The Keys to Conan: Blood and Thunder on the Underwood No. 5

You might think the new Conan movie inspired this article. Alas, you would be wrong. Its source is my immense appreciation of Robert E. Howard’s work and my love affair with vintage manual typewriters. To understand the blood and thunder style of REH, indeed all our classics of swords, sorceries and heroics, I think you need an appreciation of the manual typewriter’s effect on the craft of fiction. There’s this great scene in The Whole Wide World where Robert E. Howard pounds away on his typewriter, dictating to himself with the passion of the possessed. That machine, which Howard purchased in 1928 and used till the very end, was the classic Underwood No. 5. For decades, when most people thought “typewriter” this 30 lb. desktop machine was what they had in mind. Millions were produced between 1901 and 1932, so even today the Underwood No. 5 isn’t a rare find, nor particularly valuable unless in mint condition. When Howard bought one of these machines, he knew he was getting a reliable companion for his career. Think about the investment value. Many of these machines still work now. Think your Dell Inspiron or Macbook will be workable in 80 years? Me neither. You can get a No. 5 on eBay for $50 or less, non-restored. (For restoration you’d need a typewriter repair place, which is becoming increasingly rare.) You’ll pay almost as much for the machine as for shipping. Sadly, I don’t have one myself. Yet. I own ten typewriters already and my wife scowls when I mention a new one… I do have an L.C. Smith from the mid-30’s and a Royal Portable from 1929 (mint condition and ever so precise), so I can well attest to the action and experience of these old machines. Many of you have likely never used a manual typewriter before. Perhaps an electric, perhaps none at all. (I touched my first computer in 1983, resented the electric typewriters we learned to type on in school, and didn’t experience the true pleasure of the manual typewriter until early 2010.) If your experience is limited to electric machines, then you only know half the story. It’s just not the same. There’s an almost primal experience to using a manual, like a sculptor chiseling or a carpenter hammering. The striking of the keys, the smell of oil and metal, the gunfire staccato of striking keys (the sharp feedback as they rebound), the bell ring warning the end of the line approaches, the scraping return of the carriage, the scroll of paper. It is a thing of art and beauty. As for the effect on writing… Take a look at some books from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Notice something? They got bigger with each decade, huh? There was a marketing dynamic, sure. But computers allowed writers to match the dynamic. Allowed us all to easily become messy and long-winded. You don’t often see writing with the fast-paced, blazing action you find in old pulps. Some of that is style, but when you type on a manual machine the very writing of the story has an immediate physicality to it, not unlike the fast-paced action in REH’s work. There is sound and action. I notice the sounds more in older books. The brevity of the words. The rush of the action. Computers, gods know I love them, simply don’t have this kind of soul. And writing with them, I think, becomes more cerebral and less a physical act of creation. And it shows. Our books today tend towards lengthy description and introspection far more than the thundering heroic fantasy pounded out on the old manuals. When you write something on a typewriter, you have to mean it. Remember, if you mess up or change your mind, that’s the whole page to retype. There’s no time for rambling and dithering along through a story. You get to the point. You say what you mean. And you say it right the first time. And, I think the nature of the machine itself changes how you write. For bold pulp action, I think it changes it for the better. Note: I have thus far written one novel on a manual typewriter, a 1955 Hermes Rocket. I plan on composing all my future works on various typewriters. Naturally they will get scanned in and edited on the computer. There are advantages to our modern world. This article originally appeared on Rogue Blade’s Home of Heroics.