Reading E.B. White

Reading E.B White, it's hard to believe that at one time the world used to consume the written word in more than just the massive novel, the thin People article, and the tweet.  There was once a time when insight could come in bites--a paragraph or two.  And at one time we had a host of writers who could write insight with just 150 words or less, just as they could write with 150,000.

White wrote for the New Yorker for years, and only the other day did I discover that his works from the New Yorker had been compiled into a book.  All those little insights add up to something to marvel at, even if they aren't as respected or read as his novels, Charlotte's Web and Trumpet of the Swan--a book I loved more than any other growing up.

He was a lot like Hemingway in his love for nature, though White seemed to have lived a far healthier life.  He lived into his eighties, and I saw nothing in his biographies regarding mental illness like Hemingway's.  White has the look, too:  the twentieth century manly man look. Like Steinbeck.

It sometimes bothers me that I read so many male authors whereas there are less female authors.  Then I think of the book series that got me into reading--Harry Potter--and become less concerned.  My obsessions change from year to year.  One day my to reading list will be filled with the names of women.  Literature is sexless when you get down to it.  So many authors don't even offer their names.

The Forgotten Cutter

I have been plying my memory the past few days and it is so strange the things that come to the surface.  Things that I thought I had forgotten completely.

There are the memories of sleep overs gone horribly wrong, where you sit in terror as your friends watch The Faces of Death:  a kind of death and pornography film, showing the mutilation of the human condition is so many ways.

Then there are the girlfriends gone wrong.  It's funny how many of those I could not remember for the life of me.  I needed other memories to jog the primary one into action, bring my past into view again.

It's a nice exercise. Stories of your childhood, when framed right, can be very entertaining.  David Sedaris has taught me that.  I only hope that I can learn something from that brand of storytelling.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, spinning his wheels a little bit.

Movies for Black People v. Movies with Black People

I was walking my son out of the movie theatre.  We had just seen Planes or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.  I cannot remember which.  As we neared the doors, I noticed an advert that made one eyebrow go up, and my mind wonder what Hollywood was thinking when they green lit this forthcoming production: I'm in Love with a Church Girl.


I guess what bothered me the most was how painfully saccharine the whole affair looked on the ad, with its glossy looking cast, standing on what looked like a time share for a Rap video production company.  What underlay that was the fact that clearly Hollywood still believes that the only movies with black people worth making are ones that look as though Tyler Perry had a hand in them, or involve gang banging.

A drug dealer falls in love with a nice Christian girl.  Oh the dilemmas that must follow!

Reading the review of the movie, I am led to believe that it is based on the life of the screenplay writer, who did the whole "street life" thing. But how many of these films about street life have to come out before we ask for something more?  Are we so culturally entrenched that, if it isn't a screwball comedy with Chris Tucker or Ice Cube, or a melodrama possibly starring Medea, we don't want to see it.  

I understand that Butler movie was pretty good.  Great even, if one is to believe those around him.  I just wish that there could be more like it.  Not cookie cut either.  Just in that spirit.  Capture an experience without reverting to what the marketing metric says will or won't sell.  If everyone listened to their marketing metric, we might never have gotten To Kill a Mockingbird or Cast Away.  But listening to marketing got us four bad Star Wars films, The Godfather 3, and too many Jason and Freddy movies to bother naming.  

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table

Snail Mail

It doesn't matter how old you get.  The moment you see the mailman or woman walking down the block, your heart skips a beat.  "Oh, boy!  What am I going to get today?"  you think.

Of course the reality is never so good as the fantasy.  As a child I couldn't wait till the day came that I got mail.  As a child I only ever received cards for birthdays and holidays, and Playstation Magazine.  As an adult, I get junk, trying to sell me stuff, or bills for stuff I already bought.  The thought of mail doesn't fill me with glee.  Just anxiety.

That hasn't stopped me from passing down the tradition, though.  My son is practically beside himself when he doesn't get mail.  So much that I have taken to giving him my junk mail.

"Here. You have mail, Buddy."

"I do?" His eyes light up with glee.  "I love getting mail!"


There is a fragment of that child's joy in all of us.  It's there when we see the mail truck.  On those rare days, when we know something is coming for us--and we cannot wait--it burns in us like a torch.  It just takes a little tapping in to.

Treasures in the Pages

The debilitating death of my laptop, one cold, one current sinus infection, and a great deal of adjusting to a new schedule, but I am back, if not fully functional, and ready to talk about something that may one day go the way of the dinosaur.

If there is one thing that will truly sadden me about the world going digital, it is this: used books.

I shop used almost exclusively. There hasn't been a new book in my collection since 2011. It is the only way that I can afford to consume as much text as I do without using the public library. And, let's face it, the library hasn't been the same since the nineties.


But besides the affordability of it, my favorite part of buying used is the chance of finding a touching inscription inside. Largely I get notes and highlighter marks, especially if its Faulkner or Hemingway. But when its books like Sherlock Holmes or Tuesdays with Morrie, the insides become more personal: precious notes about how this book is representative of how special said person is. My favorite was in my copy of Tuesdays, in which notes to the reader were added at key passages to further enforce how wonderful the reader is. It's like finding someone's diary in the ruins of some long forgotten cabin in the woods, or archaeological dig. More importantly, it feels like magic.


You put the best words you can to the page with someone else and their best. You immortalize your ode to loving a person, even if the love is not immortal. I know these people are no longer together. Why else sell off such a touching gift? For that, it feels all the more special to me.

I only hope that my son gets to experience writing his first dedication to a girlfriend in a copy of her favorite book, imprinting forever a secret treasure.

Killing Words

Stephen King had once written in his memoir, On Writing, that in order to write your best you must, "Kill your darlings." In other words, never be afraid to edit, rewrite, and delete--keep it somewhere so that you can always go back and see it again, but certainly delete.

If ever you wanted a lesson on learning to do so, find an editor. These past few weeks have been some of the most informative, helpful, and, in some cases, frustrating; there is no denying that, in order to be a writer, to take a chance on something so foolhardy, you need to have the utmost confidence in yourself, your personal voice, and--most of all--your word.

Sometimes that confidence in your work means that you can't quite find the will to admit when something is weird, contrary, or just downright wrong. Or you're just so set in your vision that you cannot see beyond it.

Confession: I don't know if you can tell this about me but I really like the semi-colon as a form of regular punctuation. I also enjoy, large, clause loaded, and compounded up the wazoo sentences, as I find them most appealing and enjoyable to both read and write. It's like Tony Hawk doing a 900 or Lance Armstrong doing...never mind. We'll ignore him.

For a magazine, however, these tend to be less than admirable traits for writers. After all, when we're being honest with ourselves, semi-colons and twelve line sentences are really just for people who want you to know that they went to college, or for Salman Rushdie. They don't really lend themselves to reading.

As a result, I had the supreme pleasure of having to wonderful editors from the-magazine.org aid me in revisions that tightened my prose into a neat and streamlined syntax, perfect for a burgeoning journalist.

Everyone has someone that they like so much that they wish to emulate. I have several. Truman Capote. John Irving. John Steinbeck.

Now that I'm really getting my feet wet in journalism, I think it might be time to find others out there with different prose, cleaner and more direct prose, in which I might find a new way of using the tools in my tool box. After all, learning to hold back is just as important as when you let everything fly: like writing; like music; like any craft.

Just remember, no matter how many articles you write and how successful you become, never be afraid to kill your darlings.

The Olivettis: the Myth, my Collection

In light of my article in the-magazine.org or maybe in celebration of it, I have decided to do a tour blog of my Olivettis. It isn't the biggest collection, or even the most complete. It is, however, mine. And I love it.

Olivetti Lettera 22
There are earlier models of Olivetti portables. If you look hard enough, you'll find the rare MP-1. But as far as the world is concerned, it is the Lettera 22 that got the ball rolling. Sleek, light, and well built, the 22's were well reviewed if not bought in droves. They were really the shout out from Olivetti, saying, "We are here, World!"


Everything on the 22 went to the 32 ten years later. All basics: line select, paper supports, half-space for corrections. It even had the unique hallmark of Olivetti--the margin release key, when depressed, could act as an automatic 1/2 indent when returning the carriage.

A true first attempt, there is a lot in the guts of the 22 that needed a good revision. They are messy and convoluted. A lot is stacked and hard to get to. The 32 cleaned up nicely and is very easy to do repairs on. Also the action of the 22 is terser, requiring on the lightest setting a great deal of force.

But it still stands out as the first in modern typewriters, and was a favorite of Sylvia Plath.


Olivetti Lettera 32

It is the typewriter of all typewriters, sitting in the hallowed halls with the Royal Quiet de Luxe, Olympia SM-9, Hermes 3000, and IBM Selectric. What was wrong in the 22 was corrected, and what was right was improved upon.

The 32 has the perfect touch. It is also a little bigger than the 22, giving it a bit extra meat when sitting on the table, which is good for long typing sessions; chasing your banger across the table every two or three words can be taxing.

It is from the 32 that Olivetti planned its next 30 years or so of manufacturing. Everything that follows is really just ruminations on the 32, sometimes improving and other times redressing for a new generation.

As far as usability goes, the 32 is one of my most used machines. After tens of thousands of words, it shows no signs of wear, even after 40 years of use.

Olivetti DL/33
It was first called a deluxe, and later a 33. That's going to become a bit of a habit for Olivetti. The 33 added superficial features to the Lettera mostly making it look more high fashion than student machine. The paper guides were given their own encasement; a platen shield--to keep the dust and wite-out away from your feed rollers--was added. The DL is one of Olivetti's first shots at plastic body typewriters, though it was marketed as vinyl. 

The only real addition the DL made mechanically was moving the keyboard tension lever to the top of the machine instead of on the side. The inside has a lot more insulation, too. The 32 pings when typing, and the guts can be heard clearly through the base plate, but the DL has a perfectly singular clunk, accompanied with nothing else. It's little things like that that make it worthy of being called "Deluxe"


Olivetti Lettera 31/Dora
The very antithesis of deluxe, if the 32 was the standard, the 31 was super economy. The paper guides, grapher, tab were all taken out, as was the aluminum body. Instead the 31 has a plastic box. Literally. It makes for one of my favorite machines to look at. With its well defined and simple lines, it looks like a beginners guide to how Olivetti designs.

It is this boxy style that really lasts the longest. When the 32 is phased out, the 31 body continues on under a thousand different names. The latest I saw it was in an ad for the 1990 Soccer World Cup, labelled an Italia 90. The keys are different, but there is no mistaking the Dora/31 box. I'll bet it skids across the table like a Dora, too.

Olivetti Lettera 35
Debuting in 1974, it is the true successor to the Lettera 32. It has everything the 32 had, but in a new all aluminum body. Updated with newer, smaller, white key caps the 35 is a new direction for Olivetti, moving the company away from their sleek, tiny typers and to thicker portables that look more like cartoons of typewriters.


The 35 also came in a million different names over its twenty years in production. It also shared the name Italia 90 in the same ad as that 31. Mine is a 35l, which is probably the "deluxe" model of the 35. It has all the extras that the 33/DL had back in '69. However, there is no denying the heritage of the inner mechanism. It is a Lettera 32, through and through.


Olivetti Lettera 25
The 31 of its day, the 25 is a stripped down, economy typewriter. Marketed as Olivetti's basic portable, the 25 is a plastic housed 32 mechanism without the tab, paper guide, or tension adjuster. Like its brother, the 35, the 25 is much bigger than the Letteras of years past. But put alongside a 35 and a Studio 46 semi-standard, you see that it too shows a unified vision that Olivetti had. It too is sleek, cool, and simple. Also like the 31, the 25 showcases all of the basics of Olivetti design in its simple and sexy lines.

Most will say that the Olivetti's of the late 70's through to when they stopped production in 1994 were not as good as the machines of their heyday 60's, but I would disagree. The platen might not be as big, but I would argue that the last incarnations of the Lettera (excluding the 10 and 12, because those are hideous) are every bit the machine their grandfathers were. 

The typewriter was on the wane by 1975. Computers were coming up. Olivetti was even making some. Yet, when other companies phoned it in with Chinese knock offs (I'm looking at you Royal) Olivetti kept making their own machines, designing them with their eye, and kept the original vision alive: looks, touch, and price. The Lettera of the 80's still feels great. Much better than a Brother or Nakajima. I'd say they feel better than the last of the SM-9'S that rolled off the line. They look better too. Just looks at those shadows on that sharp body. Sexy. Damn sexy.

In the end, you can say what you want about Olivetti, but there is no denying: this is a company that could sell itself and its machines. They lasted longer than any of the others. They beat out Olympia, Royal, Hermes, Underwood. They did it with a quality product, dynamic marketing, and style and grace that wasn't to be seen again.


That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, ready for another day.

UPDATE 10-4-13: As I have come to find, the 35l is not a "deluxe" model. Rather, it was a trimmed down version of the 35, with different colored platen knobs (black instead of white), a slightly smaller shell (literally, we're talking fractions of a inch smaller all round), and no hard shell case. Mine came with a tote bag. 

It also sold a bit better, as the 35l pops up more on ebay and etsy than the 35 does. It also helps that the 35l was produced longer, if my estimates can be trusted.