When I was twelve my father enrolled me in a typing course from which I emerged typing with two fingers. That suited me and my cherished Electra 21 Smith-Corona typewriter just fine, even when, some fifty-five years later, I became aware that other writers were talking about a machine called a computer, and strange words like Word Star and Lotus began to float in the air around my head.

One day in 1985, Howard White, my publisher, took me to meet his friend and colleague, Steve Osborne. During the visit, it became apparent that an appointment was being made for me and my chequebook with Steve to acquire a computer and take a lesson.

“What’s wrong with my typewriter?” I asked.

After a pause, during which Steve stroked his beard and stared at me through his glasses, Howie said gently, “We have decided to bring you into the Computer Age.”

I was flattered by their concern, and Howie has been such a great friend. Once during a rodent epidemic he descended into my basement smiling and emptied my rat traps so that I could concentrate on what he had come for: to talk about my work. Another time, when I shamelessly said that I couldn’t write because I didn’t have a proper desk, he built me a serviceable work table right then out of a discarded election signboard he found under my boat shed that said “Vote for Don Lockstead.”

On the appointed day I arrived at Steve’s house, knocked several times, waited, and when nobody answered, walked in. “Is anybody home?” I called out. Deep silence. I sat down. Sitting on a table, also waiting, was a large oblong black box. The side facing me was open. It had a screen on the left and two slots, one above the other, on the right. A keyboard sat in front of the box, attached to it by a wire. Eventually I got up and peeked through an open door. Steve was asleep. I went back in the living room and pondered. Had I come on the wrong day? Should I have come at all?

I found out later—to my subsequent advantage—that Steve is nocturnal. He rises between noon and 1 p.m. and goes to bed shortly before everyone else gets up. That day was no exception and when he woke up, my lesson began. It was rigorous, long and thorough. When I pressed a certain key on the board, the word wait flashed on the screen and stayed there quite a while. Another code, Control-S, saved—for all time, apparently—the phrase Now Is the Time for All Good People to Come to the Aid of the Party, which I had typed onto the screen. Steve explained all of that and a lot more, and repeated everything he said, especially about my end-of-the-world fate if I forgot to save.

I departed from Steve’s house, lugging the heavy Kaypro computer, now mine. I thanked him profusely for his time and effort. What had I learned? I didn’t remember. What was I supposed to do now? The light at the end of this particular tunnel was very dim. All I could remember for sure was wait and save. I felt so ashamed when he had worked so hard. Had I panicked? Was I in a state of denial? I was.

Howie asked me how my lesson had gone. I said, “Wonderful! But I don’t remember much.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You don’t have to. I only know about ten percent of what a computer can do, but that’s enough for me. For you, too.”

This inspired me to give my Kaypro a try, although I knew that loss of memory at my age made me an endangered species, and computer manuals seem to be written in a different English language than the one I learned, starting with the index. But Steve’s lesson must have seeped into my subconscious, because I had managed somehow to grasp enough of the basics to write. Already I could see where the Kaypro was superior to my Smith-Corona. Gone were those back and neck pains from pounding on a typewriter. The ease with which I could make simple corrections and move words, sentences and whole paragraphs around was most seductive, especially the buttons cut and paste. Most important, since I am dependent on reading what I have just written, the mechanical printer that accompanied the Kaypro whisked my words back to me, clackety-clack. No messy carbon paper either. The only down side was that on those early rack-and-pinion printers, I shed so many tears trying to persuade the paper to keep its punched-in side holes on the feed sprockets that I was sure I was being punished for having a happy childhood.

Back in the 197s, on assignment for The New Yorker, I had accompanied my late husband John Daly on his troller, the MoreKelp, to record my adventures on a commercial fishing boat. I used to set up my typewriter on a table on the boat and put two pillows, one floater jacket, one Stanfield’s underwear, one blanket and a dishpan behind my back so that I could reach my machine. After John’s death in 1978 I began writing what eventually became the book Fishing with John. I would submit each section as I completed it to my editor, the eccentric and wonderful William Shawn, who would say, “That’s fine. Just keep going.” He estimated that the finished product would be about 75, words long.

For some reason I was seized with an unfortunate compulsion to type a perfect page before proceeding to the next one—not an ideal method for a two-fingered typist—and I began to think I might never finish. Suddenly Mr. Shawn, who had edited the magazine for fifty years, announced his imminent retirement. His successor, I thought, might not be so interested in salmon fishing. (He wasn’t.) It was now urgent for me to find a faster way of revising, and when Howie and Steve led me by the hand to a computer, I had my solution.

I spent three or four months that winter in a rented furnished apartment in New York City, on the fourth floor of what had once been the mansion of the great early twentieth-century publisher Joseph Pulitzer. I left my typewriter in Canada and took the Kaypro with me. It presided over the impressive living room on a large white bath towel spread over my landlord’s lofty Art Nouveau table. To reach it I bought a high deck chair that was not in keeping with the décor, climbed up into it every morning and set to work. My apparent computer proficiency so impressed my next-door neighbour, a famous artist’s famous agent, that she went out and bought a similar computer. I can still remember my astonishment when she knocked on my door to ask me for guidance.

None of the writers I knew well at The New Yorker were using computers, with one exception, Brendan Gill. “Not to worry,” Brendan said to me. “There is a man called The Computer Tutor on the West Side who rides around on a motorcycle rescuing people like us all over Manhattan. Just pick up the phone when you get into trouble and he’ll be there in a jiffy.” The Computer Tutor was generous with telephone assistance but he only materialized once, a somewhat romantic figure in puttees with a large moustache, who parked his motorcycle on the street below my window.

Then, with only two weeks to go before Mr. Shawn’s departure and my manuscript still unfinished, my good old Kaypro suddenly came to a halt. I rushed it to a computer shop and the examination revealed that one of its two drives was irreparable. No repair parts were available anyway because the Kaypro was being discontinued, and I could not find another Kaypro to replace it.

The Computer Tutor was solidly booked, but he said, “This is an emergency. I will send someone over to see you through.” Two hours later my saviour arrived: a young woman named