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No Telling 
A well-reasoned argument.
Salinger was an odd duck, but I fell a little bit in love with him after reading this.
I've read more than one article about him describing him in not-so-flattering terms (mostly by the various women in his life) but he seems to have had his standards when it came to his work, evidenced by this letter, and was willing to stick to them even if it meant leading a less comfortable life.My question of course is: what kind of typewriter did he use?
I've tried like crazy to sniff out Salinger's typewriter. So far, no dice. I'm not giving up yet, though. If anyone out there knows, please let us in on the secret.
This is silly, but I'm cheered by the strike-outs, the shadowy half-letters from a slipped finger, and the sudden lurch of line spacing at the end of the letter. Makes me feel better about blasting out my own oddly-typed missives (though I'm in no way comparing myself to Salinger!) I think we're too used to seeing perfection in the printed word these days: it feels good to get a little mud between the toes.
Me too! In fact I just this moment found another semi-sloppy letter from Salinger over at Letters of Note. This one, however, also talks about the importance of fresh ribbon…
I'm with Monda. I have more appreciation for Salinger after reading this. We could all afford to be odd ducks if we could write like him!In speaking of strike-outs and finger-slips, maybe we are not comparing ourselves to Salinger, but Salinger to ourselves. See, one of our literary heroes was sloppy! It's okay. He's no more a deity than one of us.He just… you know… was really good at stringing together coherent sentences…typos be damned.