Verlyn Klinkenborg and the Art of Description

Husqvarna Viking Automatic Type 21E

Verlyn Klinkenborg is a machinery rhapsodist extraordinaire. Recall his brilliant description of a 1979 International Harvester 230 windrower in his great Making Hay (1986). This week, in NYR Daily’s excellent “Pandemic Journal” series, he posted a piece on making face masks that contains a wonderful description of a Husqvarna Viking 21A sewing machine: 

The Husqvarna Viking 21a is a sleek, tubular machine the color of the 1950s—a pale, aqueous turquoise. I press the foot pedal and the electric motor begins to hum, and then the needle moves up and down. I know, from having taken it apart, how elaborate the inner workings of this machine are—belts, cogs, shafts, and gears shuttling round and round and back and forth in perfect synchrony. It is really a world of its own, a miniature factory. The internal light gleams down upon the arm, the feed dogs pull the cloth along, upper and lower threads intertwine in a stitch, and there is the harmonious sound of elaborate integration. At low speeds, the 21a sounds a little like a railroad engine moving slowly over the tracks. At higher speeds, it begins to whir. It does exactly what it was engineered to do, and it does it brilliantly.

That “The internal light gleams down upon the arm, the feed dogs pull the cloth along, upper and lower threads intertwine in a stitch, and there is the harmonious sound of elaborate integration” is inspired. The whole passage is inspired – a superb example of the art of description.