A couple of weeks ago, a story appeared on AOC’s Instagram account: an Olivetti. A typewriter. She’d found one. The charm and novelty of ancient technology. When she answered questions from a follower about how it works, and how to correct a typo, there was as much delight in her voice as was shock in my realization at how few people in her generation have seen (and heard) a real typewriter in action.
AOC’s Congress letterhead set in a vintage Olivetti typewriter. Photo: reddit
Soon after I watched AOC introduce her Olivetti, I came across a story in T Magazine, about a home in Silver Lake, not so far from my younger sister’s house (not biological).
My curiosity was piqued. “It’s easy to see why this house, completed in 1962, was where she got much of this work done: There are hardly any distractions, visual or otherwise.”
Anaïs Nin’s study, Silver Lake Photo: T Magazine
It was the home of Anaïs Nin. She’d been on my mind.
What T Magazine had said about the house is true. It’s a good setup. Contrasts. Luxurious to the touch, and austere for the mind: the amethyst carpet offers warmth, good and grounding on a cool desert evening. The repetitive cinder block, unadorned, regular, unglamorous, the rhythm of its lines and texture fading into the background, leaving her mind a zen-like, austere space to focus on one singular thing: to write.
Seeing her typewriter made me think. Does how we write change what we write? What’s changed about the thinking process and the craft? Without copy and paste, what is the planning, information capture, drafting, writing, and revision process like?
Are writers today the same breed of thinkers and craftspeople as Anaïs and her contemporaries?
The evolution of the writing experience made me want to see brain scans of writers, past and present. I imagined whether certain parts of their brains would have things in common, and what lights up in the brains of writers today that would have been dim in the imaginary scans of writers before the Apple IIe.
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EDIT: I found a 2012 article in the Atlantic by Maria Popova, whimsically and informatively quoting great authors on their writing process. Our Anaïs is mentioned, as is her lover Henry Miller. Finding Susan Sontag’s process may be the closest thing I’ve been trying to find. There is a 1977 version and 1990s version. Have a look.