The Adoptee Who Made the World His Home
Searching for James Michener in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
The typewriter looks exactly as it should: simple, smooth, and gray. There’s nothing special about this Olympia De Luxe; any secretary pool in the 1960s was full of such machines. It stands on an unremarkable writing desk, protected by a wall of glass.
Which is all fitting, because James A. Michener wasn’t a flashy writer. You’d be hard-pressed to find him in a crowd, even if you knew what he looked like.
“Very early on in life,” he once said, “I decided the hell with it, material things weren’t for me. Christmas would come and other kids would have all these presents and it wouldn’t bother me a bit.”
But what this typewriter lacks in ornament it makes up for in deeds: Dozens of novels were rolled over its platen. These hammers imprinted draft after draft, for manuscripts that routinely busted 1,000 pages. The De Luxe wasn’t the only typewriter Michener ever owned, but the brunt of his genius was expressed through these very keys.
I didn’t expect to see this typewriter at the Michener Art Museum; to be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But now that I’m here, this little diorama looks just right. Surprise melts into reverence. I love seeing writerly spaces and tools, and this one…
