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. 

                              ************************************************

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

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

Harper & Brothers Publishers

probably 1950s

This curiously-styled photograph is likely taken at the Harper offices, then on 44th Street in NYC. I think these men make up the national sales force. Frank Scioscia is seated all the way to the right. I almost remember the name of the man seated next to him. But who are the others?

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"

Horace Greeley - publisher - editor

Horace Greeley was a man of his century - the 19th. Westward expansion, slavery, American industrialization, reform and social idealism - these were the big issues of the times. These were Greeley's issues. He was for the first, against the second, watchful of the third, and a wholeheartedly active participant in the fourth and fifth.

Greeley came to NYC when he was 20 years old. He started several newspapers before he launched the enormously influential New York Tribune in 1841. The newspaper was his megaphone. His interests were far reaching and he had opinions to spare.

Greeley made a home for his family in Chappaqua. The town is bucolic still, 150 years later. Beautiful but apparently not a happy household for him. He called his home Castle Doleful and often stayed nights with his newspaper in the bustle of the city.

The country was young in Greeley's time. He and his New York Tribune helped to shape it.

biography from Tulane

breathtaking letter to Greeley from Lincoln - August 1862

biog of Greeley by Universalist/Unitarian

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

Monroe Wheeler - Publisher

photo by Christopher Stephens 1979

Monroe Wheeler walked into Canfield & Stephens Rare Books too late. The store was closed. The books had been sent to auction. Chris Stephens was dismantling bookshelves.

Wheeler looked around. "What's going on here? Are you remodeling?"

"I have some books."

He certainly did! He pulled 6 books out of a battered leather briefcase that didn't go with his sharp suit, white shirt and nice tie. The books were beautiful ones from Harrison of Paris Press.

Monroe Wheeler and Barbara Harrison published Harrison of Paris books from 1930 to 1934.

Some of the books Wheeler pulled out of the briefcase were limiteds or super limiteds. Chris wanted them. Monroe wanted to sell them. For cash.

Stephens explained the situation. Canfield & Stephens was disbanded and he didn't have sufficient personal cash in his pocket. Wheeler agreed to accept Chris' personal check "this once".

"I have lots more books in my apartment," said Wheeler. Monroe Wheeler lived with Glenway Wescott in an apartment on 51st between 2nd and 3rd Avenues - just around the corner from the closed Canfield & Stephens. There were handsome glass-covered bookshelves in the apartment and they were handsomely filled. There was one copy of each state of each Harrison of Paris publications on the shelves but there were plenty more tucked around the apartment. There were stacks of books in manilla envelopes or wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

Again and again Chris Stephens put cash in his pockets and visited the book paradise. Stephens bought multiple copies of Venus and Adonis and The Typographical Commonplace Book and Hacienda and The Wild West and others.

Aesop's Fables was illustrated by Alexander Calder. Harrison of Paris did a special edition of 50, each with an original Calder drawing slipped in. After Chris had purchased several of these, he came to realize that the drawings were not put into a book until it was purchased. Wescott and Wheeler had a big folder thick with Calder drawings. Eventually Chris was allowed to select his drawing each time he bought another Fables. He thought it quite a grand thing to browse through that folder of Calder drawings.

Monroe Wheeler was old when Chris Stephens met him, but he was lively and sharp. He could remember details about the books and the people involved. He remembered, for instance, about H.T. Lowe-Porter's shabby translation of Thomas Mann's A Sketch of My Life.

Monroe and Wescott were appalled. The translation was sloppy and graceless. What could they do?

They could translate. The two of them worked on it together. They kept the respected Lowe-Porter name as the translator, but not the translation that they didn't respect. They used their own.

Harrison of Paris press list

Frognall Dibdin's book blog

biographical notes on Monroe Wheeler

1988 NY Times obituary for Wheeler

1987 NY Times obit for Glenway Wescott

Glenway Wescott Personally a biography - book

Alexander Calder web site

Sixty Photographs - Alfred A. Knopf Sr & Jr

Alfred Knopf took photos of many of the intriguing people he and his wife, Blanche, had as friends and associates. Sixty of these photographs were selected to publish in the book, Sixty Photographs, which commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher. The book was published in 1975.

Knopf started his publishing company in 1915. He and Blanche, ran it as a family business until 1959 when their son left Knopf Publishing to to start Atheneum. At that time Knopf blended in, quite happily, with Random House.

I love this book. The front cover of Sixty Photographs shows A.A.K. himself, as a young man, seated comfortably in a meadow a few years before he founded his publishing company. The back cover shows him as an old man seated comfortably in a similar meadow. On the pages in between, Knopf gives us a treat. The photographs have the unstudied charm of the enthusiastic amateur photographer. Unpolished, they're more intimate. Knopf includes anecdotes to accompany each picture. They read like a conversation. You and he are flipping through the photos and he's recollecting the people and the circumstances. Sixty Photographs is a heartening glimpse of a mid-20th century world of literature and art and music and publishing and friendship.

This book is readily available. You can get one easily at your local bookstore or over the internet. We got ours from Pat Knopf.

In the late 1970s Alfred A. Knopf, Jr invited Christopher P. Stephens up to his house in Connecticut to look at books. Of course Chris went. There were lots of books, nicely arranged on handsome shelves. Chris expressed interest in buying a beautifully inscribed author collection. "Oh no," said Pat. "Those are going to my daughter." Chris ended up with 3 or 4 cartons of good books that weren't going to Knopf's daughters or son. He brought them back to Canfield Stephens Books.

Pat Knopf was friendly and easy to talk to, says Chris. They talked books. They talked publishing. Knopf had been in publishing since his infancy. Chris expected him to have tons of ephemera tucked away in boxes and drawers. Chris expected piles of papers on the floors and desk tops and bursting forth from cupboards. There was no evidence of any of this.

"Don't you have any junky stuff around somewhere?" he asked.

Pat was bewildered. "What do you mean?"

"You know," Chris coaxed him. "Galleys. Proofs. Letters from authors. Production correspondance."

Knopf dismissed it all with a wave of the hand. "I don't keep any of that. I throw it all out when I'm through with it."

Although Pat Knopf threw out much that Stephens would have liked to buy, Chris still left happy. He had some very fine books. He brought Sixty Photographs home for our personal bookshelves.

That volume had to get used to quite a different environment. At our house we do have a lot of junky stuff around.

Alfred A. Knopf 1892 - 1984

Pat Knopf 1918 - 2009

A brief biography of Alfred Abraham Knopf, Sr. by Columbia University

The Alfred A. and Blanch Knopf Collection at University of Texas at Austin

NY Times Obituary for Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/books/16knopf.html

Lakeside Classics

Lakeside Classics are printed - one per year - by the R.R. Donnelley Company, printers. Richard Robert Donnelley founded the company in the 1864. His son started the Lakeside Classic Christmas book tradition 39 years later. The books are given away to clients and employees as Christmas presents. They are nicely designed and beautifully printed using the most modern printing technology.

Each year, each book reaffirms "the objective set forth by Mr. T.E. Donnelley who, as president of our company in 1903, wanted an example of a book which in taste and workmanship met the exacting requirements of the book lover, but which was printed on machines built primarily for the reduction of cost."

The Lakeside Classics fit the bill. They feel good in the hands. They are pleasing to look at. The paper is good. The print is clear. Indeed, the taste and workmanship of Lakeside Classics does entirely meet the exacting requirements of this book lover. What's more, the content quite delights!

Lakeside Classics tell the story of the American Old West, usually in the voice of someone who lived there and then. The series specializes in personal narratives of the American frontier.

For instance, Edward Abbott "Teddy Blue" lived a colorful cowboy life just after the Civil War. He and a lady journalist wrote We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cow Puncher. Teddy Blue ridicules the movies' fascination with two-gun cowboy gunslingers. "I punched cows from '71 on, and I never yet saw a cowboy with two guns. I mean two six-shooters. Wild Bill carried two guns and so did some of those other city marshals, like Bat Masterson, but they were professional gunmen themselves, not cow punchers."

There weren't many woman in Teddy Blue's territory. A certain preacher's daughter might have had an exaggerated religious influence because of her gender. Later she bragged to a neighbor about reforming Teddy Blue. "Ted?" asked the neighbor. "Why he's the wildest cow puncher in all Montana." Subsequent events demonstrated that the neighbor was more right than the preacher's daughter.

In Narrative of my Captivity Among the Sioux Indians, Fanny Kelly relates how she tried to save her daughter by coaching her to slide off the pony and crawl back to camp. Much later Fanny meets an Indian with her daughter's scalp tied to his belt.

Harriet Bishop McConkey was never abducted herself, but she lived through the Indian Massacres of 1862 and 63 in Minnesota. She was a careful observer. Dakota War Whoop tells the story.

I became quite attached to Billy Breakenridge reading his Helldorado. Billy worked on the railroads. He labored in a livery stable, fought in Tombstone, panned for gold and gambled. He rode cattle, joined the calvary, and served as a page in the winter of 1863 when the territorial legislature was in session. He took a job hauling liquor for a saloon owner through dangerous country where Indians and French renegades were looking to interrupt his deliveries. Breakenridge tells an entirely different version of the Chivington Massacre from those I've read elsewhere.

The content, as well as the craftsmanship, of the Lakeside Classics is remarkable. I was telling a bunch of literary pals about these books. They liked what they heard. Christine Lehner wanted to know if I'd read them all.

Read them all? Last month R.R. Donnelley Company distributed the 107th title. I've read 6 or 7 of them.

It's an intriguing idea though. It sounds like the making of a New Year's Resolution. Sure it wouldn't have the onerous component so critical to most New Year's Resolutions. It would, instead, be pure pleasure. Besides, it would take me 5 years, not just one because I'm a slow reader and I want to read a lot of other stuff too, for work and for fun. Nevertheless it is exactly my kind of resolution. I'm making it now: I resolve to begin a half-decade project of reading all the Lakeside Classics.

Want to join me?

R.R. Donnelley Company describes Lakeside Classics: http://www.rrd.com/wwwRRD1/AboutUs/LakesideClassics/LakesideClassics.asp

riverrun sells Lakeside Classics: http://www.riverrunbookshop.com

Besides asking questions, Christine Lehner writes a very entertaining blog. I recommend it:

http://sortquenchdump.blogspot.com/

interesting history of the companies leading up to RR Donnelley and Sons Company:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2840800225.html

Chris Stephens' Lakeside Classics Checklist with bibliographic information but no content annotations. That's what I should add in 5 years.

Bits of Conversation with Sol Stein - publisher Stein and Day

Sol Stein came into riverrun with a whole string of compliments for Frank Scioscia and riverrun.

A whole string of compliments is also appropriate for Stein himself.

He told me tantalizing bits of lots of stories. He told of Stein and Day, where he was publisher and editor-in-chief for almost 30 years. He talked about WWII, where Stein was an insider - even winning a bet with Dwight D. Eisenhower. He told stories of authors and great book collections. He talked about political leaders and about his grandchildren.

Unfortunately time was short. He promised more details at the next visit. I'm looking forward to it.

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

A Conversation With Patricia Lowy - Graphic Designer & Artist

"I started working at William Morrow as a production assistant. Every week I had to type up a production report. And I didn't really know how to type. I was supposed to file all this stuff - manuscripts, cover art, production galleys, bound galleys, individual pages.

"It was totally boring but I had to support myself while I was in school."

Where was she going to school?

"Pratt had a special graduate program in graphic design. All the teachers were professionals in the field, so the courses were conducted in the evenings and weekends. It sounded great but many of these professionals had considerably more talent as artists than as teachers.

"There are professional artists that are also good teachers. They're rare. Milton Glaser is one example. I took a course from him at School of Visual Arts. He's an amazing graphic designer and he's an amazing teacher. A really great teacher. The Pratt program didn't have teachers like that.

"A better opportunity to learn came my way. Cynthia Basil, art director of Morrow Junior Books, took me on. I became her assistant and she taught me everything. She was great.

"Cynthia was quite a character. She chain-smoked Camels. She collected toys - all these old tin toys with moving parts. Her apartment was full of them. She never married. In a way, she never grew up. Maybe you need that Peter Pan characteristic to excel in junior books.

"In publishing, at that time anyway, you had to change publishers to get much of a salary increase. I moved to E.P. Dutton. Riki Levinson was a very talented art director at Dutton. Later I went Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. There I designed for adult as well as children's books."

What does designing books without illustrations entail?

"The designer makes decisions about the title page, the chapter openings, the whole way a book looks. The layouts are designed in pencil on tissue paper. Everything is ruled carefully. There weren't computers at this time. All work was long hand.

"In the 1970s and 80s publishers spent a lot of money getting type set. Now that's done more easily on computers. It's a big change. Then they hired retouchers. Now they use photo shop."

Patricia moved to McGraw Hill where she was the design supervisor. She worked on text books, which required quite a bit of design attention. "I earned more money but the work was dry.

"I left and became a free lance design consultant. Much more fun. My studio was above Shakespeare & Company. It was a convenient location. Dan and I lived nearby. Every publisher I'd worked for gave me work.

"One project was for William Morrow. I was designing a book by Charles Silverstein. My 5th grade teacher was named Charles Silverstein. He was a great teacher - memorable because you have so few really great teachers as you grow up. I wondered if it was the same person. It was! I telephoned. He wasn't phased in the least - he was thrilled to hear from one of his former 5th graders. He'd left teaching. He'd become a psychologist and had written several books, one of which I designed."

Patricia Lowy closed down her studio and her consultancy to devote more time to her sons. She remains a graphic designer and artist. Often her artwork blends unexpected combinations of paper and subject matter, or of emotional impact and technique. Some are drawn from an unusual physical perspective. All, even the ones of inanimate objects, burst off the page with bold vitality.

I especially admire her charcoal drawing that's behind Lowy in the photos. The decorative floral pattern, sort of like wallpaper, is a soothing screen you see at first glance. At second glance you see the body bags.

Patricia Lowy is always interesting to talk with. I might have badgered her too relentlessly for this particular conversation about her work in publishing. I appreciate this conversation though. I appreciate all of them.

NYTimes article by Vivien Raynor - Ms Raynor has a keen sense of self-importance but as an art critic she still has a distance to go. read paragraphs 5 and 6

Center for Book Arts

Richard Minsky ran the Center for Book Arts. It was on Bleeker Street in NYC during the 1970s. Now it is a bigger more comprehensive operation on 27th Street with hundreds of inviting classes in the many aspects of making books.

In 1975 I took a wonderful class in letter press hand printing from Minsky on Bleeker. There were just a few of us n the class. Richard was an enthusiastic teacher. He was also enthusiastic about his own creative binding projects. While I was there he had just finished a binding that included an actual bird as part of the book.

One night Richard let me stay late to work on one of my broadsides - a heart shaped poem by Piero Heliczer. It was cold in the studio. Most of the lights were off. Alone there, it felt like I was back n time. Newspaper editors at the old west might have worked in the cold, in the dark, alone at night to put together a front page for frontier readers. I put together a few broadsides.

1.) Marvin Cohen 2.) announcement for a Richard Kostelanetz party 3.) lyrics of a country western song by Bruce Holvenstot, a friend of mine from Marvin Cohen's writing class at CCNY, and 4.) the Piero Heliczer poem of Auswich

These broadsides made up the entire output of my Moondragon Press.

The Book Arts of Richard Minsky

Minsky's resume

Center for Book Arts

Margie Cohn - House of Books

photo by Christopher P. Stephens 1981 or 1982

Margie Cohn was Grande Dame of the Book business.

When Chris Stephens first met her in the late 1960s, she had already been establishing her expertise for almost 40 years. Margie and her husband, Louis, opened House of Books in 1930, the year they married.

Louis was proprietor. He had assembled an extensive Hemingway collection. He gave it to Margie as a wedding present. The two of them continued to build the collection. Louis became Ernest Hemingway's enthusiastic bibliographer. Hemingway cooperated. The author sent the book collector manuscripts and proof copies and various editions of his work. Hemingway designed a book plate for Cohn. It said: From the Works of Ernest Hemingway in the Library of Louis Henry Cohn. Hemingway wrote a note reminding himself to "give him the works".

The working relationship between Cohn and Hemingway - bibliographer and author - developed into a lasting friendship.

The Cohn's published other friends' poetry in their Crown Octavos Series. T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Stephens Vincent Benet, Marianne Moore are some of those poets. They also published W. Somerset Maugham, Thomas Wolfe, Cyril Connolly and Tom Stoppard. Because Margie and Louis were both born collectors, they kept files of all the correspondence with these authors and poets.

Louis Cohn died in 1953. The House of Books did not. Margie stepped forward and ran the operation. Some, who knew them both, say that Margie did a remarkably better job than Louis had. She continued to carry 20th century work. She specialized in the authors and poets she knew personally.

Margie Cohn had a brusque, no nonsense manner that Chris always enjoyed. She knew a lot. Margie continued to develop existing contacts with librarians, collectors, and writers. She ran House of Books in the pre-internet period. Book dealing was knowledge intensive. She guarded her knowledge of points for collectable editions. She also guarded her contacts. If a book collector dropped by when a young book dealer, like Chris, was visiting - for example - Margie made the collector wait in the anteroom while she shooed the book dealer out another door.

Chris did visit Margie often. He was tremendously fond of her. He admired her knowledge.

Margie lived to be almost 100. A few years before she died Chris saw her at a book fair. She was looking intently at some books. She was so immersed in what she was thinking that she didn't know Chris took a photo. Then she saw him.

"Don't you dare take a picture of me, Chris Stephens!"

Chris coaxed. He wanted more shots.

"If you take a picture of me, I will cut you off. I will not sell you anything. I will not buy anything. You may never again come to visit."

That was pretty clear. Chris smiled, laid down his camera and never mentioned to the one he'd taken. The one he'd taken of the great book lady for whom he had such high regard.

Margie: Marguerite Arnold Cohn 1887 - 1984

Louis Henry Cohn 1888 - 1953

A Bibliography of the works of Ernest Hemingway by Louis Henry Cohn

The Cohn Ernest Hemingway Collection at the University if Delaware

Paris Review interview of T.S. Eliot that took place at Margie Cohn's apartment

interesting anecdotal essay by Jack W.C. Hagstrom about Robert Frost, mentions Margie toward the end. Hagstrom sponsored her for membership in the Grolier Club.

a brief mention of the Cohns in a preview of what looks like a very interesting book: A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes

Frank Scioscia - Harper & Row

Frank Scioscia was a sales representative for Harper & Brothers from summer 1956 to spring 1966. His territory was Southern California and Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. He liked the travel. His accounts were stores that carried new books, but he always stopped in at the used bookstores wherever he went.

In 1966 Frank was promoted to the head office in New York. Frank Scioscia worked at Harpers until he retired. He worked through mergers that changed the name of the publishing house from Harper & Bros to Harper & Row to Harper Collins.

Frank Scioscia enjoyed the publishing world in NYC, but he always a little bit missed the life of a publishers sales rep.

July 1979

     This is Frank Scioscia's office at Harper & Row Publishers.  He spent the day showing his grandson around Harper's.  At the moment of this photo Michael is trying out Frank Scioscia's chair.     The chair feels just right.  So do the piles of books all around.   

PPB

The cost of paper, printing and binding, PPB, is calculated for each book and comes to around $3.00. There are also warehousing and transportation costs directly associated with that book.

A publishing company cannot survive, let alone flourish, unless most of the books it produces contribute revenue toward editorial, advertising, royalty, and plant costs also. In accounting terms though, PPB is the cost of the book.

PPB is a somewhat artificial number. Still, publishers like to recover PPB on remainder copies of a book that they are letting go out of print. In the 1970s winning remainder bids were usually less than PPB. This was disappointing to the publisher but it was better to get something for the books rather than nothing.

In an extreme example of this, Ted Maass, then V.P. in charge of sales at Simon & Schuster, urged Chris Stephens to buy the remaining 1100 copies of Wolf by Jim Harrison for a penny a book. 1100 books for $110. Quite a deal. Ted knew that Chris was interested because Chris had already purchased 1000 copies of the same book at quite a bit more.

Chris was interested. He believed in Jim Harrison who is listed as one of the authors in Chris' famous Sixties Catalogue.

Limited space forced Chris to reluctantly decline the great deal. It didn't make sense for us. It did make sense for Maass to try though. A penny was a tiny fraction of PPB but it would cost a nickel each to have the books ground up. The sale would have made a 6 cent swing per book for Simon & Schuster.

Not everyone saw it that way though. Thomson E. Murray didn't. In the 1980s he was the manager of remainder sales at Doubleday.

Many authors have a clause in their contracts that allows them to purchase copies of their book at PPB when it becomes a remainder. Charles Newman had such a clause. Newman had been editor of the Tri Quarterly Review for many years. He also wrote alternative fiction. Dial, then an imprint of Doubleday, published Newman's novel, White Jazz.

White Jazz went out of print in the fall of 1985. Newman asked Stephens to buy the remaining copies and put the title back in print under Stephens' Ultramarine Publishing Company. Chris was happy to. Charlie offered to exercise his option to purchase at PPB. Chris said, "No. no. We'll handle this as if we don't know each other. I'll bid on White Jazz at the next remainder sale."

Chris bid 15 cents per copy. He was the only bidder. He should have won the bid and purchased the remainder at that price. But it didn't happen that way. Manager Murray was personally insulted by the low bid. He told Chris he would have those books ground up before he would let them go at 15 cents.

"That doesn't make sense," said Chris. "It will cost the company money to have them ground up."

Murray didn't care. He was incensed. He said he'd destroy them on principle.

Maybe he was playing chicken. Neither Stephens nor Newman cared to chance it. Chris bought the entire remainder at PPB. Which was much more than was sensible.

Doubleday was right in a way. Sales were slow. It didn't make financial sense to pay the warehousing and distribution expenses of keeping it in print.

But in the bigger picture Ultramarine was right. White Jazz is an interesting piece of experimental fiction by an important author. Still in print almost 25 years later, it has been available to the occasional - yet keenly interested - reader all that time. The title's in-print status has actually outlasted the author.

PPB is one measure of a book's cost but what's the measure of a book's value?

books by Charles Newman:

New Axis

The Promise Keeper

A Child's History of America

There Must Be More to Love Than Death

White Jazz

The Post-Modern Aura: the Act of Fiction in an Age of Inflation

reviews of Jim Harrison's books from The New York Times

an interesting article about Jim Harrison

and another

Remainders

Publishers went on warehouse rampages in the 1970s. They ground up books. There was a tax advantage to get rid of back stock.
Grinding wasn't the best method of getting rid of books. Selling was. Once the publisher decided to stop carrying a title in-print, the publisher offered the remaining quantity, the "remainders", for sale. Prospective buyers bid for them. Or didn't.
This was the decade of transition from small, often family-held publishing companies to large comglomerate-held publishing companies. The conglomerates got rid of some great titles. For tax reasons.
Christopher Stephens had just completed his legendary Sixties Catalogue, containing books by substantial and promising authors who began their careers in the 1960s. (This fascinating catalogue will be the subject of a future posting)
Many of Chris' favorite authors were being remaindered. They were going out of print. Good books gone. This distressed Chris. He started bidding on books by authors in his Sixties Catalogue, authors he believed in. Chris started his own publishing company, Ultramarine. When he bought the remainders, he put them back in print.
The books were delivered on skids to our apartment in Washington Heights. Chris built wider book shelves to accomodate boxes. We stored them and filled orders as they came in. At first it was like we had a little warehouse in our big apartment. Very shortly it was like we had a little living space in our big warehouse.
Toward the end of the decade, companies like Barnes & Noble did so well buying remainders and selling them in their stores that the remainder auction took off. Ultramarine could no longer afford to buy favorite authors to keep in print. We went in other directions.
That publishing transistion period was very interesting. The phenomenon of very cheap remainders was one of the most interesting aspects of that time.

December 1963 - Scioscia's living room in Manhattan Beach, California

left to right:

Theron Palmer - sales rep Dial Delacorte

Mary Scioscia

Violet Palmer

Ted Maass - sales rep Macmillan