But hundreds of thousands of books and millions of short stories were written using typewriters. And some of these books and short stories actually saw print. Now put a brand new Gateway 2000 and an Epson color printer in place of that clunky cream-colored Adler. Only that he was very lazy. That s the point.
Typewriters are work.
They defy us. We bash them, stick our fingers into their mechanics and get ourselves gritty with ink to get typewriters to give us what we want actual manuscript pages. Sitting down at a typewriter to write a book compared to sitting down to a new Gateway 2000 to write that same book is like getting on a tricycle to pay a Christmas visit to Aunt Minerva, who lives three states east. But, by God, once we sit down with Aunt Minerva and pile on the cranberry sauce, though our fannies ache and our legs will not pedal us another yard, we know we ve very nearly accomplished the impossible. Most of us can guess how a typewriter works.