Ever since Tom Furrier introduced he was closing Cambridge Typewriter the telephone has been ringing off the hook.
“I’m going out on prime,” hollered the 70-year-old on a current morning at his storefront on Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington, the place he moved the enterprise, which has been round for greater than 50 years, after shopping for it from his outdated boss in 1990. “I’m busier than ever.”
Furrier’s tiny store is a mid-century relic, with the odor of ink wafting by means of the door, framed interval adverts on the partitions, and dozens of classic handbook typewriters emblazoned with names comparable to Underwood, Remington, Smith-Corona, and Royal perched on cabinets and sitting on the ground in sturdy circumstances.
Like so many companies, Furrier’s was disrupted by the digital revolution of the Nineties. However current years have introduced a modest renaissance for the Nineteenth-century communication expertise as a wave of younger prospects with a penchant for handbook typewriters boosted the shop’s funds.
This new cohort joined the store’s shrinking group of regulars, which over time has included celebrated writers like Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, novelist Celeste Ng (“Little Fires In all places”), memoirist Susanna Kaysen (“Lady, Interrupted”), and poet Louise Glück, who gained the 2020 Nobel Prize in literature — and generations of Harvard, MIT, and Boston-area college students and college members.
Though his enterprise remains to be strong, Furrier says he’s prepared for retirement. Many years of lifting and fixing typewriters (about 30,000 by his rely) have left him with worn cartilage in his arms and persistent again ache. After plans to promote the store failed twice, he’ll shut down on the finish of March.
It’s bittersweet.
“I’m actually going to overlook this place,” stated Furrier, his work jacket exhibiting cussed grease stains and, in his pockets, his favourite instruments: a spring hook and a small screwdriver to achieve contained in the machines’ nooks and crannies. “I’m going to overlook my prospects. My common prospects are very upset as a result of now they’ll need to journey to southern New Hampshire, Rhode Island or southern Connecticut … However I’m simply finished.”
A forestry main and lifelong tinkerer, Furrier started as a typewriter technician within the Eighties, when he was 25. In these days he did largely service calls at MIT and Harvard Regulation Faculty, the place he would repair machines utilized by students comparable to Laurence Tribe, Alan Dershowitz, and others, he stated.
In recent times, others with hyperlinks to Harvard have visited his store, amongst them Tayari Jones, a 2011-2012 Radcliffe Fellow who grew to become a typewriter devotee.
Jones’ encounter with Furrier was as serendipitous because it was consequential. Fighting author’s block, she visited the store in search of inspiration.
“Tom made me right into a convert,” stated Jones, who teaches inventive writing at Emory College, in a telephone interview. “It wasn’t till I went to Tom’s that I found handbook typewriters … Tom is the best typewriter physician as a result of he doesn’t run his store like a museum. He’s not fussy and prissy about it. He’s very sensible and all the way down to earth. He desires us all simply to have enjoyable with the typewriter; simply get it; put some paper in there; make some noise and make some artwork.”
“Tom is the best typewriter physician as a result of he doesn’t run his store like a museum.”
Tayari Jones
Jones now writes on classic handbook typewriters. In reality, her 2018 award-winning best-seller “American Marriage” was produced fully on a typewriter — one of many 11 in her assortment, 5 of which she purchased from Furrier.
“There’s a lot stress within the business to be quick,” Jones stated. “Utilizing a typewriter made me really feel like, I can decelerate and work at my very own tempo … And there’s something so satisfying about elevating a racket when utilizing a typewriter.”
Professors Jill Lepore and Leah Value visited Furrier’s store as they have been making ready for “The way to Learn a Ebook,” a seminar they co-taught a couple of years in the past. The category requested college students to consider the instruments they use to take notes by recapitulating the historical past of note-taking applied sciences, Lepore wrote in an electronic mail. College students used clay and a stylus, paper and quills, typewriters and smartphones.
Lepore stated she used the typewriters she purchased from Furrier in a historical past class she taught within the fall.
“We visited Cambridge Typewriter some years again to top off,” wrote Lepore. “I nonetheless use the three typewriters that I purchased from him then … It’s tougher and tougher to search out typewriters to make use of. When those I’ve received break down, or once I can now not substitute the ribbon, this significant piece of the historical past of expertise might be misplaced.”
Reached by electronic mail, Value, an affiliate in Harvard’s English Division and Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor at Rutgers College, stated she had form of an epiphany at Furrier’s retailer.
“Visiting Tom’s store helped me perceive that developing with concepts is the simple half,” stated Value. “Repairing the instruments that report and transmitting these concepts turned out to be surprisingly difficult, and banging out their ideas on a typewriter keyboard helped decelerate our college students to a tempo the place they needed to assume earlier than they wrote. Come the apocalypse, each Crimson journalist might wish to know how you can change a typewriter ribbon.”
“Visiting Tom’s store helped me perceive that developing with concepts is the simple half.”
Leah Value
Guests typically come to Furrier’s store as if it have been a museum or a curiosity store.
“If folks are available in by themselves, they arrive again with household or pals as a result of they are saying, ‘You’ve received to come back to see this store,”’ Furrier stated. “Or folks include their grandkids to point out them that that is what they used to put in writing with.”
Furrier stated it took him abruptly when a youthful crowd began showing within the early 2000s. Some have been aspiring writers who wished to emulate legendary ones, just like the buyer trying to buy a Hermes 3000, the mannequin famously utilized by American poet Sylvia Plath. Others have been in search of one thing computer systems can’t provide.
“To jot down on a typewriter is a very totally different expertise than writing on a pc,” stated Furrier. “It’s a sensorial expertise; the sounds of the click-clack, the texture of the keys and the paper, the odor of the ink. And there are not any distractions. Typewriters solely do one factor; you’ll be able to’t multitask on it, and that’s a brand new factor to youthful folks.”
“It’s a sensorial expertise; the sounds of the click-clack, the texture of the keys and the paper, the odor of the ink. And there are not any distractions. Typewriters solely do one factor; you’ll be able to’t multitask on it, and that’s a brand new factor to youthful folks.”
Thomas Furrier
Reflecting on his profession, Furrier stated he most cherishes the friendships he made with writers and a few prospects, and a few stints as a typewriter guide for interval movies, amongst them one by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris.
Different highlights embody the time when actor Tom Hanks, a typewriter collector, gifted him an autographed Olympia SM4 machine with a typewritten letter asking him to “take excellent care of it and assist it hold doing its job for one more hundred years.”
After which there was being talked about within the acknowledgment part by Jones in “American Marriage.”
To bid farewell, Furrier will maintain a retirement occasion with typewriters for folks to make use of on March 22 on the Fox Library in East Arlington. Longtime prospects, pals, and most of the people are all invited.
“It has been past my wildest goals,” Furrier stated of his profession. “For a tinkerer like me, fixing typewriters has been enjoyable and rewarding. I received to befriend some superb writers and geek out about typewriters. And the way many individuals can say they received film credit and a guide acknowledgement?”
