Book Impressions: The Typewriter Revolution

Well, we received a great tome in the mail today that I found on eBay - Richard Pelt's "The Typewriter Revolution - A Typist's Companion for the 21st Century," and what a great volume it is! 

I bought the flexibound editions, and I'm so glad I did. If you don't know what flexibound is, it is sort of a cross between paperback and hardback - the stuff that the popular birding books like Sibley's and Kaufman's are bound in - flexible but sturdy with high end paper and high resolution printing inside. Having read a free Kindle edition sample before getting this flexibound hard copy, I can understand that half of the author's message is carried in the thought and detail put into the actual construction and layout of the book. There is, after all, a great deal lost in digital experiences, things that you can only experience through actual tactile, in-your-hand contact with things. Thus, you would be missing out on half of the point and pleasure of the book were you to go the Kindle route in this case because half of the joy of this particular book is in experiencing it in your hands. Not only is there the cover texture, the embossed title, the colorful layout of the pages, and the flexible heft of the book that gives it a feeling of authority, but to top things off, it comes, like a Bible or hymnal, bound with a long cloth bookmark made of grosgrain ribbon in black and red, just like a two-color typewriter ribbon, minus the ink. Nice touch!

Content wise, the author accomplishes his mission by using the revolution metaphor throughout. The revolution, however, is not one of fighting the establishment or "the man" in the streets or of one class toppling another, but rather a revolution of a new idea - an idea that is actual a stepping back from the current digital world we have allowed ourselves to be pickled into. Instead, we are asked to step a bit back in time and embrace some of the old tech that we abandoned too quickly - the written, specifically typed, word. It is a call for a return in a sense to those aspects of the analog world, but not an overthrow of the technology we have. It is not a call to reject the technology we have but rather a call to step back a bit and embrace some of what we loss in our rapid march forward. The goal is all about balance, with the book serving to present the other side of the scale to those who have forgotten or never experienced it. 

Thus, at the very beginning of the book, there is a page spelling out the "The Typewriter Manifesto," It is not a set of political tenets but rather tenets decrying the state that the totality of adherence to the digital age has brought us to. The manifesto is broken into tenets, each of which is discussed throughout the book in little between chapter page called Interludes. My favorite tenet is this:

We affirm the written word

  and written thought

      against

multimedia,

  multitasking,

    and the meme.

Hard to not enjoy some of that, especially the bit about the meme! 

in a It would not be unreasonable to view the revolution here as part of the trend these days away from the seeming temporary nature of electronic and digital things and toward more analog, tangible things. Be it the fascination in some quarter with old film cameras sense it is a part of that organic trend by younger folks today away from digital photography or the even more organic realm of lomography, from the iWatch and its clones to mechanical automatic and wind-up watches, and from mp3s back to and even cassette tapes. People seem to want to hold on to things without the need for electricity.

The book is broken into nine chapters, with Chapter One, for example, introduces the reader to the whole new world of the Typosphere - what it is all about, how it manifests itself, and who these new (or returning) enthusiasts/activists who go to type-ins and typewriter petting zoos and enjoy "engaging in public acts of typing'" are. Other chapters cover things such as the history of typing, how to pick a typewriter, what these newly engaged typists use their typewriters to do, and what the future holds for the typewriter move growing from this organic movement. 

Well, I have gone on a bit longer than I had planned, so I had better put a cork in it and just sum up by saying that The Typewriter Revolution is a very interesting, colorful, and artfully designed and laid out. It feels really good in your hands too. 

There is a website for the book if you want to learn more at, of course, typewriterrevolution.com. "Resist the Paradigm!"