NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS
Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts, and Audio Interviews from The Biblio File radio program pertaining to same by a writer, broadcaster, bibliophile.
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Archive for September, 2009
Audio Interview with Comics historian Brad Mackay: Cartoonists, Illustrators and the Graphic Novel
Writer, journalist, comic reader, intermittent blogger, and over-tired family man Brad Mackay is the author most recently of a biographical essay which appears in The Collected Doug Wright Volume One (Drawn and Quarterly, 2009).
First of a two-volume set, the book – designed by well known Canadian cartoonist Seth - presents a comprehensive look at the life and career of one of the most-read, best-loved cartoonists of the 1960s. The work draws from thousands of pieces of art, pictures, and letters, plus the artist’s own journals, and provides a picture of the British-born Wright as both cartoonist and human being. It follows his artistic development from earliest unpublished works through to the introduction of his most enduring comic strip, Nipper. First published in 1949, a full year before the debut of Peanuts, it memorably captured both the humorous and frustrating side of parenting.
I spoke with Brad recently in Ottawa. We use Wright as a wedge to delve into the history of illustration, comics and graphic novels. Toward the end of our discussion Brad provides some tips for those interested in collecting comics and graphic novels on how best they might start their journey.
Please listen here
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Serious novelists used to believe more strongly in their own competence
Just received the 21st R.R. Bowker Memorial Lecture in the mail. Publishing Then and Now 1912-1964 by Alfred A. Knopf (New York Public Library, 1964), Here’s what Mr. Knopf had to say about the difference between then, 1912, and now, 1964:
"When I went to work at Garden City I heard of only one editor aboard the ship: Harry Peyton Steger was the friend of O. Henry and Booth Tarkington, neither of whom required the services the author of today expects his editor to render. Let me quote from a letter I received not long ago from a young and not unsuccessful novelist. He was explaining why he felt he had to leave us for another house. There he would have the assistance of a friend who "more than anyone else anywhere has for almost fifteen years now encouraged me, kept after me, slaved with me over my writing as an editor and a friend…there is no longer anyone in your firm with whom I have anything even approaching this kind of relationship which is of such great importance to me." In the old days, I think, the serious novelist believed more strongly in his own competence."
I think here of James Joyce, and anyone trying to screw with his prose.
Beale’s Best Book Shops
This ain’t no Zagat, or Michelin guide, but I do want to proffer the Nota Bene seal of approval on several bookstores visited during last weekend’s drive from Ottawa to Portland, Maine, and back. No hard criteria, many floating ones…common to them all however was this quality: if after 45 minutes browsing I couldn’t bring myself to leave, or if the necessity of it resulted in weeping and wailing…it got the grade. So:
For its immaculate organization and presentation, and its owner (Nancy S. Grayson)”s superb collecting suggestions (King Penguins and Britain in Pictures), Cunningham Books in Portland:
Also in Portland, for its plentiful supply, well chosen titles, and delightful, chaotic presentation:
Yes Books.
For their focus on food, their innovative combination of new and antiquarian fare, and for involvement with their audiences, Don and Samantha Hoyt Lindgren, Rabelais Books, Portland.
For its significant collection of basement-housed periodicals, its Books on Books section ( from which was pulled signed copies of A. Edward Newton’s Amenities of Book Collecting, and The Truth About Publishing by Stanley Unwin),
and all of the wonderfully
photogenic
books
gracing
the place (thank you Caroline)
De Wolfe and Wood in Alfred, Maine.
For its deceptively diminutive facade, and behind it the miles of shelf lined warrens, and the fact it provided me with an addition to my Auden collection, Northwood Books
in Northwood, New Hampshire. For similar reasons, and for taking pity on late arriving biblioholics, its sister store in Henniker, NH. manned by husband to the proprietess at Northwood: #6 Book Depot.
Ditto Pleasant Street Books in Woodstock, Vt. for keeping the lights on hours past normal,
for two more Auden titles (one On This Island signed by Joseph Blumenthal of Spiral Press fame …printer of said book), a bulging Lit Crit section, from which I extracted First Editions of Kenneth Burke’s A Grammar of Motives (in a VG DJ) Ford Madox Ford’s The English Novel (sadly without), and, from nearby Literature, a re-bound First of Aldous Huxley’s Mortal Coils…plus its roof:
The Fury of Abandonment
The Fury of Abandonment
by Anne Sexton
Someone lives in a cave
eating his toes,
I know that much.
Someone little lives under a bush
pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against
his starving bloated stomach,
I know that much.
A monkey had his hands cut off
for a medical experiment
and his claws wept.
I know that much.
eating his toes,
I know that much.
Someone little lives under a bush
pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against
his starving bloated stomach,
I know that much.
A monkey had his hands cut off
for a medical experiment
and his claws wept.
I know that much.
I know that it is all
a matter of hands.
Out of the mournful sweetness of touching
comes love
like breakfast.
Out of the many houses come the hands
before the abandonment of the city,
out of hte bars and shops,
a thin file of ants.
I’ve been abandoned out here
under the dry stars
with no shoes, no belt
and I’ve called Rescue Inc. –
that old-fashioned hot line -
no voice.
Left to my own lips, touch them,
my own nostrils, shoulders, breasts,
navel, stomach, mound, kneebone, ankle,
touch them.
It makes me laugh
to see a woman in this condition.
It makes me laugh for America and New York city
when your hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone.
from The Death Notebooks (HMCO 1974)
Do it yourself Illuminated Letters
I’m cleaning out some old files in preparation for a move. Came across artist Kathryn Finter’s business card. It looks like this:
The reason I have it, I think, is that I attended a lecture she gave on illuminated manuscripts at the National Gallery of Canada several years ago. It went something like this:
Incoming search terms:
- how to do illuminated letters
- downloadable illuminated letters
- illuminated letter copy paste site
- illuminated letter software
- how to do an illuminated letter
- illuminated letters
- illuminated letters software
- national gallery business card
Biblio Handles
Biblioclast: Destroyer of books
Bibliobule: One who reads too much
Bibliolater: One who worships books
Bibliomancer: One who tells fortunes with books
Bibliopegist: One who knows about, or has a special love of bindings
Bibliotaph: Concealer, burier or hider of books
Bibliopole: Seller of books
Bibliolestes/Bilbioklept: one who steals books
What makes a piece of Fine Printing fine?
According to Joseph Blumenthal, proprietor of the Spiral Press (and whose signature appears in the copy of W.H. Auden’s On This Island I just bought from Pleasant Street Books in Woodstock, Vermont):
from his book Typographic Years:
Clarity, beauty, nobility are the quintessential goals. The first duty of the book designer is to transmit the author’s text to the reader without hinderance. Illustration and decoration may well enhance the pages, but the successful arrangement of type is the vital, central concern…
Most pressmen tend to overink printed matter. That is the easy way, but the effect is dense or heavy, and if inspected with a magnifying glass, the edges of the type are not sharp. The goal should be maximum colverage with minimum ink, thus with sensitive impression achieving clean, crisp type. To the naked eye the type should be well covered, but a magnifying glass would show the textured paper minutely breaking through the inking. The white paper thereby breathes and gives the page a sense of (invisible) luminosity. This is the core of craftmanship and the mystery of its gratification.
Country Barns, etc.
During my recent week (Week 8, it may be late, but it’s great) at Red Pine Camp (Club Med, Eastern Ontario) I took to walking each morning, with various fellow campers, along this pleasant, winding, country road. I figure the same barn oil salesman must have gotten to all the farms along the way:
And another kilometre down the road?
The Golden Lake Bookstore.
