A Writer's Best Friend

"How would you like to visit Pyongyang and interview Kim Jong Il?" my producer inquired.

"Do you have to ask?" I replied, in the most sarcastic tone I could muster. A chance to interview Kim Jong Il, the most mysterious and shadowy figure on the world stage? What red-blooded, expatriate American journalist wouldn't drop everything to int erview the guy and find out if he really is a nutzoid, pathological killer -- or whether all those stories are just the work of a great PR agent?

The saga begins

The preparations for my planned trip to North Korea were more like getting ready for an African safari than for a visit to the world's last "socialist paradise." As always, though, I readied my laptop computer -- just as much a necessity for a journali st these days as a tape recorder or camera.

"Don't even think about it," warned an acquaintance who had been to North Korea. "They'll be watching you all the time, going through your things, checking to see if you're a spy or an assassin. Do you really want them to check out your PC from the ins ide out? Who knows what they'll do to your gear when you're not in your room?"

After dwelling on the possibility of a North Korean "technical expert" checking to see what's on my hard disk -- with a screwdriver -- I began to fret about what to do. In this day, you are considered functionally illiterate without a PC: a social pari ah. We have all become so dependent on our little machines that the very thought of traveling without a laptop can produce chills and symptoms of withdrawal.

What were my alternatives? I could handwrite my radio scripts on a legal pad, but my handwriting can only be deciphered by a pharmacist who has studied Sanskrit. As I tried to think of other solutions, and began to seriously consider penmanship lesso ns, my producer called from Washington with what seemed a ridiculous suggestion: "Why don't you bring a portable typewriter along? A good portable typewriter beats a finicky laptop hands down."

"You must be joking," I declared. A portable typewriter? (Do they still make them! A typewriter isn't far up the evolutionary scale from Gutenberg's first press.) A typewriter -- in the age of laser printers, fax machines, electronic mail, and the In formation Super Highway? How could anyone get anything done with a typewriter?

I could almost hear the knowing smile on the other side of the world. "Trust me. It's the best thing going into hostile, unknown territory,'' he assured me, in the tone of voice a grandfather uses to teach his grandson about fishing. "Better a typewrit er than a computer in Pyongyang. You'll never have to worry about the power going out, or your hard disk crashing." He went on to express his doubts that Pyongyang boasted many computer stores, and didn't think Microsoft had a local office there, either.

The search

After hearing about his version of "the good old days," when writers were writers and editors were glad of it, I conceded that his argument was sound. A portable typewriter might indeed be a viable solution. True, I hadn't used a typewriter since I took t yping in high school, and I certainly didn't own one, but there was still a week to go before my flight -- plenty of time to find a top-of-the-line portable typewriter... Not!

"It's like finding a manual typewriter in Tokyo" will forever replace "finding a needle in a haystack" in my personal collection of adages. There was not a portable typewriter to be had. I called the major stationary stores: they had typewriters, but only big, lumbering, electric models used for filling out the complex shipping and banking forms that keep Japan's economy running. I checked the mom-and-pop stationery shops that are on virtually every street corner and seem to stock items dating from t he age of the quill pen. But when I asked the clerks if they had a small, portable typewriter for sale, I might as well have been a Martian asking to be taken to the Prime Minister. The looks received conveyed an unspoken, bewildered "why?"

Then a friend told me of some typewriter shops that sell used machines to ... well, someone. But, the only thing I found while checking out those shops were vacant lots, or signs in the window listing the number of a local real estate agent. Another in dustry run-over on the Information Super Highway. I did a bit of research and discovered a portable typewriter called the Valentine. In "cute-sells" Japan, the target market for the little beasty is probably teenage girls looking for a trendy tool for writing their first love-letters. The color of the lc35,000 machine is fire-engine red. An appropriate hue for visiting North Korea, I mused, but not the sort of color I would care to look at for hours on end. Still, if there was nothing else...

Time to leave

Only five days to go before heading for the Hermit Kingdom. Did I dare chance taking my PC? Or should I rely on my cryptic handwriting? I was about to flip a coin when my producer called again. It seems that several years ago, from the newsroom of an o rganization now long-gone, a lot of junk had been thrown away. One of the castoffs was an old Olivetti Lettera 32. "The same type I have," he proudly informed me. "I bought mine in '64 on my way to the Navy. We've been everywhere together; hasn't failed me yet."

He had salvaged the contraption to keep as a spare, and now offered it to me as a gift -- a passing of the torch, I guess -- if I would agreed to pay the shipping charges (well over $100 for rush service). I almost gagged, but under the circumstances, 10,000 yen for a portable typewriter seemed not such a bad deal.

I eagerly awaited the final item on my equipment checklist. The package arrived with one day to spare. Inside the large, seasoned, cardboard box was my new traveling companion: a blue-gray Olivetti Lettera 32, circa LBJ and Vietnam. It wasn't much to look at, but it weighed only a few pounds and, surprisingly, had one of the smoothest keyboards I've ever felt. But there was little time to get acquainted; I would have to learn how to work the thing on the road.

The sad reality

"I'm sorry," the North Korean diplomat apologized, as a portrait of Kim Il Sung leered at me from the wall behind him. "There's a two-year waiting list for journalists to visit."

"Then why were we invited in the first place?" I asked one of the world's few remaining Communist functionaries.

"I don't know," was the helpful reply. "We just do what Pyongyang tells us to do."

Drat! All dressed up and nowhere to go. Fortunately, the whole affair was not a total loss; after much argument and hardball negotiations, my colleague (who was on the list several months before me) got permission. We quickly worked out a plan by which he would send his radio and wire reports to Beijing, where I could pass them to Washington. (He never did get the interview with Kim part II, unfortunately, but we did file some interesting stories. See "The Land Internet Forgot" in the November Computing Japan, for a sample.)

Re-learning to type

A week to spend in Beijing -- most of it in a hotel room, editing audio tape and writing copy. A lot of work, and no laptop. Oh, well! With no choice in the matter, I sat down and started re-learning how to work a manual typewriter.

I took me a while. I reached deep into my mental archive, back to my high school days, and remembered the little things -- that a "1" is typed as a lowercase "L" and that you can make an exclamation mark with apostrophe-backspace-period. Just like ridi ng a bike: the know-how never really leaves you. At times, I could almost see the vicious, bespectacled witch of a typing teacher who threatened to strip the flesh from my knuckles if I so much as looked at the keyboard while she taught the Biblical-like virtues of the sacred "home keys."

Eventually, I felt the need to conserve the supply of typing paper I had brought with me for dispatches. So, after I had exhausted all the hotel guest stationery I could find -- the stuff in the drawer next to the Gideon Bible I called housekeeping to request more. This caused quite a stir, as well as suspicion about what I was up to. That, and the fact that I possessed a manual typewriter dating back to the Cultural Revolution, must have truly caused a panic among the hotel staff.

The revelation

Intrigue aside, those long hours in the hotel room taught me that there are advantages (yes, advantages) to using a typewriter. It also reminded me that there are some very useful mental skills many of us have lost by becoming dependent on a word processor. It was to be, well, somewhat of a spiritual experience.

Isaac Asimov, author of hundreds of books on nearly every kind of subject, once described what he thought the most advanced information storage and retrieval device would be like. It would store massive amounts of data, require no external power sour ce, and be cheap enough for anyone to own. It took a while for the reader figure out what Asimov was talking about: a book.

Like a book, and unlike a computer, a typewriter requires no electricity. It doesn't require that you read voluminous manuals or memorize complicated keystroke commands, and all of the models are virtually the same. The only software required to oper ate it is the human brain.

The typewriter is an amazing device, I discovered. You sit down and type, and immediately you see your thoughts on paper. No powering up, no cables to connect, no batteries to worry about: nothing but you and your words. The immediate product of your fingers not always in a final, usable form, but after molding and polishing, and throwing away, the stuff that's left can be something wonderful.

A typewriter demands the user to think in a linear manner. You first must compose the sentence in your head, and then type. This requires far more mental discipline than a word processor, which encourages spaghetti-like composition and permits changes ad infinitum. With a typewriter, you must, in silence, do what most of us don't seem to have the time to do these days: think and reflect on what you're trying to say. I began to feel like a deprogrammed cult-follower! The uses for this amazing device see med endless.

You can't beat a typewriter for quick, small notes, for filling out forms, labels, envelopes -- all sorts of things. And it's rugged. It will even keep working if you spill coffee on it or drop it into a swamp!

I soon began to wonder about other things. A computer has a useful lifetime of only two or three years, before the engineers at Intel and Microsoft come out with innovations that render your many-thousand-dollars investment obsolete. A well-built manual typewriter, with functional principles that have not changed in nearly a century, can faithfully serve its owner for decades.

Writers, as well as other professionals who create text for a living, now spend hundreds or thousands of dollars every year for new equipment and software: money that, before the invention of the personal computer, would have been spent on books, or travel, or someone a lot better looking than Bill Gates.

I eventually began to call into question some of the economic realities of our time. We constantly spend our money on newer and faster computer everythings. Think about it: What other industry in the history of man has operated like the software industry? A business where, if you create a product that doesn't do what it should, and is riddled with all sorts of defects -- you get rich fixing the problems you caused by selling upgrades. At the time my typewriter cat-came off the assembly line, that sort of thing was called consumer fraud.

Computers get no respect

Besides the mental discipline considerations, and the lack of need for upgrades, one must take into account the "Loyalty and Respect Factor" of owning a typewriter. At one time, a typewriter inspired its user to view it as a living, breathing friend and companion. It was an assistant that stuck by you through all the good times and the bad. And just like the friend of flesh and blood, each typewriter has its own annoying quirks and flaws. Every one is unique and has its own way of doing things that, with time and patience, one learns to adapt to and accept. And like a friend, a typewriter was not easily discarded or abandoned when times got tough. A true writer once would have sold his soul before he would part with his beloved writing machine for something as insignificant as, say, food.

Who feels that way about a computer? These days, nobody seems to feel loyalty for their machines. Our loyalty lasts only as long as the PC we possess is "on the cutting edge." People sell or trade their laptops or notebooks with all the heartlessness of Simon Legree. A writing machine that one has traveled the world with, been under fire with, spent both the good and the bad times with, and spent more "quality time' with than family, deserves a certain amount of loyalty. If you have poured out the most intimate, inner workings of your soul onto any sort of writing machine, you should treat that device with the same sensitivity and respect as any other lover.

The information country road

But the greatest fun I found is, like most pleasures, not practical. Using a typewriter these days has a certain romance to it. It can transport its user, especially a journalist, back to a much simpler and slower era. When the typewriter was in its prime, correspondents traversed the world on ships, constantly evading their editors, whose only hope of contacting their wandering employees in a far-flung corner of the world was to send a telegram to some exotic Port of call, in the hope that, somehow, the message eventually would be delivered.

It was a more innocent era; a time of far-away lands, steamer trunks, trench coats, Zippo lighters, romance, and adventure. A time when the United States was still considered an up-and-coming country. A time when the moon was still a mystery; when a pre-Hitler Europe was the undisputed center of human civilization; when the perils of travel were the elements of nature, not the bombs of terrorists.

Someday, our newspapers and magazines may eventually be delivered to us electronically, and all of the knowledge of the human race will be available at the touch of a finger. But I hope we never cease to find joy in the arrival through the mail of a letter from an old friend, composed in the heart and brought to life on an antiquated but faithful manual typewriter.

Don't get me wrong. I have no intention of throwing away my laptop or desktop computer anytime soon. I'm still a cyber-junky, and will probably be one for the rest of my life. But neither do I intend to abandon my new (old) typewriter. I have a feeling 1 will still be using it many years from now. After all, even though many people of the world travel along highways -- even those of the Information Super-variety -- who among us doesn't enjoy, on some lazy weekend, lust going out for a drive down some old, quiet country lane!

Thanks Kim! I hope to return the favor sometime.