A Bodhisattva of the Book: William Dailey

by Stephen J. Gertz

With a note of sadness, Booktryst is otherwise pleased to announce its latest publication, A Bodhisattva of the Book: William Dailey, a memorial to the Southern California bookman who tragically died in December 2017.

Featuring heartfelt contributions by John Burnham, Michael R. Thompson, Pom Harrington, Ari Grossman, Peter Háy, John Martin, Barry Humphries, Bruce Whiteman, Bettina Hubby, Peter Kraus, Johan Kugelberg, myself, and others, the book celebrates the consummate rare and antiquarian bookseller who was a mentor to many, a friend to many more, and whose book shop in Los Angeles was the hip Mecca on Melrose for bibliophiles.

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A Bodhisattva of the Book: William Dailey. McMinnville: Booktryst, 2019. Octavo (8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.). 69, (1) pp. Color photo-illustrated wrappers. $25.

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How WET Can You Get?

by Alastair Johnston 

Leonard Koren, Making WET: the magazine of Gourmet Bathing, Point Reyes, Ca: Imperfect Publishing, 2012

 WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing (1976–81), was a pioneering example of a California “lifestyle” magazine that was as much about the design and packaging as about the content. There were ads that looked like editorial content and vice versa. Ostensibly about bathing, it ran from 1976 until 1981, when the editor, Leonard Koren, left Venice, California, moved to San Francisco and then to Japan.

  The influence of Japanese culture increased steadily in the US, particularly the West Coast states, after the Second World War. Zen Buddhism was an important element, but so were the graphic arts. And there is the Japanese tea ceremony. “The Japanese tea room – despite its very appealing form and philosophy – was too culturally specific for the vague purposes I had in mind,” said Koren, who was a former architecture student looking for a direction.

   Koren wanted to create some kind of visual expression that was not in the mainstream. He had been thinking about bathrooms as important but overlooked places that were private and cleansing: they had illumination, heat and water. They involved nakedness and contemplation. He had used images of bathers in a series of artworks, and came up with the idea of a magazine about bathing. His magazine was to be about enthusiasms, and since California is about extremes, he though he would create a parody of enthusiasts.

   His inspiration was threefold, first there was Vogue which he saw as dogmatic, full of bombastic bluster and grand pronouncements about fashion, such as “BROWN is the new BLACK!” Then there was Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, which was a compendium of beautifully presented drivel by self-important minor celebrities; and thirdly, there was Gourmet, a foodie magazine which featured pretentious articles about meals. Koren liked the idea of a tongue-in-cheek combination of all three, a “Magazine of Gourmet Bathing,” that was and was not about bathing: mud baths and soaps can only hold your attention for so long, but pretty much anything could work in the context. He started working on WET and delivered the magazine to friends in Venice Beach and Santa Monica, networking to sell ads or find contributors.

WET June/July 1977, photo by Raul Vega; design by Tom Ingalls & April Greiman

   In April 1977 he met the designer Tom Ingalls who had design world connections to photographers and graphic artists, that would improve the look of the magazine from a funky typewritten fanzine into something with more polish. At the time Ingalls was going through a break-up with his girlfriend April Greiman, and Koren hoped they could get along long enough to get the April/June issue of the magazine done. Greiman was on the verge of becoming one of the key figures in the LA design world. Her background was in textiles and she had gone to Basel, Switzerland, to study at the Art School there, but the faculty had plugged her into a series of courses in typography that were to transform her interests. She took the Swiss style she had been schooled in, and elements of Russian Constructivism she had picked up in Europe, and deconstructed them, leading to a postmodern style in American design in the 1980s (popularized, for example, on record album covers from Los Angeles-based labels).

  Cultural historian Frances Butler referred to it as “The LA Slash-and-Spritz style” because of the pieces of film, rubylith and artificial blotches added to the clean layouts that were appearing with the introduction of computerized design. No longer were jobs typeset in metal, repro-ed and pasted up, now there were photo-compositors, and most of the pre-press work was done on the light table. This led to a certain sterility in graphics that Greiman saw at once, and countered with stray bits of Zip-a-tone screen, registration marks and other tools which were normally invisible – a “baring the device” technique that had become popular in literature and film long before. In 1981, Butler wrote, “Sometimes the connection between visual incidents is not made explicit and the reader must try to trap these incidents into a syntax. Much contemporary graphic design has essentially a reader-sequencing structure. This is true of many Japanese posters, especially the early work of Tadanori Yokoo, and now the poster work of the Los Angeles slash-and-spritz school.”

WET September/October 1979, the "Religion" issue: Ricky Martin photographed by Guy Webster; designed by April Greiman & Jayme Odgers

  WET quickly evolved from a funky typewritten news-letter to a slick glossy publication and this attracted attention and advertisers. And while the content is more or less immaterial to advertisers, the nudity aspect didn’t hurt. As Koren said, “There is an appetite for nakedness – not the stagey, self-conscious nakedness of skin magazines, but the nakedness that lets the body pass by itself through the awakening and regenerating extremes of hot and cold, light and dark, wet and dry, that the natural environment is so kind to provide.”

  The magazine took off (events at bath houses created a buzz in the press, followed by television interviews in hot tubs, and Mademoiselle editors coming to mud bath parties) and attracted a lot of talented Angeleno artists: designers John Van Hamersveld, Taki Ono and Rip Georges, cartoonists Matt Groening, Futzie Nutzle and Gary Panter, photographers Herb Ritts, Raul Vega and Jayme Odgers. Some at the start of their careers, lent their talents cheaply and helped push the boundaries of art and design that WET would become known for.

  Koren said, “Scattered throughout California there are certain latter-day saints – a dangerous number of whom seem to be artists, photographers, or writers – who get the joke of gourmet bathing without having it explained. Which is fortunate because the concept is so evanescent and mercurial that to attempt explanation is to risk over-kill.” He did explain that it is not a system, a therapy or a philosophy, it is “at most a point of view having some--thing to do with sensuality, humor, humility, and taking such pleasure in small things that they stop being small.”

WET September/October 1980, design by John Van Hamersveld

  
   The magazine continually reinvented itself. For one thing the designers used it as a calling card to move on to other better-paying or higher profile gigs, but through new approaches to graphics and editorial content, it evolved. John Van Hamersveld, who had already achieved design fame with covers for the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (1972: a collage of Robert Frank photos with scrawled hand-lettering and visible tape and cut marks), Hotter than Hell by Kiss (1974: showing the influence of Tadanori Yokoo), and Eat to the Beat by Blondie (1979: hand-lettering, angled type and a grid), continued with an illustration career; Jayme Odgers’ trade-mark image of a hand holding a Polaroid was featured on Fleetwood Mac and other best-selling album covers; Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell” cartoon made its first appearance in WET in 1978: it grew to a weekly syndication of 250 papers and launched Groening’s TV show “The Simpsons.”

   Koren found the thematic approach (e.g., “Religion”) was a good solution to pulling an issue together. He persuaded poet Lewis MacAdams to move south from Bolinas and assume the role of editor, which he fulfilled excellently, bringing in another range of literary connections, including William Burroughs’ essay “Is language a virus?” An article on necrophilia created a furor – and sold copies. Koren was well-networked. He dropped in on Noel Young in Santa Barbara and got a copy of Henry Miller’s essay “On Turning Eighty,” which ran in the magazine, as did an article on Henry Miller’s bathroom (Sept/Oct 1981). Fashion and music joined the regular contents. Kristine McKenna brought interviews with musicians that had uncensored language and ideas, making them unfit for more mainstream media. WET caught the Zeitgeist and was light and ephemeral, not predictable or ponderous. The ads blended into the editorial content and vice versa, creating a unified style, which is always desirable in a magazine.

WET September/October 1981, design by "King Terry" Teruhiko Yumura

 
    Koren refers to wabi-sabi, the Japanese concept of finding beauty in imperfection, and seeing profundity in nature, as one of his guiding principles. D. T. Suzuki described wabi-sabi as “an active aesthetical appreciation of poverty.” In graphics there is a style known as hata-uma or good/bad art (literally “clumsy-tasty,” referring to the occasional appeal of the badly drawn), which extends wabi-sabi to illustration. Koren hired Tokyo-based Teruhiko Yumura as art director in 1981. Yumura (known in WET as King Terry) brought this fresh style to LA design and it influenced Gary Panter and others. Again confusing editorial and advertising matter, there is a full-page ad for Terry’s Hit Parade, a “full-color action art book from Japan’s number one illustrator,” available exclusively as a “terrible WET book.”

   The successful marketing of the Californian lifestyle, particularly in the context of water, was a trend that continued with Beach Culture (late 80s) and Ray Gun (Santa Monica, 1992–2000) magazines, designed by David Carson, that were also essentially pointless, but graphically far less interesting.
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A Doves Binding To Die For

By Stephen J Gertz

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever." 

So Keats declares in the first line of Endymion (1818), and never has a poem so succinctly expressed the exquisite loveliness of  the binding it is found within, here an eleven on the 1-10 Drool Scale.

Bound by The Doves Bindery in 1894, this binding is a masterpiece of Arts & Crafts hand-work.

In full prussian blue morocco with a single gilt fillet frame and corner design of carnations,  three-pointed leaves, solid triangular tools, and gougework  enclosing a field of tiny gilt stars, its design is handsomely elegant, an aristocratic nature walk under a starlit dusk. The compartments possess massed stars and alternating carnation and leaf centerpieces. "1818" is tooled in gilt at the spine foot. The turn-ins feature leaf corner-pieces and triple fillets. All edges are gilt, with gauffered borders.

Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840 – 1922) was an English artist and bookbinder closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. A friend of William Morris, Cobden-Sanderson was passionate about the movement, and once, during a dinner party with the Morrises, he was persuaded by Morris's wife, Jane Burden, to pursue bookbinding. He was a natural. He was an artist. He wildly succeeded. Ten years later he gave it up but in 1894 he opened a workshop, The Doves Bindery, at the urging of Morris. In 1900, he established the Doves Press, one of the most celebrated of the era's private press movement.

The  hand-work  is  breathtaking. The field  of  stars, for instance, is  tooled with a degree of  precision   usually  seen only with block-stamping. Each star  is delicate but not weak. Charles McLeish was the fiinsher at The Doves Bindery, carefully following Cobden-Sanderson's instructions and patterns. Cobden-Sanderson's artistic attention to detail is obsessive: he designed gauffered borders to each of the gilt edges. It's a very subtle touch, easily overlooked. George William Gwynne performed the bindery's edge gilding, either on the premises or at his own shop.

It should be noted that these gauffered edge-borders were not recorded in Tidcombe's descriptions; space precluded full details.

The Doves Bindery produced 828 bindings before closing to outside work in 1909. This binding, number 123 in Tidcombe's chronological catalog, was bound on October 9, 1894 for acclaimed New York art dealer, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904), who paid £18 for it.

With original pull-off box by Doves Bindery.

The book next passed into the hands of author, lecturer, bibliophile, political activist, etc. Louise Ward Watkins  (1890-1975) of Pasadena, California, who, amongst her many accomplishments, was the first California woman to run for United States Senate on a major party's ticket. A married woman of means, she was an avid and discerning book collector, her  collection second. perhaps, in quality (if not quantity) only to the library of her neighbor to the southwest in Los Angeles, Estelle Doheny (1875-1958).

 The binding recently returned to Southern California.

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[DOVES BINDERY]. KEATS, John. Endymion: A Poetic Romance.  London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 1818.

First edition, earliest issue, with only one line of errata and "Printed by T. Miller, Noble street, Cheapside" on verso to half-title. Octavo (8 1/2 x 5 7/16 in; 215 x 139 mm). [12], 207, [1, blank] pp. With the bookplate of Louise Ward Watkins,

MacGillvray 2. Tidcombe 123.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

Accurate color reproduction is always a challenge, and the actual hue of the binding is that seen in the double-spread image of the spine foot.

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The Early Books of Artist Raymond Pettibon

by Stephen J. Gertz

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Pig Cupid.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt, Raymond Pettibon: The Art 1978-1998, 31.
"Why do I dream of undertow when I don't even know what it is?

Comics, books, film noir, pulp fiction, TV, politics, advertising, violence, the famed and the infamous: Artist Raymond Pettibon inhales pop-culture and, gas exchanged, exhales its carbon dioxide into a teeming mosh-pit. It is no accident that warnings of global warming began to increase in volume when he established his career as Southern California's  - and, ultimately, the world's - prince of Punk Art (though he rejects labels). For better or worse, when Pettijavascript:void(0)bon puts pen and ink to paper the temperature rises. His books have become rare and highly desirable.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Capricious Missives.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1983. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 9.
"Even toothless she can still bite off a boy's head."

PETTIIBON, Raymond and Michael Gira. Selfishness.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Orht 32.
"I want her to dream about what I did to her when she passed out."

Charles Manson, Ronald Reagan, various and sundry speed freaks on a high wire,  hippies, punks,  baseball players, surfers, and, good grief, it's Gumby, etc., populate his images, an idiosyncratic ensemble exploding from Pettibon's cerebral popcorn popper onto paper with an occasional un-popped kernel breaking a tooth. Who said art wasn't risky?

PETTIIBON, Raymond. The Navigator's Wives.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 27.
"I am still working on my public face!"

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Cars, TV, Rockets, H-Bomb - You Name It.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 21.
"Perhaps the fact that I hadn't had sex in 3 whole days left me vulnerable."

William Blake, Henry James, the Bible,  Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa - Pettibon co-opts their work and others' and reprints or reshapes it, his personal warp jump-starting their text and driving it into another direction, disturbing, ironic and ambiguous. The work in toto is provocative and vital.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Jane's Book of Fighting.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 24.
"She even had a little moustache."

Raymond Pettibon began life in Tucson Arizona in 1957 as Raymond Gill. He earned a degree in economics from UCLA and was working as a math teacher when his brother, Greg, established the seminal Punk band, Black Flag, in 1977. Raymond provided the group's name and designed their logo. He changed his surname. He created posters and handbills for the L.A. punk scene. He designed record covers for Black Flag's label, SST (Super-Sonic Transport, in homage to the now dearly-departed Concorde). By the early 1980s, he had established a reputation as the music movement's visual brother and had begun to produce small, simply produced books published and distributed through SST.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. A Can at the Crossroads.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm).  Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 20.
"I saw Christ. I was drunk but still lucid to be searching."

PETTIIBON, Raymond. New Wavy Gravy.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 29.
"Of course he became a Christian."

The books from the early 'eighties through 1985 were released in limited editions of 500 copies. Despite their $1.25 price the books, however, did not sell well at all. It was Remainder City at Pettibon-central in Venice Beach, CA and, according to the artist, he destroyed the bulk of the print run for each volume, only 100 copies, slightly more or less, of each title escaping the compost heap.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Tripping Corpse #6.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 36.
"It doesn't matter where they were raised or by whom.
By the time they get to Venice Beach they all look like this."

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Lana. Lawndale, CA: SST, 1984.
Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100). Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm).
Original stapled pictorial wrappers. Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 16.
"OK, OK, I never even met her. But even just pretending with her is so
much more intense and fulfilling than the real thing with anyone else."

Sit down, dear book collector-punkster or innocent bystander. If you had originally bought any one of these little books at their cover price of $1.25 they have now appreciated in value to upwards of $450 each in fine condition. If you had any of the originals and, over the years, tossed them or lost them you may now genuflect, hari-kari huff a can of Black Flag, the Punk pesticide of choice, and experience the  grim, writhing  death that greets all book collectors when we realize how we have blundered, big-time. Having in ignorance and  without an in to the oracle at Delphi forsaken an Antiques Roadshow bonanza, we can only, as the tetramethrin kicks in and fricassees our neurons, lamely express a cosmic, aching and disconsolate "Who knew?" before life drips into eternity's inkwell and blots out, dark matter that didn't see the light soon enough. Sic transit gloria collectori de libri...

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All images courtesy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, with our thanks, who recently offered the above titles in his Catalogue Five, April 2011. They sold within moments. Sic transit gloria Pettibon.
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Of related interest:

New Book Documents the L.A. Punk Scene.
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Our apologies for the slightly blurred images; the hi-res wasn't high enough.
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An Oasis For Writers and Readers

by Stephen J. Gertz

In the heart of the Southern California desert, two hours from Los Angeles, lies a small, tranquil oasis with mineral pools and lagoon, aromatic garden, and time, blessed quiet, quality time to be undisturbed and productive, if you wish, or undisturbed and completely unproductive. It is a jewel in the sand.

As such, it is the perfect spot for working or aspiring writers in search of comfortable isolation and solitude to jump-start creativity and get that project in gear. And if you've been looking at a pile of books you promised yourself to get to but haven't because the quotidian is cramping your style it is the ideal reader's retreat.

A view from the pool.

The Hacienda Hot Springs Inn, located in Desert Hot Springs, is a boutique hotel with a relaxed Old World ambience. With only six cozy and attractive guest rooms you receive attention unlikely at larger hotels - if you want it - and never be annoyed by noise from other guests.

Author Rachel Resnick calls it "a magical place...mind-bendingly gorgeous...blissed out...jellyfish relaxed....inspiring." Writers On Fire, which Resnick established to organize writer workshop-retreats, is holding one at the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn October 15-17 2010. Writers On Fire, which has held retreats in lovely spots around the world, will likely return to the Hacienda to accommodate the demand.

Afternoon in paradise.

The proprietor, William Dailey, knows from books, writing,  and reading; William Dailey Rare Books has been an important part of the Southern California book community for close to forty years. Appropriately, he keeps a library of vintage books at the Hacienda. He's even written a  bibliography on books about the Southern California desert.

Full disclosure: I am a close friend and former employee of Mr. Dailey. I was present when Dailey originally bought the property; at the time it was a near-derelict dump. What he has done with it is nothing short of amazing; he has invested an enormous amount of time and money into developing the Hacienda into a world-class retreat. I was an early guest at the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn and have  unforgettable memories of my stay there.

Dusk falls on the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn.

I have no doubt that you will, too. For writing, reading, to foster creativity in all its forms (or just to do nothing and do it well) the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn can't be beat.
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