What Shakespeare Ate On Menu At 47th California Rare Book Fair

by Stephen J. Gertz

The California International Antiquarian Book Fair returns to the Pasadena Convention Center next weekend, February 7-9, 2014. Now in its 47th year, the Fair will celebrate the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth.

The bi-annual Southern California rare book extravaganza brings together the world’s foremost dealers, collectors and scholars; it is now the largest such book fair in the world. This year the Book Fair will present special exhibits featuring some of the finest expressions of Shakespeare through the centuries, and a mouth-watering panel discussion on What Shakespeare Ate: Dining in the Elizabethan Age.
 
The Huntington Library, which holds a world-class collection of early editions of Shakespeare's works, will offer an enlightening display on Shakespeare scholarship throughout the 90-plus years of its history. On view will be highlights of scholarly work researched, written, and published at the Huntington, as well as facsimiles based on Huntington holdings and items that illustrate the institution's focus on all facets of the history and culture of Renaissance England.

Fine press and artists’ books from the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College will show how Shakespeare has inspired the art of the book.  Highlights include:

• Early 20th Century “Hamlet” from Doves Press, the British private press that was one of the exemplars of the Arts and Crafts movement.

• “The Tragedie of King Lear,” illustrated with spectacular woodcut prints by American artist Claire Van Vliet that eloquently convey the pain and drama of the play; printed in limited edition in 1986.

• “R&J: The Txt Msg Edition,” this limited edition, contemporary artists’ book created by Elizabeth Pendergrass and John Hastings in 2008 presents Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene in the form of text messages printed on accordion folded pages fitted into a retro cell phone cover that is cradled in a miniature leopard-print, high-heeled shoe.

Poster images from the collections of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will spotlight memorable film adaptations of Shakespeare from around the world.  

The Honnold/Mudd Library at the Claremont Colleges Library will offer insights into stage productions with items that include:

• Photos of renowned Victorian actors Ellen Terry and Henry Irving in some of their most famous Shakespeare roles.

• Original 20th century costume studies.

• Prompt books with actors’ handwritten notes.

• “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke” (Weimar, Cranach Press, 1930) with illustrations by Edward Gordon Craig.

Rare books on food and cookery in Elizabethan times from the University of California San Diego Library will also be exhibited.  Highlights include:

• Ann Clutterbuck, “Her Book.” A English family manuscript book containing recipes for foods and for medicinal needs from 1693.

• Gervase Markham, “The English House-Wife” dated 1675.

• Bartolomeo Scappi, “Opera…dell’ Arte del Cucinare” from 1660 which includes fabulous woodcuts of the Renaissance kitchen and all its gadgets; first time knife, fork, and spoon shown together.

A related special panel on Saturday, February 8 at 1 p.m. entitled "What Shakespeare Ate: Dining in the Elizabethan Age" will further immerse Book Fair visitors into the world of the Bard.  Panelists include the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic for the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Gold; noted food historian Charles Perry; cookbook author and founder of the Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne Anne Willan; and bookseller Ben Kinmont who specializes in antiquarian books on gastronomy. Two-time co-Pulitzer Prize winner, Los Angeles Times columnist, and NPR correspondent Patt Morrison will moderate.

To be or not to be at the Fair? That is the question. But if you love books there is no question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - fugetaboutit! Just go. You'll be glad you did.

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Bukowski: Lost Original Drawings Of A Dirty Old Man Are Found

by Stephen J. Gertz

Nineteen long-lost original drawings by Charles Bukowski, America's poet laureate of the depths, surfaced at the 46th California International Antiquarian Book Fair February 15-17, 2013, offered by ReadInk of Los Angeles. Sixteen of them appeared as accompaniment to Bukowski's classic column in the Los Angeles Free Press (The Freep), Notes of a Dirty Old Man. The remaining three originally appeared in Sunset Palms Hotel, Issue #4 (1974).

The drawings come from the personal collection of L.A. poet-publisher Michael C. Ford, who found them while cleaning out his desk at the end of his own tenure as a Freep staffer in late 1974. When he offered them to Bukowski, he was told “ah, you hang onto ‘em, kid, they might be worth something someday.” Ford took the advice and tucked them away in his personal files, from which they have emerged just once before now, for a short-run display a few years ago at a small and now defunct gallery in Long Beach, California.

Until its termination in 1976, Bukowski’s Notes of a Dirty Old Man feature in the Los Angeles Free Press was probably the single biggest contributing factor to both the spread of his literary fame and his local notoriety as a hard-living, hard- drinking L.A. character.  

Begun in John Bryan’s famous Open City underground newspaper, published in L.A. from 1967 to 1969, “Notes” continued in the Freep after Bryan’s paper folded, and was also picked up by underground and counterculture publications in other parts of the country (e.g. NOLA Express in New Orleans). Bukowski’s contributions, which alternated irregularly between prose and poetry, were often illustrated with his crude but evocative and humorous doodles; occasionally he dove into comic-stripland, as with his “Clarence Hiram Sweetmeat” episodes, which made a handful of appearances in late 1975. 

Deadpan and hilariously direct, these Free Press drawings represent an important “lost” element of one of Bukowski’s signature achievements. Both published collections of “Notes” columns - Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969, which of course predates these particular drawings) and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns (2011) - reprint only the text portions of the originals, omitting the illustrations. 

 

Yet it’s so much more satisfying to read Buk’s piece on his day at the racetrack (The Freep, November 2, 1974), when it’s accompanied by his slapdash rendering of a race in progress, its essence brilliantly encapsulated in his simple caption: “Right or Wrong in 18 Seconds.”

Until these originals came to light the only way to appreciate the “Notes” columns in their illustrated fullness was to either scrounge up old copies of the Freep (neither easy nor cheap, these days), or  park yourself in front of a microfilm reader at a major library and feel your eyes dissolve from the strain.

All the drawings are ink on paper, 81⁄2”x11" with a single exception, 6 1/2" x 4". Information regarding original publication date(s) is available upon request from ReadInk.

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All images courtesy of ReadInk, with our thanks.
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Of Related Interest:

Charles Bukowski's Last, Unpublished Poem, and the Bestial Wail.

Charles Bukowski, Artist.

Charles Bukowski Bonanza At Auction.

Dirty Old Man Exposed At Huntington Library.
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Four Days of the Codex Book Fair 2013

by Alastair Johnston

"There is not a prophet in the Old Testament who would not be excommunicated from the modern Church for the vehemence of his opinions" -- John J. Collins

The 2013 CODEX book fair brought together makers of expensive books from all over the world to show their wares. CODEX is timed to coincide with the biennial visit of the California International Antiquarian Book Fair to San Francisco and for that reason (among others) I have never attended, being more interested in the old book I've never seen than the new book I cannot afford, but this time it had been moved to the week preceding the ABAA/ILAB event. It was also moved physically from Pauley Ballroom on the U C Berkeley campus to a former Ford plant in the wilderness of Richmond, California, where I agreed to help staff a friend's table.

The CODEX book fair is the baby of Peter Koch, who models himself after Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press, a grand bookman in the tradition of the Grabhorn Press, producing trouser-press editions of chestnut texts with an emphasis on the materiality of the book, rather than the originality of the work. In fact the typography and imagery generally reflect a style that was popular in the 1930s and is based on pattern-recognition, so people will look at it and think "Ah, a fine press book," rather than question the originality of the concept, production methods (increasingly faux letterpress from computer-generated plastic plates) or structure. Even the Codex fair "look" is based on Cassandre's eccentric Bifur typeface designed in 1929.

Perhaps the success of the fair is due to the "Kindle Effect" (like the "Connecticut Effect" which the NRA hopes will soon wear off). While there is a genuine nostalgia for "real" books after the sudden surge in the e-Book market, it is surprising to see these fancy books still hanging on to an audience, but at $800 for a table there were not going to be too many purveyors of medium-priced well-made books or "democratic multiples." But the fair has grown and consequently a second aspect of it, a morning-long symposium for some of the participants to discuss their work in detail, was sold out.

To accommodate those who missed out on the symposium, it was webcast live, which seemed like a good idea. However, the camera was at the back of the auditorium and the sound was picked up there, rather than fed from the podium, so you mainly heard coughing; the speakers were but a distant speck beneath the large blurry & skewed video screen on which they showed their work. One speaker I heard sounded very silly saying "balance of type image concept brought back into balance." Maybe I heard him wrong. And while it seemed a majority of the exhibitors were women, there was only one woman speaker in the symposium.

San Francisco skyline from Point Richmond

Point Richmond is a long drive from sillivization and not easily accessible by public transport unless you want to brave the environs of one of the scariest BART stations in the system. Exhibitors could buy a bus ticket (for an additional $50!) to get them there and back before and after the 4 long days of showing their work. It is a lovely setting though, in an old Ford tank factory right on the San Francisco Bay, next to the Rosie the Riveter museum. But once there, attendees are stuck. When it was held at Pauley Ballroom (currently being renovated) it was a short walk to the hotels, restaurants and bookstores of Telegraph Avenue. One woman's suggestion: since Peter is such a macho cowboy, he should hold the next one at the Cow Palace.

Peter is famous for his drinking stories, according to one Midwestern exhibitor. In December, I went to a talk at Moe's Books, advertised as a "preview of CODEX," as I was eager to learn about the fair and its attendance -- not just who is showing work, but what kind of numbers show up, if sales are made, or is it all window-shopping (Since the cost to exhibit is so steep it's not a light investment for most presses, never mind airfare and hotel). Instead I had to sit through a provincial account of "My big trip to Venice," telling how much of Peter's wife's money they spent. As you no doubt know, Prosecco flows like water in Venezia, and only rubes pay $15 for a glass of Prosecco, but that seemed to be the apogee of Peter's visit. That and the fact they spent $15,000 or was it 50,000? in pre-production costs for the reprint of the Joseph Brodsky book they produced there, Watermark, that retails for $6000. Unfortunately the fair suffers from being closely associated with Peter Koch though you cannot imagine all the exhibitors are so pretentious.

There was a lot to look at: too much in fact, and by the time people came around the nearly 200 tables, like yachts with luffing sails being pulled sideways into the Richmond dock, they had that glazed "museum-goer" look. I saw lots of "gratuitous structure": books that were in flag or accordion-spine formats for no reason other than it was a cool idea at the time (with of course no recognition for Hedi Kyle who originated those structures). But, warned Peggy Gotthold, as she showed me her elaborately constructed anthology "For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn," there are no new structures, only rediscovered ones.

I remarked on the one aspect of such fairs which always bothers me: the artists themselves are sitting behind their work, some looking more confident than others, but every person who walks by is seen to judge the work, with either an instant curiosity (sometimes simply "how did you name your press?") or instant indifference: "hmmm, whatever it is I don't wanna know!" One attendee said she felt guilty looking at the books because although she was fascinated, she couldn't afford them and maybe was preventing some librarian from getting in close to make a purchase.

Peter Koch printing the cruciform poster for CODEX 2013

In the valedictorian speech (on line) Koch said he welcomed criticism, as long as it was couched in flattering terms, so kudos to Peter and his son Max for pulling this off four times. While the real audience is rich collectors and librarians, the value of Codex is it enlarges the tiny pond of the Bay Area book arts scene. It's a chance for local enthusiasts to learn something, to get ideas or to meet artists and printers. But it is marred by the cowboy aesthetic. Many women exhibitors complained about the Wild West theme (which is inherent in Peter's typography -- he likes beat-up wood type and the bullets/lead analogy). The poster for the fair is a large Xtian cross with CODEX vertically and 2013 being the horizontal arms; then it has "Drawing a bead on the book" as a subtitle. Targets abound. We are not all hicks in shitkickers, these ladies complain, please leave the target practice out. 

Artist Cathy DeForest listening to dealer Donna Seager

The Bay Area and the bustling Santa Cruz book arts scene were well represented, and it spirals out from there to Ninja Press and Pie in the Sky in Southern California, to Inge Bruggeman (Ink-A! Press), Cathy DeForest, and Diane Jacobs (Scantronic) who work in Oregon. One reason to exhibit was to let people know you are still around. Though nonagenarian Jack Stauffacher was not present, his Greenwood Press was represented by one of his authors, photographer Dennis Ledbetter, holding down the fort. Walter Hamady's daughter, Samantha, showed his superlative Perishable Press work and reassured passersby that Walter is not dead -- in fact he is a sprightly 72, though he gave up printing two years ago to concentrate on sculpture and collage. His last book, A Timeline of Sorts, as well as copies of many of his other fine works, were on display at Codex for the first time.

Walter Hamady's parting gesture

M K Publishers from St Petersburg (Russia) were there and Vladimir Zimakov: I didn't know his name but did recognize his work. Mexico, alongside California, was well represented, but there was simply too much to take in. On Facebook people have posted amazing snapshots of things I missed. Nevertheless here is my hopefully constructive criticism: four days is too long (the first day could be a one-day symposium followed by a 3-day bookfair). The fair should end at dusk: since there are no lights in the Craneway Pavilion it was too dark to see the books for the last hour. One final idea: invite a taco truck to park outside.

Browsing in the gloaming

The best looking book I saw was one with five pochoir plates from Shanty Bay Press of Canada, but it is not even for sale, being out of print.

There were many international book artists, like <usus>(Stoltz & Schneider), the lexikon gang "Zweite Enzyklopädie von Tlön", and Veronika Schäpers from Germany, the latter now working in Japan. Italians, French and Brits were there too, from Whittington Press who do traditional Monotype work and publish Matrix magazine, to Susan Allix who presents her fine art in quirky formats, but always impeccably presented.

And surprisingly there was one genuine literary publisher of affordable books there: The Brother in Elysium from Brooklyn, New York, who had a new folder of Ed Sanders' Glyphs and a witty packaging of a Ted Berrigan work in a library binding with a big "WITHDRAWN" stamp and library pocket stuck in. He may have broken even, but only because he was visited by librarians from The Bancroft, Simon Fraser, Florida State University and Stanford. Many of the exhibitors were breathlessly awaiting the arrival of Mark Dimunation of the Library of Congress, hoping he would bestow a purchase order on them. Meanwhile there was plenty of schmoozing to go around.
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Award Winning Weekend On Tap For Oscar's Library

Poster For Best Picture Nominee The Philadelphia Story (1940).

(All Images Courtesy Of Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, Magaret Herrick Library.)

As already reported here by Book Patrol's Stephen J. Gertz, the theme of the upcoming 43rd California International Antiquarian Book Fair is From Author To Oscar®. To be held February 12-14 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, the largest rare book fair in the world is "focusing on the symbiotic relationship between books and film." Since most of the Best Picture Academy Award®-winning films are based on literary works, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library was the perfect place to conduct research for the movie-themed fair. The library staff was even gracious enough to loan some of their priceless artifacts for display at this year's festival of rare books. As an early thank you note and valentine from book lovers, two of the Herrick Library's fascinating film-related exhibits are in today's spotlight.

The Featured Poster From The Margaret Herrick Library's Exhibit.
The More The Merrier (1943).

Now on view at the Academy's Grand Lobby Gallery in Beverly Hills is The More the Merrier: Posters from the Ten Best Picture Nominees, 1936 – 1943. The exhibit is a tribute to this year's big change in the annual Oscar nomination process: ten motion pictures are competing for Best Picture honors rather than the five tapped for the last six decades. What even the most savvy Oscar devotees may not know is that the number of Best Picture nominees ranged from three to twelve from 1927 to 1943. Only in 1944 was the number set at five, where it remained until 2009.

Poster For Best Picture Nominee, The Good Earth (1937). Based On the Novel By Pearl Buck.

The Academy’s poster exhibition spotlights the eight consecutive years during which there were ten Best Picture nominees. The films represented in the exhibit include many based on books or plays: Romeo and Juliet (1936), The Philadelphia Story (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Kitty Foyle (1940), You Can't Take It With You (1938), The Good Earth (1937), The Human Comedy (1943), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone With The Wind (1939), Rebecca (1940), and Our Town (1940), to name just a few.

Artist Pierre Pigeot's French Poster For Casablanca (1942).

Famed artists and illustrators whose work is on display in the gallery include Boris Grinsson, Pierre Pigeot, Jacques Kapralik, Ercole Brini, Norman Rockwell and Al Hirschfeld. Highlights of the show include an original painting created by Sergio Gargiulo for Gone With The Wind, an exceedingly scarce 3-sheet poster for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and a promotional presentation created for the British release of Lost Horizon (1937). This free exhibit of rare and beautiful movie posters from around the globe will continue through April 18, 2010.

Noel Coward And Co-Star Elizabeth Taylor On The Set Of Boom! (1968).

On display in the same building, but in the Academy's Fourth Floor Gallery from now until April 18, 2010, is Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward. The always modest Mr. Coward, playwright, composer, director of stage and screen, actor, singer, painter and possible war-time espionage agent, once remarked: "Star Quality: I don’t know what it is, but I've got it." Judge for yourself if his high self esteem was warranted by paying a visit to this comprehensive exhibit covering all aspects of his wide-ranging talents.

Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich in 1937.

Assembled through previously unparalleled access to the Coward Archives, drawing on public and private collections from around the world, and enriched by the Margaret Herrick Library's extensive holdings, the free exhibition brings together a never before seen collection of dozens of rare photographs, drawings, paintings, manuscripts, letters, sheet music, posters, playbills, set and costume designs, memorabilia, audio and video clips, and original costumes, including several of Coward's trademark silk dressing gowns. It offers unique insight into the man who gave us theatrical gems like Private Lives and Blithe Spirit, timeless tunes like Mad Dogs And Englishmen and Mad About The Boy, and unforgettable films like Brief Encounter (1945) and In Which We Serve (1942).

The 43rd California International Antiquarian Book Fair Is Oscar Bait.

Why not make it an Oscar-worthy weekend? Celebrate Valentine's Day 2010 with a trip for two to the 43rd California International Antiquarian Book Fair, followed by an afternoon a deux enjoying the Margaret Herrick Library's historic Hollywood exhibits. After all, don't you think your sweetheart has more than enough star quality to take home that golden statuette? (You say you're still in the process of casting the all-important role of the love of your life? What better way to screen test for the proper chemistry than spending a day sharing your favorite books and movies? And if you haven't even begun the auditions for your silver screen romance? A chat about art and literature is bound to be the perfect ice-breaker, no?)

Posted by Nancy Mattoon