POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Like a writer, Tim Youd got distracted. He did not notice that the paper was in wrong until he had typed “Herconfidencefledasshe.”
A writer would have put spaces between the words, but Mr. Youd is not a writer. He is a performance artist who retypes famous novels, word for word, with no spaces — lineafterlineafterline,likethis. And he does so on old typewriters like the ones the authors themselves used. Mr. Youd, 50, has retyped 55 novels so far. He is aiming for 100.
Mr. Youd has typed “A Farewell to Arms” in Piggott, Ark., where Ernest Hemingway wrote much of it, and “The Sound and the Fury” in William Faulkner’s hometown, Oxford, Miss. He has typed Jack Kerouac’s “Big Sur” in—where else? — Big Sur, California.
