Update February 3, 2012
A new book from the press
Typographical Tourists, Tales of Tramping Printers, edited by Alastair M. Johnston.
I first met the tramp printer while researching my book Alphabets to Order: the literature of nineteenth-century typefounders' specimens. In the late 1880s American founders began to print in-jokes about disreputable characters ("gay cats") in black "thousand-mile" shirts, out of date frock coats, worn shoes, and battered stovepipe hats, who would wander into small town print shops looking for work. These were worldly (& wordy) men who could set type swiftly and accurately, write an editorial, set up a poem from memory to fill a space, whittle a needed letter for a headline on the back of an old sort, make rollers, adjust the press -- in short they could do any part of the work in a printing office. Their conversation was full of quotations from Shakespeare, the Bible and Horace Greeley. They could recite the poems of Eugene Field and indeed could tell stories of getting drunk with the author in St Jo. They'd met Bret Harte in Eureka and Mark Twain and Dan de Quille in Virginia City, Nevada, having walked across the entire length and breadth of the United States, even into Indian Territory, working in many shops along the way. Most were well-educated, many came from respectable families, but they all suffered from wanderlust & when it struck they would resign their position, collect their wages and hit the road. Some "of the orbital persuasion" might show up annually (if they didn't owe too many debts in boarding houses and saloons around town), others vanished and became the stuff of legend. Some drank, some were escaping heartbreak; one had been humiliated by his typographical errors, another had married a beautiful octoroon by mistake; some were army deserters, others were brave ex-soldiers who had been shell-shocked and couldn't get used to sleeping indoors. Whatever their background and circumstance, they populated the landscape in the era between the American Civil War and the coming of the Linotype machine in the 1890s.
¶
There were also tramp printers in Europe. Tramping in England was well-established with a system of Union relief to help underemployed printers relocate. Some tramped to Paris to work on Galignani's Messenger. Some made it to South Africa, Australia, or New Zealand and, if there was no printing work, might become a gold prospector.
¶
While working in the Kemble Collection of the California Historical Society I began to find whole articles in trade periodicals (such as the Inland Printer, The Pacific Union Printer, the Printer & Bookmaker) about tramp printers. Some were better-written than others, and I began collecting them. I used the material for performances in which I would dress up in a top hat and frock coat and relate the tales of the tramping printer. One memorable event was held at the historic Historical Society itself, when I teamed up with my friend Steve Lavoie to perform -- however they wouldn't let us light the hurricane lamp or smoke our cigar stubs, so we were limited to nipping on a bottle of Jack for punctuation.
¶ In 1996 a really bad book called Tramp Printers appeared. I wrote a scathing review and pointed out some sources the authors overlooked, such as the writings of Will Visscher. There were many excellent first-hand accounts of tramps, including those by Jerry Graham, John Hicks and Ben Hur Lampman. Soon I had two folders of raw material and decided it was time to put the material in order before it got too unwieldy. But then I discovered the Library of Congress Historic American Newspaper archive which yielded many more wonderful tales tucked between ads for shoe polish and draught horses. I was overwhelmed with great source material and could cherry-pick it for this anthology, tailoring it so the stories lead into one another. A tramp called "Rocky Mountain" appears in a story set in New York, then we meet him in Burlington, Iowa, in another tale. The saga of Peter B. Lee, from Dodge City, 1876, seems almost mythical, but then he turns up in a newspaper item, albeit rumored to be dead, in Missouri, a decade later. My favorite discovery is Reddy Morgan -- the two stories about him shed light on different aspects of his personality, and, being written by professional newspapermen, are tales well-told and thoroughly entrancing.
¶
Though many of the stories were written in retrospect, looking back on the golden days of typographical tourists, there is no rosy glow -- the harsh reality of the tramps day-dreaming in a ditch is palpable. Nothing is sacred: Benjamin Franklin ("He had one son who was illegitimate and never got over it"), Horace Greeley, even Mark Twain are satirized. The stories are full of adventure and humor, surrealism and slap-stick.
¶
To set the stage for the tales I designed the book using "artistic printing" ornaments from the 1880s. Most of my designs are simple and modern but here I went overboard using all the Victorian typefaces in the shop for headings and a fair amount of "clip art"-- small news cuts from the specimen books of the late 19th century, to evoke the period.
¶
178 pp., paperback, includes bibliography, $20.
Back in Print
We discovered a box of unbound books and have bound them up. Fans of Tom Raworth will be pleased to know we are now offering two of his early works which are back in print as long as stocks last. Logbook, 1976, illustrated by Frances Butler. Written in Colchester in 1970, Logbook comprises random pages from a ship's log that were found floating in the poet's imagination. Frances Butler illustrated the book with elaborate Rapidograph drawings that echoed images in the logbook as well as her own fascinations with wood, stone, crumpled & torn paper, Japanese aesthetics, and the battle between the vegetables and the rocks! Alastair Johnston hand-set the text in Bulmer and 60 copies were printed on dampened Arches and bound in fabric. The same year we produced 500 copies by offset-lithography in black and white, but it has long been out of print. Limited quantities available at $25 each. Note: You can hear Raworth reading from this work on the University of Pennsylvania website.Nicht Wahr, Rosie? also by Tom Raworth, appeared from us in 1980. The book was written while Tom was studying Spanish at the University of Essex in the sixties. In 1972 a small press edition appeared in England but was destroyed accidentally after only one or two copies had made it into the world, so we were pleased to see this major work back into print. Typeset in Sabon by Alastair Johnston. Our apprentice, Marilyn Perry, did the layout and our former professor of calligraphy, Arne Wolf, designed the wonderful cover. In 1980 the book won the Award of Excellence in Typography from the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Again, limited quantities are available, at $25 each.
Cover photo by Shelly Vogel
Update January 10, 2012
It's always a pleasure and a joy to read Darrell Gray's poetry. Allan Kornblum & I have talked about doing a Collected or Selected Poems for years for the many fans and readers of Darrell, however that has not happened yet. Meanwhile, musician and author G.P. Skratz submitted a manuscript to me that consists of collaborations he wrote with Darrell in the decade between 1975 and 1986 (the year Darrell died). Darrell lived and breathed poetry so it was hard not to be involved in collaborations with him: whenever you visited him there would be a sheet of paper in the humming Selectric on the kitchen table and as the wine flowed, & the stereo blared, crazy ideas would be committed to the paper. I printed my own collaborations with Darrell -- Wreck O'Lections-- soon after he died, but here 25 years further on are some gems that were the fruitful result of many sessions with G.P. Skratz and the odd line from Pat Nolan or Andrei Codrescu, who happened to be present at the time. The book is divided into five sections; one of them the spurious translations from the French of Anton Laplace, inventor of the shoe-horn and gnasher of the ankles of princesses. It also includes a wonderful expansive introduction by Skratz on the history of Actualism, the mysterious poetry movement that Darrell founded in Iowa City in 1972 while he was a student of Ted Berrigan and Anselm Hollo at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Another of the key exponents of Actualism, Dave Morice, aka Dr Alphabet, provided two drawings to accompany Skratz' introduction. In order to create a parallel visual narrative I invited New York-born photographer Shelly Vogel to contribute some of his dramatic city nightscapes and urbane California moments to the book.
72 pages, paperback. Available at Moe's, trade orders from Small Press Distribution, or directly from us (write if you want to pay by paypal). Retail price is $18, post free in the US.
Cover art by Frances Butler
Update November 6, 2011
The first printing of the Kevin Power book Where You're At is sold out and so we are reprinting it. This is exciting as the book is just selling by word of mouth, no major reviews having appeared yet.Congratulations to Lisa Rappoport of Littoral Press, Oakland, the winner of the 2011 Alastair Johnston Award from the Pacific Center for Book Arts for her work THE SHORT GOODBYE, an imagistic recreation of Philip Marlowe from Raymond Chandler's novel. Her work was selected for purchase and presentation to the Special Collections of San Francisco Public Library from the many entries in the 14th Triennial Members Exhibit of the PCBA. -- Yes, it's a bit awkward having a prize named after me, while I am still alive, but it's better than the alternative...
Speaking of me, I have a new book out from Cuneiform Press, titled Hanging Quotes, a compilation of 19 interviews I conducted over the last 40 years with important figures in the worlds of typography, type design, book arts, small press publishing and poetry. It's a large paperback, heavily illustrated with the work of the people in the conversations. The oldest conversation in the book was with Noel Young of Capra Press, Santa Barbara, which took place in 1974. At the time Noel was publishing books of Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Diane Di Prima and many others and also printing the early books of Black Sparrow Press. I was finding my way in printing but at the time writing a column for the local free papers the Santa Barbara News & Review and planning a move to the Bay Area. This conversation has never been published. The most recent is a great long rambling discussion with Walter Hamady held this June and drawn from three hours of taped chatter (there were four hours on tape, but by the fourth we were into whisky & Walter was modeling his druze and bedouin outfits for our amusement). This conversation which covers his career and his thoughts and opinions on other book artists has also never appeared before.
At key moments in the development of the artists book I sat down with major critics to discuss the field. In 1988 I had a provocative discussion with Joan & Nathan Lyons of Visual Studies Workshop; then Sandra Krishenbaum, of Fine Print & I debated just what each of us thought an artist book is or should be (from ArtWeek, 1991).
Poetics and publishing were among the topics discussed with Bob Grenier and David Meltzer, two opinionated poet friends. Grenier talked about his voice and the visualization of his poems on the page; Meltzer reminisced about the LA Art Scene in the 50s and his close involvement with Wallace Berman of the ground-breaking Semina magazine. I quizzed poet Robert Creeley about his small press activities in Majorca, when he published the books of Divers Press in the 50s. Another Black Mountain figure, Bob Hawley, was told to give up poetry by Charles Olson and concentrate on publishing, so he put out the series of books under the Oyez! imprint. His printing was often done by Graham Mackintosh, who like Hawley talked about Everson, and also discussed Jack Spicer's philosophy of the book, in a whimsical conversation in 1986.
Glenn Todd (Arion Press), Dave Haselwood (Auerhahn Press), Joe Dunn (White Rabbit Press);
party at Ernesto Edwards, 1986. Photo by Alastair Johnston
One of the longest and most engaging discussions is with Dave Haselwood founder of Auerhahn Press who gets indiscreet about Kenneth Rexroth and (like Meltzer, Hawley, et al) tells wonderful anecdotes about the poets of the 50s and 60s: McClure, Lamantia, Snyder, Whalen, and Wieners. I was aware during many of these discussions of the historical import of getting these memories down. While I had spoken to and indeed had wonderful chats with Jonathan Williams of Jargon Press and Asa Benveniste of Trigram Press, I never taped them and so I wanted to elicit memories of them from others who had known them too. The resonances bounce around as I also chat to the late Holbrook Teter about his work at Zephyrous Image. Not only is this the only interview he gave about his work with Michael Myers, it's the full unedited interview, published here for the first time.
Among interviewees I consider my teachers, I was able to tape conversations with Nicolas Barker, former Deputy Keeper of the British Library, Roger Levenson of Tamalpais Press, Arne Wolf, calligrapher and painter, and Jack Stauffacher of Greenwood Press, San Francisco. Tying in to their comments on typography and visual design I went to the source and conducted a group of interviews with the prime movers in the world of type design -- the key people who oversaw the transition from metal to digital type -- Matthew Carter, Sumner Stone and Fred Smeijers. I also had an enlightening 90-minute discussion with the late Paul Hayden Duensing, typefounder. Figures like Hermann Zapf, Charles Olson, Paul Blackburn, Kenneth Patchen, Eric Gill, Jack Spicer, Dieter Roth, crop up in these conversations that represent, as Terry Belanger says, "Excellent printing history -- by it's 20th-century makers."
Details here.
