“You think when you wake up in the morning yesterday doesn’t count. But yesterday is all that does count.
What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. There’s nothin’ else.”
Cormac McCarthy, passage taken from ‘No Country for Old Men’
Cormac McCarthy is one of this century’s greatest writers.
He’s written, No Country For Old Men, The Road, and host of other novels considered by many to be among America’s best.
Putting his stratospheric status as an American author aside, there’s something that’s even more impressive about him.
He’s a grinder.
Check this out.
According to the New York Times, a heavily weathered, light blue, Lettera 32 Olivetti manual machine that a writer bought in 1963 for $50 was sold at Christie’s to an unidentified American collector for $254,000.
This manual typewriter was traced back to Cormac McCarthy and it was the machine he used to type all his novels, including a couple that won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
The best part of the whole story?
Mr. McCarthy will not be using the opportunity to go digital after all these years. A friend of his recently bought him a replacement typewriter, the same Olivetti model for less than $20.
From where I sit, Cormac McCarthy is the grinder of all grinders. Having typed more than a million of the best words ever recorded on a manual typewriter–McCarthy has no intention of changing.
Is that cool or what?
Thank God for Cormac McCarthy and thank God for grinders.
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