Stringers Attached

It's an instant conversation killer, saying that you're a freelance writer. Usually I get a noncommittal--nonetheless nice--smile. Other times I get nothing. After all, that can't possibly be a career. No one makes money writing little "stories" right?

The Journalist's weapon of choice circa 1949

Well, not enough, I have to clarify. I do this other things, too. A job that is more of a "job" in said person's mind, and their attitude changes from one of incredulity to one of general approval.

In truth, I would probably feel the same way had I not met the nicest freelance writer in the world when I was at Wayne State University. He took a writing class with me. His writing was solid, though he confessed a fear of writing from imagination, which complicated things since it was a fiction writing class.

Afterward, when we had gone our separate ways, I ran into him in the library. I was researching medieval castles for a novel I had been working on for two years, and am yet to finish! He was looking up possible jobs.

"You seriously find work this way?"

"Yep. This is how I have always been paid."

It seemed incredulous then, too. Then I never entertained the idea of being a journalist. I was yet to read "Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72" or "In Cold Blood" or "Travels with Charlie" or Hemingway's work with the Toronto Star.

That was years ago. Now there is the karmic simplicity of having to explain myself to those who don't understand, who do not see my job as a real job.

And I revel in knowing that I can now find myself on Google. Then feel sad, thinking that I hold that as some kind of standard of existing.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, getting ready to bust out the Cranberry and Goat Cheese. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Comeback Kid

My father and I had this debate: Would anyone be interested in a period film version of Batman and the Justice League? I stood (and stand still) firmly on the side that says. 

My reasons for why are: the rise in fascination (and the price in resale) of typewriters, rotary phones, vintage glasses and vintage anything; Kickstarters like the qwerkywriter; the popularity of Mad Men, Gangster Squad, Public Enemies, Boardwalk Empire, and Gotham--all of which borrow an analog aesthetic; hipsters; and now the Hemingwrite.

from hemingwrite.com

According to its press kit, the Hemingwrite will be everything that I had ever wanted in a word processor. As a prototype, the Hemingwrite sports a Macish aluminium body, cloud connectivity, mechanical keyboard switches, and a 1 million page memory. Also, it kind looks like a typewriter, which is perfectly fitting for it. It's named after one of the most famous typewriter promoters of all time. All it needs is a place to put in the paper and laser print the text as I type, and it will truly be a machine out of my dreams.

And it's about time.

It's been too long since the dedicated word processor was sold to potential writers and not to public schools. For Christmas last year, my fiance bought an Alphasmart NEO for me from an elementary school. For those that don't know, the Alphasmarts were marketed for students with special needs to aid in their education. They are as simple as they come: instant "on," automatic save, no internet, and universal computer connectivity.

Neo Direct, the maker of Alphsmart, stopped making the Neo and Neo2 (the last incarnations of the Alphasmart) in 2013, as their sales were in decline as laptops became cheaper and more powerful. Yet there remains a fierce loyalty to the dedicated word processor. A new version of the Neo is in the works from writerlearning.com called the Forte/Fusion. There are journalists and novelists that adore the Alphasmart models still out there - even if they are ugly as sin.

Will there be some kind of renaissance for the word processor, launching it back into the lime light with a hip, new design that strikes the right chord with the nostalgic millennial generation? Who knows. But I hope it does. There was once a time when everyone thought that the tablet was a bad idea. Costs as much as a computer but no keyboard. Now the world practically runs on the silly things. Perhaps one day, seeing a college student on what looks like a steam punk keyboard will be as natural as swiping on the iPhone.

from hemingwrite.com

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, getting ready for NanoWriMo.

Did you ever know that you're my hero?

Everyone likes to talk about the writers that influence them. That being said, no one likes to be told that they write like one of their influences. The key is in burning down the ladder that took you to the top, and, once there, pretend as though you had been there the entire time. Kind of like Clark Kent in every episode of Superman...ever.

Me? I like to think that my ladder is still very much in tact, that my life's work will always be a work in progress. After all, masterpieces are for latter years. Youth is for experimentation.

And without further adieu: My ladder...

JOHN IRVING

This is the man that made me want to write. I wrote a bit about him on medium.com a few months ago. You can find that article here.

Though his work is mostly in a serious vein, it is John that taught me how to laugh with literature. I spent most of my nights in college laughing as I read and reread The Cider House Rules--one of the best titles of all time. That book was also the first since Harry Potter to make me cry at the ending.

WOODY ALLEN

Everybody who's anybody wants to be a somebody, and that isn't necessarily the somebody that they are in the present. They want to be an icon. That's Woody.

I came late to the Woody Allen game. He was already well into his winter years, and I was still yet to see Annie Hall or Manhattan or even The Scoop, which came out when I was a teenager...and idolizing Hugh Jackman, so how could I miss that, right?

But what came from my exposure to Allen was the work ethic that it takes to be an icon. It doesn't just happen overnight. Image is cultivated to practice and hard work. In many ways becoming an icon is like writing yourself as a novel. Your body is the text, main and supporting characters. And it is exhausting.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

There are good writers. There are great writers. There is Truman Capote.

If only you glance at his short stories, you will feel that you are in the presence of a writing genius. Capote's prose are the cleanest, most precise, and most labored of all the 20th Century writers. And that's saying a lot considering all the greats in the 20th Century. But when asked why I think Capote is so good, I need only give you three words: Breakfast. At. Tiffany's.

or: In. Cold. Blood.

or four words: Other. Rooms. Other. Voices.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

I love short fiction. I especially love Hemingway's. (I also love beards and fancy hats, of which Hemingway has in spades.) I also love his work with the Toronto Star. If ever you wish to see how a news article should be written, you need only look to Papa for an example. He serves as the standard of what 100% useful words represents. Even when his prose run on the flat side, Hemingway's work is still a wonder to behold.

THE HONORABLE MENTIONS

Neil Gaiman--enchanting prose, enchanting fantasy

J.K. Rowling--moved me in ways I never could have imagined

Patrick Rothfuss--only time and his next two books will prove if he is truly a thing of legend

J.D. Salinger--great writer, though I still haven't gotten through "Catcher in the Rye"

Papa Returns

It was announced that there is going to be another movie next year starring ole Papa--Ernest Hemingway. Not another magical bout into the past a la Midnight in Paris or an adaptation of one of his books, which has always been very close to memoir rather than outright fiction, Papa is a tale of a time in Hemingway's life when he had befriended a young journalist in Cuba. The entire movie is being shot in Cuba, which is a fact that seems to have eclipsed the very basics of the movie itself.

I remain ambivalent about movies about writers. Capote was an excellent look at the man during some of the most interesting years of his career as a novelist and reporter.  On the other hand, The Rum Diary was a messy (at times indulgent) farce, hiding Hunter S. Thompson and his beliefs behind a supposed work of "fiction" and said little or nothing by the time the credits rolled.

My problem is that sometimes the writers tend to not be nearly as interesting as their personas lead us to believe. In the case of Truman Capote, he was an icon, whose social candor was second to none, and whose life was as interesting as he wrote it to be. In Thompson's case--and I am a big fan of his work--he was by-in-large an overly exposed drug addict, and his work suffered for it. His landmark book, Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72, chronicled his drug addiction as much as it followed Nixon and Humphrey. And as great as it was to read the insights he had on the candidates of '72, it was equally sad to see his work fall apart because of his numerous addictions. His life, unlike Capote's, can be largely summed up as a man who wrote well for a while but was very inconsistent.


Whether Papa Hemingway is interesting enough to warrant a movie dedicated, not to his life, but to a specific moment closer to the end than the beginning remains to be seen. I suppose that 2015 is just around the corner now anyway.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, getting ready to "pen" the next great American novel--then maybe a bar fight.

The Royals: From Hemingway to Hemingway to...whatever this is.

It has occurred to me that, though I am at heart an Olivetti fanatic, I also have had a fair share of Royal typewriters come my way. Many of them I liked, too! If there was a company I would rate right next to Olivetti as far as the second most fashionable and accessible machines, it would be Royal.

So Here We Go!

'49 Royal Quiet Deluxe

Probably the least loved of all Royal typewriters, even if it is one of the best. Inside it is a classic QDL, just like Hemingway's. Hemingway used this one--or so Mr. Typewriter says--before he died. It was designed by Henry Dreyfuss. Read a great article about him here. This was also a favorite of Ian Flemming, the man who created James Bond. His, however, was gold plated--a sign of how much it pays to invent James Bond.

Mine came from a girl, who got it from her neighbor, who didn't want to keep it. Their loss. I had Chuck Theile from CCS Business Machines take a whack at it, and now this QDL is on my desk nonstop.

This was the last of the "classic" Royal typewriters, and as far as I am concerned, they don't get any better.

'50 Quiet Deluxe

Bigger shell and fiberglass keys, it isn't quite the classic, and it certainly isn't as iconic. It's quality speaks for itself, though. This is still a great Royal.

'60 Safari

A Bob Dylan favorite. It looks like the sixties. Bubbly and just as likely to rocket off into space as it is to pound out your next term paper. I don't know about these. They have the Royal name, and they certainly aren't bad machines, but they don't FEEL like a Royal.

This one I saved from a washer and dryer store. All it took was a little TLC and a couple hours to get it moving again. The rubber was fantastic. The guy at the front desk told me that they only used it for receipts, so you can imagine that it was used regularly, but only enough that it didn't rot.

After a year with me, I sold this one. I hope it's new owner is enjoying it.

Litton Royal Tab O Matic

Here we go. The history of Royal as a subsidiary, as an American company, and as an independent firm is a long and confusing and sometimes unknown history.

But this Royal is from the end of that history, when Royal was halting all its American production. Instead of making quality machines, Royal was rebranding Japanese typewriters from Nakajima. It was all the rage in the 70's. They were cheaper to make, were made in a way that made their shells easy to redesign, and the market was aiming toward the ultra light "Baby Rocket" style anyway.

Sounds great, right?

It wasn't. Not for Royal, anyway, who would waste away through the 70's and 80's. All that's left of them now is a small firm that still sells Nakajima knock off electronic typewriters.

It's not like it's a bad typewriter, per say. It works, and is all metal. That's saying a lot during a decade that pretty much worshiped cheap plastics. But it's based on the Hermes Rocket, which was innovative about forty years before. Better slim line designs came after--for example, the Lettera 32. What really made the Rocket so great was high--stupidly high--quality. This one didn't have that, and so it too was sold off.

'70 Apollo 10

Another of the Nakajima Royals, this one was actually designed in Holland. It was first made around the same time that Royal was selling European ultra slim portables based on Holland typewriters--your Parade, El Dorado, Dart, and of course the Apollo. Later on, when Royal was focused exclusively on Japanese rebranding, they gave the name and shell design to Nakajima, which fit one of their manual models into it and added a motor for kicks. Using it, it feels just like the above Tab O Matic. It has the same carriage shift and slant to the keys.

'50 Royal Aristocrat

A lot of people might have trouble telling the difference between Royal typewriters. Then you get your hands on a couple and realize that it's all in the materials. As its name suggests, the Aristocrat is the royalty of Royal. It has the best action, the coolest paint jobs, the quietest carriage return, the fastest maximum type speed. It feels like a full size in a portable body.

Even mine, which came to me in very rough shape, is still one of the best typewriters I have ever used. I am thankful that, though Royal fell from grace in the decades that followed this machine, they never thought to sully its good name on a knock off Nakajima or brother clone.

Those are the Royals so far. That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, getting used to Elite typeface.

On Watching Salinger

There was a recently released documentary on J.D. Salinger, chronicling his life and career in a tangential way. It's probably the most direct way of dealing with the author who pretty much invented the word "aloof."

Indirectly.

It's hard to imagine being Salinger. Reading his work, seeing the reactions that people had to him, I cannot grasp being viewed as a deity--having my words be read with the same kind of exuberance that is usually reserved for extreme right wing readers of the St. James Bible. It's obvious that there was something in water all our mid-20th century writers were drinking. Between Hemingway, Salinger, Capote, Williams, Vonnegut and the rest, I don't think that you'll find a better group of writers. There are no better prose; no cleaner syntax.

Yet these were also men obsessed with creating their own image. Capote was a drama queen to the enth degree. Hemingway went on adventures, and intentionally put himself out there so as to maintain his bad-ass manly man image. And then there was Salinger, who was as an obsessive control freak over his words. He was renown for hating anyone who tampered with his stories. He threw fits and ended friendships.

And he was obsessed with remaining out of the spotlight. That, it seems to me, only exacerbated the public's desire to know what he was up to.

As a writer and father, I tend to believe the John Irving and Stephen King model of writing: that writing is a support system for life, not life a support system for writing; that writing should never come before family. John Irving has said in interviews that he never closes the office door, because he never wants his kids to think that they cannot come in.

Do they write as well as Salinger did? Well, the answer is a solid no. They have their great works, and have written some gooder-than-hell books, but Salinger is on a freak level. And to get there he destroyed everything that is supposed to make life beautiful: family, friendship, love.

I love to write. I love to read. And I hope that one day something of mine changes a life for the better. I hope to be a writer that attracts a fan base. But never at the price of having a life.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, waiting with bated breath for a '49 Quiet Deluxe to come back from the shop.

Thinking about Capote

  I had heard it once said that the difference between PTSD and a normal life is the narrative: how you recount the darkest part of the human experience--killing each other. Was it horrifying and haunting? Or do you see it as formative?
     The friendships?
     Or the phantoms?
     A writer is no warrior, but we share that commonality. We control the narrative. We need to, or else it destroys us.
     Lately a memoir has been in my brain. It is the rare and joyous kind where so much of my dark hours are spent in the footnotes. And I'm okay with that. How could I deal with those moments?
     So much of fiction is our life reflected and watered down, and writers--too often--are the least equipped to deal with them.
     Our demon devours us. They gnaw at our bones, while feeding our pen.
     In the end, they kill.
     Sylvia Plath committed suicide.
     Capote and Hemingway died from alcoholism.
     So did Kerouac.
     Then think of Tolkien, Irving, C.S. Lewis--men who, all of them, live/lived happy lives, seemingly unaffected, though their stories are fraught with darkness.
     John Irving never knew his father, and was sexually initiated at a young age. Tolkien and Lewis grew up in the shadows of two world wars, and Lewis had other, smaller

(though massive to him) issues.
     But Tolkien said, "If The Old of the Rings was an allegory for World War II, Mordor would have been occupied, not destroyed."
     Lewis wrote some of the greatest children's literature of all time.
     Irving wrote Until I Find You and The World According to Garp, not only meeting his demons head on, but conquering them in fiction.
     Be wary of what bones you want to dig up. Not all of us can be Tolkien or Irving. Unfortunately, most of us are probably more like Capote, only without the awesome skills.