Two typewriters associated with famous writers, but not with their most famous works, sold for just above their low estimates at Christie’s on Tuesday. Jack Kerouac’s last typewriter, a Hermes 3000 manual that he used from 1966 until his death in 1969, brought $22,500 at the auction, having been estimated at $20,000-$30,000. Meanwhile, a typewriter that belonged to John Updike from the late 1960s until 15 years before his death sold for $4,375, having been estimated at $4,000-$6,000. (Updike produced several major novels in this period, but Christie’s didn’t determine whether he actually typed them on this machine.) Updike’s typewriter was being sold by a member of his family; half the proceeds will go to the New York Public Library.
Both prices were considerably lower than the $254,500 paid last December for the Olivetti on which the novelist Cormac McCarthy wrote books including “All the Pretty Horses,” “Blood Meridian,” “No Country for Old Men,” and “The Road.”