The Lennon Diary 1969

Hey.  Wait a minute.  What IS this?  It seems to be a reproduction of John Lennon's diary.  I hope so.

His life was out-sized yet this is bit-sized.  The diary booklet measures 2 x 3 inches and is oddly formatted.   Each double page accommodates 6 days, so there is an intriguing rhythm to the way the weeks break.  It reminds one of the way human calendars and celestial movements require that extra day in leap years.

John Lennon - a giant of our times!  I could hardly wait to see how he'd spent 1969.  I was especially interested to see what small event or observation he would choose for the tiny space allotted each day in the diary.

woke up. went to work. came home. watched telly. went to bed. 

Written over and over again.  Occasionally fucked wife or went out.  July 14: went to Majorca.  blank pages until July 26: came back. Sunday July 27:  woke up - late watched telly. went to bed. 

This can't be right.   Is someone pulling my leg?

I wanted it to be real.  That it is the only explanation I have for my continuing and unreasonable gullibility.

A bit of scientific skepticism finally kicked in.  I checked July 21, the day  Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.  No diarist could fail to mention this.  According to The Lennon Diaries, John was in Majorca at the time.  Even so.

Further checks saw no mention of Colonel Mummer al-Qaddafi driving Libyan King Idris 1 into exile; no mention of the Woodstock Extravaganza in August of that year; no mention of George Harrison releasing his own album; no mention of Lennon, himself, refusing the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire award as protest for UK involvement in Vietnam.  Were these too inconsequential for limited diary space?

And what about his marriage to Yoko Ono on March 20, 1969:  got up. went to work. came home watched telly. went to bed.

Okay.  It's not real then.  It's a joke.  Good one.

As it turns out, it really is a good one.  The Lennon Diary 1969 was written by John Lennon in November 1968 as part of a future diaries project.  It was published in 1970 and included as one of 14 items in the box that was issue No. 7 - The British Issue - of Aspen.  Aspen is "The Multimedia Magazine in a Box".

1969 was quite a year.  John Lennon was quite a man.  This little book introduces me to Aspen Magazine and Dave Dyment.  I'm glad to know of them both.

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relevant links:
Aspen, the index page gives a good sense of this remarkably interesting project:
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/siteIndex.html

Aspen page of John Lennon's future diary - includes the entire book:
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen7/diary.html

Artists' Books and Multiples -  Dave Dyment has a great blog showcasing artist books and other stuff he calls "editioned artworks".  He has reproduced the entire The Lennon Diary and given bibliographic information.  Apparently Dyment's leg was not pulled.
http://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-lennon-diary-1969.html

An audio diary - John Lennon talking about his life - on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko839Ppuq24

more plausibly real John Lennon's diaries
http://www.beatlesarchives.com/diaries.htm

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."

More Detective Tales

All 12.  Each 2.75 x 4.25 inches, 64 excitement filled pages.

Detective Tales

Midway in the Golden Age of Pulp Magazines, Detective Tales put out 12 tiny book supplements to the magazine.  These books were only 2¾ x 4¼ inches, printed on poor paper, and bound with double staples.  

So flimsy, they were as ephemeral as butterfly wings.  How could a full dozen have lasted through more than 90 years and found their way to riverrrun?  Perhaps it was the tough guy writing that kept them intact.

Each little book has a dramatically illustrated cover and contains a hot-action novelette or condensed novel.  Each is 64 thin pages of text with slightly heavier covers.  Just holding one of these gems brings you back in time.  They were published 1922 - 1924.  Prohibition.  Rampant crime.  Women gone mad with suffrage, smoking on street corners and whatnot.  Corruption.  Betrayal.  Homicide.  Irresistible reading pleasure!

The tiny book supplements to Detective Tales were published by Rural Publishing Company, founded by Jacob Clark Henneberg and J.M. Lansinger.  Rural published other pulp magazines as well, including the more enduring Weird Tales.  When the publishing company hit difficulties, the founding partners divided assets.  Lansinger kept Detective Tales and retained Edwin Baird as editor.  The magazine went through several name changes, but didn’t print little book supplements after 1924.

It is not only the action packed covers and swiftly moving stories that bring you right into the pulp world.  The advertisements do too.  Each little book has the same three ads.  On the inside front cover, you are invited - urged - to attend the University of Applied Sciences in Chicago to learn the skills for the fast-expanding field of the fingerprint expert.  As the ad says, it’s an uncrowded field and a wonderful opportunity.

On the back cover a 21 jewel Burlington watch beckons.  You can get this watch, plus a free book about watches, for only $1 down and an unspecified monthly payment for an unspecified number of months.

Sure.  Anyone would like a great fingerprinting career and who wouldn’t want a  classy 21 jewel watch?  My favorite advertisement, though, is on the inside back cover.  This ad explains that science has uncovered the secrets of Enrico Caruso’s beautiful singing voice.  For a fee, and no matter what your natural voice sounds like now, Prof. Feuchtinger of the Perfect Voice Institute can train you to sing like Caruso.

I’m sold.  These little books pack lots and lots of fast action, new career possibilities, a splendid watch, and a velvet Caruso-like singing voice. 

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related links:

Interesting article featuring Vincent Starret, Edwin Baird, & Sherlock Holmes - brief mention of Detective Tales and subsequent iterations of the magazine

http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/images/WickedBeginnings_Betzner.pdf

pulp magazine notes - includes an entry for Detective Tales

http://www.philsp.com/data/data380.html

fascinating history of the long-lived and much sought after magazine, Weird Tales, which was also a Rural Publications magazine and also first edited by Edwin Baird

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/troubled-history-weird-tales-magazine/

Pulp Magazine Project: “The Project is dedicated to fostering ties between communities of collectors, fans, and academics devoted to pulp magazines, and will offer opportunities for research and collaboration to both scholars and enthusiasts alike. “

http://www.pulpmags.org/default.htm

google books: Caruso

https://books.google.com/books?id=wbgLIMjkfpMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Lipchitz at the Library

Jacques Lipchitz sculpture in front of the Hastings on Hudson Public Library - photo 2013

"Local" Sculptors: Lipchitz and Zazel

Lipchitz was born in Lithuania in the last decade of the 19^th century.  He lived in Lithuania until he was 18 and then he moved to Paris to study art.

Paris was the center of exciting art and now-legendary artists at that time.  Lipchitz flourished.  Considered the first Cubist sculptor, he broke new ground and met with much success.

World War ll brought great danger to Lipchitz.  He escaped to America in 1941.

After the war, Lipchitz settled in America – in the lovely river town, Hastings on Hudson, New York.

riverrun bookshop settled in the same lovely river town 30 years later.  Lipchitz died in 1973, 5 years before riverrun, but the store’s original founder, Frank Scioscia, did live in Hastings on Hudson at the same time as Jacques Lipchitz did.  I don’t think they knew one another. No doubt, however, they both admired the same majestic palisades towering over the Hudson River and both liked the same comfortable streets in town.

By this time Lipchitz was spending months of each year working in his studio in Italy. I’ve heard a story – possibly true – that the village trustees mistook his long studio trips for a permanent move away from Hastings on Hudson.  The sculptor was a village treasure. The trustees tried to purchase one of his sculptures for the town to commemorate his long-time residence here.  According to the story, Lipchitz laughed, assured the trustees that he and his wife had no intention of moving, and GAVE a large sculpture to the village.

However it happened, Hastings on Hudson does have an impressive Lipchitz sculpture mounted in the prominent grassy space by the town library and courthouse.

The artist himself died in Italy and is buried in Jerusalem, but part of him presides over the village from the hill by the library.  You can see that sculpture on your walk to riverrun.  Or, in case you are too far to stroll over to riverrun, I will post a photo shortly.  As well as the little I know of Zazel.

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A lengthy and fascinating article about Lipchitz, his art, his life, and his religion.  There is a sense  of immediacy in this article that makes the reader feel privy to inside knowledge:

http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/393257/jewish/How-Jacques-Lipchitz-Found-G-d.htm

Tate Gallery artist biography:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jacques-lipchitz-1518

art directory biography:

http://www.jacques-lipchitz.com/

searchable interview plus photos of work:

http://www.imj.org.il/lipchitz/

 Lithuania:

http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/member-countries/lithuania/index_en.htm