Red Door #28 - The TYPEWRITTEN issue

An interview
with Richard Polt
by Madam Neverstop.
An interview released this spring
via Red Transmissions podcast
announced the open call for this fall
TYPEWRITTEN issue of Red Door,
with a very special guest, who spoke
to me from Ohio, with typewriters on
his desk and in the background, in
case there was any doubt on the subject.
Professor of philosophy, Associate
Dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences at Xavier University in Ohio,
author and typewriter collector Richard
Polt.
Originally from California and raised
bilingually due to his Spanish background,
Polt shares that his father
used a Smith corona so his upbringing
in Oakland was always surrounded by
typewriters. That is to say, we jumped
straight to the important subject.
Speaking of his collection, Polt shares
that he has approx. 300 typewriters,
which have always been a part of his
life but which he began seriously collecting
once he dug into the history of
early typewriters and the strange original
designs and concepts of these
machines, leading to him to create a
website called the Classic Typewriter
Page, which has served to connect
fanatics/collectors around the world.
The number of the collection is a bit
uncertain, as in reality his attempt to
cut down failed or was put aside for a
better cause, as apart from his personal
collection, his basement is full of
typewriters which he is restoring and
preparing for literacy programs for the
youth in his city.
The Typewriter Revolution came out
in 2015, a beautiful publication visually
and rich in content, which started
due to a typewritten blog, (a practice
called typecasting) which he started
in 2010 and which connected him to
typewriter users of the 21st century,
something which felt rebellious, inspiring
and hopeful, and which showed
him simultaneously all the negative
ways in which digital technologies are
occupying our lives.
He typed up the typewriter manifesto
about the rebellion and revolution
as a tongue-in-cheek text. This turned
into a movement of supporters which
he chose to encourage through the
book, which many of us consider “the
bible” for the typewriting subculture.
Polt shares that there are aren’t yet
book versions in other languages but
that there’s talks of releasing it in Italian.
I In addition to this publishing project,
Polt has also been publishing academic
texts, but there is now a whole
other collection of typewriter-themed
books, a series called Cold Hard Type,
to encourage people to use their typewriters
through various themes, such
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