The Typewriter is Holy, the Poem is Holy

As part of his 100 Novels Project Los Angeles–based artist Tim Youd starts with a retyping of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which documented Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters forays from the Santa Cruz hills on the Further bus. Youd continues by retyping volumes of poetry by Beat Generation writers, in locations across the Bay Area, on the same make/model typewriters the authors themselves used—Allen Ginsberg at City Lights; Joanne Kyger in Bolinas; and Weldon Kees at the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge, where his abandoned car was found in the aftermath of his disappearance.

Youd’s process is to retype entire books on a single page, in a multi-day/week performance. The top sheet is backed by a second sheet; the text is overwritten again and again, and the paper becomes distressed. When the retyping is completed, the two sheets are separated and mounted side-by-side in diptych form. The entire novel or volume of poems is there, but entirely illegible. These drawings will each be exhibited at the museum as Youd types his way across the Bay Area through the full run of Further Triennial.

To date, Tim Youd has retyped 84 novels at various locations in the United States and Europe. Residencies at historic writers’ homes have included William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak with The University of Mississippi Museum (Oxford, MS); Flannery O'Connor’s Andalusia Farm with SCAD (Milledgeville, GA); Carson McCullers Center (Columbus, GA); and Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House (Rodmell, East Sussex, UK).