[iRomain]

I laughed so hard at Gordon Inkeles' response.

Wendell Berry:

  My wife types my work on a Royal standard typewriter bought new in 1956 and as good now as it was then. As she types, she sees things that are wrong and marks them with small checks in the margins.

Gordon Inkeles:

  Wendell Berry provides writers enslaved by the computer with a handy alternative: Wife - a low-tech energy-saving device. Drop a pile of handwritten notes on Wife and you get back a finished manuscript, edited while it was typed. What computer can do that? Wife meets all of Berry's uncompromising standards for techno- logical innovation: she's cheap, repairable near home, and good for the family structure. Best of all, Wife is politically correct because she breaks a writer's "direct dependence on strip-mined coal."
  History teaches us that Wife can also be used to beat rugs and wash clothes by hand, thus eliminating the need for the vacuum cleaner and washing machine, two more nasty machines that threaten the act of writing.

[chx]

What about Sister.

Frigyes Karinthy, a very famous Hungarian author active roughly 1910-1935 rightly famous for his humorous writing. He is also often billed as a translator -- this, however, is not quite true. His son, much later, in 1981, confessed he had a mentally ill sister, Emilia -- as an example, she used to put buttered toast in her handbag as is -- who nonetheless was a translator genius. She spoke 15-20 languages and she was capable of such feats as typing text in Russian dictated in Spanish. It was she who made the rough translations and Frigyes rewrote these in his style. This, for example, resulted in Winnie The Pooh becoming a cult classic book in Hungarian, much beloved by every Hungarian child (and let me quietly note: adult too) -- and it only resembles Milne's original passingly. Aside from the few sentences this son told the grandson in 1981 we know nothing of her. There are no photos, no records, nothing. Nonetheless the textual evidence is extremely compelling -- it was a longstanding mystery how could Karinthy translate Milne and Wells when he didn't speak English well.

(Tangential note: there's nothing in English Wikipedia about this. Obviously not. And I'd rather gnaw off my arm than try to fix anything there ever again. I tried once.)

[magic_hamster]

Fun story. About Wikipedia, I found it fairly easy (even too easy) to introduce changes given you can cite literally every claim you type.

[chx]

Not if it is in Hungarian...

[Jun8]

Sometimes it does come in handy, case in point, Sophia Tolstaya (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Tolstaya):

“ Sophia acted as copyist of War and Peace, copying and editing the manuscript seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes requiring a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes.”

Stop and think about that: WaP in Russian is 1225 pages. Seven times!

[richiebful1]

That seems to be extremely common in that time period. Fyodor Dostoevsky got married to his stenographer, Anna Dostoevskaya (neé Snitkina).

The story of Fyodor's proposal (excerpted from Wikipedia) is pure gold:

In the Memoirs, Anna describes how Dostoevsky began his marriage proposal by outlining the plot of an imaginary new novel, as if he needed her advice on female psychology. In the story an old painter makes a proposal to a young girl whose name is Anya. Dostoevsky asked if it was possible for a girl so young and different in personality to fall in love with the painter. Anna answered that it was quite possible. Then he told Anna: "Put yourself in her place for a moment. Imagine I am the painter, I confessed to you and asked you to be my wife. What would you answer?" Anna said: "I would answer that I love you and I will love you forever".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Dostoevskaya

[MichaelZuo]

Wife is also partially self replicating and somewhat field repairable in austere conditions too.

A level of technology unlikely to be achieved by computers anytime soon.

[LaGrange]

I too snickered at that reply. Then I scrolled, and found his answer adequate.

This doesn't mean that exploitation of women as unpaid labor is fake, it's _extremely_ rare. But, on the other hand, it's not inconsistent for someone suggesting _relying on your community_ to, you know, _accept help from said community_.

The issue with the unpaid labor of women isn't that we're helping our families, or even that we're not receiving monetary remuneration - it's that it's frequently non-consensual (in the sense that there's no safe possibility to refuse) and without any respect for women's agency.

And, you know - thinking about that this way - it's not like I never proofread a friend's manuscript. It's an interesting, and on many levels enjoyable activity. It's also a quite personal, even intimate, way of helping a friend.

[LaGrange]

> it's _extremely_ rare.

...it's extremely _real_. I wish it was rare.

[benhoyt]

Berry's response to that (and similar) letters is quite sharp, but fair, I thought:

> I am also surprised by the meanness with which two of these writers refer to my wife. In order to imply that I am a tyrant, they suggest by both direct statement and innuendo that she is subservient, characterless, and stupid -- a mere "device" easily forced to provide meaningless "free labor." I understand that it is impossible to make an adequate public defense of one's private life, and so I will only point out that there are a number of kinder possibilities that my critics have disdained to imagine: that my wife may do this work because she wants to and likes to; that she may find some use and some meaning in it; that she may not work for nothing. These gentlemen obviously think themselves feminists of the most correct and principled sort, and yet they do not hesitate to stereotype and insult, on the basis of one fact, a woman they do not know. They are audacious and irresponsible gossips.

[etothepii]

I'm not sure it is fair. The tone of the essay to me reads as one written by someone who never thought to ask.

My wife routinely proof reads my work, and she does do it because she loves me, but I am not so foolish as to believe she loves doing it.

[themadturk]

There's nothing in the essay that said he didn't ask, and that she wasn't a willing participant, doing the work because she loves him. (And why wouldn't your wife love proofing your work if she loves you? Just curious if she's told you either way.)

[etothepii]

I would not be so mean as to say for certain he did not ask. The tone reads to me as written by the type who does not ask, or more precisely has ended up in a situation where the default is for his wife to proof read his work.

On its most basic level, it reads that Wife does the boring work while the author does the fun creative work. We can not tell from the article but I am highly doubtful that the author proof reads and types his wife's articles.

I would go so far as to be willing to lay a quarter for a nickel that he has never offered and a dollar for a cent that he has never done so.

[microtherion]

cf. E.W. Dijkstra in 1986: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E...

  I have often been asked why I don't use [Word Processors], and my honest answer has always been that there is for me so much to write that I cannot afford the use of these time-saving devices.

Like Berry, Dijkstra took the existence of menial labor for producing printed or typed products for granted, although, to be fair, for much of his writing (letters and research notes), his longhand was supposed to be the final form, and he had very legible handwriting.

[ezconnect]

I also have problem recording my thoughts using a computer, writing by hand is more convenient for my brain than using a pc to write the sketch, math symbols and everything else it's just too convenient compared to any note taking device on a pc or tablet.

[User23]

I think he found something about handwriting to be more natural for the manuscripts he wanted to write. A good pen and paper note taking system can allow freer more direct expression than some sort of editor program.

[kevin_thibedeau]

His typewriter broke. It was customized with symbols and couldn't be easily substituted with a new replacement.

[WalterBright]

My mom typed my dad's book manuscript over and over and over again. Even a simple computer revolutionized that inhumane practice.

When I worked at Boeing circa 1981, I was expected to write documents out longhand and then hand it to the secretary pool to type. Screw that. I invaded the word processing room, a windowless room with about 20 women working on Wang word processors, with a supervisor facing them. With all the charm I could muster, I talked the supervisor into letting me use one. She warned me that it was very difficult to learn, and I must take a 2 week Wang course beforehand. I said nah, just gimme the manual, and I was using it in 5 minutes (she was horrified by that).

[JasonFruit]

I'm not sure they appreciated you demonstrating their superfluity, even if you believed it was for their own good. I was once or twice in my career surprised by such ingratitude before I realized that some jobs continue as both soft charity and a means of inflating managerial importance under a polite fiction of usefulness.

[WalterBright]

Appreciated? They didn't like it at all. It didn't matter what I did, their fiefdom relied on people being afraid of computers and not realizing how simple word processors were. That could not possibly last, and it didn't.

[JasonFruit]

I see. I thought you extended "inhumane practice" to the secretarial pool. What I don't understand is why people were afraid of typewriters before they were afraid of word processors and computers. They're frankly not that threatening.

[padheyam]

Most of the responses were pure gems. I wonder if comments on internet sites will be qualitatively better if people are asked to snail mail their comments to the editorial teams (to be formed) of the sites. HN thankfully doesnt need this yet.