Ermanno Marzorati has rarely been so busy. He is currently fixing a 1930 Underwood typewriter for Tom Hanks. However, there are plenty more ancient writing machines awaiting his tender care.
While the modern world taps away in an ever-increasing frenzy online, the Italian senses a new trend, from his calm Beverly Hills studio in California: the return of the art of slow writing.
Marzorati has restored typewriters belonging to Ian Fleming, Tennessee Williams, Jack London, Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles, as well as celebrities like Julie Andrews, Greta Garbo and John Lennon.
Photo: AFP
He proudly shows photographs of some of his best work, including an orange-colored Underwood machine dating from 1926, on which Orson Welles wrote Citizen Kane. It was totally destroyed when he got it.
“To me the typewriter is better than the computer, not because I’m old-fashioned, but because it slows you down. You have to choose the words carefully because you cannot correct,” he said. “It takes a long time to press the key.”
Collector Steve Soboroff says typewriters, unlike computer keyboards, have an intimate relationship with their owners.
“I just love the idea of authors, famous people, would spend hours of their lives on these typewriters, so they are very personal. And there’s only one of them, is not like there are hundreds of them,” he said.
“There’s only one for each,” added the biggest customer of Marzorati, whose studio is full of old printing machines, typewriters and mechanical calculators.
Occasionally Hanks tweets photographs of the vintage typewriters that Marzorati restored in his own collection.
Marzorati has a shelf dedicated to his most famous client, and he currently holds 12 machines belonging to the Forrest Gump star.
In all, the talkative Italian has about 60 machines waiting to be fixed — an enormous number compared with a few years ago. “I’m booked up for six months,” said the 68-year-old, who started repairing typewriters in 2003.
“Collectors are the exception. Most of the people I fix typewriters for are people who are going to use it,” said Marzorati, who was born in Italy in 1945 and moved to Los Angeles in 1969.
“I feel people, honestly, are getting fed up because all these iPhones, all these electronics, they like to get back to the basics,” he said.
However, the obvious question is, why would someone in the 21st century want to type on a heavy and difficult-to-use mechanical device, without the possibility of cutting, pasting, erasing or copying?
Marzorati said the advantages of computers are overrated.
“Writing on a computer is very distracting, because you get e-mail coming in, you type a word, you delete it, you change it, you get stuck,” he said.
His view is echoed by Christopher Lockett, who regularly takes his 1950 Hermes Baby typewriter with him to write in the open air in LA’s Griffith Park, next to the hipster Los Feliz district.
“There are no text windows in blue popping up, you can’t play music on it,” he said. “I shut off my iPhone, I take my typewriter and sit and I don’t worry about the typos, I keep moving forward, and I go dah dah dah dah ding!”
He compares the experience of using a typewriter to riding a bicycle.
“It’s an alternative to the most efficient way of doing something, it’s about enjoying the ride, and nobody gets angry about the notion of a bicycle. But people are like ‘typewriters are impractical,’” he said. “Well, so is a bicycle and people are still making bicycles and it’s not an issue.”
Lockett, a cameraman and documentary-maker, made a film on the subject last year called The Typewriter in the 21st Century, which is currently showing on the independent movie circuit in Los Angeles.
“I thought: ‘If the typewriter is going away, and is in part responsible for every great novel from the 20th century, they deserve a proper send-off,’” he said.
When he set about making the film he was surprised to find that, not only are typewriters not disappearing, but there is a surge of demand for old machines to be repaired and brought back to life.
“Suddenly typewriters were all over the Internet,” he said.
Artist Tim Youd is staging a performance in New York this month in which he taps out a Henry Miller novel on the same model of typewriter used by the writer.
Painter Louise Marler last year held a type-in event in Venice Beach. Young inventor Jack Zylkin meanwhile has created a “hack” that allows a mechanical typewriter to be connected to an iPad via a USB port.
Lockett said the wave of interest in typewriters should not be misunderstood as a desire to return to the past, and abandon modern technology.
“Nobody in the film is saying it is the only way to work. They’re making a case about something everyone is throwing away,” he said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
RSS