Bocce in the Window

Marian Ferrer opened her pottery studio/shop in Dobbs Ferry a couple of years before Frank Scioscia opened his pre-riverrun bookstore. The Dobbs Ferry Bookstore was less than a block from Dobbs Ferry Pottery. The proprietors became friends.

There was a nice bocce court down the hill from both shops. Frank Scioscia was an enthusiastic player. He had been since childhood.

Marian fashioned some bocce players from clay. She gave them to Frank. They've been at riverrun ever since.

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

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

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

William Faulkner

William Faulkner first fell in love with Estelle when they were in high school. What with one thing and another, she married some other guy. Her parents felt quite strongly that this other guy had a more promising future than Faulkner (or Falkner as it was spelled at the time).

The parents might have misjudged. Estelle's first marriage didn't work out well. She divorced the other guy and Faulkner got to marry her after all. It's a romantic story.

William and Estelle look good in this photo, striding confidently into their future together.

A Conversation with Dominique Bohr - Editor, Book Dealer

"Nothing changed my life more than computers," says Dominique Bohr. "With a computer and the internet, you are plugged into the world's greatest library - that is the best thing."

When Dom's son was in second grade, he wrote report on his father. "My father," Benji wrote "is mainly interested in knowledge."

"That's right," says Dom. "Anything. It doesn't even have to have any relevance to my life.

"When I was young, I worked, following knowledge, for Elsevier Publishing Company. Elsevier put out a good Dutch language encyclopedia. It's widely read in The Netherlands. Sixty or seventy percent of Dutch households would have that encyclopedia on their bookshelves at home.

"I was one of about 10 editors revising the encyclopedia. Elsevier had very strict rules about the format for the articles and how to handle issues like country of origin. You know, in Europe people are always being born in countries that don't exist anymore.

"My responsibilities were to research and revise entries at the end of G and all of H. That included gravity. We had a renowned physicist writing an entirely new article on gravity but I knew a little physics myself. Not much, but I was young enough to be really arrogant. As editor, I was basically proof reading the physicist's article. Somewhere though - probably in my science fiction reading - I thought I'd heard about something called a graviton. I wrote to the renowned physicist. I said 'your article is pretty good but why didn't you mention anything about gravitons?' "

Dom laughed heartily. He couldn't get over the fact that a kid who reads science fiction was given the editorial authority to challenge a mature scholar who has devoted his life to physics. Did the physicist respond?

"Yes," exclaimed Dom. "He apologized! He added a bit about gravitons to the encyclopedia article!"

Dom did plenty of other interesting things following, accumulating, and organizing knowledge. Now he's a book dealer. He says he was headed for that pleasure from the earliest times.

"In The Netherlands family and friends often give money for birthdays and other occasions. When I was seven or eight years old, I measured that money in pocket book buying power. One pocket book cost 25 gulden. That was my measure.

"The quantity of money that could purchase of one book was my basic unit of currency."