Moon-Face

Jack London, born John Griffith Chaney, did not have an easy childhood.  The lack of ease started early.  His mother was embarrassed by his illegitimate conception, irritated that Jack's father left, and overwhelmed at Jack's birth.

London's parents lived in San Francisco where they plied their trades.  William Chaney was an astrologer.  Flora Wellman was a spiritualist.  She channeled the spirit of Black Hawk. This notable American Indian was born a century before as Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kis-kiak of the Thunder Clan.  He aligned himself with other Sauk Indians who were hostile to the settlers and wanted to return to the old ways.  Black Hawk became a leader of the Sauk and Fox Indians.

 It is unclear just how he presented his spirit through Jack London's mother.

Though from a wealthy family, Flora Wellman did not have an easy childhood herself.  She had various troubles.  One was an illness that left her physically deformed and perhaps mentally unbalanced.

Flora gave over the care of infant Jack to Virginia Prentiss, an ex-slave.  Mrs. Prentiss had just lost her own baby in childbirth.  She nursed Jack.  They remained strongly connected for life.  Through the Prentisses, Flora met John London.  He was a widowed veteran of the Civil War with many children of his own - several grown and one recently deceased  Eight months after Jack was born, Flora and John London married.  Their household included baby Jack and John London's youngest three children.  Flora drew on her training as a privileged young girl, and taught piano.

Everyone worked hard.  Jack shoveled coal, cut wood, and went to hunt seals in the Pacific.  As a teenager, London went to the Yukon to search for gold at Klondike.  He suffered a term in jail, pirated oysters, and rode trains.  In his spare time, he read.

The letters that Jack London wrote home convinced his mother he should be a writer.

He became one.  His colorful descriptions of the sea and the frozen north fascinated readers all over the world.  He wrote novels, short stories, essays, magazine articles and newspaper columns.  He was enormously popular in his (short) lifetime.  He used his influence to promote socialism and to speak about justice and beauty.

NOTE:  Moon-face is not his most famous novel, but the above pictured first edition recently found its way into riverrun.  It has that letter, featured in the earlier post, tucked in. 

links:

This Jack London World is a trove of information, photographs, writing and anecdotes.  The list of links to additional sources is a trove within a trove
http://www.jacklondons.net

Project Gutenberg's free online Call of the Wild
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/215/215-h/215-h.htm

It's fascinating to see these many images for Call of the Wild from google images.  Most of them are book covers but there are also cartoons and movie stills and sculpture.
the call of the wild

Black Hawk biography
http://www.historynet.com/black-hawk
also: http://www.blackhawkpark.org/History/Black_Hawk.html

google images of the Klondike Gold Rush

Jack London Writes Out Some Thoughts

a few quotes from the letter:

"But I am learning, slowly.  The great difficulty is to get the proper co-ordination of the various parts so essential to good photography..."
"Of course I like beautiful things..."
"...the aesthetic should simply be ...one of the many things for  the raising of the human."

That last paragraph pulls at the heart.  So many great things to do - such limited time.  Jack London died in 1916 at the age of 40.  Look at that handwritten last line.

"Only a little while and I am not."

Thank you, Anne Fadiman

   Anne Fadiman may be responsible for riverrun’s survival and we never thanked her properly.  In fact, though profoundly grateful, we never thanked her at all.

     The transition from riverrun owner Frank Scioscia, who always subsidized the bookstore quite heavily, to his son in law Chris Stephens, who did not have the luxury of outside funds, was fraught with peril.  At one very dark moment I was beginning to wonder if we could make it.

Then there was a miracle.  Someone told us that they’d read a zippy article about the store.  Several other customers came in telling us how they’d read of riverrun in a complimentary article by Anne Fadiman.  We didn’t know Anne Fadiman.  A stranger had discovered us!

     Someone brought us the article from the Library of Congress magazine, Civilization.  We loved it.  It isn’t really an essay about riverrun.  It is an essay about the love of books, the way books furnish an outward environment for the inward self, and about a husband who has the good sense to share one’s love of books.  Only incidentally does the essay mention a birthday surprise expedition to riverrun bookshop, the long browse there, and the 19-pound purchase carried back to New York City.  The way we read it though, it was an essay about riverrun.  It buoyed our spirit and strengthened our will and eased our way across the difficult transition.

     We taped that article to the front windows of riverrun and it continued to smile at us daily as we came into the store.

     Seasons passed.  The ink from the article transferred itself to the window glass.  The paper became brown and tattered but remained in place until the landlady had to replace the store windows.

     Gone with the discarded old windows!  Why hadn’t we made copies of the article when it was fresh and new and still readable?

     No matter.  Anne Fadiman’s collected essays from Civilization were published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in a wonderful book called Ex Libris.  The essay mentioning riverrun is the last in the book, “Secondhand Prose”.  Clever.

     My first copy of Ex Libris was given to Chris and me by a beaming customer.  Re-reading “Secondhand Prose” was such a pleasure that I read and reread every essay in the book, oblivious to all else.  I read them again today when I took this book out to scan for the blog.

    These essays are perfect.  I wanted more.  Luckily there are more.  I just ordered another couple of books by Anne Fadiman.  At Large and At Small and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.  I have a treat coming in the mail.

     Not everyone knows about these jewels.  Why not? For one thing essays are hard to categorize.  I know of a case of mis-categorization.

     Our daughter Mary – quite a good bookwoman herself – was working at a bookstore in Memphis.  Mary was keeping a low profile for reasons of her own, but she couldn’t keep silent when she saw Ex Libris shelved in the foreign language section.  “This book isn’t written in a foreign language,” she told another worker.

    “It isn’t?”  He stared at the title, baffled.

     If I had been Mary, I’d have stood on a chair waving the book in the air and making noise.  “This book mentions my family’s bookstore,” I would have shouted.  “And it belongs in a high visibility spot so people can buy these superb essays!”

     I thank Fadiman for those superb essays.  They are a delight to read and to reread.  I also thank her for mentioning riverrun at a point in history when the bookshop might have winked out of existence.

    Thank you, Anne Fadiman, thank you!

Books by Anne Fadiman (all readily available)

Ex Libris

At Large and At Small

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Rereading: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love (edited by Fadiman)

Bio from Yale:

http://english.yale.edu/faculty-staff/anne-fadiman

article and interview from Atlantic online:

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/bookauth/ba981028.htm

Isaac Asimov

photo by Chris Stephen at NY Book Fair in 1970s

   Isaac Asimov was a scientist and an historian.  He wrote what seems like millions of books (really just over a half thousand).  Most famously, he wrote science fiction but he also wrote an analytic critique of Shakespeare’s plays and he wrote mysteries and hard science and philosophical speculation about the future of humanity.  Through his heroic futuristic novels he opened up, not only the possibility but, the expectation of commonplace human space travel.

   As a young girl, I read Inside the Atom by Asimov and as a teenager I read his sci fi.  I believed it all.

   Asimov was part of an optimistic generation that had survived both the Great Depression and the second world war.  Asimov helped to popularize the miraculous march of science. He and others promised children more from harnessing the power of the atom and more from the space program than has yet been delivered.

   No matter.  He wrote so well that I still believe him.  I’m ready for the spaceports, when they’re built.  At that time I’ll rocket out to explore the great cosmos.  In the meantime I’ll settle into a comfy chair and read another interesting book by Isaac Asimov.

                                                 Isaac Asimov  1920 - 1992

A very appealing 1988 interview of Isaac Asimov by a young Polish

fan, Slawek Wojtowic

http://www.slawcio.com/asimov.html

A good overall website for Asimov by Edward Seiler

http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_home_page.html

youtube of Asimov extolling the present and future use of computers with libraries of knowledge available to peruse at one’s own speed and along the lines of one’s own interests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U6xXqElj08

Jed Levin Talks About Ira Levin

   “I knew him both as a father and as a writer,” Jed says.  “He involved us in his writing life.  Not when he was writing books - he needed time alone then.  But once he finished something, especially plays, he brought us into that part.”

   Jed and his two brothers saw one of Ira Levin’s plays repeatedly.

   “I have no idea how many times I saw Deathtrap.

    “My father went to the out-of-town tryouts and, in New York, he went to every performance with a new actor – not just new leads, but any new actor.  He wanted to be able to confer with the director as to directions for the new actor.  Also, he liked to go to Deathtrap.  And he liked to take us with him.

“We went out to dinner at Sardi’s before hand.  We went backstage afterwards.

   “It was so much fun to be in the back of the theater.  We weren’t watching the play as much as we were watching the audience.  My father didn’t have tickets, of course, no seats - we just sat on the steps. We were fascinated by audience reaction.   We’d wait on the edge of our steps in anticipation.  How hard would they laugh at the jokes?  How much would they jump at the scares?  We never really got tired of it.”

    Jed wondered if I knew the play.

    “It’s great,” he said.  “It’s two plays – kind of a play about a play – something like the little play within Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  It’s funny and it’s suspenseful at the same time. There are lots of good twists.  I can’t tell you the plot.  You have to see it.  Go to one of the frequent revivals.”

     Ira Levin’s sons didn’t spend all of their time on the steps.  Sometimes they spent the second act backstage with Marian Seldes in her dressing room.

     “Marian was the female lead for the duration of the show.  She never missed a performance.  She was so nice.  We loved hanging out with Marian in her dressing room."

     Hanging out with performers in their dressing rooms, dinner at Sardi’s, fussed over by staff and celebrities, aware of his father’s impact in the theater, movie and book business – this was all part of Jed’s and his brothers childhoods.

     “Deathtrap is the work of his that involved us most.  That was about 1974.  I was in the 4^th or 5^th grade when it opened and it ran for a good chunk of time.  Death Trap was something that was always going on in the background of my childhood.”

     When Ira Levin and Jed’s mother, Gabrielle, divorced the boys still saw their father frequently.  He took an apartment nearby their Wilton, CT home.  (Wilton likely provided the inspiration for Ira Levin’s “Stepford Wives”.)

     “It was a small apartment.  We slept on a foldout sofa, I think. We ate on his desk.  It was a big desk and at dinner time he would just move the typewriter.”

     What about all his papers and notes and other things spread out all over the desk?  I wondered.
     “No, no.  He was a neat person.  Meticulous really.  There would just be a folder of notes and an orderly stack of papers.  Easy to move.”

     Jed told me about “Drat! The Cat!”, a musical Ira Levin wrote.

     “He wrote the play, the lyrics, and he actually wrote the music too. They didn’t use that music though.  They advised him work with a musician for the melodies.  His were good though.  Very good.  My father played some of his songs for us in the on the piano.  We liked it.

    “Elliott Gould was in Drat! The Cat!  He was married to Barbra Streisand.  She recorded one of my father’s songs – “He Touched Me” – maybe as a way to help promote the play Gould was in at the time.   The song was a big hit lasting a lot longer than the play ran.

     “Such a charming play.  Too bad it flopped.”

     It flopped?

     “The New York Times went on strike just as the musical opened.  It was a disaster. The review wasn’t printed.  Wasn’t read.  No one knew about it.  The play closed early.

     “It’s just a matter of time, though, before someone puts it on again.  I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened. It was such a good musical.”

    Some time afterwards, the music for He Touched Me was used as background to a perfume ad.  “It was funny,” said Jed, “to hear it come on the TV.  ‘There’s Dad’s song’ we’d say.”

     What did Jed get from his father, Ira?

     “I really treasure his influence on me.

     “I value those interests of his that he passed on to me.  Movies – he loved movies.  The original King Kong was his favorite.  He was pretty clear about that.  That’s one of my favorites too.   I have his same general taste in books.  We both like Dracula and Sherlock Holmes and Poe.  Certain things I read make me think of him.

     “I remember him best when I am reading something we both liked.”

YouTube snippet from Deathtrap 2010 movie – British version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdW7Aft5MSI&noredirect=1

YouTube excerpt from 1982 Death Trap with Christopher Reeve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrGqLW-ySj4

IMDb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083806/

about the Roman Polanski movie, Rosemary’s Baby, based on Ira Levin’s novel

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/

Guide to Drat! The Cat!

http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_d/dratcat.htm

Ira Levin bio

http://www.biography.com/people/ira-levin-20703551

Ira Levin plays board games

Ira Levin’s son, Jed Levin, took this photo of his father playing monopoly.  Jed and his brothers played monopoly and scrabble with their father frequently.  I was surprised.

Their father is the guy who wrote Rosemary’s Baby and the Boys from Brazil and Stepford Wives and A Kiss Before Dying - as well as plenty of other scary things.  Isn’t it hard to imagine him enjoying an ordinary, pleasant board game with his sons?

“People were surprised sometimes,” says Jed Levin.  “especially if they didn’t know him, or if they only knew about some of his work.  He was a mild, nice man.  He was our father.  I didn’t think of him as a horror writer.  For one thing, he wrote in plenty of other genres too.  He wrote comedy and even a musical.  He was a writer, not a certain kind of writer.”

Jed and his brothers spent Wednesdays and alternate weekends with their father after his parents divorced.  Sometimes the four of them would spend the weekend with Ira’s parents, who lived in a comfortable house outside the city.  The photo was taken at Ira Levin’s parents’ house.  Jed’s grandmother was a good cook.  His grandfather was an amateur painter (although Jed doesn’t think his grandfather painted the young woman gazing at Ira from out of a painting behind him).

This monopoly evening must have taken place in 1973 because Ira Levin is wearing a shirt with “Veronica’s Room” printed across the chest.

The play, Veronica’s Room, is one of his scary ones.

“Someone in the cast must have had tee shirts printed up,” Jed said.

Tee shirts announcing his father’s work, and chats with cast members in their dressing rooms, and opening parties at Sardi’s were part of Jed’s childhood.  He and his brothers were involved in all sorts of other aspects of Ira Levin's many plays, and books, and movies from books, and television productions.

Jed’s got good stories.  And they’re coming soon.

One of Jed’s brothers set up this very complete website

http://www.iralevin.org/works.htm

Veronica’s Room

http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3652

Dick Higgins, poet and publisher

unknown photographer 1970s

Dick Higgins had tremendous creative vitality. He was alive with ideas. Besides being an artist and publisher, Higgins was an arouser, an organizer, a proselytizer. He lit fires for Fluxus.

A YouTube Dick Higgins interview by Norrested & Thomsen in Copenhagen - Higgins discusses the differences and similarities between the dada and fluxus movements

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9feLztCuQ18

another YouTube video interview - Higgins shows Something Else Press Books and tells anecdotes about production and about authors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKAhRlsbawc&NR=1

A bitter lamentation by someone who calls himself Allen Bukoff, PhD, Social Psychologist and Fluxus Artist. It's addressed to some high profile artists and admonishes them for letting the movement slip away. He peevishly announces that he is shutting down a number of sites that I, for one, would have liked to look at.

http://www.fluxus.org/higgins/

A Child's History of Fluxus by Dick Higgins - odd but interesting

http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/dhiggins-childshistory.html

Dick Higgins explains and discusses pre-fluxus metadramas - link also includes many.

http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lhiggins.htm

Ernest, Frank, Reynolds, and Toni

unknown photographer 1975

Ernest J. Gaines and Frank A. Scioscia

                                                                  Reynolds Price and Toni Morrison

     Usually the Literature Advisory Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts meets in Washington DC.

     July 1975 they met in Big Sur, a particularly majestic section of the California coast. Not a bad place to meet and discuss the majesty of literature and how to encourage it.

      Some of the members of the panel are pictured here. Links below tell more about the pictured author-members.

warming and inspiring article about Reynolds Price and his students in Duke University newspaper

http://dukechronicle.com/article/reynolds-prices-students-recall-storied-writers-magic

Angelfire list of all Reynolds Price's publications + personal info

http://www.angelfire.com/nc/ReynoldsPrice/

Academy of Achievement biography pf Ernest J. Gaines includes vivid pictures
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gai0bio-1

a more personal article on Price from Los Angeles Times while he was still alive and well
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-reynolds-price24-2009may24,0,7037737.story

The Official Website of the Nobel Prize - Toni Morrison biography
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-bio.html

Distinguished Women of the Past & Present presents a very interesting biography of Toni Morrison
http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/morrison.html

slide show of 9 recent Jennifer Zdon photos of Ernest J. Gaines
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/10/20/us/Gaines.html

accompanying article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/us/21gaines.html?_r=1

FAS at the National Endowment for the Arts

In 1974, a couple of years before he founded riverrun, and while he was still working at Harper & Row, Frank Scioscia was invited to serve on the Literature Advisory Panel of
the National

Endowment for the Arts.

What an honor! He accepted. Who wouldn't?

I think Fran McCullough - on the Panel herself at the time - recommended him.

The invitation was signed by Nancy Hanks, the Chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1969 to 1977. Perhaps she could better be called the Queen of the Arts. She built up the federal program and earlier was behind the scenes at the inception in 1964. Before the inception actually. She worked with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund helping to lay the groundwork for what was to become the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a remarkable woman. And she signed Scioscia's letter! Not that a signature on an official letter represents much of a relationship, I guess. I'm posting it though.

Frank got a very big kick out of serving on the panel.

Later he did have more than a signature; he had a very substantial and treasured friendship with a different Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts: Dana Gioia.

Gioia was Chairman from 2001 to 2009. He instituted all sorts of dynamic and satisfying projects for us. For us citizens. I have two special favorites: the Big Read - almost a national book club - and the veterans' memoir writing project.

Dana Gioia ambled into riverrun bookstore one day. It was just exactly his kind of store. Gioia was just exactly Scioscia's kind of customer. The men hit it off immediately. Both had unlimited interests. Both were down-to-earth kind of guys.

When they met a short time later, the two Marys, their wives, hit it off as well. Dana and Mary Gioia moved to Hastings on Hudson. They were up the hill and slightly south along the aqueduct from riverrun.

The way I choose to remember it is that Dana said, "I want to live in a place that has a bookstore like this," and his Mary agreed.

Frank Scioscia did not live long enough to see Dana Gioia become Chairman of the Endowment for the Arts but it wouldn't have surprised him.

That appointment would have been the absolute only thing about George Bush that Scioscia could have applauded. And he would have applauded mightily.

more about the National Endowment for the Arts

http://www.nea.gov/

how to apply for a grant in literature

http://www.nea.gov/grants/apply/Lit.html

Art Works article on Dana Gioia

http://www.nea.gov/chairman/gioia-bio.html

A whole bunch of fascinating video clips on Big Think, of Dana Gioia chatting about different things that interest him. http://bigthink.com/danagioia

Book Rags biography of Nancy Hanks

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/nancy-hanks/

Joe DeVoy - Walking on Clouds

Joe DeVoy signed copies of his novel, Walking on Clouds, at riverrun yesterday. He doesn't really think of himself as a writer yet he says, although he does like to write.

Walking on Clouds was born out of a writer's block. "I was working on another story, a love story actually, but I'd come to a place where I didn't know what was next. I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't write anymore." Just when he was most stumped and frustrated, an entirely unrelated idea came to him. "It didn't have anything to do with the one I was writing. I kept thinking about the new idea every time I tried to continue the love story. My wife encouraged me. I developed the new ideas into this book."

DeVoy's wife is important in his life. "Family is the most important thing to me," he says. DeVoy's grandson was on hand at riverrun to see his grandfather sign books.

Joe DeVoy has lived through an experience that other writers haven't. In fact, he's lived through an experience that other people haven't. He once fell six floors down an elevator shaft. His legs were broken and crushed. I wondered if that terrifying and painful episode showed up in his book.

"No," he said. "Not in anything I've written. Recovering from something like that is slow and you can't do much of anything. It gives you a lo

t of time to think."

This novel is about something that requires a lot of thinking on the protagonist's part.

He has to figure out how what to do in an ethically complex situation.

Walking on Clouds by Joe DeVoy.

Michael Andre - poet, publisher, critic

1979 photo by Christopher P. Stephens

Michael Andre is a man of many talents. Chris first met him in connection with the Unmuzzled Ox, Andre's very interesting periodical. Some time ago I was a bystander when someone asked Michael what made the Ox go. Why was it successful?

"Contributors," said Andre. "When you have good writers with something to say, people want to read them. The magazine sells."

The Unmuzzled Ox does have good writers with with something to say. Andre himself is one of them.

Once I was at a party on the lower west side, somewhat near the scary meat-packing district. Some guy, a guy who seemed like he knew what he was talking about, told me that Michael Andre was the best living art critic.

unmuzzledox.blogspot.com

theartblog.org

A Conversation with Christine Lehner

Christine Lehner has an especially favorite part of the blurb Richard Russo wrote for one of her books. Lehner and Russo hadn't met. He only knew her through the writing. Russo wrote:

"Christine Lehner's What to Wear to See the Pope is perhaps the most haunting, idiosyncratic, gleefully subversive, and satisfying story collection I've read since Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales."

"And I adore Isak Dinesen," said Christine. "Reading her is one of the first things that made me want to write! My mother was a big fan of Isak Dinesen too. She gave me the books to read. Probably too early but I didn't care. They were great."

Lehner's mother is Belgian. She spent much of her life in Egypt. I like to think of her mother reading Isak Dinesen in a shaded room with the desert off in one direction and the Nile, probably close by, in another direction. And I find it almost as exciting as Christine does that Russo recognizes Dinesen in Lehner just through her use of words.

Christine Lehner collected stamps as a girl. "They're so beautiful and so evocative of faraway places. I worry that people aren't collecting stamps anymore. Great collections will end up in dumps somewhere getting rained on."

Lehner also read as a girl. "And read, and read, and read. At first I was mostly interested in Nancy Drews and other mysteries, The Lives of the Saints, and poetry. My interests became more eclectic as I grew older. Now I even read quite a lot of non fiction."

I wondered if Christine still liked poetry, and if she went to poetry readings, and why.

"Yes, of course I still like poetry. I love it. The word usage in poetry is so interesting. When I was young I liked The Romantics - Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Galway Kinnell. I've always preferred the visceral, emotionally charged poetry over poems that are strictly cerebral.

"I do go to poetry readings - not too often - just maybe 3 or 4 times a year. One of the reasons I go is that I enjoy being read to."

This is an intriguing enjoyment. We talked about other instances of being read to. One of them is tapes.

"I buy books, lots of books, probably too

many books, but I don't buy books on tape. I check those out of the library. The library is fabulous. You can get anything now. If it isn't in our local library, it's in the county system and our library gets it for you. It's an incredible resource."

Lehner was in a graduate program at Brown. John Hawkes was her professor there. "He was an amazing writer and also an incredible teacher. He put me in touch with people at New Directions. My first book was published there in 1983 and it's still in print. New Directions keeps an active backlist. It is one of their strengths.

"New Directions was started in the 1930s by a young guy, James Laughlin. He was at Harvard writing poetry. He started this great publishing company devoted to interesting poets and maverick writers. In the early days he put books in his car and drove them around the country. That was his early distribution system.

"Laughlin also put money into a Utah ski area, Alta. It's a throwback to a time when ski resorts weren't polished. Alta is a place for purist skiers. New Directions is a publisher for literary purists."

Time passed. Lehner raised children, read and did other things. It was a period Lehner referred to as a lacuna in her writing career. Almost 20 years later she was ready to publish her next book. By that time the people she knew at New Directions were no longer there.

"I was lucky enough to get a really nice agent. Amy Berkower is a senior agent at Writers House. She and I like each other and she liked my work as well. She had a delightful assistant at the time, Genevieve. She was sweet and smart, a lovely combination. Genevieve has gone back to school but Amy Berkower is still my agent and I feel really lucky to have her.

"Berkower placed my second book at Harcourt with Tina Pohlman. I liked Tina a lot and she was also a great editor. Unfortunately that was about the time of that big shake-up at Harcourt before it ended up purchased by Houghton Mifflin. I was fortunate to get a good review in the New York Times, but the Harcourt publicists were getting shuffled around and dropped. There wasn't the continuity to follow up book requests."

I wondered how much overlap there was in the responsibilities of agents and publisher's publicists.

"The agent 1.) sells the book, and 2.) negotiates the contract.

"The publicist 1.) sees that the book is reviewed, and 2.) gets copies out there. Publicists work in marketing and publicity although these are different and I've never quite understood the distinction between them."

Besides Dinesen, who are some of Lehner's favorite authors?

"Recently a friend recommended Jim Harrison. I'm hooked. I've been reading his fiction, poetry and his memoir. He is fantastic. He doesn't use many commas, so sometimes you have to read slowly or reread. It's a good thing though, because looking carefully you can really see the architecture of his sentences. So impressive."

For myself, I've been reading Christine Lehner - books and blogs. With great pleasure.

Books (all in print):

1983 - Expecting

2004 - What to Wear to See the Pope

2009 - Absent a Miracle

Christine Lehner's great Blog: http://sortquenchdump.blogspot.com/

Chritine Lehner's homepage

an extremely interesting Paris Review interview of Isak Dinesen that does remind one of C.L.

John Hawkes by Mark Hamstra

"A Brief History of New Directions"

H.L.Mencken Playing his Piano

The latin quote inscribed on the photo by Mencken means "Life is Short; Art endures". Or something like that.


10 + pages of Mencken quotes - some serious - most humorous, the biting kind

Samuel R. Delany - Sci Fi author

Samuel R. (Chip) Delany

photo by Christopher Stephens 1979

Chip Delany has been nominated for award after award. He won 4 Nebula Awards and 2 Hugo Awards for excellence in science fiction writing. Delany is a giant in the science fiction community. Delany's editor and friend, David Hartwell, is another giant. The two of them are extra tall at conventions and award ceremonies and in the hearts of fans.

One day in the 1970s Chris Stephens was visiting David Hartwell at Arbor House. Chris browsed the upcoming Arbor House list for especially attractive titles and found The Bridge of Lost Desires. Hartwell talked up the book.

Stephens arranged with sub-rights at Arbor House for Ultramarine Press to bring out a simultaneous, special, beautifully bound, limited, first edition. Delany liked the idea too. He asked that it include illustrations by a friend, Greg Frux. So it did. Frux did 7 pen and inks that were bound into the Ultramarine edition.

Later Ultramarine put out another special edition of Delany's Hugo Award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light and Water. In this book there was an original signed Greg Frux frontispiece in each copy.

These books and others sold well and were widely read. Samuel R. Delany was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002.

interview of Samuel Delany

Samuel R. Delany information - very complete

home page - brief biographical notes + partial bibliography

Anne McCaffrey - Dragonlady

McCaffrey calls herself "Dragonlady" because of her enormously popular dragons of Pern books. That's not how I think of her though. To me, Anne McCaffrey is the Reigning Queen of Science Fiction/Fantasy.

When White Dragon was being remaindered, Chris Stephens wanted to keep it in print. He got in touch with Virginia Kidd, McCaffrey's agent. Kidd got in touch with McCaffrey and McCaffrey agreed to help finance the purchase of all 4000 copies of this very good book. Chris would distribute them.

The arrangement worked out well for everyone involved

Fantastic Fiction- short interesting bio notes and complete list of work with book photos

site devoted to A.M. includes biographical info+ photos + discussion

review of McCaffrey on Starstore Blog

A Conversation With Steve, Michael and Fin

Stefan Kanfer came in to help identify some of the characters in old riverrun photos.

Michael and Fin were in the store. Steve was enthused to see the young people taking a hand in bringing riverrun more fully back into the community. Michael and Fin will have reorganized 7 Washington before summer. Maybe well before. They want to begin having riverrun readings again in the late spring.

"riverrun is a welcoming place," said Steve. "People will come. You can get people to help you with readings and music like this." Steve waved the photos of musicians at riverrun. He gave advice on how to make more room and how to get authors to come into the store.

"And there are so many local authors," said Fin.

She's not kidding. So many in this area. Steve told how the library held an event for local authors. "Eight four authors came." Steve talked about authors and artists and publishers and cartoonists and agents and editors. He knows people in all fields of publishing. Maybe he knows everyone. He had interesting things to say about lots of people, but my favorite comment was about Ed Young.

"You know that you have a world class artist living right here in Hastings. Ed Young can illustrate anything. He can paint Persian miniatures. He can paste up bright collages. He can draw. He can..." Steve stopped his list. "Ed Young might actually have too much talent."

Steve advised Michael and Fin. "You have to get the word out about riverrun. It's the best used bookstore - in the world. You can say that. In the world."

Kanfer has been a friend and advocate for riverrun bookshop since the beginning. He gave help and support to Frank Scioscia, the original proprietor, and to Chris Stephens, the present proprietor. He's happy to be encouraging Frank's grandson, Michael Stephens, and Michael's wife, Fin.

James Welch and Riding the Earthboy 40

jacket photo by Lee Nye

The first edition of Riding the Earthboy 40 by James Welch is scarce. Once it wasn’t though. In the early 1970s Chris Stephens and Frank Scioscia knew where there were about 1500 copies.

Welch’s success as a poet and novelist comes in spite of some bad breaks in the book business. Earthboy was his first book publication. The World Publishing Company went out of business shortly after his book came out, so the it wasn’t well distributed. World remaindered Earthboy. Ancorp took them on.

Ancorp was a major distributor in the city. They had hundreds of thousands of books. Unfortunately Ancorp also went under. During their last days in business they offered more and more dramatic discounts off their stock. At first it was 70% off list, then 80% off, then 90% off, and finally all hard covers were 50 cents each.

Scioscia and Stephens had been frequenting the sale. riverrun didn’t exist yet, but the men were stocking up anyway. They couldn’t help themselves. There were a couple of shrink-wrapped skids of Riding the Earthboy 40 at Ancorp. Scioscia & Stephens asked about a special price for all the copies. Ancorp management said no, 50 cents was their bottom price. The men could take as many as they wanted at 50 cents.

Well, how many is that? It was a promising book. In the end Chris only bought 20 copies and Frank 60. Probably the rest were ground up.

James Welch went on writing and publishing and getting reprinted:

Poetry - Riding the Earthboy 40

Novels - Winter in the Blood

The Death of Jim Loney

Fools Crow

The Indian Lawyer

The Heartsong of Charging Elk

Nonfiction- James Welch

Killing Custer: The battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indian

James Welch 1940 - 2003

interview by Cindy Heidemann

http://www.pnba.org/welch.htm

an interesting discussion of James Welch's novels and poetry as well as commentary on other writers who are American Indians

http://www.dancingbadger.com/james_welch.htm

1999 interview by Owen Perkins

http://www.csindy.com/colorado/james-welch/Content?oid=1106464

Shel Silverstein thanks FAS

Shel Silverstein spent time in riverrun. He came up to the house too. He was comfortable with Frank Scioscia.

Silverstein signed lots of books to Frank. This - Now here's my Plan - has one of Chris Stephens all-time favorite cartoons on the cover.

google images for Shel Silverstein

americanpoems.com

song writer legacy recordings

famous poets and poems.com

Ultramarine Disch

Tom Disch was an interesting conversationalist as well as an interesting writer. Chris Stephens especially enjoyed talking with Tom. "He was lively. He was ready to discuss any subject. He knew lots and you never knew what line he was going to take," said Chris.

Back when I was young, I was slightly intimidated by Disch's intellectual intensity. I was more comfortable with the gentler soul of Charles Naylor.

Disch and Naylor had what was essentially a long and happy marriage, just like Chris and I have. Unlike Chris and I though, their partnership was unrecognized legally and spousal benefits accrued to neither. For instance, during all those years that Naylor taught in the public school system, Disch was not covered under Naylor's medical benefits. Later, when Naylor died first, Disch had no legal rights to stay in the rent-controlled apartment he'd lived in for years with Charles. This is a societal injustice. It could be easily remedied.

Disch's book, M.D.: A Horror Story, is one of the Ultramarine Press limited editions signed by Thomas Disch. It came out in 1991, simultaneously with the Knopf first trade edition. Denis Gouey bound the limitation. There were 12 beautiful full leather copies and 38 half leather with marble boards.

In the early 1980s Ultramarine Press put Neighboring Lives, by Tom Disch and Charles Naylor, in print. Chris Stephens had purchased the entire remaining stock from Scribners.

Amazon customer reviews of The M.D. Horror Story

Tom Disch - Poet & Writer

In the 1970s Tom Disch lived on Union Square in Manhattan with Charles Naylor. There were books in most of the rooms and long metal shelves filled with boxes of books all the way down the long hall.

Chris Stephens bought books from Tom. At first he bought review copies of books Disch had been sent to review. Later they became friends and Chris bought copies of books that Disch had authored. Tom would heave down a couple of boxes and he and Chris would go through them. Tom wanted to be sure he kept one copy of everything he'd written. Chris had to find another copy to reassure Tom that his last one wasn't walking out the door.

One time they were looking through books, Chris noticed a paperback by Victor Hastings packed in with copies of Disch's books. Chris picked it up. "Tom," he said. "Did you write this one?" Disch abashedly 'fessed up.

Another time Disch volunteered the history of how The House That Fear Built came to be.

Someone from Paperback Library, probably Hy Steirman, called Disch.

Quick, Tom, I need a Gothic mystery by Friday.

I don't know Gothic mysteries, Tom said, I've never written anything like that.

You're a writer aren't you. If you're a writer you can write and I need you to write me a Gothic mystery by Friday. I'm paying $300.

This exchange took place when $300 would cover a couple of rents and then some. Besides, Tom Disch relished a challenge. He accepted the commission. In the 1960s Disch was living with John Sladek. John watched Tom write through Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. On Wednesday Tom bogged down. He was totally blocked. He couldn't move the plot forward.

Give it to me, said John. Why don't I write on it for a little while? So they passed it back and forth and finished it by Friday. It was published under a Paperback Library house name, Cassandra Knye, but it was really a couple of guys taking turns at it writing through a week.

Hy Steirman was right though. Tom Disch was a writer. He could write. He settled into science fiction and later horror. He also wrote mainstream fiction, criticism, and of course he wrote poetry.

Above all, Tom Disch was a poet. He kept a 3x5 card with details of every poetry publication. There were thousands of them.

Once when I was teaching English to a bunch of hoodlums, I found a Tom Disch poem reprinted in their literature textbook. I told my students that the poet lived around the corner and that he was a big, strong fellow with tattoos, who would snarl most menacingly - and worse - if annoyed. The description was so much counter to their impression of poets that Disch got their attention. They listened to the poem with interest.

Many people read Tom Disch with interest. His poetry, stories, novels and criticism have a forcefully provocative edge that keeps that interest keen.

Thomas Michel Disch 1940 - 2008

Tom Disch's live journal

Dana Gioia remembers Tom Disch