Damn Arms Olivetti After news of the closure of the last typewriter factory circulate all over the Internet, there have been articles in defense of these gadgets, tributes tear denials (electrical machines apparently in good health) and the statements of writers who claim that there has never been nor will there be anything better. I guess as is the case with Polaroid, the Scooters, Minis old and in our case with the red box D & D
, nostalgia is a rising star capable of raising the dead. I wonder if they have sold many used machines on ebay since the announcement. I bet you did. It is a paradox but it feels to look back with nostalgia is another way to assert himself as different and "modern." Repeat any past was better and how it has lost the original spirit of things ... yes, Twitter on your iPhone.
My typewriter, the first and only, was an Olivetti Lettera 42. It was not a very graceful junk, it lacked the air of church organ or steam black spider of the Underwood. With its compact white plastic keys do not even serve to make one of those steampunk
customizations that are so fashionable now. His only strong point was a cover with handle, through which could be carried anywhere with ease, if you had a strong arm. More than
Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote is , Olivetti to see me come to mind rows and rows of office workers trapped by boredom, repeating over and over again as a primitive invocation
words ASDF! JKLÑ! .
By then it was too optimistic, or rather very innocent, so in order to master this pileup bought a book type. It did not help much, the keys have their own life and the painful habit of catching my fingers between them. I signed up for some classes, those that occur with a bright display, tapes cassette and a mechanical voice repeating where you have to click to pitch camp or brainwashing program of the CIA. To my surprise worked and my hands began to dance on the keyboard to the sound that I marked. Quite an achievement that did not improve much my relationship with Olivetti.
acknowledge that motivates me to write in that metal box filled with levers and rollers. I despaired of the imprecision of the carriage return, that the work of an hour remaining clutter and inappropriate for a final look rough error and the final result. The letter was stamped not for me a special romance, did not resemble that of a book, but rather the dull form a bureaucrat. However it was the only tool I got closer to professionalism, with her my work and was not relegated to books written in pen, was more serious, or so I thought. I kept trying and wrote one of my first modules, namely
Cyberpunk 2020, a keystroke. To discover years later in an old file I felt a little twinge of pride and maybe it was at that moment when I became reconciled with the infernal machine. Who knows where he is now.
Olivetti The relay was an Amstrad PCW 8256, an archaic word processor that understood me better and I wrote stories, articles and more modules, this time of fantasy and supernatural horror ... but that's another story.
