An Ode to the BPL

by Jodi Bosin

The front of the Boston Public Library

A palace for the people, Charles McKim called it. 

The Boston Public Library on Mason Street,
its location from 1854-1858. Image from bpl.org.

The architect's firm McKim, Mead, and White completed their masterpiece one hundred and eighteen years ago. The Boston Public Library, better known as the BPL, had been located first in a former schoolhouse on Mason Street (shown on the right) and then in a building on Boylston Street. Both of these locations were much too small to contain the first large free municipal library in the United States, even in its younger days. In 1854 when the library first opened the collection had about 16,000 volumes; it now holds almost nine million. Indeed, a palace seems the only structure suitable for an urban cave of wonders such as this.

Upon approaching the library, I navigate the streams of pedestrians passing through Copley Square and ascend the thin sheets of steps that surround it. The giant stone building stands majestically before me; skyscrapers rise up behind it but their shining surfaces seem to be made of something less eternal. I step in one of the gaping oval entryways and into a sudden quiet, sheltered from the bustling square beyond. A marble staircase leads upward, under the protective gaze of two sculpted lions and past murals by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Edwin Austin Abbey, and John Singer Sargent.

The front stairs

I then enter Bates Hall, my favorite public space in the city of Boston. The ceiling stretches 50 feet high, lined with fifteen large windows and magnificent barrel vault arches. The hall is bordered by bookshelves around its edges and features two long rows of wooden tables with the sort of green lamps remeniscent of a musty grandfather's study. The room exudes comfort and calm, and I have often found it the perfect refuge to study, read, or write surrounded by others doing the same.

Bates Hall

I am proud to count myself among the three million or so that visit the BPL each year. With a wide range of programs, manuscripts, maps, prints, and books, as well as 25 other branch libraries, the BPL is a veritable beating heart. "Boston Pubic Library is a community gathering place, a place for lifelong learning, a place to seek knowledge, solace, and renewal," wrote President Amy E. Ryan in a letter announcing the BPL's reopening following the Boston Marathon events. Charles McKim would be glad to hear it, and thousands of Boston residents would readily agree. We are glad to have it back.

Godine Quotables

Godine Quotables

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Slumber Room n. The room in which a corpse (sorry, the “departed”) is laid out by a funeral director in preparation for the funeral. Why not add a little spice to family visitations by eschewing the term “guest bedroom” in favor of this somewhat more ambiguous appellation?

In Death at a Funeral, raucous guests bring chaos to the slumber room.

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. Slumber room appears in the Superior Person's Field Guide.

April Review Round Up

Here at David R. Godine, Publisher, we strive to produce high quality books above all else. So, when our books and authors are praised, we hope you'll forgive us for acting like proud parents. Please join us in celebrating the recent success of a few of our talented authors.

This past month, Kirkus Reviews highlighted two of Godine's upcoming releases. The first book that the magazine praised is The African by J.M.G Le Clézio, a stunning tale of the author's experience moving from Nice, France to a Nigerian village:

A slim yet resonant autobiographical entry from the Nobel laureate’s early years in West Africa.

Le Clézio’s (Desert, 2009, etc.) memoir of his African youth is thin in length yet rich in detail as he reconciles his experience being spontaneously relocated at 8 with his mother and brother from World War II–era Nice, France, to remote Nigeria. As the only whites in a villages of natives, he describes family life crammed into a rustic homestead with paneless windows and mosquito netting—the best the French government could provide to his father, a military doctor. Even without schooling or sports, the author’s cultural enlightenment becomes an explosion of sensations, from the sun-induced bouts of prickly heat to the naked culture’s immodest “supremacy of the body.” Le Clézio writes of liberating his pent-up frustration from being raised fatherless in dreary, wartime Europe on the African savannah, yet his father, the man he’d reunited with in 1948, emerges as the memoir’s beating heart. Restless after medical school, he’d fled Europe for a two-year medical post in Guyana and two decades in West Africa. The author paints his father as pessimistic, lonely, overly authoritative and staunchly repulsed by colonial power, yet happily married. Sadly defeated by time and circumstance, he’d become a stranger and, once relocated back to France, “an old man out of his element, exiled from his life and his passion for medicine, a survivor.” Only in his lyrically articulated hindsight does the author truly appreciate his father’s good work and a unique, memorable childhood.

A vivid depiction of a splintered childhood and the lovely wholeness procured from it.

The African will be available this summer; you can learn more about it on our website.

Kirkus also reviewed Pizza in Pienza, a delightful read filled with colorful illustrations and information on the history of a simple Italian creation that Americans have come to love:

A little Tuscan girl introduces readers to her hometown of Pienza and her favorite food, pizza.

Simple, declarative sentences take readers from Queen Margherita of Italy, circa 1889, to the streets of Pienza, where life “is still pretty old-fashioned,” to a brief history of the pizza. “[P]izza as we know it,” she says, “was really born in Naples,” but she goes back even further to inform readers that the ancient Greeks and Italians ate flatbreads before moving on to discuss classic pizza ingredients and the invention of the pizza Margherita. The first pizzeria in the United States opened in New York City in 1905, she continues, but pizza did not become popular around the country until after World War II: “Now there is pizza in Pienza… / …and all around the world!” Her ingenuous voice is matched by equally enthusiastic, folk-style artwork, which looks to be made with oil pastels and is dominated by warm, Tuscan colors. Fillion spices the illustrations with humor, pairing a black-clad nonna on a bicycle to a modish young woman on a Vespa on one page and planting a demurely held slice in Mona Lisa’s left hand on another. The English text appears above an Italian translation on every page, and the story is supplemented by an author’s note, a pronunciation guide, a two-page history of pizza and a recipe.

Both tasty and just filling enough, just like a slice of pizza Margherita.

Look out for Pizza in Pienza, available on our website this summer. In the meantime, check out godine.com for more of our recent and upcoming arrivals!

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Sackbut n. A medieval instrument, not unlike a trombone. The term is derived from an old French world for a hook used to pull a man off a horse. Make what you will of this.

In recent years, the sackbut has become very popular at lavish New York dinner parties.

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. Sackbut appears in the Second.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Parisology n. The deliberate pursuits of ambiguity in one’s use of language.

A true Renaissance man, Ben Franklin was an expert in the field of Parisology.

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. Parisology appears in the First.

Godine Quotables

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Touch Signature n. A dactylogram, i.e., a fingerprint.

A young researcher carefully prepares a colorful touch signature for analysis.

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. Touch signature appears in the Superior Person's Field Guide.

March News and Review Round Up

Here at David R. Godine, Publisher, we strive to produce high quality books above all else. So, when our books and authors are praised, we hope you'll forgive us for acting like proud parents. Please join us in celebrating the recent success of a few of our talented authors.

First and foremost, we are honored to announce Joe McKendry's One Times Square: A Century of Change at the Crossroads of the World as a winner of a New York City Book Award for 2012.

For a firsthand look at his beautiful illustrations, find One Times Square on our website.

This past March there were also a host of positive reviews of Godine's books. Photo Life magazine praises not only the formal beauty of the photographs in Karsh: Beyond the Camera but also the book's illuminating content:

. . . this book features many of his beautiful black-and-white photographs. In addition to that, Karsh: Beyond the Camera includes the background stories of the portrait session when the images were taken. This enjoyable text provides insight into how Karsh so successfully connected with his subjects and established a high degree of trust through his "gift for interpersonal exchange and an inquisitive temperament."

There was also a review of Karsh: Beyond the Camera in The Antioch Review, which concurs on the power of the commentary, both from the photographer himself as well as from photo curator David Travis. Travis "places the image in a historical context, but also has the ability to articulate what is special in a photograph and what was involved in getting the image," and his reflections slow the experience of looking at the portraits to thus allow them to speak more forcefully.

We were pleased to celebrate the beauty of Karsh on March 27th in an event at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, put on by the Canadian Consulate. It was a great event, filled with stories about the famous photographer from those who knew him best, including his widow, Estrellita Karsh, and long-time assistant Jerry Fielder.

Estrellita Karsh and David Travis, editor of Karsh: Beyond the Camera.

To learn more, you can purchase Karsh: Beyond the Camera on our website.

Connecticut Today delves into the history of Adam Van Doren's artistic career and shares some of his insights behind the illustrations for An Artist in Venice:

"I saw the buildings as works of art unto themselves and was less interested in their technical aspects," says Van Doren . . ."Venice is conducive to the experience of painting," he says. "It's meditative, with unusual light at all times of the day. There are no tall buildings so you have unobstructed panoramas. You can disappear in time, with no reminders of modernity except tourists."

Read the full article for more of Van Doren's thoughts and past experiences. The book can be found here.

Barbara Paul Robinson continues to be applauded for her brilliant biography Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener. The gardening publication Historic Gardens Review contrasts the pristine picture of Verey painted by another book with the "darker side of Verey" that Robinson describes. The review goes on to say that:

Robinson's crisp narrative emphasizes that in spite of the showbiz element (Elton John was one high-profile client) Verey's work should not be forgotten and was underpinned by considerable scholarship.

Find Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener on our website, and take a look a the homepage of Godine's website for many more new and noteworthy selections!

A Look at Little Free Libraries

by Jodi Bosin

I discovered my first Little Free Library this past summer in my hometown of Philadelphia, on an undisturbed Old City street filled with quiet stores and restaurant suppliers. The freestanding construction on the sidewalk looked like a large birdhouse on a wooden pole. It was filled with books and inscribed with the words “Take a book, leave a book." I was in awe of this small and wonderful structure. Naturally, I returned the next day to engage immediately in its instructions.

Todd Bol's original Little Free Library
in Hudson, Wisconsin

The phenomenon of the Little Free Library began with Todd Bol's beautiful tribute to his bibliophile mother. Three years ago the Hudson, Wisconsin, native put up a miniature schoolhouse on a post outside his home and filled it with books to be borrowed. A few friends followed suit, and today there are thousands of miniature libraries in over thirty countries across the globe.

The Little Free Library movement is now a nonprofit run out of Wisconsin by Bol and his friend Rick Brooks. Their website offers the chance to register a Little Free Library for a small fee and purchase a pre-built model (although creating a library from scratch is always encouraged). Registration offers the chance to be listed on the Little Free Library Map of the World and receive special offers and updates from the organization.

Cambridge's Little Free Library
run by Roberts and Belove

When I returned to Boston, I instantly sought out all the Little Free Libraries in the area (as you may have already done sometime around the last paragraph), and it turns out that we have a few of these small sanctuaries right here in our city. Laura Roberts and Ed Belove are the stewards of the Little Free Library at 1715 Cambridge Street, and the anonymously created library in Jamaica Plain stands at the corner of South and Bardwell. Jan Gardner writes about the Cambridge edition in the Boston Globe:

Roberts has reported to her what she sees from her window. “People are stocking it. People are stopping and talking and taking pictures,” she said. She and her husband supplied the first few piles of books but now others are making donations. On a recent day, “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway stood next to “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” by David Sedaris...Roberts and Belove are longtime members of Friends of the Cambridge Public Library. The opening of their own little library is no commentary on its grander relation. “Libraries big and small,” Roberts said. “We love them all."

The full article can be found here.

One might ask, won't the books be stolen, or the libraries vandalized? These things can happen, but a world filled with Little Free Libraries is a world of hope and hungry readers. With Spring coming upon us, it is the perfect time for a pilgrimage to these small treasure troves. Just remember to bring an unwanted book that needs a home.

Godine Quotables

Godine Quotables

Godine Quotables

February Review Round-Up

Here at David R. Godine, Publisher, we strive to produce high quality books above all else. So, when our books and authors are praised, we hope you'll forgive us for acting like proud parents. Please join us in celebrating the recent success of a few of our talented authors.

The Poetry Society has announced Naomi Replanski as the 2013 recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award, given each year to a book of poetry written by a single author and published by a small, non-profit, or University Press. On the Poetry Society's website, B.H Fairchild writes:

Replansky has become the master of a Blakean music radically unfashionable in its devotion to song-like meters and the reality and politics of working-class experience. For those of us who came upon her poems half a century ago, the appearance of Replansky's Collected Poems is cause for celebration and, as an expression of deep gratitude and woefully belated recognition, the conferring of the William Carlos Williams Award.

The full text can be seen here, and be sure to find Naomi Replanski's Collected Poems on the Black Sparrow Books website.

Adam Van Doren's book An Artist In Venice - featured in last month's round-up as well - continues to receive high praise. The Boston Globe believes he does justice to a city that has been written about for centuries:

Van Doren, a master of light and grandson of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Van Doren, is an amiable companion as he goes about exploring the city, sketchbook and notebook in hand. “An Artist in Venice” (Godine) succeeds as a memoir of discovery and a portfolio of paintings and sketches. His dreamy, richly hued works, none more than six and a half inches tall, are beautifully reproduced.

The full review can be read here.

Ralph Gardner Jr. of the Wall Street Journal also acknowledges the fact that Van Doren is tackling "one of the best-known, and most thoroughly researched, subjects in all of art and literature." Yet Van Doren's paintings, like the city, are easy to love:

...those who fall in love with Venice tend to do so completely. And rapture is easier to portray than mixed emotions. I had a second minor revelation as I examined Mr. Van Doren’s paintings. (He must be doing something right, because I rarely have any revelations, let alone two triggered by the same artist.) Perhaps more than any other city, when you’re painting Venice you’re simultaneously painting nature. New York, by contrast, is a man-made world...But Venice can’t be separated from the sea, which surrounds and more than occasionally engulfs it; or from the interplay of architecture, sea and sky.

Van Doren's paintings demonstrate the manner in which "nature worms its way into the perception of the city," writes Gartner. The author's architectural background provides him with the talent of "insinuating precision with the fewest possible brush strokes." An Artist in Venice is also a memoir, "a lively account of living in the city" and the author's adventures there.

Continue reading Gartner's article here, and find An Artist in Venice on our website.

The New York Daily News recognizes Andrew Alpern's documentation of New York's holdouts, "about 50 bygone-era buildings in Manhattan," in his book Holdouts! The Buildings That Got in the Way. in the full article, you can read  testimonials from residents and see photographs of what some of these holdouts look like.

For a full account of these endangered structures, you can purchase Holdouts! The Buildings That Got in the Way on our website.

More new and noteworthy books can be found on the homepage of Godine's website, along with a host of high quality selections.

Godine Quotables

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Toggery n. Collective noun for your togs, i.e., clothing. "So - we're off to the beach and then on to the pictures. Everyone got their toggery?"

The little oysters don their nighttime toggery before tucking into their shells to sleep.

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. Toggery appears in the Third.

The Beauty of Black Sparrow Books

In the winter 1986 issue of Matrix, the renowned review for printers and bibliophiles, Robert Kelly wrote that Black Sparrow books have a certain look: “The soft, textural wrappers, the odd, vivid-by-default underwhelming of hues and values, the habit of solidity.”

Not to mention the original use of type, color, ornament, and paper and the relationship between these elements that put this particular press – now an imprint of David R. Godine, Publisher – in a league of its own. In his essay, Kelly describes how he views a book as something precious, an object “of love and desire by virtue of some gorgeous timeliness conferred by printer or binder," and how Black Sparrow books confer such a quality. The woman behind many Black Sparrow covers is Barbara Martin, who designed over three hundred in twenty years from her Santa Barbara home. Martin, who is married to John Martin, the original publisher of Black Sparrow Press, accurately portrayed each individual work and author while still preserving an identifiable style of her own. She viewed assignments critically and would refuse an author's personal color preferences if they did not serve the work. Kelly could always recognize a Black Sparrow book in a store, drawn to it by the "tender differences the designer cares for" that characterize Martin's look.

Martin's covers are indeed striking. Her sharp, geometric compositions betray influences of abstract expressionism and Russian modernism and push the reader to question their relation to the content inside. With one of these books in hand, it is impossible not to notice the fine quality of the paper on which the covers are printed and the bold colors rendered in clean, decisive matte. Open one up and you will see a three-color title page, a rarity in today's printing world.

The “continued miracle of the Black Sparrow Press” Kelly writes about is just as evident today as it was decades ago. Here are some examples of Barbara Martin's covers (front and back) from our shelves, all of which are still available on Black Sparrow's website:

 

Ekbert Faas, Young Robert Duncan: Portrait of the Poet as Homosexual in Society

 

David Meltzer, Arrows: Selected Poetry 1957-1992

   

David Meltzer, No Eyes: Lester Young

   

John Sanford, The Winters of that Country: Tales of the Man Made Seasons

 

John Sanford, Scenes from the Life of an American Jew, Volume 1: The Color of the Air

Thaisa Frank, Sleeping in Velvet


If you're still feeling nostalgic for the crisp letterpress style of the past, take a look through the many other treasures that Black Sparrow has to offer here.

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Butyraceous, a. Looking or acting like butter; buttery. “Who was that oily young man who took Sabrina out last week? The one who complimented you on your hairdo?” “Oh, the butyraceous one! That was…”

These days canines have been embracing the latest butyraceous fashion trends.

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. Butyraceous appears in the Third.

Paul Goodman: Literary Icon

Paul Goodman (1911–1972) defined himself not just as an author but also as a playwright, poet, novelist, urban planner, media critic, classicist, activist, and primary-education expert. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Goodman spoke for a generation of dissatisfied youth through his writing. He was revered not only by students but also by other renowned writers; Susan Sontag called him "our Sartre." Goodman may not be a household name today as he was half a century ago, but his praises are still sung by artists and writers who remember his legendary influence.

Black Sparrow Books, an imprint of David R. Godine, Publisher, publishes many works by Paul Goodman: Volumes 2, 3, and 4 of The Collected Stories of Paul Goodman, Parents' Day, and The Empire City. Find them here, and read a few examples below of recent recognition.

In an interview this month with writer Jonathan Cott on Powell's Book's Blog, Cott cites Paul Goodman as the one author that he thinks people should read:

Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an extraordinary American novelist, poet, playwright, literary critic, psychotherapist, pacifist, and social activist. All of these facets of his being are in evidence in his prodigiously inventive and audacious novel about New York City entitled The Empire City, which depicts a small group of radically sane "misfits" living in a world of eight million "normal" lunatics.

You can read the full interview here.

Cott also converses at length about Goodman with Susan Sontag in his upcoming book The Complete Rolling Stone Interview with Susan Sontag, which will be published by Yale University Press this fall. In particular, their conversation focuses on the "Johnson Stories," several volumes of which are published by Black Sparrow Books.

The film Paul Goodman Changed My Life (2011) by Jonathan Lee delves even further into the writer's lasting influence, set in New York when the '60s were in full swing. The film features commentary and quotes from a range of writers, peers, and family members. The film's website states: 

Paul Goodman was once so ubiquitous in the American zeitgeist that he merited a “cameo” in Woody Allenʼs Annie Hall. Author of legendary bestseller Growing Up Absurd (1960), Goodman was also a poet, 1940s out queer (and family man), pacifist, visionary, co-founder of Gestalt therapy—and a moral compass for many in the burgeoning counterculture of the ‘60s.

The New York Times review of the film claims that:

The time is surely right for a Goodman revival. There are aspects of contemporary life that he anticipated and influenced — the gay rights movement, most notably — and others that are sorely in need of his wisdom.

You can revive Goodman's wisdom and relive his stories yourself by purchasing any number of the volumes offered on our website!