Type
cast: Darren Wershler-Henry
explores typewriting throughout history
Interview by Derek Beaulieu
(January 2006)
 Reading
Darren Wershler-Henry’s The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of the
Typewriter, I looked up from the page, and saw, on the end table
beside my couch, an old Underwood No. 5 typewriter. When I originally
spotted the machine at a garage sale, I knew I had to own it, even
though I didn't understand why. It just had something to do with what a
writer was supposed to be.
In The Iron Whim, Wershler-Henry
argues that the typewriter defines not only how we write, but also what
we write, who does the writing, and how we look upon writing itself.
Despite the fact that typewriters have
become an antiquated form of communication, replaced by personal
computers, they are still icons of the writing life, part of the
romantic sepia-toned image of the struggling author ensconced at his
desk, surrounded by gray smoke, discarded drafts and frustration. The
typewriter however, is just as clearly associated with typing pools,
secretarial positions and even speed-typing competitions. It
is these images, and what Wershler-Henry describes as the
"haunted" relationship between machine, dictator and
"amanuensis" (the person who receives the dictation and does
the actual typing, receiving transcription from the dictator), that is
the focus of The Iron Whim (McClelland & Stewart, 331 pages,
$29.99).
As the Winnipeg-born writer, critic,
editor and poet explains in the book, inventors tried to create a
writing machine for more than 200 years. Those efforts eventually
culminated in Christopher Latham Sholes's invention of what we today
recognize as the typewriter in 1866. Since that date, for the past 140
years, the typewriter has had a striking effect on how authors approach
writing. This is where The Iron Whim comes in. Wershler-Henry has
focused not so much on the history of the typewriter itself, but on the
history of typewriting.
Wershler-Henry, who teaches
communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, is the author or
co-author of nine books, which include the tapeworm foundry, a book of
poetry nominated for the Trillium Award in 2000, and five books on
Internet technology and culture. With fellow poet Christian Bok, he
co-authored the infamous Virus 23 Meme (a meme is an idea,
behaviour, style or usage that passes from person to person in a culture
like a virus), which they posted on Andy Hawks' Future culture mailing
list in 1993.
Clearly, Wershler-Henry is a computer
man. He was drawn to write about the
history of the typewriter and typewriting because of what he feels is a
"disconnection" between us and the typewriter. While we feel
an "incredible nostalgia for the typewriter," very few people
"recognize typewriting when they see it and, in fact, very few
people even own a typewriter." The typewriter as a tool has been
completely replaced by the personal computer, and its very form is
antiquated. Instead, he argues, we have an "intellectual and
emotional investment in it as the symbol of writing."
Collectors have brought their hunt for
old typewriters - like the one I have on my end table - online.
Strangely enough though, Wershler-Henry says, "a typewriter is only
valuable if it doesn't look like a typewriter. The late-19th century,
strange things are what collectors go nuts for."
"It's always struck me as odd and
improbable that people are invested in this. Writers that still use
typewriters are deliberately contrarian. It's a world of
computers."
Writing The Iron Whim, which is
based on his doctoral dissertation at York University, enabled Wershler-Henry
to understand how nostalgia "looks back on the way that we no
longer write and says that it was the correct way." As an example,
he said, "we are blinded to the media technology that is organizing
how we are writing now, we only recognize that influence after the
technology is gone."
Not only is the typewriter indicative
of our dependence on and blindness to technology, it also reflected and
defined gender roles in the workplace for decades. Wershler-Henry
explains that "the Industrial Revolution brought a massive amount
of paperwork memos, bills of lading, invoices for the goods that are
circulating. No longer were rows of clerks on stools sufficient. Women
started to enter to workforce in a very complex way."
"Typewriting is associated with
the suffragette movement and the independent woman, but on the other
hand, this figure is either alien and cold or a new sex-toy for the male
office workers of the world. Originally, the typewriter sales companies
sold the typist with the typewriter: she was part of the package."
This contradictory packaging of the typewriter with the typist in the
case of the suffragette, caused G.K. Chesterton to quip that "women
refused to be dictated to and went out and became stenographers."
It is also ironic that the 1930's
romantic image of a journalist sitting long into the night, with his
suspenders down and a bottle of bourbon in the desk drawer, has come to
represent unalienated, direct, honest writing. Only a few decades
earlier, the typewriter was not seen as the symbol of writing; the pen
was the direct mode of communication. Typing was seen as an inferior
mechanical process. Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood, once
infamously dismissed the work of Beat generation author Jack Kerouac's On
The Road saying "that isn't writing, it's typing."
As Wershler-Henry and I spoke over the
telephone, we recreated the dictator-transcriber role. I frantically
attempted to speed up my typing to make sure my transcribing of our
conversation on my computer keyboard kept up with his admission that
"I can't type - I've never been able, I've never taken a
typing class. I've tried to teach myself ever since the third grade, and
now I'm an insanely fast hunt-and-peck two-finger typist."
Like so many writers today, however,
Wershler-Henry is hunting and pecking on digital technology that not
only records but links him to information from anywhere in the world.
"My own writing is structured around the computer. Not only do I
write on a computer, it's a network computer and can access the Internet
and the hundreds of feeds that come into my path at any given moment.
These are the terms under which I write now - it would be difficult to
consider it any other way."
derek beaulieu is the author of several books of poetry
(with wax Coach House, 2003; Frogments from the Frag Pool Mercury, 2005;
fractal economies Talonbooks, 2006). His poetry and artwork has appeared extensively in magazines and galleries across Canada. He recently co-edited
Shift & Switch: new canadian poetry (Mercury, 2006). He lives, with his young daughter, in Calgary where he is Administrative Director at The New Gallery, an artist-run centre. |
