The Story of the Typewriter: Paul Auster and His Writing Machine

Abstract

Contemporary American author Paul Auster stubbornly refuses to use computers in fa- vor of vintage typewriters. The fact that both Auster and his textual stand-ins stay loyal to old Underwood, Olympia or Smith-Co- rona typewriters makes one question the significance of this nearly-obsolete object for a writer in a digital age. We praise the mighty computer for its word-processing skills to quickly generate, edit, erase, and multiply texts. Yet the extraordinary powers of the typewriter – this simple mechanical device that can nevertheless possess the writer – to generate interconnected textual networks, while simultaneously asserting and overturning the conventional notions of authorship and origin, seem to pass unnoticed. The typewriter is not only a wri- ting machine in its literal sense (which it - self is ambiguous, anyway), and not only a prosthetic tool, but, like Martin Heidegger’s “thing” and Bruno Latour’s non-human “actant”, it does its own “acting” in produ - cing, remaking, mingling and multiplying texts of different modes and media. The article looks at Auster’s collaboration with his famous typewriter and seeks to answer the question “Why type?” as it traces the functions and associations of the tool. The two – the writer and his writing machine – present a curious case that invites one to rethink the questions of textual authorship and originality, and textual dispositions and boundaries.