ABSTRACT
Argentine novelist Sergio Chejfec begins his essay “What Comes Next” with a discussion of writing machines. Concretely, he compares writing on a word processor to writing by hand, and he nds these technologies of inscription paradoxically similar. He frames them both in terms of their simplicity, identifying their “exibility” and “immediacy.” “Writing with computers is more intimate and involving,” we read. Chejfec discusses this intimacy in relation to the older technology of the typewriter. He goes into great detail about the taxing demands of these machines, in particular the specic ones he had previously used. They demanded workarounds and quick, ad hoc solutions. Though mechanical, they were not entirely automated, as the writer was forced to intervene constantly. Typewriters were not always transparently functional, in other words, and their correct working required a craft-like know-how. “Once we began using machines, that is, typewriters, typing was reinvested with artisanal rituals,” Chejfec continues. But the word processor skirts these requirements: “Now the processing of words is ritually manual” (Chejfec). Writing on a computer, in other words, allows us to evade the complications of bulky moving parts in favor of something approximating simple automaticity. The computer is ergonomic in a way the typewriter never could be. Once one masters the keyboard, writing seems to ow as simply as handwriting.
