Hasta La Ideas

I would have titled this post “No typewriter for old men,” but The Guardian beat me to it! Cormac McCarthy, author of aforementioned novel, All the Pretty Horses and The Road has auctioned off his trusty old Lettera through Christies. His workhouse machine since 1958, he has composed all manuscripts with it. It sold for an incredible $254,500 to an anonymous bidder: over 10 times the estimated price.

“I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not yet published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of fifty years…” he claims in the accompanying letter of authentication. He also states that the only maintenance done over the years involved “blowing out the dust with a service station air hose.” Hmmm, maybe that’s how he came up with Anton Chigurh’s murderous weapon of injecting compressed air into his victims?

Read more about the Lettera at The New Yorker.