Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Cormac McCarthy finally gives up his Olivetti

By Patricia Cohen in the New York Times:
Cormac McCarthy has written more than a dozen novels, several screenplays, two plays, two short stories, countless drafts, letters and more — and nearly every one of them was tapped out on a portable Olivetti manual typewriter he bought in a Knoxville, Tenn., pawnshop around 1963 for $50.

Lately this dependable machine has been showing irrevocable signs of age. So...Mr. McCarthy [has] agreed to auction off his Olivetti Lettera 32 and donate the proceeds to the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit interdisciplinary scientific research organization .
McCarthy will be replacing his Olivetti typewriter with... another Olivetti typewriter - almost identical but in better condition.

2 comments:

  1. Might be interesting to know how many Guild members still use a typewriter? Or is it just old-fashioned novelists at the Society of Authors? And is there anyone out there still repairing and servicing them?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The typewriter repair shop in Wood Green closed down a few years ago. I don't use a typewriter but I was sorry to see it go.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.