One of the more infuriating self-plugs common to elderly writers is the insistence that they (or that YOU SHOULD) still write on a manual typewriter. I know this sounds insane, but just I swear that both Tom Wolfe and Larry McMurtry claim that they write on manual typewriters. Nice affectation. Or nice load of bullshit. My real question, however, is what will this sort of “aesthete” be saying in 2020? What will be the hardscrabble rite of passage?

“I wrote my first two novels on a Compaq Armada Pentium II with a 3.0 gig hard drive, 266 processor, and dial-up.”

“I used an external hard drive.”