More Reading

     I posted in great haste yesterday and in the process, left off one of the better books I'm reading -- yes, I have several going at any one time, usually one on the Kindle and one on paper, with occasional overage.

     The present paperbound "overage" is an excess of delight and practicality, typewriter collector Richard Polt's The Typewriter Revolution, covering history, use, maintenance, philosophy and esthetics of, yes, the typewriter.  It's got everything from tool-selection guidance to polemics and (partially tongue-in-cheek) propaganda, clearly written, lavishly and nicely illustrated, all in a lovely buckram binding with a bound-in bookmark in the form of red-and-black typewriter ribbon.  It's A Compleat Thing, an artifact at once practical and pleasant.  If you like typewriters, you should have this book.

     Lines to love?  This fellow Richard Polt, with such a deep appreciation of an obsolete, clunky technology, could have signed himself Dr. Polt (he didn't); he's a Professor of Philosophy at Xavier and no slouch at it, either, if a quick web search is to be trusted.  Here he is on fixing your own typewriter, a few pages away from a photo of his neatly-organized workbench:

     "I was never the kind of kid who took apart alarm clocks, but I was able to teach myself typewriter repair as an adult with patience and logic."

     ...Which is how we learn anything, from Heidigger to harmony, the application of patience and logic; a knack alone rarely cuts it.  It shouldn't take a philosophy professor to point it out but I'm kind of glad it did.

     This is a good book; you'll read the parts that appeal to your take on the hobby and save the rest for when you need it.