May 21, 2010
PARALLEL UNIVERSE: Big Apple Typist Banned from Writers Room: Author Told to Switch to Laptop or Leave
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Editor
I have an unusual -- especially in this digital age -- addiction: I like typewriters. In fact, I like them so much I have more than a dozen of them, which I use from time to time for letters (remember them?), envelopes and mailing labels. (Don't ask me how much more than a dozen I have! I also like film cameras and have a bunch of them, too, along with film processing and enlarging equipment.)
I like the look of classic typewriters, mostly portables like my flat Olympias or Hermes Baby/Rocket or luggables like my Olivetti Studio 44 (the favorite machine of the late Tennessee Williams) or my Hermes 3000 from Switzerland, favored by many writers, or my Olivetti Lettera 32, just like the one Cormac McCarthy used to write "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road.
I like the sound and feel of typewriters, and remind myself of the days when I wrote newspaper stories on a typewriter -- stories that a copy boy or copy girl would collect and take to the editing desk where copy editors would write headlines and make any style corrections. Those really were the good old days, my friend!
I'm a member of a Yahoo affinity group, the Portable Typewriter Forum (PTF) and that's where I learned about Skye Ferrante, a 37-year-old Manhattan native who writes children's books. Ferrante was told to switch to a laptop or resign from a place where he goes to write. He has until June 30 to switch to a laptop and leave his trusty 1929 Royal portable typewriter at home or give up his $1,400 a year membership in The Writers Room, a Greenwich Village institution (link: New York Daily News story: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/05/20/2010-05-20_untitled__typewriter20m.html).
The story, which has elicited a flurry of indignation in the Yahoo PTF forum -- there's talk of a "Type-In" in The Village -- noted that for years there was a sign posted in the "Typing Room": "In the event that there are no desks available, laptop users must make room for typists."
The Daily News story -- written on a computer, of course; I have three of them and use them constantly -- noted that when the Ferrante returned to the Writers Room in April after an eight-month break, the sign was gone and laptop users -- most of them -- looked askance at the nifty black portable that he inherited from his grandmother.
"I was told I was the unintended beneficiary of a policy to placate the elderly members who have all since died off," Ferrante told the Daily News. "They offered me a choice to switch to a laptop or refund my money, which to me is no choice at all."
Writers Room executive director Donna Brodie said staffers didn't realize Ferrante was a typist when he rejoined "the airy haven of private cubicles on Broadway near Astor Place." All the others had died or converted to laptops. "It would mean that everybody else who wanted to work in that room would flee," Brodie told the Daily News reporter. "No one wants to work around the clacking of a typewriter. That's why the room had been established."
A related running thread on the PTF discusses the pros and cons using a portable typewriter in coffee shops and other places where writers gather. I know a Texas author who regularly brings his laptop to his favorite San Antonio coffee shop where he does the bulk of his work. Caffeine and creativity go together.
Like many writers, even today, Ferrante believes that "there's a different commitment when you know you're making a mark on the page, when you strike a key and bleed ink on the page...." Although most of the members of Writers Room are hostile toward Ferrante and his typewriter, at least one member, essayist Maria Laurino, isn't.
"Skye has been here for years, and there's never been an issue," she told the newspaper's reporter. "I'm surprised as to why there'd be an issue now."
As for Ferrante, he said he's so bitter he doesn't plan on returning.
It's a shame, but I think people who use laptops should tolerate a writer who clings to tradition. Writers, of all people, should be open to the habits and ideas of others.
In the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!" there's a song, "The Farmer and the Cowman":
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends,
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
One man likes to push a plough,
The other likes to chase a cow,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.
The same goes for typists and computer users, in my opinion.
Editor's note: The accompanying photo shows two of Kinchen's portable typewriters, a Corona 4 on the left and a green Remington. Both of these 80-year-old machines work fine.
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PARALLEL UNIVERSE: Big Apple Typist Banned from Writers Room: Author Told to Switch to Laptop or Leave
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Editor
I have an unusual -- especially in this digital age -- addiction: I like typewriters. In fact, I like them so much I have more than a dozen of them, which I use from time to time for letters (remember them?), envelopes and mailing labels. (Don't ask me how much more than a dozen I have! I also like film cameras and have a bunch of them, too, along with film processing and enlarging equipment.)
I like the look of classic typewriters, mostly portables like my flat Olympias or Hermes Baby/Rocket or luggables like my Olivetti Studio 44 (the favorite machine of the late Tennessee Williams) or my Hermes 3000 from Switzerland, favored by many writers, or my Olivetti Lettera 32, just like the one Cormac McCarthy used to write "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road.
I like the sound and feel of typewriters, and remind myself of the days when I wrote newspaper stories on a typewriter -- stories that a copy boy or copy girl would collect and take to the editing desk where copy editors would write headlines and make any style corrections. Those really were the good old days, my friend!
I'm a member of a Yahoo affinity group, the Portable Typewriter Forum (PTF) and that's where I learned about Skye Ferrante, a 37-year-old Manhattan native who writes children's books. Ferrante was told to switch to a laptop or resign from a place where he goes to write. He has until June 30 to switch to a laptop and leave his trusty 1929 Royal portable typewriter at home or give up his $1,400 a year membership in The Writers Room, a Greenwich Village institution (link: New York Daily News story: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/05/20/2010-05-20_untitled__typewriter20m.html).
The story, which has elicited a flurry of indignation in the Yahoo PTF forum -- there's talk of a "Type-In" in The Village -- noted that for years there was a sign posted in the "Typing Room": "In the event that there are no desks available, laptop users must make room for typists."
The Daily News story -- written on a computer, of course; I have three of them and use them constantly -- noted that when the Ferrante returned to the Writers Room in April after an eight-month break, the sign was gone and laptop users -- most of them -- looked askance at the nifty black portable that he inherited from his grandmother.
"I was told I was the unintended beneficiary of a policy to placate the elderly members who have all since died off," Ferrante told the Daily News. "They offered me a choice to switch to a laptop or refund my money, which to me is no choice at all."
Writers Room executive director Donna Brodie said staffers didn't realize Ferrante was a typist when he rejoined "the airy haven of private cubicles on Broadway near Astor Place." All the others had died or converted to laptops. "It would mean that everybody else who wanted to work in that room would flee," Brodie told the Daily News reporter. "No one wants to work around the clacking of a typewriter. That's why the room had been established."
A related running thread on the PTF discusses the pros and cons using a portable typewriter in coffee shops and other places where writers gather. I know a Texas author who regularly brings his laptop to his favorite San Antonio coffee shop where he does the bulk of his work. Caffeine and creativity go together.
Like many writers, even today, Ferrante believes that "there's a different commitment when you know you're making a mark on the page, when you strike a key and bleed ink on the page...." Although most of the members of Writers Room are hostile toward Ferrante and his typewriter, at least one member, essayist Maria Laurino, isn't.
"Skye has been here for years, and there's never been an issue," she told the newspaper's reporter. "I'm surprised as to why there'd be an issue now."
As for Ferrante, he said he's so bitter he doesn't plan on returning.
It's a shame, but I think people who use laptops should tolerate a writer who clings to tradition. Writers, of all people, should be open to the habits and ideas of others.
In the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!" there's a song, "The Farmer and the Cowman":
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends,
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
One man likes to push a plough,
The other likes to chase a cow,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.
The same goes for typists and computer users, in my opinion.
Editor's note: The accompanying photo shows two of Kinchen's portable typewriters, a Corona 4 on the left and a green Remington. Both of these 80-year-old machines work fine.
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