The Typewriter

Growing up, I always wrote with a ballpoint pen on a legal pad or spiral notebook. I liked the feel on the pen in my hand, the pressure of the nib on the paper. It felt like my thoughts were going from my head, down my arm, into my hand, through the pen, and onto the page. It felt like both a physical and a metaphysical connection.

When I was a teenager, my parents bought me my first typewriter – a Royal portable. It was a satisfying tactile experience, hitting the keys, sensing their weight, feeling the thud of the lettered slug casts hammer against the paper on the rubber platen, slinging the carriage left to right to start a new line. It was rewarding in a different way from handwriting, and I loved doing both.

I used many typewriters over the years – Smith Coronas, Underwoods, Olivettis – but none matched the touch of the Royal. There was a characteristic weight, a resistance and then a leveraged force that created an unmatched sound and feel with every keystroke. It’s like the difference between a grand piano and an electric keyboard. Ian Fleming and Ernest Hemingway used Royals.

And the keys that had the most gravitas were on the Royal desktop models, like the vintage Royal 10. Much heavier than the portables, it sat on your desk and it wasn’t going anywhere. And it felt like it lent the fact of its mass to the whole process, like it put the weight of the entire machine into the slugs striking the paper.

I got the old desktop Royal in the early 70’s, when I was first putting words to paper on World Enough, and Time. I wrote with it on my grandfather’s old rolltop desk, in my apartment on 51^st and Dorchester. And it stood me well for many a year.

Of course in later years, like everyone else, I transitioned to the computer; first a desktop, and now exclusively a laptop for many years. And of course it is so much more convenient. Edit as you go, cut lines, add them back, no more physical cutting and pasting, multiple drafts with ease.

But there’s nothing like the feel of the old desktop Royals.