Feature: We Visit the Artist at Work, Retyping a Chicago Literary Masterpiece

Tim Youd is a performance artist. His work builds on the power of the written word as he creates artifacts from classic works of literature on vintage typewriters in locations that play a central role in the original work. Right now, he’s retyping The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel about men at work in the brutal, bloody conditions that prevailed in the meat-packing industry of the period. With a copy of the book clipped to a small easel, he’s retyping it word by word on an Underwood Standard, similar to the typewriter Sinclair used.