This is the Smith-Corona Electra 12, upon which my father wrote his master's thesis in Cambridge, and I wrote Yes in Boston, "Brian's Dream" in Virginia, and chunks of Fugue and Like Swimming in Atlanta. It stopped working--wouldn't turn on at all--and my then-roommate DP, mechanically inclined as he is, decided to fix it. He took the typewriter apart quickly and tracked the problem to that small black rectangle you see in the picture, to the right of the carriage, above and slightly to the left of the screwdrivers. That small black rectangle is the switch, the only self-contained part of the typewriter. Someday I'll find a replacement; until then, continues to travel the East Coast--right now, it's in Blacksburg, VA, as a prop in a film version of my short story "The Goat."

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typewriter, coffee, tools, machine guts

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