F

Flavorwire

Photography

Famous Authors and Their Typewriters

By Emily Temple on
← →
of 19

Ernest Hemingway, 1939

← →
of 19
View all pages

Filed Under:

Bob DylanCharles BukowskiErnest HemingwaySylvia PlathWilliam FaulknerWilliam S Burroughs
Post comment as
twitter logo facebook logo
Sort: Newest | Oldest

[...] Mundo Livro, Carlos André Moreira juntou uma galeria de fotos de escritores brasileiros. Escritores famosos e suas máquinas de escrever. O 18º Educar, Congresso internacional de educação 2011 com o tema: “A educação [...]

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

[...] *Want to see some authors at their typewriters? Here they are. [...]

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

[...] are pretty great (from Flavorwire, via LIFE Magazine) and seem to me the ultimate in “literary eye candy.”  Why is this? [...]

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

models wanted, modelling work Earn $2K a week as a model and get paid every Friday. We are looking for 10 new models today so hurry up before all the positions are filled up. Many of our girls are earning over $10K a month and have no money worries anymore. http://www.flickr.com/photos/81649483@N04/7478621850/in/photostream earn $1k a week, hiring models

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Excellent post! We are linking to this particularly great content on our site. Keep up the good writing.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Best Faulkner quote: " She existed in that dream state in which you run without moving, from a terror in which you cannot believe towards a safety in which you have no faith." William Faulkner Absolum, Absolum

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Gotta love him, Hunter Thompson

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I don't have any photographs, but I do have Bill Mauldin's typewriter, I think! I have a Remington Noiseless Portable No. ND- I 73048, with warranty from the Remington Typewriter Company Ltd, 100 Gracechurch Street, London EC3. It's complete and in working order, but needs some TLC. It was my father's, but I understood that previously it had been Bill Mauldin's. Certainly a possibility - my father was a chum of Bill's; I have Mauldin books with Willie/Joe dedications to my father. I had thought of offering it on Ebay, but perhaps it deserves a more discerning home? Mike Shepherd-Smith England

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Elmore Leonard is STILL writing on an IBM Selectric ("still," as in, he wrote on his IBM Selectric today. He's hard at work finishing his next novel, "Raylin"). And Brando loved science and had a computer in the early 90s - a Mac - before most people did.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Enjoyed seeing photos of some authors I've read, others I've only heard of. In this era of "living color" it's refreshing to see these in black and white. The images in black and white in some ways create drama and give even more strength to the subjects.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Isn't it wrong to lift the photographs from another source with getting permission and without attributing the photograph? It would seem that just as it is wrong to plagiarize, it is wrong to post a picture without giving credit to the photographer.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I'm sad there were so few women and one person of color. And the people who said "get over it" make me want to puke. A meritocracy? Are you joking? I know...you're not. I just wish you were. Thanks for putting up this fabulous post. I certainly don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth. I just do urge you to try to represent these tragically underrepresented populations. James Baldwin? nikki giovanni? Anne Sexton?

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Cool! I love seeing the faces behind the words I so enjoy. What isn't cool is all of the folks so unhappy with themselves who just have to criticize and complain... (kinda like me! oh!) Check out your local garage sales, you just may find that Olivetti Lettera 22 for $5.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

So even if we consider the life mag gallery most of these images seem to have been drawn from, i.e. this idea one should consider the "vintage" or era, there's the weird exclusion of Nikki Giovanni. Which is to say one would not have had to look all that hard, nor all that long, to find someone else's image to include other than Faulkner mfing *twice*. And Nikki's photo is awesome! Looks like she's standing with some kind of early 70s era processor: http://www.life.com/gallery/42822/image/2119727#index/27 And even a cursory search of the interwebs turns up photos of James Baldwin and Richard Wright with their typewriters. Uh? Ugh.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

No Hunter S Thompson; the fisrt image any writers, especially a so called 'journalist' would think of, and you include Maroln Brando etc..

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

most looked more like composites than actual photos, which explains the absence of photo credits

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Can you imagine creating in such a tidy space? I couldn't do it.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I agree about the PC stuff...the amount of women and POC is what it would have been for the vintage. And yes, many look posed...these were pictures in LIFE magazine, folks, think of the era! Most pics were posed back then...it's still cool to see the authors in any format. PERIOD. I'd just like to see more. PERIOD.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I have to agree with Brian. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson should have been here. There's also a general lack of female writers. Peace!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

About halfway through I started smiling from ear to ear. I haven't stopped. Thank you.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Amazing, solitary, thoughtful, inspiring pictures of creativity in action! Thanks for posting!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

"These are the sorts of images that make me want to fire up" I'll drink to that!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Stephanie said "Sigh. Faulkner twice? “Just because?” In a set with 4 women writers and 1 person of color? Seriously?" Which person of color? Seems I'm color blind - which speaks to the success of our American melting pot experiment. Besides 1 out of 16 (excluding musician and actor) is about the same proportion as actual famous authors - especially of that vintage. 4 women of 16 is about the right proportion, too. "Half of humanity" is not equal to "half of famous writers".

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Of all the novelists/wordsmiths Leonard Cohen touched me with his words, his music and personality. Yes Leonard Cohen for me.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

"In a set with 4 women writers and 1 person of color? Seriously?" Hate this PC crap. Literature is a meritocracy and doesn't care what color or gender a person is - however, it does reflect the cultural, and those with more opportunity will produce more. If you go up and down the list of great authors, women and "people of color" are actually probably OVERrepresented in this slideshow. It's through no fault of their own, but the huge disparity does exist, and all including equal numbers would do is make the disparity even more glaring. You'd be getting some real mediocre women writers and black writers while still having about 1000 great white men authors to go. Sorry if this doesn't gel with what they taught you at Vassar.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

What about Borges, Camus, Marguerite Yourcenar, Chandler, Steinbeck, Sartre, Clarice Lispector or Huxley? Keep going posting!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

the Burroughs should be the Bug!!!!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

no HST, no Kerouac. santa please

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Thanks, Stephanie. My thoughts precisely. 4 women, 1 POC -- and Faulkner twice. What a disservice.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Have these photos been bound? This collection would make a brilliant coffee table book for lit geeks.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

no Hunter S. Thompson shooting his typewriter? what a terrible omission.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

There's a couple of great shots of Stephen King with his typewriter. I have them as postcards.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Burroughs is posing by the type writer as is Hitchcock. Burroughs had college students type out his work, the nods are not conducive to working the keys. He paid them in smack. Hitchcock had his secretary scare up screen plays from the typewriter.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I'd be curious to what "typefaces" were on those typewriters. Anyone got a clue?

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Finally, at Tennessee Williams, I see a room/office that looks lived in and used! Who are all these writers with their clean workspaces?! How can you create masterpieces that way. I swear someone came by and collected all their papers and crap before they took the picture!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Dr. Gonzo would have something to say about this: http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/5h0k

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Sigh. Faulkner twice? "Just because?" In a set with 4 women writers and 1 person of color? Seriously?

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

You've forgotten Cormac McCarthy and his Olivetti Lettera 32!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I agree that the photos should be credited. And really, why are there no photos of HST with his typewriter and Jack Kerouac with his typewriter?

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I don't mean to be a pest here, but I'm bothered you don't bother to credit these photographs -- when possible -- to the photographers who took them. It'd be relatively easy to do. Clearly many of the photographs are screenshots you lifted from the TIME photo essay on the same subject, and most of those photographs are credited. Photographers work for their photographs and deserve to be given recognition, especially when it's so easy to do.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

I agree with a few of these comments in reference to the Gonzo journalist himself, I feel Thompson is definitely needed on this list. Other than that though, very good stuff.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

No Hunter S. Thompson?

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Ditto to Brian's comment! I went through the slideshow expecting to see my beloved Hunter Thompson. Great photos, but it's too bad HST wasn't included.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Trackbacks

  1. A Literary History Of Word Processing « Movie City News says:
    December 26, 2011 at 1:54 pm

    [...] A Literary History Of Word Processing And – Picturing 19 Famous Authors And Their Typewriters [...]

  2. Pictures authors | Gwinnettgas says:
    April 2, 2012 at 8:42 am

    [...] Flavorwire » Famous Authors and Their TypewritersDec 25, 2011 … There’s something magical about catching a glimpse of one of your favorite authors at work – even a photo of the epic event can send an … [...]

  3. Poetrysphere: The Writing Writer | Simone's Oasis says:
    July 2, 2012 at 4:32 am

    [...] Poetrysphere: The Writing Writer by Simone Published on: July 2, 2012 Comments: No Comments FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { _gaq.push(['_trackEvent','SocialSharing','Facebook - like button',unescape(String(response).replace(/+/g, " "))]); }); If you like photos of writers “behind the scenes” in their writing environments, check out Flavorwire for its gallery of iconic writers with their typewriters. [...]

  4. Thrifty Thursday: Tortoise Sunglasses » Midwestyle says:
    July 6, 2012 at 10:38 pm

    [...] lives, playing sand volleyball in my dog tags with Slider and Iceman, beach soccer, and maybe doing a little bit of work outside if there’s time. I’ve been in the market for some ’60s throwback sunglasses, [...]

  5. Digital Digest | Alice-Azania Jarvis | Independent Digital Digest Blogs says:
    July 25, 2012 at 11:40 am

    [...] Seeing a photograph of your favourite writer at work can be thrilling, especially if they’re using a clunky, romantic, old typewriter. Here, courtesy of Flavorwire, is a charming gallery of great authors at work on typewriters, including William Faulkner, Sylvia Plath, Bob Dylan, Dorothy Parker and George Orwell. ind.pn/WritersType [...]

  6. Across the literary pages » Spectator Blogs says:
    August 6, 2012 at 6:29 am

    [...] – 4 April 2011 12:59 Though not strictly a weekend literary supplement, the Flavorwire has 19 pictures of achingly sharp authors working at their typewriters. They include Tennessee Williams, John Cheevor, Slyvia Plath, [...]

  7. The Making of an Author’s Photo, Part 3: The Final | The Art of Doing says:
    August 7, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    [...] More great author photos and images here and here and here. [...]

  8. iTypewriter, experimenta la bohemia y convierte tu iPad en una máquina de escribir - #Gadgetopost says:
    October 31, 2012 at 3:07 pm

    [...] cual considero digno de las quinceañeras que se llevan su macbook air a Starbucks y además…”. Fuente.¡Y es que así cualquiera escribe un best-seller!, aunque por ahora sentimos anunciar a todos [...]

  9. Nostalgia « Digital Living: FIN_IND_USA says:
    November 8, 2012 at 9:43 am

    [...] some visuals, check out this post with photos of about 20 authors and their typewriters — Sylvia Plath is pictured [...]

  10. Authors and their typewriters :: Zengestrom says:
    January 14, 2013 at 7:18 pm

    [...] same story told in images: here’s a wonderful collection of Time Magazine photographs of famous authors, poets, performers (including Ernest Hemingway, [...]