7 ms·

Cormac McCarthy's Olivetti Lettera 32

40 points by nyc111 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
metmac 4y ago
I believe the Olivetti Valentine famously on display at The Met and the MoMA at one point, were actually just retooled/modified Lettera 32s. In any case, these little machines are brilliant and I’ve owned around 4 of them over the years.
chadlavi 4y ago
That stupid website paused my music and played sound effects with its intrusive chat bot
- intrasight 4y ago
  Yup. Is there just no way on iOS to prevent that?
- netsharc 4y ago
  Left them a rude message with a fake address...
idlewords 4y ago
It would be way more fun if The Road had been written on a tangerine iBook G3.
david_shaw 4y ago
Unrelated to his typewriter, I'm currently reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, and I'm really enjoying it. I had previously only associated McCarthy with The Road and Blood Meridian, but I'm glad I gave some of his other work a shot.
- Baeocystin 4y ago
  Cormac McCarthy has the dubious distinction in my library of producing the most beautiful English I've ever read in service of such unrelentingly dismal stories that I don't feel that I have the stomach to read them again. I admit this is a me problem, but still. I've only read The Road and Blood Meridian, though. Does Suttree follow the same pattern? [edit] Thank you for the answers!
  - ycombinete 4y ago
    All the Pretty Horses isn’t all that bleak. More of a western Bildungsroman.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
    Not really. Suttree is not exactly a happy story, but it has beautiful prose descriptions of filth and the Tennessee river, great rendering of vernacular language and culture, and some hilarious laugh out loud segments (the watermelon incident, for instance). It's probably the least dismal of his books, tone-wise.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    They're all sort of heavy and with grim parts but I think the two you already read are the most disturbing by far. There are some parts of his other books as intense as those two but they aren't pervasive.
  - brudgers 4y ago
    Suttree is semi-autobiographical. There is less violence and more drinking than his other novels. It doesn’t really investigate morality in the ways most of his novels do. It is the last of his early novels set in Appalachia.
- themisto 4y ago
  When Suttree found me it was exactly the right time and it left me forever changed. Not a month goes by I don't think of it nearly a decade later. Definitely my personal favorite of his. Wish I was reading it again for the first time :)
mk_stjames 4y ago
I had this exact typewriter, in exactly that blue-green color as a kid and learned to type on it, before ever getting a computer. It had been knocked around a bit and probably needed service. Keys would stick, two strikers would stick to each other if you were using keys next to each other sometimes, etc. What is crazy is I haven't seen it or used it in *almost 40 years and I can still remember exactly how it feels to press the keys and specifically the sound it would make when a letter hit the paper.
lqet 4y ago
I will never replace my trusted ORGA Modell 9 [0] as my doomsday writing machine. This thing served in the office of a painter's business for 3 generations until the mid-90ies, is nearly 100 years old and is still working perfectly. Just imagine a desktop computer, or a laptop, serving 3 generations for more than 60 years. [0] https://ireland.apollo.olxcdn.com/v1/files/h5jm4s38hndf3-PL/image https://ireland.apollo.olxcdn.com/v1/files/h5jm4s38hndf3-PL/...
- biztos 4y ago
  That's a beautiful machine. What language is it designed for? And how fast can you type on it? You might need to hurry on doomsday but this looks more suited to poetry than urgent communiqués in the AI Wars.
  - lqet 4y ago
    I don't own the exact machine on the picture, but the same model in the same condition (including the cracked residual glue on the front which I think held some kind of paper decoration originally). Mine is in German. Typing speed is (for me) considerably slower than on a modern keyboard, but I have never measured it nor am I a professional typewriter.
intrasight 4y ago
I too learned to type on a typewriter. The idea to take typing in high school was suggested by another hacker/geek friend. It turned out the be a very valuable skill. But the skill is the only thing that I took with me. I never laid hands on a typewriter after that class. Other than the retro, steampunk-like vibe, is there any practical reason to use a typewriter?
- wantoncl 4y ago
  For various definitions of "practical", I remember a quote from Frederick Forsyth, to wit: "No one has ever hacked my typewriter, nor will they." I think he was using some manual thing as well, and possibly from back in the day when he was a correspondent working in Africa in the '60s. (his quote is maybe 10 years old) I'm old enough to appreciate a device that does one thing and does it really well, has almost no dependencies (just paper and ribbons, and if it's a cloth ribbon, you can re-ink it even more cheaply), doesn't need electricity, built like a tank, and can be remarkably portable, and is the epitome of a distraction-free writing environment. Even the most ruggedized laptop probably can't take a bullet and keep on working.
  - intrasight 4y ago
    Also worth pointing out, good or bad, that your writing cannot be anonymous with a mechanical typewriter.
dsr_ 4y ago
For many authors, the tools they used were not the result of obsessive comparisons and ranking, but what was available, that they could afford. And if they decided to replace them, the replacement was likely to have only slightly more research applied: it must be portable because the old heavy one hurts to move around, or it must be heavy because the dog keeps knocking the portable off the table. We live in the time of the blessing and the curse of choice.
- fipar 4y ago
  This, so much. I learned to type on a typewriter. I sadly don’t remember the brand or model as I was a kid, but in my house, we used it /kind of/ as one would use a printer now. We did not type stuff from scratch there. Too expensive (IIRC paper was more of a problem than the ink ribbon, but again, I was a kid). We wrote on paper, by hand, and typed things up when they were ready in their final form. I love love /loved/ that typewriter and would love to have it now to use it every now and then (not sure to write what though, I’m not a writer), but I feel there’s a bit of cargo-cult writing now involving them. As you say, writers used the tool they had at hand. It was no life hack to use a typewriter, it was just better to share text than handwriting for most people.
rcarr 4y ago
I was toying with buying a typewriter and a scanner and then using said typewriter for all first drafts and scanning them into the computer with OCR software to save time having to type them up. However I ended up discovering that the Apple Pencil and handwriting recognition in Nebo Notes is insanely good so I use that instead. I still might end up trying out the typewriter/scanner method at some point in the future when I start writing more seriously. People dismiss these things as hipsterism but there is definitely something to be said for using them. There was an interview with Neil Gaiman where he talks about being an editor and noticing that after computers became widespread that the average length of stories being submitted increased dramatically with no increase in quality, or worse, a decrease in quality. He subsequently took personal efforts to avoid falling into the same trap. I believe he now writes all his first drafts using fountain pens and paper. Something about the slower nature of typewriters and handwriting forces you to slow down and think more which I believe is particularly useful when you’re writing fiction.
- akeck 4y ago
  In his interview with Tim Ferris, Neil says that he writes his drafts all the way though before editing in a bound notebook with a fountain pen.
- rcme 4y ago
  I recommend writing on a typewriter. Only being able to go forward acts as a forcing function for writing. The lack of distraction is also nice. You're not going to randomly find yourself on HN, for instance.
  - biztos 4y ago
    Writing with pen (or pencil) on paper gives you "paged" real-time random access, plus the ability to illustrate at any resolution. The satisfying scratch of the roller ball on the paper tooth is also available in some hardware configurations. I agree about the typewriter but there's a lot to be said for actual writing too.
    - 4y ago
ncphil 4y ago
A friend had this very same machine, causing me much envy. Meanwhile, I got through college and law school with a government refurbished Underwood that was the polar opposite of portable. By the time I went back for my masters (in history, the law thing didn't take) I was using vde and tex on a Kaypro 1. Those old manual typewriters were great, but editing and formatting with a computer was considerably less fatiguing: unless you had to write your own daisywheel printer driver to get some output. If I'd known how hard that was going to be, I would have stuck with the Underwood. Or maybe looked for a used Selectric.
- shoo 4y ago
  > polar opposite of portable For some reason, this makes me think of pipe organs. If there's a ten point portability scale, maybe a pipe organ could be 1, a piano might be 2. A pencil could be 10. A sausage dog might be an 8 or 9. Some of these would be more practical writing instruments than others. I'm not familiar with Underwood typewriters, but my arms are feeling tired merely after looking at some photos online. It might be around a 3 or a 4 on our portability scale.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

40 points by nyc111 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

I believe the Olivetti Valentine famously on display at The Met and the MoMA at one point, were actually just retooled/modified Lettera 32s. In any case, these little machines are brilliant and I’ve owned around 4 of them over the years.

chadlavi 4y ago

That stupid website paused my music and played sound effects with its intrusive chat bot

intrasight 4y ago
Yup. Is there just no way on iOS to prevent that?
netsharc 4y ago
Left them a rude message with a fake address...

idlewords 4y ago

It would be way more fun if The Road had been written on a tangerine iBook G3.

david_shaw 4y ago

Unrelated to his typewriter, I'm currently reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, and I'm really enjoying it. I had previously only associated McCarthy with The Road and Blood Meridian, but I'm glad I gave some of his other work a shot.

Baeocystin 4y ago
Cormac McCarthy has the dubious distinction in my library of producing the most beautiful English I've ever read in service of such unrelentingly dismal stories that I don't feel that I have the stomach to read them again. I admit this is a me problem, but still. I've only read The Road and Blood Meridian, though. Does Suttree follow the same pattern? [edit] Thank you for the answers!
- ycombinete 4y ago
  All the Pretty Horses isn’t all that bleak. More of a western Bildungsroman.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  Not really. Suttree is not exactly a happy story, but it has beautiful prose descriptions of filth and the Tennessee river, great rendering of vernacular language and culture, and some hilarious laugh out loud segments (the watermelon incident, for instance). It's probably the least dismal of his books, tone-wise.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  They're all sort of heavy and with grim parts but I think the two you already read are the most disturbing by far. There are some parts of his other books as intense as those two but they aren't pervasive.
- brudgers 4y ago
  Suttree is semi-autobiographical. There is less violence and more drinking than his other novels. It doesn’t really investigate morality in the ways most of his novels do. It is the last of his early novels set in Appalachia.
themisto 4y ago
When Suttree found me it was exactly the right time and it left me forever changed. Not a month goes by I don't think of it nearly a decade later. Definitely my personal favorite of his. Wish I was reading it again for the first time :)

mk_stjames 4y ago

I had this exact typewriter, in exactly that blue-green color as a kid and learned to type on it, before ever getting a computer. It had been knocked around a bit and probably needed service. Keys would stick, two strikers would stick to each other if you were using keys next to each other sometimes, etc. What is crazy is I haven't seen it or used it in *almost 40 years and I can still remember exactly how it feels to press the keys and specifically the sound it would make when a letter hit the paper.

lqet 4y ago

I will never replace my trusted ORGA Modell 9 [0] as my doomsday writing machine. This thing served in the office of a painter's business for 3 generations until the mid-90ies, is nearly 100 years old and is still working perfectly. Just imagine a desktop computer, or a laptop, serving 3 generations for more than 60 years. [0] https://ireland.apollo.olxcdn.com/v1/files/h5jm4s38hndf3-PL/image https://ireland.apollo.olxcdn.com/v1/files/h5jm4s38hndf3-PL/...

biztos 4y ago
That's a beautiful machine. What language is it designed for? And how fast can you type on it? You might need to hurry on doomsday but this looks more suited to poetry than urgent communiqués in the AI Wars.
- lqet 4y ago
  I don't own the exact machine on the picture, but the same model in the same condition (including the cracked residual glue on the front which I think held some kind of paper decoration originally). Mine is in German. Typing speed is (for me) considerably slower than on a modern keyboard, but I have never measured it nor am I a professional typewriter.

intrasight 4y ago

I too learned to type on a typewriter. The idea to take typing in high school was suggested by another hacker/geek friend. It turned out the be a very valuable skill. But the skill is the only thing that I took with me. I never laid hands on a typewriter after that class. Other than the retro, steampunk-like vibe, is there any practical reason to use a typewriter?

wantoncl 4y ago
For various definitions of "practical", I remember a quote from Frederick Forsyth, to wit: "No one has ever hacked my typewriter, nor will they." I think he was using some manual thing as well, and possibly from back in the day when he was a correspondent working in Africa in the '60s. (his quote is maybe 10 years old) I'm old enough to appreciate a device that does one thing and does it really well, has almost no dependencies (just paper and ribbons, and if it's a cloth ribbon, you can re-ink it even more cheaply), doesn't need electricity, built like a tank, and can be remarkably portable, and is the epitome of a distraction-free writing environment. Even the most ruggedized laptop probably can't take a bullet and keep on working.
- intrasight 4y ago
  Also worth pointing out, good or bad, that your writing cannot be anonymous with a mechanical typewriter.

dsr_ 4y ago

For many authors, the tools they used were not the result of obsessive comparisons and ranking, but what was available, that they could afford. And if they decided to replace them, the replacement was likely to have only slightly more research applied: it must be portable because the old heavy one hurts to move around, or it must be heavy because the dog keeps knocking the portable off the table. We live in the time of the blessing and the curse of choice.

fipar 4y ago
This, so much. I learned to type on a typewriter. I sadly don’t remember the brand or model as I was a kid, but in my house, we used it /kind of/ as one would use a printer now. We did not type stuff from scratch there. Too expensive (IIRC paper was more of a problem than the ink ribbon, but again, I was a kid). We wrote on paper, by hand, and typed things up when they were ready in their final form. I love love /loved/ that typewriter and would love to have it now to use it every now and then (not sure to write what though, I’m not a writer), but I feel there’s a bit of cargo-cult writing now involving them. As you say, writers used the tool they had at hand. It was no life hack to use a typewriter, it was just better to share text than handwriting for most people.

rcarr 4y ago

I was toying with buying a typewriter and a scanner and then using said typewriter for all first drafts and scanning them into the computer with OCR software to save time having to type them up. However I ended up discovering that the Apple Pencil and handwriting recognition in Nebo Notes is insanely good so I use that instead. I still might end up trying out the typewriter/scanner method at some point in the future when I start writing more seriously. People dismiss these things as hipsterism but there is definitely something to be said for using them. There was an interview with Neil Gaiman where he talks about being an editor and noticing that after computers became widespread that the average length of stories being submitted increased dramatically with no increase in quality, or worse, a decrease in quality. He subsequently took personal efforts to avoid falling into the same trap. I believe he now writes all his first drafts using fountain pens and paper. Something about the slower nature of typewriters and handwriting forces you to slow down and think more which I believe is particularly useful when you’re writing fiction.

akeck 4y ago
In his interview with Tim Ferris, Neil says that he writes his drafts all the way though before editing in a bound notebook with a fountain pen.
rcme 4y ago
I recommend writing on a typewriter. Only being able to go forward acts as a forcing function for writing. The lack of distraction is also nice. You're not going to randomly find yourself on HN, for instance.
- biztos 4y ago
  Writing with pen (or pencil) on paper gives you "paged" real-time random access, plus the ability to illustrate at any resolution. The satisfying scratch of the roller ball on the paper tooth is also available in some hardware configurations. I agree about the typewriter but there's a lot to be said for actual writing too.
  - 4y ago

ncphil 4y ago

A friend had this very same machine, causing me much envy. Meanwhile, I got through college and law school with a government refurbished Underwood that was the polar opposite of portable. By the time I went back for my masters (in history, the law thing didn't take) I was using vde and tex on a Kaypro 1. Those old manual typewriters were great, but editing and formatting with a computer was considerably less fatiguing: unless you had to write your own daisywheel printer driver to get some output. If I'd known how hard that was going to be, I would have stuck with the Underwood. Or maybe looked for a used Selectric.

shoo 4y ago
> polar opposite of portable For some reason, this makes me think of pipe organs. If there's a ten point portability scale, maybe a pipe organ could be 1, a piano might be 2. A pencil could be 10. A sausage dog might be an 8 or 9. Some of these would be more practical writing instruments than others. I'm not familiar with Underwood typewriters, but my arms are feeling tired merely after looking at some photos online. It might be around a 3 or a 4 on our portability scale.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]