Photo by Susana Raab for The New York Times; caption: “The writer Flannery O’Connor’s desk and typewriter in her bedroom at Andalusia, her farm near Milledgeville, Ga. She was a master of the Southern Gothic.”
From the Travel section article of the New York Times, February 4, 2007, by Lawrence Downes:
I was met at the door by Craig R. Amason, the executive director of the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation, the nonprofit organization set up to sustain her memory and preserve her home. When the affable Mr. Amason, the foundation’s sole employee, is not showing pilgrims around, he is raising money to fix up the place, a project that is a few million dollars short of its goal. The foundation urgently wants to restore the house and outbuildings to postcard-perfection, to insure its survival. Last year the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation placed Andalusia on its list of most endangered places in the state.
For now, the 21-acre property is in a captivating state of decay.
There is no slow buildup on this tour; the final destination is the first doorway on your left: O’Connor’s bedroom and study, converted from a sitting room because she couldn’t climb the stairs. Mr. Amason stood back, politely granting me silence as I gathered my thoughts and drank in every detail.
This is where O’Connor wrote, for three hours every day. Her bed had a faded blue-and-white coverlet. The blue drapes, in a 1950’s pattern, were dingy, and the paint was flaking off the walls. There was a portable typewriter, a hi-fi with classical LPs, a few bookcases. Leaning against an armoire were the aluminum crutches that O’Connor used, with her rashy swollen legs and crumbling bones, to get from bedroom to kitchen to porch.
There are few opportunities for so intimate and unguarded a glimpse into the private life of a great American writer. Mr. Amason told me that visitors sometimes wept on the bedroom threshold.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Why do we wax nostalgic with these recent typewriter posts? Somehow, I can’t picture our great writers pounding away, on laptops. And Jack Nicholson in the Shining – maniacally repeating his line away on his iPhone, LOL… would not have the same effect. Typewriters are so quaint now; wished I’d kept my first one.
We had an employee once, older chap, who kept his own unique cataloguing system on 3 x 5 cards, and yup, entries were typewritten. He had a heckuva time getting tape ribbons for the old machine though.
No, I wouldn’t trade in the easy editing of a computer, but would love to have an old ribbon typewriter just to look at.
LikeLike