When I first got into this business, it was not uncommon to find writers who still used typewriters on a daily basis. Now, I'm talking 20 years ago. But it's a fact that back then, Jim Crumley, Robert Parker, Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, (hell, even Hemingway had he lived into his 80s) were using typewriters, even if they were powered electrically like the famous IBM Selectric.

'Course, all the writers I just mentioned are dead now, and so too it seems, is the typewriter.

I loved that famous picture of Papa seated at a desk in Ketchum, Idaho, looking healthy and burly, shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, while he pounded out the manuscript that would become For Whom the Bell Tolls. To me the sound of that machine-gun clatter that only a typewriter can make is music to the soul. Especially the clatter from a manual typewriter. Back then I envisioned myself doing the same thing, typing out my stories and novels in single-extended-index-finger style on an old black Remington portable, not unlike the one Papa is using in the famous photo....

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