Browsings

by Michael Dirda

  This past weekend, I wandered into downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, to attend a book arts festival sponsored by Pyramid Atlantic, a cooperative devoted to teaching and promoting every sort of paper-based art and craft. Part of the two-day festival included printing and papermaking demonstrations at the Pyramid Atlantic studios, as well as lectures by noted local artists. For instance, it was fun to learn how all those wonderfully garish posters—the kind tacked to the sides of telephone poles or kiosks—were designed and produced for visiting carnivals, county fairs, and rock concerts.

  Did I mention that there was also a related book fair at the Silver Spring civic center?

  As I sauntered among the booths, I noticed that one vendor was selling what she called Mean Cards. Instead of saccharine Hallmark greetings and congratulations, these were inscribed “Just Go Away and Die,” “Everyone Hates You,” “Jerk,” and “You Look Awful. Seriously.” When I pointed these out to my Beloved Spouse, that gentle dove immediately bought the entire stock. You don’t want to cross Marian Dirda.

  I, of course, Mr. Sweetness and Light, continued my usual aimless meandering, pausing to check out the fine-press offerings from Baltimore’s Kelmscott Bookshop and to page through various limited editions published in runs of just 200 copies. In short, I was enjoying myself in a quiet, low-keyed sort of way—quiet and low-keyed because almost nothing at the fair seemed quite to my taste.

  No matter how beautiful the paper, artwork, printing, and binding, I’m seldom drawn to a book unless it’s by a writer I care about or on a subject that appeals to me. Many private press items, however, tend to be of largely regional interest—California history, the journals of some early pioneer, descriptions of the natural world. All worthy subjects and worthy of support, but, as we used to say in the ’60s, not my thing. So I felt free and easy under the apple boughs, or rather among the booths, until I came to Bowerbox Press. The proprietor, Val Lucas, mainly offered a wide supply of cards, handsomely decorated with birds. Ms. Lucas was clearly fascinated by all things avian because she’d also brought along two large woodblock prints, 18 inches by 24: one featured a gull-like seabird in full flight, the other a somewhat sinister crowlike creature.

  The seabird first caught my eye, in part because of the bold title: “The Albatross.” I then noticed a bit of squared-up text, obviously stanzas, underneath the image. Now there are only two well-known poems that feature an albatross, Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Albatross” by Baudelaire, in which he compares the artist, mocked and out of place in society, to the seabird, which is comparably clumsy and awkward when not soaring among the clouds. I stooped down to see if the poem was a section of “The Ancient Mariner” or if it might be the Baudelaire. Instinctively, my eyes went to the last line, and I read: “Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher”—“His giant wings prevent him from walking.”

  As for the black bird: since it wasn’t the Maltese Falcon, it could only be, and was, a raven, with Poe’s Halloween classic somewhat tightly printed underneath. I suspect that “Quoth the Raven: ‘Nevermore!’” may be the most famous line in American poetry.

  “The Albatross” and “The Raven”—studies in light and dark—certainly looked very handsome together. The pair, however, were hardly what you’d call cheap. Neither were they impossibly expensive. Still, with wholly uncharacteristic resolve, I finally walked away. I eventually walked home, too, albeit in a thoughtful mood. And the next day I hurried back to the fair and bought both prints.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that M. Dirda is a sucker for anything bookish in the way of artwork. On the mantel in my living room you will see Leonard Maurer’s big etching of James Joyce—another copy used to hang in the offices of Book World above art director Francis Tanabe’s desk—and Dan Miller’s woodblock of W. B. Yeats and Ray Driver’s pen-and-ink portrait of Shakespeare as a sleek Broadway-style theatrical impresario. Back in the happy days when I taught and enjoyed an office at McDaniel College, I was able to deck the walls (and shelves) with the following:

  A photograph of Borges

  A framed postcard of W. H. Auden petting a cat

  An old publicity shot of M. F. K. Fisher, with her hair sleeked back and looking to-die-for gorgeous

  The reproduction of a photograph of bookman Vincent Starrett, with the caption “A cigar and lots of old books—what more could one ask for?”

  A high-quality reproduction of a drawing of Ezra Pound by Guy Davenport, in the Easter-Island style of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

  A colored photograph of Chekhov, set in an elaborate frame that I bought at a Russian store in New York

  Two Richard Thompson caricatures of T. S. Eliot and Bernard Shaw, drawn in what looks like a soft gray conté crayon

  A poster of Tenniel’s Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland: “Who are you?”

  A framed post card of M. R. James, author of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, seen in profile at his desk

  A period-style lobby card for a new translation of Jules Verne’s play Journey Through the Impossible

  A poster advertising the Atlantic Center for the Arts (where I once taught writing and later worked on two of my books)

  Lots of small pen-and-ink images, drawn by the much loved and still-missed Susan Davis as illustrations for my Readings column in The Washington Post

  Of course, I haven’t even mentioned the Sherlockian art or the poster of Bettie Page or the facsimile cover of the first Batman comic. Still, like many of my books, most of this material is stored away in boxes, awaiting the day when I’ll wake up and find myself the possessor of a proper library. If I’m lucky, my eyes will still be good enough to read with and my liver will be functioning, so that I’ll be able to sprawl in a leather armchair and sip brandy and gaze at these mementos of a bookish life—while listening to Ben Webster or Mozart on the sound system. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  In Praise of Small Presses

  Books don’t only furnish a room, they also make the best holiday gifts. Note that I said “books.” Kindles and Nooks and iPads may offer texts, but word-pixels on a screen aren’t books. Come Christmas morning, what do you tell your significant other? “Darling, I can’t thank you enough for this download of The Hobbit for my e-Reader.” I don’t think so. Somehow, this isn’t quite the same as unwrapping a signed first printing of The Hobbit in a fine dust jacket (many bucks), or Douglas Anderson’s information-packed annotated edition (invaluable), or any of the handsome versions illustrated by Michael Hague or Alan Lee or Tolkien himself.

  No, a Christmas present should be, well, something present, right there in your hands after you’ve read the gift card and ripped aside the ribbons and bows and red-and-green paper decorated with snowmen and Santas.

  So hie thee to your nearest bookstore, be it an independent like Washington’s Politics and Prose or a big box Barnes & Noble. What could be a better way to shop for the holidays than to spend an hour or two, alone or with your family, looking at books? In my own case, of course, I try to make it Christmas every day, or at least once a week.

  All of which said, I want to make a pitch for some works you aren’t likely to find in your local bookstore, no matter how extensive its holdings: small-press titles. In recent years, as trade houses increasingly gravitate to wholly commercial “product,” specialty publishers and independent presses have risen up to make available wonderful books, real books, of all kinds. Let me stress that I’m not talking about those generic print-on-demand titles, many of which are bare-bones ugly and little better than photocopies bound in bland paper wraps. Nor am I talking about self-published work, so much in the news these days. No, I’m thinking of legitimate small publishers with a mission to bring neglected authors back into print and to produce the kind of books that dreams are made of.

  My own tastes are fairly eclectic, but in recent years I’ve grown intensely interested in science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and adventure stories written between
roughly 1865 and 1935. This “golden age” of storytelling is being served by a number of presses, all of which host websites where you can purchase their offerings. I’m going to list, in alphabetical order, some of my favorites. Just type their names into your search engine, and you will soon be drooling and counting the dollars in your pocketbook.

  —Ash-Tree Press specializes in classic English-language ghost stories and weird tales, with a subsidiary imprint, Calabash Press, that publishes material relating to Sherlock Holmes. Recently, much of their backlist has been made available as e-books, but I still recommend the original editions. Some are out of print, but many are still available. Here you can buy the complete supernatural fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee and Sheridan Le Fanu, not to overlook John Meade Falkner’s eerie novel The Nebuly Coat or M. R. James’s memoir Eton and King’s.

  —Centipede Press brings out several kinds of books—oversized portfolios, such as the complete art work of Lee Brown Coye, collections of commentary on influential horror films such as Carrie, handsome editions, often illustrated, of classic titles (most recently Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and the major works of important genre authors. For example, this fall Centipede is offering five volumes devoted to the great noir writer Cornell Woolrich. The edition of Phantom Lady comes with a haunting dust jacket by Matt Mahurin, an introduction by Barry N. Malzberg (who was, for a short time, Woolrich’s agent), and a gallery of the covers and film posters for the book and the movie based on it.

  —Crippen & Landru takes its name from two of the most famous real-life murderers of England and France. The press only publishes story collections, usually gathering together for the first time the best of an author’s scattered short fiction. In their “Lost Classics” series you can acquire perfect holiday entertainment from John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, T. S. Stribling (Dr. Poggioli), Michael Gilbert, and Vera Caspary (best known for Laura). Crippen & Landru doesn’t just focus on the dead, however: here are collections by S. J. Rozan, Lawrence Block, and—this fall—Melodie Johnson Howe, whose “Diana Poole” stories are set in Hollywood.

  —Gasogene Books/Wessex Press is the major purveyor of books by Arthur Conan Doyle or about Sherlock Holmes. Any fan of Robert Downey Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, or Jonny Lee Miller should explore the greater world of Sherlockiana, and this is where to start. Gasogene/Wessex has reissued Vincent Starrett’s Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, an edition of the 1910 stage production of The Speckled Band, a 10-volume collection of the entire Holmes canon (annotated by Leslie S. Klinger), Sherlockian pastiches, CDs, and much else.

  —Hippocampus Press is to H. P. Lovecraft what Gasogene is to Sherlock Holmes. For Hippocampus, the great scholar of the weird tale, S. T. Joshi, has edited HPL’s letters, occasional writings, and fiction. The press has also brought out Joshi’s massive, and massively enjoyable, biography of Lovecraft, as well as the horror and science fiction of other important authors, notably Clark Ashton Smith, M. P. Shiel, and Barry Pain. But Hippocampus casts a wide net, and its list also includes the collected poetry of the California “romantic” George Sterling, several journals, and work by outstanding younger talents like Richard Gavin, author of At Fear’s Altar.

  —Night Shade Books struck gold a couple of years ago by publishing Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Wind-Up Girl, one of the best and most-honored science fiction novels of recent times. While the press brings out work from many new science fiction and fantasy authors, I’ve long particularly admired Night Shade’s single author collections. Here one can find the complete works of William Hope Hodgson (best known for The Night Land and The House on the Borderland), all the short fiction of Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote a lushly poetic prose of almost hypnotic beauty, and Lord Dunsany’s brilliant “club stories” told by Joseph Jorkens, three delicious double-volumes of tall tales about mermaids and ancient curses, unicorns and trips to Mars.

  —Tachyon Publications covers the full spectrum of fantasy and science fiction. Interested in steampunk? Here are basic anthologies by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Like the work of Kage Baker, author of “The Company” novels? Here are her essays on silent film. A fan of Peter Beagle, Michael Swanwick, James Morrow, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Powers? Here are some of their best works. Indeed, Tachyon’s edition of Powers’s The Bible Repairman and Other Stories just won this year’s World Fantasy Award for best short-story collection.

  —Tartarus Press books are immediately recognizable: Most of the volumes have the same muted, mustard-colored jackets: only the authors and titles vary. The books themselves stand out for their elegant design, thick paper, good printing, and comfortable heft in the hand. If you buy one Tartarus Book, it’s safe to say you’ll want to buy them all. And why not? As with Ash-Tree and Centipede titles, the books tend to go up in value, sometimes dramatically when they go out of print. Tartarus has recently been bringing out the complete works of Robert Aickman, the premier English author of “strange stories” of the past half-century (with Ramsey Campbell a close second). But they have also issued the major works of Arthur Machen, Lafcadio Hearn, Sarban, and Edith Wharton, among others. Tartarus, like the other presses, also publishes several outstanding contemporary masters of the eerie tale, including the incomparable Reggie Oliver, Mark Samuels, Rosalie Parker, Mark Valentine and Michael Reynier.

  —Valancourt Books makes available in attractive paperback editions fairly rare books from the late 18th century to the present. Here one can find the gothic classics that frightened the heroines of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the works of Bram Stoker other than Dracula, many of Richard Marsh’s novels, starting with The Beetle, and some of the stranger weird or decadent literature of the 1890s. How can you possibly go wrong with Florence Marryat’s 1897 The Blood of the Vampire, in which the heroine is the daughter of a mad scientist and a voodoo priestess?

  The above are just a few of the more important small presses. But there are many others. This year Black Dog Books brought out With the Hunted, a magnificent collection of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s scattered nonfiction. Sirius Fiction published Gate of Horn, Book of Silk: A Guide to Gene Wolfe’s ‘The Book of the Long Sun’ and ‘The Book of the Short Sun,’ by Michael Andre-Driussi—and since Gene Wolfe is our greatest living writer of science fiction, and one of our greatest living writers period, this is an important study. Sundial Press has produced an exceptionally attractive edition of Phyllis Paul’s A Cage for the Nightingale, likened to James’s The Turn of the Screw in its power and artistry. One of our best writers of unsettling fiction, R. B. Russell, can be sampled in collections from Swan River Press (Ghosts) and PS Publishing (Leave Your Sleep). The stories of the writer-scholar Mark Valentine (some written with another fine fantasist, John Howard) can be enjoyed in collections from Swan River and Tartarus, while Exposition Internationale has produced an exquisite volume of his prose poems titled At Dusk.

  While this week’s “Browsings” column has gone on rather longer than I expected, all these publishers—and authors!—deserve your attention and support. I know my own life has been enriched by the work of these devoted bookmen and women.

  P.S. Despite that obvious close, I just realized I hadn’t mentioned my favorite small press publisher for kids: Bobbledy Books. Matthew Swanson writes the words, and his wife Robbi Behr creates the pictures, and together their books are silly, poetic, surreal, and incredibly cool. Their latest title is Bobby and the Robots, which ends by giving instructions on how to build a robot. Wise parents are advised to check out, then join the Bobbledy Books Club. Some readers may recall that Swanson and Behr, under their Idiots’ Books imprint, produced that timeless, modern classic, The Baby Is Disappointing.

  P.P.S. And how could I overlook Ramble House? Yes, its books are print-on-demands, but where else can you acquire the complete works of Harry Stephen Keeler, author of The Man with the Magic Eardrums, The Skull of the Waltzing Clown, and many, many others? Keeler is either the worst or the most original detective-story writer of all time. Ramble House is, in fact, pul
p heaven, with reprints of Weird Tales authors and numerous oddities, such as Adams Farr’s unique World War II novel, The Fangs of Suet Pudding. They certainly don’t write ’em like that anymore.

  Christmas Reading

  Tis the season when choral societies start practicing their “Hallelujahs” and theaters around the country stage A Christmas Carol. Readers have their December traditions as well. To my mind there are two kinds of literate diversion particularly appropriate to the weeks just before and after Christmas: either Golden Age mysteries and ghost stories or what one might call “seasonal” poems and stories.

  Into that first category falls the so-called “Christie for Christmas.” For years, publishers brought out an Agatha Christie whodunit just in time for holiday gift-giving and, one assumes, post-holiday reading. But all sorts of genre writers have traded on the association of Christmas with cozy chills, Dickens being the pioneer and the story of Ebenezer Scrooge remaining the undisputed champeen.

  Yet there are many other fine, lighthearted Christmasy works, including the wonderful Dingley Dell chapters of Dickens’s own Pickwick Papers, P. G. Wodehouse’s “Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit,” Damon Runyon’s “The Three Wise Guys,” and Jean Shepherd’s “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash” (the basis for that nostalgia-rich and hilarious film A Christmas Story). To this day I am still moved by those two old-fashioned, sentimental classics, O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” and Henry Van Dyke’s “The Story of the Other Wise Man.”

  Still, I’d like to recommend three of my particular favorites for the upcoming holidays—a novel, a poem, and a short story.

  John Masefield’s The Box of Delights begins a few days before Christmas as the English schoolboy Kay Harker is en route to visit his guardian and cousins near the cathedral town of Tatchester. On the train he meets a pair of sinister strangers, has his money stolen, and loses his ticket. When Kay finally reaches his station, he encounters an aged Punch-and-Judy puppeteer, who asks him to perform a small favor: “Master Harker, there is something that no other soul can do for me but you alone. As you go down toward Seekings, if you would stop at Bob’s shop, as it were to buy muffins now. . . . Near the door you will see a woman plaided from the cold, wearing a ring of a very strange shape, Master Harker, being like my ring here, of the longways cross of gold and garnets. And she has bright eyes, Master Harker, as bright as mine, which is what few have. If you will step into Bob’s shop to buy muffins now, saying nothing, not even to your good friend, and say to this Lady ‘The Wolves are Running’ then she will know and Others will know; and none will get bit.”