"When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac's typewriter. It's as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife." That's Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer, on the 50-year-old Olivetti Lettera typewriter he is helping Cormac McCarthy auction off for charity. Upon learning that before the invention the typewriter, many authors wrote their books in pen, Mr. Horowitz said that was like if the Egyptian pharaohs had built the pyramids with their teeth. Then he gazed out the window, imagining how much a full set of Egyptian pharaoh teeth would fetch at an auction...