Free A Writer's Life by Gay Talese Page A

it.
    And so I decided in late July, after the polite declination from Time Warner, to try to forget about Liu Ying and adhere to the daily schedule that I have always sought to follow when attempting to write books at home in New York or at my home on the New Jersey shore, a rambling Victorian beach house that is winterized and that I commuted to regularly, with or without my wife, while visiting my mother, who lived nearby and who, at an advanced age, no longer wanted to drive her own car at night when going out to restaurants and casinos; but she
still
wanted to go out. So I was her chauffeur and escort.
    When I am writing, each morning at around eight o’clock I am at my desk with a tray of muffins and a thermos filled with hot coffee at my side, and I sit working for about four hours and then leave for a quick lunch at a coffee shop, followed perhaps by a set or two of tennis. By 4:00 p.m. I amback at my desk revising, discarding, or adding to what I had written earlier. At 8:00 p.m. I am contemplating the numbing predinner delight of a dry gin martini.
    Whether I am at home in New Jersey or New York, I work in a single room behind a desk that is U-shaped, formed by three tables at right angles, and I sit on a firm-backed cushioned swivel chair that has armrests and rollers—and, as I shift about, the roller sounds (whether in New Jersey or New York) emit precisely the same squeaks. In both locations the workroom walls—or, rather, the walls that face and flank my desk—are covered with white panels of Styrofoam insulation material, each panel ten feet long, two feet wide, and an inch thick; in my opinion, these Styrofoam panels are more desirable as bulletin boards than are the wood-framed cork examples customarily sold in stationery stores. Each panel, selling for three or four dollars, is much less expensive than a corkboard of similar size, which costs twenty or thirty dollars or more, and in addition to being light enough to be affixed to walls with heavy tape reinforced maybe by a couple of thumbtacks, the Styrofoam panels are softer than cork and easier to penetrate with the dressmaker pins that I use when hanging up instructional notes or reminders to myself, or, on those rare occasions when my work is flowing, the many manuscript pages filled with finished prose that dangle overhead like a line of drying white laundry, fluttering slightly from the effects of a distant fan.
    Most of the desk utensils and machines that I work with in New Jersey and New York are duplicates; whenever I see things that I like and need, and also foresee the day when these things might be outmoded or out of stock, I invariably buy two of them—one for each house; and so now I have twins in computers, printers, typewriters, photocopiers, wastebaskets, pencil sharpeners, fountain pens, and such other regularly used items as electric shavers, tennis rackets, bathrobes, shirts, and pairs of shoes. Being by nature impetuous, one who often deviates from prearranged travel plans and whose tendency to overpack is offset by a lack of zeal for hauling luggage, I seek comfort in knowing that, at least when commuting between New Jersey and New York, I may carry little more than house keys. But since I rarely throw anything away, except pages of my own writing, I am surrounded within these homes by things no longer manufactured and marketed and that in some instances are inoperative—for example, a desk lamp in New Jersey with a corroded switch.
    Although my portable Olivetti manual typewriters purchased during the 1950s are dented and wobbly after my having hammered out more than a million words through miles of moving ribbons (I have also secured several loose letters to their arms with threads of dental floss), Inonetheless continue to use these machines at times because of the aesthetic appeal of their typefaces, their classical configuration imposed upon each and every word. But the Olivetti keyboards are characterized by