Safransky, retiring editor of The Sun, imagines the previous owners of a typewriter that had served him well. Writing in 1987, he evokes another era of different details along with the process of writing, which essentially remains the same:
I wondered how many other people had owned it over the years. On how many nights had someone switched on a small lamp and rolled a sheet of paper into the carriage and waited–a cup of coffee nearby, cigarette smoke drifting to the ceiling–waited in suspended time for the right words to come, waited under that pale yellow light for the image that rises from within, that joins what is seen with what is hidden, that makes the world anew.
“Last Words,” September 1987; photograph by Z. LeCompte
