Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer who is handling the auction for Mr. McCarthy, said: “When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac’s typewriter. It’s as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife.”

and a stand-alone office with an antique walnut desk, an Art Deco lamp by the modernist Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray and a typewriter — an Olivetti Lettera 32 — that once belonged to the novelist Cormac McCarthy. After years of false starts and a second career as a stock trader, Brolin finally became a movie star with his role as an unsuspecting hunter in the Coen brothers’ film adaptation of McCarthy’s 2005 novel, “No Country for Old Men”; he was with the author this past June the night before he died.

Saturday, May 23, 1970: “This is a brand new Olivetti typewriter upon which I am writing given to me by Lil and Brook. It is sparkling and very loose compared with the Hermes Baby and it will take me a little more time to bang away on it with the same abandon as I do on the old one which I shall keep anyway out of loyalty for many years of battered service. I shall retire the Baby to the library on the boat or at Gstaad. The machine is fire-engine red and I’ve pasted on it a Welsh dragon. . . “ - Richard Burton, The Richard Burton Diaries

Josh Brolin, who starred in No Country for Old Men, at his Southern California home. He became close with McCarthy and sat with the novelist right before he died. He’s also the proud owner of McCarthy’s Olivetti typewriter. Wayne Martin Belger

It was John who told me that McCarthy worked in bed—a California king with high-thread-count sheets, the Olivetti on a wooden platform with a leather pillow underneath it, and piles of typed pages, magazines, books and catalogs. Writing, McCarthy once said, was not a conscious process for him. He put a blank piece of paper in the Olivetti, the words arrived, and he typed them down. But that was just the first stage of an extensive rewriting and structuring process, and some of his books took 20 years or more to get right. “Dad didn’t like being interrupted when he was working, or when he was reading,” John said. “‘No, no, no. I’m reading. Go away!’ he would say.

Nor did McCarthy use a computer—ever. He typed out his pages on a cheap, durable Olivetti typewriter and, I learned later, did most of his work propped up on pillows in bed.

I call these, "Undervettis."

Olivetti used regular M3 thumb nuts.

I found it in an old Italian typewriting course that I’m studying, it says translated “on olivetti machines both manual and electric , if you press the margin release key while performing line return, the carriage will stop ten spaces before the set left margin. This creates a fix indentation useful for starting new paragraphs”

my Torpedo 18s which fits perfectly in a spare Underwood-Olivetti 21 case

Unfortunately ribbon carts for these (Olivetti Lexicart) is almost impossibe to find.

I've always wanted an Olivetti Valentine and recently purchased one. To my surprise, there is a metal commemorative marker on the back that reads, in English, "Commemorative Edition. 31st Anniversary. 1965-1996. Special Anniversary Edition. 179/250". This was surprising because 1) the Valentine was released in 1969 and 2) production ended in 1975. From the reading I've done online, it seems like production lingered in Mexico, but 1996 seems very late.

Just saw a man get killed with a Lettera 32. Man in the High Castle.

What's the diameter of the central hole? Checking if it's 4,5, or 6mm will help a lot in identifying which type of spool it is.

Montgomery-Ward rebranding of the Underwood 450 which was never branded as an Olivetti.

It's an Olivetti Valentine. An iconic piece of design with mechanicals almost identical to the Lettera 32. Its designer, Ettore Sotsass, was apparently not fond of it ("I worked as an architect for sixty years of my life and all people know is this fucking plastic machine" - or something to that effect) and its first production run was not particularly popular.

Sottsass transcended the sameness of typewriter design to give it an endearing personality. He tuned into Pop art, citing the orange nipples and pink breasts in Tom Wesselman’s nudes as inspiration for the orange scroll caps.

The Valentine never reached mass audiences, despite the iconic advertising campaign he conceived.

Reese Electronics on Westwood Blvd in Los Angeles. Helmut was a mechanical engineer for Olivetti.

The one on the cover of your book, the Hermes 3000, is that your favorite? Absolutely. It’s a rock solid portable. I have four of them. I also like the Hermes Rocket, Olympias, Olivettis. I use them constantly.

the lever for later machines was connected with a different sized pin, which makes finding donor machines challenging as pins from the more common newer machines won’t fit the older ones.

It also interesting to note that loss of the carriage return lever is apparently a common problem on Studio 44 Series Is and Series IIs.

The machine was produced in four different versions: Series I with a beige body and black round keys borrowed from its more portable sister machine, the Olivetti Lettera 22 Series II with beige body and black ergonomic keys intended to conform better to the user’s fingers Series III with light blue body, grey-blue keys and knobs Studio 44 L with body from former competitor Underwood (Olivetti bought a controlling interest in Underwood in 1959, and completed a full merger in 1963)

The Studio 44 was designed in 1952 by award-winning architect, industrial and graphic designer Marcello Nizzoli in collaboration with engineer Giuseppe Beccio.

If you love the Art Deco style of the font, look for an Olivetti MP1 ICO with Simplicitas. Same feel but in a beautiful matching machine. I picked one up for $1500 fully restored from Spain. The look and feel of it is far superior to the Royal P Vougue. I've seen dozens of Vogue for sale, only two Simplicitas.

I consider Valentines 'designer' typewriters, and generally overrated. If you want to write on an Olivetti, I'd go for the Lettera 22/32/DL. The Valentine is based on the Lettera 32, so the mechanical part is solid, but the Valentine is not as well-balanced as the 32. And about ten times more expensive.

Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer who handled the auction for Mr. McCarthy, told The New York Times earlier this week: “When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac’s typewriter. It’s as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife.”

A.M. Cassandre and Imre Reiner designed two typefaces that included four different widths for the Olivetti Graphika. And W.A. Dwiggins worked on the design of proportional type for Remington Rand.

Olivetti Lettera 31 (Another name for the Dora -- or is it the opposite?) olivetti Dora (the actual base model if I'm not mistaken, with a bunch of rebrands worldwide) ETON (naturally this belongs on this list, I've even seen 2 others for sale online since) Underwood 315 (rebrand) Montgomery Ward Escort 33 (rebrand) Olivetti Underwood 310 (pretty sure this is a rebrand too, or at least very closely related) Olivetti Index (this is the closest thing I've found to my ETON branded one. It s PRACTICALLY the same in every regard - seen two online for sale) Montgomery ward escort 44 (also a rebrand of the DORA?!) Mercedes Super T (rebrand as well, seen one for sale) Montomery Ward Escort 77 (pretty close to being the same model again again... But not quite?) Neckermann BRILLANT Special T (DEFINITELY a rebrand. The manual is a dead give-away among other things) JUPITER (A typewriter 100% identical to the IDEX or ETON, but rebranded again again) Underwood 314 (no idea on this one. I gave up at this point)

Olivetti Dora, Lettera 31, Underwood 310, or in Sweden also branded ”NK Futura” for Nordiska Kompaniet, but it’s the exact same machine.

"The factory cannot only look at the profit index. It must distribute wealth, culture, services, democracy. I think factory for man, not man for factory, right? The divisions between capital and labour, industry and agriculture, production and culture must be overcome. Sometimes, when I work late I see the lights of the workers working double shifts, the clerks, the engineers, and I feel like going to pay my respects." —Adriano Olivetti

Olivetti Underwood 21

My favorite is always changing. Any Smith-Corona Sterling or Silent is a gem. Any Hermes, either the green or tan, all work like lightning. I have a thing for my Olivetti Lettera 22’s, as they are masterpieces of design, the action is crazy fast and light, and the typewriter is in the Museum of Modern Art.