No Country for Old Typewriters - A Well-Used One Heads to Auction
No fewer than five people today sent me this article about how Cormac McCarthy is auctioning off his old Olivetti Lettera —the typewriter on which he’s written all of his highly-praised MacArthur-genius-grant-worthy novels. I’m touched that all these people thought of me—they are good folk—but when people tell me I MUST read a certain article or book or pamphlet on safe sex, there’s a part of me that bucks. Don’t tell me what to read, dammit! I will not be put in a box! Besides, I know what happens: there’s nuclear fallout, everyone dies, the son eats the father (Viggo Mortensen!) while watching I Am Legend and then Wall-e shows up and develops a new language based on the symbols found on an odd object stamped with the word Lettera. Then Clive Owen arrives just in time for London to explode and it all ends with everyone singing songs from Hello Dolly. As the credits roll, we see an old man at the Genius Bar asking for a bourbon, neat, with a MacBook Pro on the side.
