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ere’s a bit of very interesting typewriter lore. We use A4 sheets to type. American novelist Jack Kerouac wrote his cult classic ‘On the Road’ in 1957 on a single 120-foot-long scroll of paper. Someone bought it at an auction for over $2.4 million in 2001. On the Road is based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. I wonder if it has been translated into Sinhala. If not, someone should. The characters bring to my mind another 60s American classic, this time a movie – ‘Easy Rider.’ Kerouak was apparently inspired by a 10,000-word rambling letter from his friend Neal Cassady. A 10,000 word letter! I wonder if it was typewritten. Most people can’t that much today with a word processor. Isn’t it ironical that, long after writers, painters and other artists are gone after a life of struggle, their work is sold at auctions for millions? Among painters, Van Gogh comes to mind.

Part of my museum project is to find people who use obsolete technology. Here’s someone who printed his own books at home with an old letterpress machine.

This is the late Alloy Gunawardhane who wrote more than 1000 songs including hit songs of iconic singer H. R. Jothipala. Over the years, and now especially after the economic crash, I have admired him more and more, because he printed his own song books with this letterpress machine at home. I admire that tenacity and resilience. He was his own printer and publisher. I took this photo in the early years of the new millennium. By then, letterpress was on the way out, used mostly to print cinema wall posters and death notices – and small song books of popular hits. It was a crude poor man’s press, but it did the job. He had the sort of independence that most writers can only dream of. American poet Walt Whitman was a printer too, writing, printing and publishing his own newspaper single handedlyback in the 19th century, challenging big business. Alloy was doing the same. He’s a hero. Now I wish I had done the same. In today’s context, with outrageous paper and printing costs, the time has come for us to print and publish our own books. Desktop publishing (digital) is a fashionable concept, but I discovered long ago but it’s not cost effective when it comes to printing our own books. I bow my head to these forgotten heroes of the letterpress!

Of typewriters and laptops

Writers are dependent on technology as much as anyone else, whether they write by hand or use machinery (This post is repeated in Book Lover, my writer's blog).

You can see here the technology I used as a writer from 1981 till the new millennium. I bought the 1960s Imperial typewriter at the bottom as an antique 10 years ago, but the white Olympia above is my first typewriter, bought in Jordan in 1981 when I was working for the Jordan Times. I used it for a long time until buying an electric typewriter in the early 1990s. On top is my second laptop, a Bondwell 486 using diskettes bought second hand in 1998 or so. It worked for about 3 years before packing up. Typewriters age well. Laptops don’t. Tapping on a typewriter keyboard is a real life experience compared to a computer keyboard. A computer will keep you connected. You can mail your docs, photos, videos. On the other hand, with a typewriter, you have no spam, viruses, malware or ransomware. I can start using my typewriters again after so many years. All I need is a little machine oil and a new ribbon. But I can’t revive this laptop., and they are expensive. When this one crashed, I had to wait more than ten years to buy another laptop. If there’s no power, I can still type, and I don’t need breaking news when I’m doing creative writing. Finally, when I remove the top and look inside, it fascinates me. The laptop is just a plastic box with a motherboard inside.