given to him on his 22nd birthday
By his then fiance
Hadley Richardson.

It was a durable
Compact typer
Perfect for a roving reporter
Sending dispatches.

600,000 sold in it’s 30 years
Of manufacture.

In a drunken rage
Hemingway
Proceeded to throw
The Corona #3
Out of the window
Of their fourth floor
Paris apartment window.

He spit after it
Cursing thunderously
Watching it
Corkscrew to it’s death
On the cobblestones
Below.

They divorced shortly thereafter
And he switched to a
Corona #4
Followed by a 1940’s Royal
When he was in Cuba.

He kept his ‘Lady’
In the bedroom
On a small shelf
By the window
As he preferred to write
Standing up.

The ‘Lady’
Sold just recently
At auction
With the original leather case

For a paltry
$2750.00.

She died in the hands of a collector.

Orwell wrote “1984”
On a Remington Portable
(Model #2)
Nicknamed
“Right Hand Man”.

It had a retractable toolbar
To lower the profile
For easier travel.

By the time
His now famous novel
Was packaged to send to the publishers
His physical health had declined
To the point
That he never wrote
Nor used the “Right Hand Man”
Ever again.

The typewriter died of neglect and old age.
It fell into disrepair
Keys locked up arthritic
Ribbons dried and crackled.

It eventually retired to the curb.

Kerouac was a wiz
On a 1930’s Underwood Portable
And a Royal Standard.

Ginsberg swore
That Jack could type
A staggering 110-120 wpm.

Legend has it
That he sat and typed
“On The Road”
In three weeks
On a single roll of paper
While visiting his friends
Neal and Carolyn Cassidy
On THEIR typewriter.

His last typewriter
Died just before he did
At around 11:00 in the morning
On October 20, 1969.

He was drunk from whiskey and malt liquor
And felt sick to his stomach.

He got up to go to the bathroom
Swaying dizzly
Falling into the cluttered table
Knocking the machine
To the floor
Throwing up blood
All over it
As pieces fractured off
And typebars became
Forever entangled.

Burroughs either wrote by hand
Or used a typewriter.

He wrote in detail
Of composing on insect typewriters
And of Soft Typewriters
That would write our lives
And books
Into existence.

Some pretty serious hoo-haa
That went to that
‘Great Big Fix’
With him.

Bukowski
America’s greatest poet
Tapped away on a Model HH Underwood Standard
And an Olympia SG Model
At different points
In his career.

The machines nestled in with the disarray
Of bottles
And ash trays
And a radio
That favored Mahler.

Neighbors
Could hear the keybars
Hitting the carriage
All times
Day or night.

On Christmas Day
1990
He received a
Macintosh IIsi computer
And a laser printer
From his wife Linda.

He even took classes.

Gone were the golden sounds
Of click, click, click
In the courtyard...

Hunter S Thompson
Took his red IBM Selectric
Out into the fields
Of Owl Farm
And shot it.

He did this several times
Each time replacing it
With the same model and color.

One time he used a stick of dynamite
“To really get at that fucker!”

His last typewriter
Was witness to his suicide
With the word
‘Counselor’
Typed onto the vellum
Scrolled around it’s barrel.

After completing his novel
‘Beautiful Losers’
In 1966
Leonard Cohen
Tossed his typewriter
Into the Aegean Sea.

William Gibson used a Hermes 2000 Model
To complete ‘The Necromancer’
And half of ‘Count Zero’
When a mechanical failure
And lack of replacement parts
Forced him to
An Apple IIc computer.

Harry Crews hammered away
On an Underwood II
A Royal Desktop
And an IBM Selectric
And in 1976
Unleashed ‘Feast Of Snakes’.

When it was time
His typewriters
Were beaten in a fair fight
And died a low-rent
Death
In a Southern
Ignorant
Country
Kind of way.

In 2008 it was reported
That New York City purchased
A few thousand typewriters
Mostly for the Police Department
At the total cost of $982,269
With another $99,570 spent in 2009
For the maintenance
Of all existing typewriters.

At the close of 2009
A heavily weathered, light blue
Lettera 32 Olivetti manual machine
That Cormac McCarthy said
“He bought in 1963 for $50”
And clacked out about
Five million
Fairly renowned words
Including
‘No Country For Old Men’
Sold at Christie’s to an unidentified American collector
For $254,500
More than 10 times it’s high estimate of $20,000.

Mr. McCarthy
Chose not to use the opportunity
To move into the digital age.

Instead
A friend of his bought him a replacement typewriter.

The same Olivetti model
For less than $20.

On April 29, 2011
The world’s last
Operational
Typewriter factory
Closed.

Godrej & Boyce
In Mumbai, India
Closed it’s doors
After a 114 year run.

The world gets forever noisier
But will now be
Somehow
More silent.