Word: manual
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...reader beware; the canny old master of Italian fiction has once again pulled a fast one. Of Alberto Moravia's five covertly political novels of the past three decades, 1934 is the most disguised. His previous novel, Time of Desecration (1980), was tricky enough; masquerading as a manual of kinky sex, it was, in fact, a riveting case history of the psychopathology of terrorism. In 1934, Moravia has obscured his true intentions by adopting the histrionic manner and high-flown diction of German romanticism. The effect is bizarre and not always convincing...
...anyone concerned with the fate of the typewriter will recognize a trend. It is going, this wonderful machine. It is on its way out of the world. Whether at the urgings of the Communists or the word processors, the device that has come to be called the old-fashioned manual will soon lie dusty in fraudulent antique shops between the duck decoys and the miniature spoons. "What's that funny-looking box, Daddy?" "Why, that's an Underwood, darling [gulping imperceptibly...
...cares, really, if the manual typewriter goes the way of the manual orange-juice squeezer or the crank phone? Progress is progress. It isn't as if the invention itself is dropping from existence; there are new electronic microchip jobs that automatically produce a thousand individually addressed love letters while the author snorkels in Cancún. Nor is there a great heaving nostalgia attached to the old machine. The history of its growth reads as excitingly as politics in Ottawa. Besides, people these days show far too much reflex yearning for the snows of yesteryear. Let the thing...
Pleasant as all this may be to record, it does not add up to much. Mainly one will miss the manual machine simply because it has been around so long. We take unexpressed comfort from the sight of familiar objects, superannuated or not, tending to regret their absence even when we no longer require their presence. Then, too, we will miss the sound, the clackbop from the house next door that signaled the Great American Novel in progress, or the Great American Last-Minute Term Paper. Writers will miss their old machines greatly, even as they now flirt pantingly with...
...NARRATIVE is leavened, however, by Erofeev's prodigal powers of comic invention. There are countless passages of Rabelaisian discourse. One entire chapter is devoted to a detailed analysis of Russia's greatest calling--hiccups. Another chapter is a bartender's manual for some of the most bizarre drinks ever conceived, including an unorthodox mixture of beer, two kinds of shampoo (one anti-dandruff), and insect repellant. The humor ranges from the highly subtle to the truly gross, most of it reasonably well-served by J.R. Dorrell's colloquial translation...