I didn’t need another typewriter when Jeffrey gave me the Underwood about ten years ago. I still had my old portable, which had served me dutifully since college, a sleek and sturdy Olympia on which I’d typed my way through graduate school, my first newspaper job, Europe, and two marriages. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have another typewriter around the office, though I suspected I’d be the only one who would ever use it. My preference for old-fashioned manuals was looked on, even back then, as embarrassingly romantic and impractical, and as further evidence, if any was needed, that I wasn’t happy unless I was struggling, typing and retyping the same sentences; pounding the words into place; needing no help from electricity, thank you — the persistent hum of an electric unnerving me, as if the typewriter itself were waiting impatiently for the next word.