This came to me – as many interesting things do – as an email attachment from a friend. I have no idea who to credit for this little ditty, but I’d cetainly like to. All I could find were dead links. I’d love to see cartoons #1 and #2.

Update: mpclemens whipped up a little search or two and was much more successful in finding the cartoonist, Tom Gauld. You can see the first two panels here and here. Marvelous work.

As I was bouncing around the internet the other day, I happened upon A Place to Stand – a Kelly Writers Junior Fellows (University of Pennsylvania) project that finished up last year in Philadelphia. Graduate John Carrol’s project involved reproducing one short piece of important literature on his typewriter every day, then mailing it out to a random recipient. Out of the Philadelphia phone book. Every day. The link gives a list of works he slammed out on the old typewriter, and challenges anyone reading the page to do the same: Type up a poem. Choose someone out of the phonebook. Mail it to them.

I can’t tell you how much I love that. The web page doesn’t discuss what typewriter(s) our boy John used, but I’ve emailed him and perhaps we’ll soon know. The announcement notes several of John’s inspirations for this project, most notably “Typewriter Man” by Ian Frazier. If you ignore every other link on this post – fine, but read Frazier’s article.