Fiction chronicle November 2006
Severe manners
Reviews of “The View from Castle Rock: Stories,” by Alice Munro; “Talk Talk,” by T. C. Boyle; and “Special Topics in Calamity Physics,” by Marisha Pessl.
The Royal 10 typewriter was introduced in 1914 and was one of the last real advances in typewriter design. It had side panels of bevelled glass because the levers, gears, couplings, and pins which converted the downward thrust of your finger to the tight thwap of letter on paper were intricate and fascinating enough to warrant display. One could imagine sitting sideways to the Royal 10, typing out nonsense, satisfied with simply watching it work. It wouldn’t really matter if the letters were forming words, the words sentences, the sentences a cohesive paragraph contributing rhetorically to the sense of the whole. It wouldn’t matter a whit, because the graceful movements of the steel and gun oil were more than just a technological wonder. Watching the Royal 10 was like watching a ballet. The Royal 10 reminds me of Alice Munro.
It doesn’t matter what Alice Munro is writing about—it’s fun just to watch her...
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