Description
Tom Hanks has an enormous collection of typewriters. He loves them as objects, not just for their physical beauty, engineering triumphs, and eccentric characteristics, but for what they do. In a conversation with David Green of NPR, he explained, “there is something I find reassuring, comforting, dazzling in that here is a very specific apparatus that is meant to do one thing, and it does it perfectly… And that one thing is to translate the thoughts in your head down to paper… Short of carving words into stone with a hammer and chisel, not much is more permanent than a paragraph or a sentence or a love letter or a story typed on paper.”
These are particularly familiar emotions for us at Thornwillow Press. Here, with our collection of historic letterpress equipment, we understand how easy it is to worship a machine. Each of our 30 presses has its own story to tell and like the books that we publish, each is unique. As for Hanks, our passion for this extraordinary equipment is obsessive and borders on the extreme. Hanks confessed about his collection, “I don’t want these to be a burden to my children when I kick the bucket. I don’t want them to say, ‘What are we gonna do with dad’s typewriters?'” I too worry about what will happen to our presses when I’m gone… Whether a Heidelberg letterpress or a Hermes typewriter from the 1950s, ultimately these machines are about something very simple. They’re about putting black ink on white paper. And from that very simple combination, one can open up visions of the universe.
These Are The Mediations of My Heart is the origin story of Hanks’ obsession with typewriters. Told through the voice of a woman who buys a typewriter at a yard sale and falls in love, the story explores the integral relationship the machine has between the writer and making ideas physical and lasting. He notes Meditations is “actually the story of how I got my first typewriter… [and] altered my concept of the place a typewriter can hold in your life.”
Tom Hanks tells this story beautifully. His language, as Stephen Fry explains, ranges from “the hilarious to the deeply touching …. demonstrates a joy in writing, a pleasure in communicating an intensely American sense of atmosphere, friendship, life, and family that are every bit as smart, engaging, and humane as the man himself.”
This story is a surprise and a delight, one that resonates profoundly for us here at Thornwillow… and one we are sure you will enjoy.
