As Death and Life Turns Fifty, Jason Epstein Tips His Hat to Genius

Commemorating a half-century since the publication of Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House’s fiftieth-anniversary edition of the influential book bestows special recognition on Genius of Common Sense, which was published by David R. Godine in 2009. Jason Epstein, renowned man of letters in the publishing world and Jane’s longtime editor, has written a new introduction for this celebratory volume. He chronicles his working relationship with Jacobs and her activism in New York, and ponders her distinctive nature. In searching for words to describe the impossible-to-categorize freethinker, Epstein selected “genius of common sense” and singled out Godine’s young adult biography of Jane Jacobs, whose title popularized the phrase.

In his introduction Jane’s esteemed editor alludes to anecdotes in Genius that seek to inspire the younger generation to emulate the youthful Jane. “I was not surprised to learn later from a biographer,” Epstein muses, “that she had been a defiant high school student with a sense of humor, a sharp eye for cant, and a problem for uninspiring teachers: a contrarian even then.” We take great pride in Epstein’s choosing to draw from Genius of Common Sense, given the many recent books and articles elucidating and assessing Jane’s oeuvre.

In Jane Jacobs’s last hometown of Toronto, the Centre for City Ecology – itself an outgrowth of her ideas – honored Death and Life’s golden anniversary and the new edition’s release this week by presenting a panel of four of the city’s former mayors. Mayors John Sewell, Art Eggleton, David Crombie, and Barbara Hall, all of whom had interacted with Jane during her four decades in Canada’s largest city, discussed Jane’s contributions to urban life there. Five hundred people scooped up the free tickets and filled the hall to capacity. Judging from the tweets, a lively exchange ensued. Would that the “Genius of Common Sense” herself were there to witness the ongoing dialog in response to her ideas and in keeping with her spirit. Her groundbreaking book published fifty years ago this fall is as important as ever.

The author of this post is Glenna Lang, co-author of Godine's Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of the Death & Life of Great American Cities along with Marjory Wunsch.

Yes, we have eBooks!

We are excited to have several of our titles for sale as an eBook through Google's eBookstore.

A nice variety of titles are available which include Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, Ward Farnsworth's Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric, Daniel Fuchs's The Brooklyn Novels, Charles Reznikoff's By the Waters of Manhattan, and the entire Swallows & Amazons twelve book series by Arthur Ransome.

In addition, Desert by 2008 Nobel Laureate J.M.G. Le Clezio is also available on the Kindle and nook as well as the Google eBookstore. Please keep checking back; more titles are to come!

The complete list of eBooks can be found on the Godine site.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Cirriped n. A member of an order of crustaceans which in their adult stage attach themselves in a parasitic way to other creatures or objects. As, for example, barnacles. "Dearest, do you think Kimberley might leave home this year and get her own little flat – or is she to be our permanent cirriped?"



Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Cirriped appears in the Third.

All My Dogs - Giveaway Winner!

Congrats go to Wayne Donnell for his excellent entry for the All My Dogs book giveaway! Here is his story and photo:

My wife, Deborah, and I had for many years a wonderful Keeshond named Bella. She passed on, and Deborah grieved long and well – unable to consider replacing her until one weekend our daughter, Rachel, and our granddaughter, Claire, came from their home in Asheville, NC for a visit. They took a walk to a nearby shopping center for lunch and some window shopping.

In the middle of the afternoon I get a call from Claire. She says: "Grandpa. We are at the pet store, and Grandma wants a puppy. Can she have one?" I say: "Claire, of course Grandma can have a puppy, but only if you name it." And so Sugar, a miniature Schnauzer, came into our lives. Sugar is a phenomenal dog. She steals the hearts of all who know her.

A few years later Rachel's husband took a job in San Diego, California, and they moved. To soften the sadness, Rachel promised her children they could get a puppy when they got to California. Claire and our grandson Noah wanted a dog like Sugar but all were wary of disappointment. How could any dog match the loving creature that was Sugar?

They began their search and soon found, yes, a miniature Schnauzer to adopt. She seemed wonderful so they crossed their fingers and brought this dog into their lives. Her name is Carolina, and here they are, in a photo taken the moment they headed home from the pound:



All are doing well, except, perhaps, the grandparents who wish they would all move back to North Carolina.

Poet laureates take on NH

The first ever New Hampshire Book Festival will be bringing state laureates from all around the country for a series of readings and discussions during a two day event (Oct 14th and 15th) called Poetry and Politics. Sixteen poets from around the US will arrive on Oct 13th and spread across the state for free public readings the following day.

New Hampshire poet laureate Walter Butts is hosting the event and participating poets include Wesley McNair, a beloved Godine author, and Betsy Sholl of Maine, Karla Morton and David Parsons of Texas, Dick Allen of Connecticut, JoAnn Balingit of Delaware, Sue Brannan Walker of Alabama, Bruce Dethlefsen of Wisconsin, Julie Kane of Louisiana, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda of Virginia, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg of Kansas, Lisa Starr of Rhode Island, and Marjory Wentworth of South Carolina.

If you're lucky enough to be in NH at this time, we highly recommend that you check out this event! For details click here.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Deipnosophist: n A wise conversationalist at the dinner table. Unfortunately, the two elements of the definition rarely go together.

An example of one who is not a deipnosophist.

Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Deipnosophist appears in the Third.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Henchperson - n. Close and trusty follower. This new word has been created by the author to replace its sexist (q.v.) and thus outdated equivalent, henchman, which had gradually acquired, over the years, a pejorative (q.v.) flavor. Villains have henchmen; heroes have right-hand men - or, more properly, right-hand people.

Henchmen.

Henchgirls.

Henchperson.

Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Henchperson appears in the First.

Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric on the Bill Bennett Show

Professor Ward Farnsworth was recently featured on The Bill Bennett Show, where he discussed his new book, Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric (published by yours truly). Go to the Podcast to listen to Professor Farnsworth and Bill Bennett talk about history's most persuasive rhetoriticians and what made them so (that's an ellipsis!)

Praise for Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric: 

"So, dear reader, I say it even if I say it myself—get this book! No, really, get this book! Read clever Farnsworth, and read him again, and you may become more clever yourself."
—Carlin Romano, The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Many things, from dictators to advertising, have made modern people suspicious of and cynical about language mobilized to move us. Fortunately, Ward Farnsworth's delightful swim in a sea of well-chosen words should help to rehabilitate the reputation of rhetoric."
— George F. Will, syndicated columnist

And more!

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Somnifacient - a. Conducive to the onset of sleep; having a hypnotic effect. Also somniferous, a slightly stronger expression of the same sense, meaning sleep-inducing or narcotic.  A televised golf tournament, a line dancing display in the mall, white goods comparison shopping, etc., etc.

"This couch is so somnifacie....zzzz."

Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Somnifacient appears in the Third. 

Ring of Bright Water - Top Nature Book!

The Wall Street Journal just named Ring of Bright Water: A Trilogy by Gavin Maxwell one of the top five best nature books alongside such classics as Walden by Henry David Thoreau and A Book of Hours by Donald Culross Peattie:

No shelf of nature books would be complete without a volume examining the bond between people and those animal species we have invited into our homes—that rich, reciprocal process of domestication for which the term "pet" seems trivializing. I know no author who writes more satisfyingly about pets than the Scottish writer Gavin Maxwell. After World War II, having failed as a portrait painter in London, he retreated to a remote stretch of Highland coastline and began to write. In "Ring of Bright Water," Maxwell spends the first 70 pages convincing the reader that he's basically a dour and misanthropic fellow—until he makes a whimsical decision "to keep an otter instead of a dog." And so Mijbal enters his life. A sleek master of gyrating, torpedoing, somersaulting "aquabatics," Mijbal becomes an indefatigable symbol of everything that is playful and self-delighting in the universe. And Maxwell enters a "thralldom to otters." The book offers us a lovely, unlikely metamorphosis: an otter turning a man into a pussycat.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Supernaculum n. A liquor of high quality, fit for drinking to the last drop. "It is a sad thing, Burnaby, that the custom of attending to one's religious devotions, upon arising in the morning and before retiring at night, has fallen into desuetude. In my own little way I try to compensate for that. I pride myself upon the fact that the sun does not rise upon a new day without my giving thanks with a supernaculum, in the privacy of my bedchamber."

And here's a clip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit:

Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Supernaculum appears in the Second.

All My Dogs Giveaway

My name is Hector Ramirez, and among other things I’m an unabashed dog lover. So when I heard that Godine was publishing the upcoming memoir All My Dogs: A Life by Bill Henderson (he founded the Pushcart Press, one of the most influential publishers in the country), I jumped at the chance to read it. Great book, but was it a bad call to read it so soon after leaving my beautiful German Shepherd back in Los Angeles to live in Providence, RI for the summer? Probably. But aside from the fact that it made me miss my dog like crazy, I did enjoy the book immensely: it’s a charming memoir about family, individuality, spirituality, and the way dogs help us bring all of that stuff together. Reader be warned, however — it is also a book about coping with the loss of these wonderful friends. It’s a tearjerker to say the very least, but I think Henderson really gets it right in this memoir by insisting that dogs are remarkably good at helping us move on. It’s a simple formula really: they understand what it is we need most, and then they give it to us, in a way that is the very definition of selfless, unconditional love.

As for my own dog, Penny became a part of the Ramirez family on July 17, 2010, and right away she started changing us all for the better. It’s kind of hard not to be affected by this little fur ball just by looking at her, but we quickly discovered that she is as affectionate as she is adorable, and that once you become her friend, she is fiercer in her companionship than any person you’ll ever meet. Dogs have this way of bringing out the best in people no matter what, and we were no exception. It turns out our pack was incomplete all along, and we didn’t even know it. On the car ride back to our house, with Penny asleep in my lap, I wondered how we ever got on without her.

Awwwww

But showing off my amazing dog was only part of my motivation for writing this blog post. A big part, I admit, but the other reason is a bit more exciting. I get to announce the Official David R. Godine All My Dogs Giveaway! Yay!

How does one become eligible to win a free copy of this wonderful book, you ask? Well I’m glad you did. First I should mention that the giveaway only applies to those of you who have or have had a dog in your life. That’s right folks — we’re having a cute-dog-picture showdown. Email us a picture of yourself with your dog(s), along with a short message (which could be just about anything really, from a favorite memory of you and your dog to a simple note about what makes him or her special), and you’re in! It’s that simple. Our email address is info@godine.com, and if you could write “All My Dogs Giveaway” in the subject heading that would be swell.

Be sure to send those pictures and stories in! I’ll go ahead and kick things off with a recent picture of Penny (setting the bar very, very high). The contest begins right … wait for it … now, and it ends on September 15th. We’re giving away two copies of this book, so be sure to check the blog on the 15th to see if you’ve won one!

Penny on a road trip, rocking her stunnah shades.

William Morgan – Monadnock Summer

David R. Godine has put the romance back into writing books and publishing them.

Many of us writers have endured the book signing at the mega-store at the suburban mall. You sell maybe seven copies in two hours, and are rewarded with a cup of tepid coffee. Or worse, I once signed books at a pleasant independent bookseller's in Providence, RI. But it was snowing, hard, and no one showed at all, much less bought books. Too often meeting the public in this way is just something to be endured in the vague and vain hope of sales and fame.

But my book signing experience left the realm of the dreary and morphed into the wonderful with an event in August. Monadnock Summer: The Architectural Legacy of Dublin, New Hampshire was launched at the annual meeting of the local historical society. Just as Dublin is not your average rural town, its historical society is rather special, having among other things a fireproof archives building. For example, the society's president, Henry James, is the son of a modern architect, Sandy James, who worked in town; his grandfather, Alexander James, was an important painter in Dublin; his great-grandfather was William James, the philosopher and brother of Henry James. The historical society supported my research and then my book. And now they were offering a limited edition of hardbound copies of Monadnock Summer to their members.

Knollwood, the house where the meeting was held, is a rambling shingle-covered estate built for President Taft's Treasury Secretary, Chicago grocery mogul Franklin MacVeagh, in 1899. (Taft visited twice while president and planted a tree here.) The architects were Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, the successor firm to the great H.H. Richardson of Trinity Church fame. One of the largest houses in town, Knollwood has an 180º distant view, including an unparalleled prospect of the mountain. The desk where I sat to autograph books had been Secretary MacVeagh's. After the festivities at Knollwood, I spent the night at David Godine's Dublin house, one time summer home of Mark Twain.

Book signing at Knollwood, August 12th, 2011, with Henry James
(photo by Sharron Monaghan)

If we put aside the circumstances of a visit to a most unusual town (hence the need for a book about its architecture), all of this would not have happened were it not for Godine himself. I knew of David at Dartmouth – one of the Ray Nash circle, a budding letterpress master – but I did not know him. Years later, Godine turned down one of my book proposals (rightly so, I know now). About the time the publisher to whom I was contractually bound expressed puzzlement at the value of an architectural history of one village in New Hampshire, I reconnected with David at a supper party in Dublin. When I sent him the manuscript, he replied within a few days: "This is well researched, well written, is about a subject I love, and why wouldn't I want to publish it."

The publisher-author experience from that point on was one of the best ever. Carl Scarbrough is a meticulous editor and a talented designer. That Monadnock Summer is a beautiful book reflects the entire David R. Godine aesthetic. Why wouldn’t I be happy?

William Morgan, among the preeminent chroniclers of New England's built environment, has documented the patrimony of this rich region in numerous books and teaches at Princeton and Brown. David R. Godine, Publisher is proud to publish his latest, Monadnock Summer: The Architectural Legacy of Dublin, New Hampshire, in August 2011.

The Woman in Black trailer is out!

Watch out Daniel Radcliffe!



The film is due out February 3, 2012. David R. Godine, Publisher is thrilled to publish the US edition of The Woman in Black.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Chaetiferous a. Bearing bristles. Also chaetigerous and chaetopherous. If your boyfriend must start growing a beard, at least you ought to know what to call him.



Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Chaetiferous appears in the Second.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Philogyny a. The love of, indeed devotion to, women. The most understandable of idiosyncrasies.

"WOMAN, WOMAN!!"



(Proof for anyone who doubts that Animal is the original ladies' man)

Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Philogyny appears in the Third.

Wanda Coleman's new book of poetry

The incomparable Wanda Coleman, a beloved Black Sparrow poet, has a new book of poetry forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September 2011. The collection, The World Falls Away, has already received incredible praise:

"Wanda Coleman's poems glow with an almost radioactive edginess. Yet there is also range and substance giving her intense American voice staying power. To use Whitman's word, her work has 'amplitude'."
– Diane Wakoski

"Wanda Coleman's hard-edged new collection interrogates death's nearsightedness. Mother outlives son. Feet wear out before the heart. And the truth teller dies before truth frees her. These poems don't go gently."
– Douglas Kearney

"What strikes me first about The World Falls Away is Wanda Coleman's musical inventiveness. These poems are sonically complex and technically riveting. But along with this musical dexterity comes a poetic mind of great subtlety."
– Kevin Prufer

Wanda Coleman is a poet and writer from Los Angeles, California. Black Sparrow is proud to have published Mercurochrome, nominated for the National Book Award, and Bathwater Wine, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, along with several other of Coleman's titles.

Interview with Aram Saroyan

In an interview with Yvonne Georgina Puig for the online culture and arts magazine This Recording, Black Sparrow author Aram Saroyan discusses his early literary influences (“for me,” Saroyan says, “the initiating figure was Robert Creeley”), his writing process (“these days I usually do a first draft in hand in one of those lined school notebooks that you can buy at Staples”), his perspective on the difficulties facing an author in modern America (“Artists are like window dressing on the main action, and I think it’s easy to lose your balance or paint yourself into a corner”), and many of the essays and critical pieces that appear in the 2010 collection Door To The River. Saroyan responds to Puig’s questions with the same unfussy, candid thoughtfulness that I personally admire in his writing:

Yvonne Georgina Puig: Is it more important to write well or love well?

Aram Saroyan: The best writing surely has love in some form in it and surely loving relationships play a part in bringing that into one’s writing. I don’t think it’s either/or, and both can be hard at times. But given the choice anybody’s going to want to choose loving over writing, no contest, right?”

The rest of the interview can be found here.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Clinomania n. Excessive desire to stay in bed. Not a bad mania, as manias go; and a reasonably plausible excuse for taking Monday off.


Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Clinomania appears in the Third.

Holdouts!: The Buildings that Got in the Way

Holdouts!: The Buildings that Got in the Way by Andrew Alpern and Seymour Durst chronicles the history of New York City buildings that refused to sell to developers (with often absurd results). Godine, with the Old York Foundation, has brought it back with a new edition. First published in 1984 by McGraw-Hill and then in 1997 by Dover Publications as New York’s Architectural Holdouts, this third edition gives a fresh look to these incredible, true stories of New York’s architectural progression.

The new edition of Holdouts! is hot off the presses and available for sale starting today. Included in the book are amazing photographs that were re-scanned from the originals, as well as a new foreword by Vishaan Chakrabarti (acclaimed architect and head of the real estate development program at Columbia University).

But what better way to illuminate the history of this curious book and simultaneously announce the new edition than in limerick-form? That’s how I see it anyway. And incidentally, Mr. Alpern, thrilled about the new foreword, new design and all-around sexiness of this edition, has done just that. Please enjoy (click on the poem and cartoon to view full size)!

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Juvenescent a. Becoming youthful. An extraordinary word, when you think about it. After all, no one does this. Why should there be a word for it?



Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Juvenescent appears in the Second.

Well Then There Now - starred review in PW!

The latest Black Sparrow release, Well Then There Now by Juliana Spahr, has just received a fabulous starred review in Publishers Weekly!

"Spahr's fifth book of imaginative writing (both poems and prose) should be a blockbuster, a lasting disturbance; a work of crisp wit, bizarre conjunctions and ultimately enduring moral authority; it is also the best, and perhaps the most widely accessible, thing that Spahr has done. . . . "

The Interns Do New Hampshire!

Somehow the words “field trip” still hold every bit of excitement that they did ten odd years ago in grade school. To start off this week, John, Hector, and I spent two work days in various parts of New Hampshire learning all about key elements in the publishing process.

First stop: Our warehouse in Jaffrey, NH. There we put faces to the familiar names of other members of the Godine team, toured the facility, and learned a rudimentary life skill – how to properly jacket a book! John and I spent quite a bit of time with children’s book Catie Copley’s Great Escape by Deborah Kovacs and Jared T. Williams. John, in particular, quickly became Catie’s biggest fan, though let’s just say his prospects as a professional book jacketer do not look very promising [I would like to interject here. In my defense, if I devoted twice as much time to jacketing each of Catie’s books, it was only out of my deep love and respect for that noble canine and my general inability to place the title of the book on the spine. – John]

Next: Monadnock Paper Mills! We made our way there with David and were treated to an informative PowerPoint presentation, explaining what we were about to see. A good thing we were given that information first – who knew making paper was so noisy? Armed with protective goggles and earplugs, we eagerly snaked our way through the mill, observing all stages of the process. It was really eye-opening to witness the entire progression from raw wood fiber to finished paper, and I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I look at the pieces of paper I see every day (which I’ve often so willingly discarded) in a whole new light.


How else could we cap off an exciting day other than with a trip to Shaw’s? David insisted we have the Shaw’s experience and it’s no wonder why – it’s the closest I’ve come to Wegman’s (my hometown favorite). David and I dropped off Hector and John with a rough list of groceries and returned twenty minutes later to discover Hector had mistakenly purchased a rather expensive hydroponic tomato. We refuse to let him live this down and of course had to take a picture for the blog. [Pardon me for interrupting, but I’m going to just throw my two cents in before Ellie further slanders my character. Those labels at Shaw’s are very misleading, and these particular tomatoes happened to be adjacent to some other tomatoes that were being sold by the pound. Naturally, I assumed that, with a similar price being advertised, these tomatoes were also being sold for a few bucks per pound. It was only after paying for the groceries that I discovered the devious pricing scheme at Shaw’s, having paid a few bucks for that one tomato. Bottom line: It could’ve happened to anyone. That is all. – Hector]


Our final destination for the evening was gorgeous Dublin, NH, past summer home of none other than Mark Twain. David’s home in NH is actually the same house where Twain was famously photographed in a series of seven shots smoking a cigar on the white-pillared porch. The view was breathtaking and it was truly amazing to look out into the distance at the same scene the American author had observed many years before. After taking in the sights, we manned our stations and put together a summery Mexican-themed meal and then treated ourselves to ice cream. When the last dish had been rinsed we interns still had some day left in us, so we spent a few hours playing a game Hector taught us called Liar’s Poker (a card-version of the dice game Mentirosa). Apart from John and Hector attempting to cheat by speaking Spanish so that I wouldn’t know what they were saying, it was great fun.


The sun rose early Tuesday morning and after breakfast we waved our goodbyes to the magnificent house and stopped back at the warehouse. There we spent some time organizing the reference library and exploring the current stock of books. Then we took to the road for our last two destinations – Capital Offset and New Hampshire Bindery, both located in Concord, NH.

At Capital Offset, a premium printing company, our tour included an overview of the impressive machinery the job requires, and an explanation of where the name “offset” comes from. Offset printing is actually a type of printing that involves transferring an image from a lithographic plate to the paper via a rubber blanket of sorts. We witnessed this method ourselves and were able to distinguish the high quality results. After our thanks for the tour, we departed for the New Hampshire Bindery, only a few blocks down the street. What looked like a rather average-sized building on the exterior soon became a massive factory as we stepped down into the immense basement. By the end of the tour of the facilities, we really had a full appreciation for the many steps involved (in proper book-making) and had a sense of how to tell a well-crafted book from something less than lustrous. Speaking of luster, the New Hampshire Bindery is one of the few places left in the US that still does gilding, and we got to watch two guys and an old machine transform regular books into gold-hemmed tomes.

We really couldn’t have asked for a more fun-filled and informative trip! Many thanks to Richard Verney of the Monadnock Paper Mill, Jay Stewart of Capital Offset, and Tom Ives of the New Hampshire Bindery for hosting us at their facilities.

Roger Ebert endorses Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric!

None other than the great Roger Ebert endorses Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric by Ward Farnsworth on his Facebook page:

"God help us if blog writers get their hands on this book. It's a lot more fun than it may appear. Farnsworth identifies types of rhetorical strategies and illustrates each one with a wealth of quotations which make the book wonderfully readable. Not dry as dust but lively and inspiring."

Very cool!

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Monoplegia n. Impressive medical name for writer's cramp. Overtaken, now that the pen has been replaced by the computer, by osteoarthritis of the small joints – especially, if, like most authors, you use only two fingers.


Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Monoplegia appears in the Third.

Oy Gutenberg

If you're interested in print design, you probably are already subscribed to Steven Heller's "The Daily Heller", a daily email from Print Magazine. Yesterday, Heller shared an excerpt from The Justification of Johann Gutenberg, a novel by Blake Morrison, which convincingly fictionalizes Gutenberg's personal need to insure his place in history. Heller writes "[F]or lack of much solid information on the Herr Gutenberg, this book serves as the next best thing":

"When Mainz was torn apart two years since, and the men from my old printshop flowed out into the world, I hoped my name would spread with them. In idle moments, I have dreamt of a stream of visitors seeking me out, eager to see Gutenberg, the man who minted Bibles, the dung that grew the flower. Many times I have rehearsed the scene. A knock below. A Stranger announces himself to my trusty servant, Frau Beildeck. Is this, he asks, where the Print Man lives, the Press Master, he who conceived artificial writing? Indeed it is. Frau Beildeck ushers him up to where I sit among my books. Cap in hand, he looks ready to kiss my feet but contents himself with bowing. He is sorry for the lateness of the hour, but he has journeyed far, and it was not easy to find me. He is bashful at first – until I offer him a jug of Rheingauer, which Frau Beildeck fetches from my cellar, and his tongue loosed. He has lately set up a printshop, he says, but is bedeviled by difficulties. If I could spare an hour speaking mechanical with him – on how to secure blocks of type on the coffin of the press, what consistency of ink to use, what quality of paper, and so forth – he would happily pay me. Perhaps a fee should be paid me for dispensing advice. Years of my working life were spent in debt, and now men come to plunder the riches of my retirement. But instead I give myself freely, and an hour becomes two or three, and with my visitor too many to care to leave, I fetch a second jug, offer a bed for the night and ask Frau Beildeck to make us a rib and sauerkraut . . ."

Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel on "Jewesses with Attitude"

You know it's a good day when a Godine title is featured on the Jewish Women's Archive "Jewesses with Attitude" blog. Ellen K Rothman was kind enough to contribute a post on the Cone sisters and Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel: Bringing Matisse to America:

Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s and 60s, we got our doses of high culture at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The National Gallery was only an hour away, but I don’t remember visiting it until I was in college.

To get to the BMA, we drove from our neighborhood—where there were lots of Jewish families—across a main road (sometimes referred to as “the River Jordan”) through a neighborhood then largely off limits to Jews, to the museum. At the bottom of the front steps was a full-size copy of Rodin’s “The Thinker.” Once inside, we usually started by daring each other to visit the mummy on display in the basement. The upstairs galleries were full of paintings of the thoroughbred horses that were almost as important to the local culture as the hard shell crab.

But the jewel in the museum’s crown then as now was the Cone Collection. This was the first place I saw paintings by Matisse and his contemporaries. Little did I know that the collection amassed by Etta and Claribel Cone was one of the finest anywhere in the world.

Somehow I did know that the women who created the Cone Collection and, after many years of indecision, bequeathed it to the people of their, and my, native city, were Jewish. My grandparents had lived for several years in the building where the sisters and one of their brothers had adjoining apartments with 17 rooms crammed full of art brought home from their world travels. I knew, too, that there was a connection between Etta and Claribel (as we always called them) and Gertrude Stein, another member of Baltimore’s German Jewish elite. My great aunt was married to Gertrude Stein’s nephew. Long before I read anything by or about Stein, I knew that she was, as we might say here at JWA, a Jewess with a bad attitude.

The story of Etta and Dr. Claribel (who pursued the medical career that Gertrude Stein abandoned) is beautifully told in Susan Fillion’s new book, Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel: Bringing Matisse to America, published by David R. Godine. Generously illustrated by reproductions of paintings in the Cone Collection and by Fillion’s own inspired paintings, the book relates how these two unmarried, Jewish women transformed themselves into serious art collectors and early patrons and lifelong friends of Matisse. While Fillion had a young adult audience in mind, readers of any age will enjoy her graceful, accessible, and informative storytelling as much as I did.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Rhynchocephalian a. Pertaining to an almost extinct order of lizardlike reptiles. The implication of this dictionary definition is that the creature in question is not a lizard, merely like a lizard. In that case, what is it? In any case, suitable as a descriptor for any of your acquaintances who are lizardlike and reptilian.

Yes, folks, that is Reptar from Rugrats.
If you have a little time, you should really check out this clip.

Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Rhynchocephalian appears in the Third.

J.M.G Le Clézio

My name is John Shakespear. I'm a Cambridge boy, a compa-rative literature student, and – you guessed it – one of the summer interns at Godine. When we were recently moving shop to our new office at 15 Court Square, my fellow intern Ellie and I packed up the reference library and occasionally a book would catch our eye. I noticed the name J.M.G. Le Clézio, and I wound up picking up his book Desert.

I was drawn in by Desert's opening pages, which depict the dreamlike descent of a tribe to a long-awaited oasis, and I took the book with me and resolved to find out more about Le Clézio. I learned that J.M.G. stood for Jean-Marie Gustave, that he won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, and that he spoke at the 2011 Seoul International Forum for Literature in May. In the days leading up to that event, Le Clézio gave a very interesting interview with Lee Sun-Min of the Korea JoongAng Daily in which he talked about the role of literature in our modern, globalizing world. Here's what he had to say:

“The subject the forum is going to talk about – the globalizing world and the human community – has been talked about frequently at many other forums as well worldwide. However, it is still important, it is discussed over and over again, since literature is something that travels across national borders. Of course, there is a limit, since the original words of literature are written in a (native) language. But as long as they deal with factors and ideas that all human beings can sympathize with, they will carry their power.

I heard this story, if you take a picture of all the human races and show 20 pictures every second, people cannot tell who’s Asian and who’s African and who’s European. Eventually, all the faces appearing look the same. This shows that there is something universally inherent in humans. What literature needs to do is find that inherent universal thing in humankind and let more people know about it.”

Le Clézio’s faith in the power of literature to tap into universal, borderless human experiences and sentiments is at the heart of his 1980 novel Desert, which was first published in English translation by Godine in 2008 and has now become an eBook. The sprawling, beautiful narrative crosses national borders and the first half of the 20th century as it tells the parallel tales of one son and one daughter of a nomadic Saharan tribe called the Blue Men. What really struck me about Desert was Le Clézio’s ability to use language to pull me off of my couch, out of my air-conditioned apartment – in short, out of my comfortable life – and into a world governed by very elemental and immediate human needs. Thirst, hunger, spiritual nourishment, staying warm – these are all essential aspects of what it means and has always meant to be human, but they can lose their immediacy for those who, like me, are lucky enough to live fairly comfortably. It was refreshing to read Le Clézio’s elemental, sensory prose, which draws out the natural danger and beauty inherent in those basic realities.

The rest of the interview can be found here. The eBook edition of Desert is now available at the Google eBookstore.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Dissave v. Believe it or not, this delightful word means exactly what it ought to – the opposite of "save." To dissave is to spend more than one's income by drawing upon one's savings or capital. In a sense, it could be said that the ultimate object of all saving is dissaving; this is something that not many people realize.



Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Dissave appears in the Second.

Correspondence on Bookslut

A big thank you goes out to Colleen Mondor at Bookslut for her review of the new Godine novel Correspondence: An Adventure in Letters by N. John Hall. Colleen recommends Correspondence as "an armchair education on Victorian literature":

"Dickerson's evolution from mildly interested to deeply committed is a joy to follow and the many lessons on the Victorians that Hall artfully embeds in the text are welcome to anyone who wants to know more without tackling a biography (or night school). In many ways, Correspondence serves as the best sort of English textbook; it contains a bit of a mystery, some warm exchanges between friends, and more than one kind word for some truly great writers. An AP English student would find much here to worth adding to his classroom education but I can't help thinking it is people who find themselves in circumstances similar to Dickerson -- finally with the time on their hands to learn all they missed -- who will most likely embrace it. These are literary lessons at their most amiable and a tonic to the chaos of the world around us."

Independence Day by Mark Doty

In honor of the Fourth of July holiday, we wanted to share an excerpt from a poem from Turtle, Swan by the incomparable Mark Doty:

Independence Day

Benches spangled in shade,
billows of bunting in river breeze,
the esplanade blazing: blanket to blanket
and cooler to cooler, their quarter-million radios’
zones of sound overlapping, a quarter-million
have gathered early for the fireworks.

The two of us can’t help but feel part
of this immense party: everywhere
we are spread on quilts, masked in visors
and sunglasses. The collective future’s decided,
I guess, by these crowds—more of us
than I’ll ever see in one place, and all out

for a good time. We all stake claims:
sometimes even a makeshift tent or string fence
marks a chosen portion of view,
though everyone seems more interested
in the community of viewers. We wonder
if the scene might be much different in war

or disaster—these could be refugees
lugging their portable households—
but these are cheerful explosions, surprises
and mock danger everyone seems to like.
Glow-in-the-dark headbands begin to shine
as evening comes on, electric pink

or blue, as if the buyer could wear a thin stripe
of the neon that will later burst
over the water, a fire to keep.
The faces of the vendors
who carry hundreds in swaying bundles
glow in the light of their fifty-cent toys.

. . .

Back when we were both very young, Godine had the honor of publishing the first two poetry books of Mark Doty, who has since gone on to considerable and deserved fame and fortune, winning the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008, as well as honors from the National Book Critics Circle, the LA Times Book Prize, a Whiting Award, and (as the first American in its history) the T.S. Eliot Prize. This fall Godine will publish Paragon Park, a new collection with the complete texts of Doty's Turtle, Swan and Bethleham in Broad Daylight along with almost two dozen poems that have appeared in small magazines but have never before been collected.

Printing Arts Fair in North Andover, MA

Bright and early this past Father’s day morning, this daughter set out for North Andover, MA. I’ll admit I was a little hesitant about my destination, given that it was directly across an area known as First Burying Ground that hosted all sorts of tales. Most luckily, I met neither witch nor foe. Instead, a hot sun, clear skies, and the fresh cut lawns of North Andover bid me welcome.

Fellow intern, John, met me at the annual Printing Arts Fair at The Museum of Printing. We set up our table on the second floor of the museum and watched book arts enthusiasts filter in and out, enjoying the numerous interesting exhibitors. Our exhibit featured several different books that we had a feeling might be of interest to the guests of the Printing Arts Fair. Many families stopped to chat about how they were quite familiar with a few of our books and perused some of our more recent titles. A lucky raffle winner won a copy of Personal Impressions: The Small Printing Press in Nineteenth-Century America by Elizabeth M. Harris.

Some guest favorites at our table included Lettered Creatures by Brad Leithauser, The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, Anatomy of a Typeface by Alexander Lawson, and Bibliotopia: Or Mr. Gilbar’s Book of Books & Catch-all of Literary Facts and Curiosities by Steven Gilbar.


Unfortunately our exhibit being on the second floor meant we were missing out on all the fun outside, so John and I took turns exploring other parts of the building and checking out the booths outside the front of the museum. I was initially surprised by the number of young children in tow at the fair but soon discovered there were demonstration tables set up for all ages to enjoy, giving many visitors the opportunity to print. This was very exciting to see, as many conversations that occurred at our table seemed to include the phrases “a dying art,” “kids these days,” and “I remember when.” One of the main goals of the fair appeared to be engaging young children, which is certainly of key importance when considering educating all ages on the history of printing and introducing the refined beauty of book arts.

We’re pleased to have attended the fair and been given the opportunity to share our books with true printing aficionados!

To visit The Museum of Printing, visit their website http://museumofprinting.org for hours and admission information.