From The Plastic Typewriter book by Paul Dutton, 1993.
Although Paul Dutton finished this series of prints/smudges made from a disassembled plastic typewriter in 1977, this is the first publication of the entire work. It’s a lovely sequence of visual pieces: letters pressed on broken type, lines drawn in (presumably through typewriter ribbon), smudges, fragments of rock lyrics, ribbon rubbings, fingerprints, typed text, in short, a greatly enhanced set of textual elements. Given the replacement of the typewriter by the word processor, there’s a flavor of nostalgia, or perhaps metaphor (in the destruction of the typewriter) in this piece that may not have been originally considered.
Post updated in 2024.