In Stanley Kubrick’s much-deconstructed ur-horror film The Shining (1980), conclusive evidence of protagonist Jack Torrance’s psychopathy appears tucked into the wayward winter caretaker’s typewriter. Upon finding it, his long-suffering wife, Wendy, begins to page through a stack of similar typewritten pages nearby. To her despair, she finds the sheaf of papers previously assumed to contain Torrance’s novel in progress to contain endless repetitions of the same self-mocking maxim: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” The phrase is typed in a variety of decorative configurations, as if the writer were struggling to keep himself entertained through a necessary chore, or perhaps tamp down his mania via a peculiar sort of self-flagellation or therapy. The scene is made all the creepier by its economy, a few inert bits of paper and a familiar saying signaling an irreversible disconnection from reality.
Tim Youd wields a typewriter to similarly obsessive ends. The Worcester, Massachusetts–born artist is currently in the midst of a ten-year project that involves his retyping a hundred published novels, using the same make and model of machine as each original author, and in a location pertinent to the book in question. Far from working his way through a few reams of paper each time, however, the ever-thrifty Youd makes use of just two sheets per book. Laying one atop the other, he runs the pair through the typewriter as many times as it takes to complete his protracted task, finally separating them and displaying them side by side.
