tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91749319262400401432024-03-05T23:19:27.676+00:00Sonofabookwww.cbeditions.comcharleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.comBlogger733125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-83998274177484190382024-03-02T12:30:00.004+00:002024-03-02T14:15:44.912+00:002 pence<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_C0TeeZ6iuAFKv98qSOQTLlswB0hh1CcvYiRj-Qw8GDCK6YFD54PF94uAvoKrCZnVJ-4x2-eP2q5_eC8gEnAvhwGYaCuTOW0ofOMv5woW6RXan1IBs57v9H3dEIF08eKO8UW3FiTgVIlCjUP5PfvWaO2A5MpSg2pDv0qzUUD3caxg0ExFtR9VJu_kjzpj/s2016/Follain.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_C0TeeZ6iuAFKv98qSOQTLlswB0hh1CcvYiRj-Qw8GDCK6YFD54PF94uAvoKrCZnVJ-4x2-eP2q5_eC8gEnAvhwGYaCuTOW0ofOMv5woW6RXan1IBs57v9H3dEIF08eKO8UW3FiTgVIlCjUP5PfvWaO2A5MpSg2pDv0qzUUD3caxg0ExFtR9VJu_kjzpj/s400/Follain.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Alan Brownjohn died on 23 February. A fine poet and a lovely, genial, generous man. Wonderfully colourful Romanian suits. Decades ago, long before the internet, one of the newspapers, possibly even the <i>Torygraph</i>, though Alan would have hated it, used one of his books as an example in a piece that parsed the economics of publishing. I am almost certainly the only person who remembers that long-ago page. That says something about me: that there’s always been a nation-of-shopkeepers aspect to my interest in publishing. Let’s go again.<br><br>
Say the cover price is £10. Bookshops which have set up their own account with the distributor (in CBe’s case, Central Books) buy in books at a negotiated discount off the cover price. Most independent bookshops buy not direct from Central but from the wholesaler Gardners, which has a monopoly on this, and Gardners (quote from their website) ‘normally ask for 60% discount off the RRP’. Sometimes more. So in most bookshops a CBe book with a cover price of £10 will have been bought by Gardners from Central for £4 in order to reach the bookshop. Before passing on that £4 to CBe, Central will deduct their own fee (15% + VAT) and the sales agent’s fee (10% + VAT), which brings the amount payable to CBe down to £2.80. That’s my net income per copy, and I pay 10% royalties on that (I’ve already paid the author an advance on royalties when taking on the book, often £500). So CBe’s take is now down to £2.52. The printing cost is, say, £2.50 per copy. Which leaves CBe with 2 pence.<br><br>
Could I print cheaper? For large print runs the cost per unit comes down, but CBe books are short-run books. And if I’m putting a book into the world – adding to the world’s sheer stuff – I want, obviously, this book to be a decent thing, so I’m going to add in from the extras on offer, as I think right for each book: endsheets, flaps, inside-cover printing. I’m currently paying around £3 per copy, which dunks that 2-pence profit into the red.<br><br>
CBe has no Arts Council funding and I haven’t even mentioned design, typesetting or <i>time</i>, because if I costed those in this would make even less financial sense. So not a business model. More a declaration that it can’t be done without privilege (I’m 73, no mortgage, pension, know-how picked up in previous employment: kill me) and luck; but with those it <i>can</i> be done. For sixteen years and still running. So yes, a model of sorts. An anti-business model. And if the whole thing feels about to collapse, every day, that feels right.<br><br>
The photo above: Jean Follain, <i>Paris 1935</i>, translated by Kathleen Shields. One of the books I was just waiting for: the first English translation of a prose book by a French poet (1903–1971) I am not a little obsessed with. And have <a href="https://wildcourt.co.uk/3035/" target="_blank">written about</a>. An old-style brown-cover book with gold endsheets, it had to be (though the retro brown covers come from a printer who charges artisanal-bread prices), but I wanted a photo too, so had that (by Dora Maar, 1935) printed separately and every copy will have that photo stuck on, one by one, by me. No mainstream publisher would do this. <i>Paris 1935</i> will be published in April but is available from the website now for <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Follain.html" target="_blank">pre-order</a>.<br><br>
Meanwhile, Gardners: they basically don’t care, because I don’t make them enough money. A book I published early in February was listed on their website until yesterday as ‘Not available to order’, despite the book being in stock at Central since before Christmas – which means that anyone asking for that book in a bookshop supplied by Gardners in the month of publication was told <i>Sorry, can’t get it</i>. A ‘problem with a spreadsheet’, I was told. I doubt they will have that problem with the new Sally Rooney.<br><br>
The predicament I’m describing here is that of many small presses. CBe is far from alone.<br><br>
And the usual: please buy the books. The difference to CBe between a book bought in a shop and a book bought from the website is, even after postage (up again in April, the fourth rise in two years), the difference between 2 pence and the cost of a flat white. And the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Follain.html" target="_blank">Season Tickets</a>: the whole backlist (the ones still in print) at your mercy.charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-61037663921118147552024-02-04T10:54:00.000+00:002024-02-04T10:54:06.404+00:00Two months, two books<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilVCs_FGebaHQbn2gENiBAt4_dnKPt0V5HfyIa-dpBaGFPXvCXRBe_A_eZEBwFLFXwrOrLgacGO1wtRdApcdwqWyFcsY3FzxHMk_gci9YyAA8mAU3SwtHXdcnXltQun-JZfGfVxbHPem3AmI5de4w_zRbNIlzT0MtqFY1_1e4mtm39OoM_jl2M5H2H5YS5/s640/IMG_3457.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilVCs_FGebaHQbn2gENiBAt4_dnKPt0V5HfyIa-dpBaGFPXvCXRBe_A_eZEBwFLFXwrOrLgacGO1wtRdApcdwqWyFcsY3FzxHMk_gci9YyAA8mAU3SwtHXdcnXltQun-JZfGfVxbHPem3AmI5de4w_zRbNIlzT0MtqFY1_1e4mtm39OoM_jl2M5H2H5YS5/s400/IMG_3457.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Second month of the year and the second CBe book of the year is published this coming week. Katy Evans-Bush’s <i>Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle</i> is, according to an early review (by Rupert Loydell in <i>Tears in the Fence</i>) a ‘persuasive, personal, original and revolutionary collection’. No ‘pallid depoliticised reservoirs of poetic sentiment,’ writes Fran Lock on the back of the book: ‘None of that here. But a humour and an honesty that persist despite it all. No little dramas of abjection, but real life. We cannot look away.’ For starters, go to the book’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Evans-Bush.html" target="_blank">website page</a>, where you can download an excerpt that includes K E-B’s preface – in which she spells out the presence in the book of the US poet Kenneth Patchen (subject of a CBe <a href="http://sonofabook.blogspot.com/2024/01/kenneth-patchen-rides-again.html" target="_blank">blog post</a> a couple of weeks ago) – and a note on Joe Hill. And then press the ‘Add to cart’ button.<br><br>
There’ll be a party for the book on 14 February. Katy will be reading from the book at the Faversham Festival on 24 February.<br><br>
This follows Lara Pawson’s <i>Spent Light</i>, which was launched at the London Review bookshop on 24 January and in less than a week had four reviews (<i>Guardian</i>, <i>Financial Times</i>, <i>Irish Times</i>, <i>Spectator</i>) and sold out its first print run. Phew. This is not how things usually work around here. I’m more used to staring out of the window and hoping the sun will come out. The reprint will be in the warehouse in the next day or so. Meanwhile, I have copies here to fulfil orders from the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Pawson2.html" target="_blank">website page</a>.<br><br>
If you do order from the website, think about the Season Tickets on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">home page</a>: 6 books of your choice for £45 or 12 for £80 (UK only; free postage). This is ridiculously generous. If <i>Joe Hill</i> or <i>Spent Light</i> is one of your choices, you’ll be saving £3.49 (or £4.33) off the cover price.
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-49171514997339937262024-02-01T23:59:00.000+00:002024-02-01T23:59:27.974+00:00TLS / Royal Society of LiteratureReally odd piece in the TLS this week by MC about the RSL. Are you with me? Don’t worry if not, it’s an ingrown toenail in the long-running series about writers and status that no one cares about except writers. RSL = Royal Society of Literature. First two paras in the TLS are starter waffle, which is what this column does, with added pepper, and there’s a place for this and I read it.<br><br>
Get to the point. Which he does in para 3: ‘According to <i>Private Eye</i>, the society is currently trapped in an “ideological purity spiral”’. And so it continues, lots of quotes wthin quotes, gossip, who said what to who, which is how anything bookish becomes news and gets a <i>Guardian</i> piece – posh people bitching.<br><br>
So much of MC’s piece is in quote marks. MC himself is in quote marks: ‘We’. A couple of things I pick him up on: ‘senior RSL members’: you just mean older, don’t you? Older and whiter. You imply the new members are junior. All RSL fellows are equal, or they are not. MC’s mockery (fair enough: all selection is invidious) of the ‘specially selected’ panel that will nominate candidates for new fellowships – ‘Who selects the selectors?’ – slides comfortably past the previous old-boys club way of nominating: they selected themselves. And please, please, do not say ‘august institution’, irony is over; when Marina Warner bemoans a ‘lack of respect for older members and a loss of institutional history, which was something members cherished’, she is talking about an institution first given royal patronage by the particular King George, I forget which, there were several, who declared: ‘We do hereby declare and make known, That the Slave Population in Our said Colonies and Possessions will be undeserving of Our Protection if they shall fail to render entire Submission to the Laws, as well as dutiful Obedience to their Masters.’ That is a part of the RSL’s institutional history; I think a big part; to bemoan lack of respect for it is at the very least complacent. Why, seriously, does the RLS not ditch the Royal bit? charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-43522867466135866042024-01-21T09:41:00.001+00:002024-01-21T09:41:28.342+00:00Kenneth Patchen rides again<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha5MaK1RSkHCgX4WakJZ7JdS4GTPltghq9MUnJqOWqEhLEfkVaL1uVmm6Ufy0oG2AXd2MFdw59DZsNRAi19YgQR4tQ5KIh_UgfDDJAbFiMbYPtgmycG8Q6OmaZPFzEcU89lXlo9lCcH_2BQuuBaKUgq6oaPF7z-By3xQScA4lqEXREH7n6kWiISNB4E6gm/s1417/KEBcutouts.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1417" data-original-width="1417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha5MaK1RSkHCgX4WakJZ7JdS4GTPltghq9MUnJqOWqEhLEfkVaL1uVmm6Ufy0oG2AXd2MFdw59DZsNRAi19YgQR4tQ5KIh_UgfDDJAbFiMbYPtgmycG8Q6OmaZPFzEcU89lXlo9lCcH_2BQuuBaKUgq6oaPF7z-By3xQScA4lqEXREH7n6kWiISNB4E6gm/s400/KEBcutouts.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Kenneth Patchen (1911–72) is not a writer familiar to many British readers, even obsessive poetry readers, but he was important to Katy Evans-Bush in her teens – which is an age at which writers can be <i>very</i> important – and he was important to her again during that recent period of Covid lockdowns, lock-outs, lock-ups, cock-ups. The above photo (courtesy K E-B) shows in a nutshell, or a sweetie-box, the kindling process that led to her new collection, <i>Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle</i>. For that process spelled out, go to the page for <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Evans-Bush.html" target="_blank">her book on the CBe website</a> and download the extract that gives you K E-B’s preface, and a note on Joe Hill, and a couple of the poems; and then, having got that far, buy the book. Which is officially published early in February.<br><br>
Kenneth Patchen didn’t just write. Writers don’t <i>just write</i>. Politics were important, and music and love and coffee and bluebells, and he drew and painted. Below are some of Patchen’s book covers and his poems as artworks. (Thank you, <a href="https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/national-poetry-library?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA-62tBhDSARIsAO7twbZXCoWJkqfIsagVtXli3Fc3mwwFPNnhoSko5dLtNLK2UXflZGOCgiIaAieZEALw_wcB" target="_blank">Poetry Library</a> at the Southbank Centre, a hugely important resource.)<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAJNBbhYAHKG711kmGSBz9ivgt4iqI8Fy0m7Vi5lS5Poog3F5DRX4mHmcnuWn5QA-blQ437F2f4FbUi8sAloruAg-qVyTtljrdTPxGVqvhNyolvcfkxTGkXIPQSWnE_V709n5tpux-PMMOTW6sYCS81BfBidiv2FoyKx_ITQ_6lvH4hczhbK2DTdFjX17_/s1417/IMG_3091.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1089" data-original-width="1417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAJNBbhYAHKG711kmGSBz9ivgt4iqI8Fy0m7Vi5lS5Poog3F5DRX4mHmcnuWn5QA-blQ437F2f4FbUi8sAloruAg-qVyTtljrdTPxGVqvhNyolvcfkxTGkXIPQSWnE_V709n5tpux-PMMOTW6sYCS81BfBidiv2FoyKx_ITQ_6lvH4hczhbK2DTdFjX17_/s400/IMG_3091.jpeg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV4r9ThujZSJSzFUcgtUQ_ZM77QbWrIm_COV1r-PofoUoUKd0u2xeJvKi2nVLJvxiO-C4YsbrRyYWRZI7Ejy_nnZmxLR0axEakg6ex9G9Y50qmyjqq5YxhYsl6dYh8hH-oi3_JnzylZ2tBWOM2VbHxyJe-IBwvy21u6K0qSrevxVh0wYaezcdbkyKGZ01R/s1417/IMG_3092.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1098" data-original-width="1417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV4r9ThujZSJSzFUcgtUQ_ZM77QbWrIm_COV1r-PofoUoUKd0u2xeJvKi2nVLJvxiO-C4YsbrRyYWRZI7Ejy_nnZmxLR0axEakg6ex9G9Y50qmyjqq5YxhYsl6dYh8hH-oi3_JnzylZ2tBWOM2VbHxyJe-IBwvy21u6K0qSrevxVh0wYaezcdbkyKGZ01R/s400/IMG_3092.jpeg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfjuSfQu5_l7xSQA3vQ0KnUsKdgJaXGaDD1aa6c12F9ObujFqN3oM0H0l3s4n3diZdJbFI6BZFA92LqvYQXpN5KAgkWKpM2CHsF4kGU2b0f9M3WzAdxSKZIwM9XZEELI78HJv9yfRsLKjRumacTWotKEk_yiVmyDe4oImQuXrfs5ErdLzLStefnpFbcZHN/s1417/IMG_3093.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1026" data-original-width="1417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfjuSfQu5_l7xSQA3vQ0KnUsKdgJaXGaDD1aa6c12F9ObujFqN3oM0H0l3s4n3diZdJbFI6BZFA92LqvYQXpN5KAgkWKpM2CHsF4kGU2b0f9M3WzAdxSKZIwM9XZEELI78HJv9yfRsLKjRumacTWotKEk_yiVmyDe4oImQuXrfs5ErdLzLStefnpFbcZHN/s400/IMG_3093.jpeg"/></a></div><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimpm81GGIQxDO1ZRLyfaVAJNHjbmAKgy_XUongr8w-gL1-RT_0_F4xADKhwTz2LV4QFv74iFWAj6XSQY5dE3_TPhhDxT6fXZWpgEh6luf4I6oU2O3l_oE6F4S7vzSm-Z9vp1jYNfw7-Vd1KXjUob1bPAwhjpIsrhQw3KCzju9KhLMveFHS92uVBDbtBwg7/s1134/IMG_3089.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimpm81GGIQxDO1ZRLyfaVAJNHjbmAKgy_XUongr8w-gL1-RT_0_F4xADKhwTz2LV4QFv74iFWAj6XSQY5dE3_TPhhDxT6fXZWpgEh6luf4I6oU2O3l_oE6F4S7vzSm-Z9vp1jYNfw7-Vd1KXjUob1bPAwhjpIsrhQw3KCzju9KhLMveFHS92uVBDbtBwg7/s400/IMG_3089.jpeg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-OD5NXRT8tOWp2d_CndVfFvgqeG7uOp56Md8tfRZ_QXUjGy3lVSDYrk1qa29_Hzhs8mRKISdWee64JQmZRJUEU7FrAcT1hQgdlH3fUJE1aWoBAgbyLmuQ1ygdKziHwRQZs4z9bwkoMbxTjdq3Hik2jGmDrf30PuvfxCp4PoGa7Z97FBjpLo0dzJMy8f03/s1134/IMG_3090.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-OD5NXRT8tOWp2d_CndVfFvgqeG7uOp56Md8tfRZ_QXUjGy3lVSDYrk1qa29_Hzhs8mRKISdWee64JQmZRJUEU7FrAcT1hQgdlH3fUJE1aWoBAgbyLmuQ1ygdKziHwRQZs4z9bwkoMbxTjdq3Hik2jGmDrf30PuvfxCp4PoGa7Z97FBjpLo0dzJMy8f03/s400/IMG_3090.jpeg"/></a></div><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoY-YyUNxGQ3C3Is_wUkWPNjdCQoDCpznjgaFpfQ4s-yTC-b-75EZp0K_ZnA6PN78ZlhCDNSHKu7qi2cPm8yDYaNmJYY1t7_mcLLZ-4dQDuO-qBh4sgcASKa8YLSGMIzEWOr2Qy2hYiB7fhm04mftNmN3Gd4GiE0caBxjmXpWCIlEhAKOny5Xpgtfu0HCs/s1417/IMG_3102.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="940" data-original-width="1417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoY-YyUNxGQ3C3Is_wUkWPNjdCQoDCpznjgaFpfQ4s-yTC-b-75EZp0K_ZnA6PN78ZlhCDNSHKu7qi2cPm8yDYaNmJYY1t7_mcLLZ-4dQDuO-qBh4sgcASKa8YLSGMIzEWOr2Qy2hYiB7fhm04mftNmN3Gd4GiE0caBxjmXpWCIlEhAKOny5Xpgtfu0HCs/s400/IMG_3102.jpeg"/></a></div>
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-50799642168659138542024-01-12T13:00:00.003+00:002024-01-12T14:00:26.873+00:00Dog days<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6enqC7hk71wHJYKe1_lbbmwkbSv-UuC9EAyo-SaDaNDfYnB1xKb-ji1Vbfr5FvVdEl0iz5Uf-skCLaPTmMmDCgaOhME4NstjS10A51pApFw_WEf2SUXfXMABEkgv1okEKffBpg38fCm7FxtT0O8kBtLPw9i6BJnq9sM0X_rbPErqufyE7L27WG1hiuplL/s1803/IMG_3257.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1043" data-original-width="1803" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6enqC7hk71wHJYKe1_lbbmwkbSv-UuC9EAyo-SaDaNDfYnB1xKb-ji1Vbfr5FvVdEl0iz5Uf-skCLaPTmMmDCgaOhME4NstjS10A51pApFw_WEf2SUXfXMABEkgv1okEKffBpg38fCm7FxtT0O8kBtLPw9i6BJnq9sM0X_rbPErqufyE7L27WG1hiuplL/s400/IMG_3257.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Since Christmas the view down from my desk chair has been this – Reggie, a dachshund I am dog-sitting – and I have been a member of the club of dog-keeping small presses. Kevin Duffy of Bluemoose Books posts regular photos of Lottie. William Boyd recalls visiting the ‘small cramped offices’ of Alan Ross, editor of the <i>London Magazine</i> and of the London Magazine editions (the model for CB editions): ‘Books everywhere, of course, but there were two dogs sprawled under his desk …’ Ross published Auden’s ‘Talking to Dogs’ in a 1971 issue of the <i>London Magazine</i>: ‘From us, of course, you want gristly bones/ and to be led through exciting odourscapes –/ their colours don’t matter – with the chance/ of a rabbit to chase or of meeting/ a fellow arse-hole to nuzzle at …’<br><br>
2024 books: Lara Pawson’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Pawson2.html" target="_blank"><i>Spent Light</i></a> publishes on 23 January; she will be in conversation with Jennifer Hodgson at the London Review bookshop on 24 January. Katy Evans-Bush’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Evans-Bush.html" target="_blank"><i>Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle</i></a> will publish on 6 February – available from the website now (as is Spent Light).<br><br>
Coming in April: the first English translation of <i>Paris</i> by Jean Follain (1903–71), a French poet I hugely admire and have written about. And <i>The End of Ends</i> by the renowned Polish theatre director Tadeusz Bradecki, written in the last year of his life: a non-fiction book about story-telling and everything else which happens to include an embedded novel.<br><br>
There are birthdays galore in January and the 10th anniversary of Studio ExPurgamento (co-publisher with CBe of <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/blush.html" target="_blank"><i>Blush</i></a> and <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/CamdenTownHoard.html" target="_blank"><i>The Camden Town Hoard</i></a>) to continue celebrating: party at the Horse Hospital on 23 January, free entry but reserve a ticket on <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mustang-salon-tickets-781334672037?aff=oddtdtcreator&fbclid=IwAR3PqMrXu8GjsRaBl-bvETQEpfGeXg6pixT9-1i6gTMb7xyrxc-cPWQqn7o" target="_blank">Eventbrite</a>. A not-bad birthday prsent for yourself or anyone else is a Season Ticket (6 books for £45, 12 for £80, post-free) from the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">website home page</a>.<br><br>
From the US-based organisation Pleasure Pie you can download <a href="https://www.pleasurepie.org/articles/free-zines-about-palestine" target="_blank">10 free zines</a> about Palestine. Begin with <i>Gazan Youth Manifesto</i>: ‘Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community […] We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?’
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-39714530359765433152023-12-04T13:58:00.001+00:002023-12-04T14:21:18.706+00:00Lives. Books.In the late 1970s I sat in Fulham town hall listening to Bruce Kent (CND) ask Richard Harries (who wrote on the ‘just war’ and later became Bishop of Oxford): Do the personal moral values and standards we ask of our friends also apply to politicians, or do they get a realpolitik get-out clause?<br><br>
Palestine. Israel. I cannot speak on behalf of all the writers I publish, I am not their elected representative, but by definition a publisher operates in public so, for the record: damn the State of Israel’s apartheid and barbarous actions, and damn Hamas, whose own actions are those of a death cult. And damn, too, political leaders in my country and elsewhere who are prepared to accept indefinite killing and mutilation of women and children in the interests of what, precisely?<br><br>
Books. A free copy of Leila Berg’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/berg.html" target="_blank"><i>Flickerbook</i></a>, which is one of CBe’s touchstone books, will be sent with the next 12 online orders. Berg: immigrant Jewish family, Manchester, defiantly left-wing and an activist for the welfare of children all her life.<br><br>
Tony Lurcock’s <i>Uncommon Places</i>, a commonplace book by the author/compiler of a trilogy of books about Finland published by CBe that stretched to four volumes, was recommended in the <i>TLS</i> last week; it’s not a CBe book but is <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/UncommonPlaces.html">available from the website</a>.<br><br>
Books alone do not save lives. But they are voices too and my work is to get some of them heard. Either for yourself or as a present for others, see the Season Tickets on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">website home page</a>: 6 books <i>of your own choice</i> for £45, or 12 for £80.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2eA0mycBb4oxni7g9k0frkzWHMruAqv0FpJGgK5Bfo9-dSrq1eogfJFc0M-DujL_dr0-wTpySPvo5G78tBXdn9lxAvWd2D0BVEKPaDYDdNN0eLbOn_OQyJn7Ttag0G-3aiVOKKtNptvMzeNnEqr7tp1aq7WZ0TMtEn0ukXjl9K4GgEVbw86BZusde3av/s1395/IMG_8715.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1395" data-original-width="1276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2eA0mycBb4oxni7g9k0frkzWHMruAqv0FpJGgK5Bfo9-dSrq1eogfJFc0M-DujL_dr0-wTpySPvo5G78tBXdn9lxAvWd2D0BVEKPaDYDdNN0eLbOn_OQyJn7Ttag0G-3aiVOKKtNptvMzeNnEqr7tp1aq7WZ0TMtEn0ukXjl9K4GgEVbw86BZusde3av/s400/IMG_8715.JPG"/></a></div>
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-53535738942424792722023-11-23T18:55:00.000+00:002023-11-23T18:55:06.312+00:00More on public schools(Earlier post <a href="http://sonofabook.blogspot.com/2023/04/public-schools-stupidy-and-awfulnuss-of.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br><br>
Anyone who thinks that paying for a child to go to a public school will buy them a ‘good’ education needs to read the diary extracts supplied to the Covid Inquiry by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser (2018–23): Eton-educated Johnson was confused by graphs and data and watching him try to ‘get his head round stats is awful’. Johnson struggled to understand basic scientific concepts ‘and we did need to repeat them – often’.<br><br>
And then read this: ‘<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-67468076" target="_blank">Man claims £1m damages over Loretto boarding school “abuse”</a>’: ‘For me, we're talking about thousands of assaults over more than 2,000 days.’ These are allegations of torture. In the 1990s. The current headmaster of the school has stated in an email that ‘the defence of the legal proceedings is being handled by our insurers and their lawyers’. <br><br>
I was at that school in the 1960s. The normalisation of violence, bullying and abuse was already in place – see the 200-page <a href="https://www.childabuseinquiry.scot/news/loretto-pupils-suffered-sexual-physical-and-emotional-abuse-0" target="_blank">report on the school</a> published earlier this year by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. The SCAI is an ongoing inquiry into the care of children in Scottish boarding schools and other institutions. To date, the inquiry has announced 112 investigations and has completed 11 case studies. No such inquiry exists in England: it would be too expensive, it would never end.<br><br>
The result of the case mentioned above will be important. Potentially, thousands of historic abuse claims for damages against public schools may follow. At the very least, the cost of the insurance policies taken out by the schools to protect themselves against such cases will rise steeply.charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-60191785259303700612023-10-30T12:39:00.000+00:002023-10-30T12:39:16.571+00:00Bananas<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLZl7bBamxb0NC8C1cetOgMJ8SSeFd9GGoOKPB98mvZL2d4veYytscpGS-DzEGguHeSDedDPrIi_VlUxuUZQujqLqbgKGZILnAEvu3Y0dXPgH8UK7yRyhO_hFLTBeqw00Hv3olRlj0_WrKCLJFSbaXyNXR1IamunY-sUJPdFyrRbpstGr82K8d_BjiBwR/s640/IMG_3059.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLZl7bBamxb0NC8C1cetOgMJ8SSeFd9GGoOKPB98mvZL2d4veYytscpGS-DzEGguHeSDedDPrIi_VlUxuUZQujqLqbgKGZILnAEvu3Y0dXPgH8UK7yRyhO_hFLTBeqw00Hv3olRlj0_WrKCLJFSbaXyNXR1IamunY-sUJPdFyrRbpstGr82K8d_BjiBwR/s400/IMG_3059.jpg"/></a></div><br>
‘Every square meter is filled with so much stuff. Fruit vendors, lottery booths, blind singers, tires, scrap metal, old motorbikes, buckets filled small nuts, bananas gone a little bad, live and dead chickens, heaps of indistinguishable merchandise …’ This is from Gianni Celati’s description of a street market in Bamako in Mali, which I was reading during (rare) quiet periods behind the CBe table at the Small Publishers Fair in the Conway Hall last Friday and Saturday. ‘Everywhere people are selling things and chatting with an admirable indolence. Everything moves in discontinuous fluxes, trailing-off busyness, frequent encounters, continual deviations off the path. Movements that are busy, yet meandering, in the space that is packed with human bodies and lively colors, and merchandise heaped into piles. Nothing gives the impression of being isolated … In this continual rubbing up against people who speak as soon as they see you, without barriers that protect against approaches, I am forgetting the funereal privacy with which I live in England …’<br><br>
Celati talks with his friend, a film-maker, ‘about the fact that in Europe the passion of business seems like a means to an end, and the end is only profit … Here, instead, it seems that living and doing business are the same thing, the same stuff as the hours of the day, for which the goal of profit is not separated from the chatting and the cloud of dust, and rarely are the encounters reduced to an anonymous rendering of services …’<br><br>
Still, Celati does wonder ‘What is the profit of the cigarette vendor in front of the hotel who sells perhaps ten packs a day? And the profit of the woman selling ten bananas total, on a little table in the street?’ For the record: CBe sold 87 books over the two days of the fair, for an average of £8.50 per book (which is less than the cover price of any one book, which varies between £8.99 and £14, because I was offering two for £16). A few more than ten bananas. And I gave away a few, and 30 free copies of <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Farthings.html" target="_blank"><i>Farthings</i></a>. There were discontinuous fluxes and frequent encounters and deviations off the path. Enormous thanks to Helen Mitchell for enabling the fair to happen.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYIYhkupL4FiYz5iUp2hQiwumxRQONT1fW7E7_oSK6N2md4q2ltkQZlNm8mbn5hLCO77iD0EXtyRttO15N36YH2kfRSl9XPAiUCYkf2Rwfkw1WY2lh2-UmVlGFc3TDAtjyUpEkMtMiK8JYhxjyGzJr4-GeEzeF8Ao71bKI9JBhPb25jANLmPb5JY4ROaLP/s640/IMG_3055.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYIYhkupL4FiYz5iUp2hQiwumxRQONT1fW7E7_oSK6N2md4q2ltkQZlNm8mbn5hLCO77iD0EXtyRttO15N36YH2kfRSl9XPAiUCYkf2Rwfkw1WY2lh2-UmVlGFc3TDAtjyUpEkMtMiK8JYhxjyGzJr4-GeEzeF8Ao71bKI9JBhPb25jANLmPb5JY4ROaLP/s400/IMG_3055.jpg"/></a></div><br>
And now a new banana, perfectly ripe, freshly delivered: Lara Pawson’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Pawson2.html" target="_blank"><i>Spent Light</i></a>, which publishes in January 2024 but is available now for pre-orders from the website.<br><br>
Plenty other bananas. They keep well. Selling not from a little table but from the website, where bulk orders, also known as Season Tickets – 6 titles of your own choice for £40, 12 for £75 – are available from the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">home page</a>. Think of the website as a street market.charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-16104678979153956542023-10-15T09:42:00.000+01:002023-10-15T09:42:15.395+01:00A tale of two book fairs<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkRHPPpdDrSwSAW897aZO_PhmG6QDXan0AEGXVwGciOv2wLP8dxRlpf6GXcp83EcOj6e4mtnBPhRJmFAPtPRy_qRdSa-lyX8QrvOqpZzlNsejanOlRR1vOoNgn1H1pAZsgKLpLqlPx3TNB2A0d5VEw_xreDfpH1rcdd-ho_Sa4XIG9BwafbE-s9v37aQJl/s1885/IMG_2982.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1331" data-original-width="1885" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkRHPPpdDrSwSAW897aZO_PhmG6QDXan0AEGXVwGciOv2wLP8dxRlpf6GXcp83EcOj6e4mtnBPhRJmFAPtPRy_qRdSa-lyX8QrvOqpZzlNsejanOlRR1vOoNgn1H1pAZsgKLpLqlPx3TNB2A0d5VEw_xreDfpH1rcdd-ho_Sa4XIG9BwafbE-s9v37aQJl/s400/IMG_2982.jpg"/></a></div><br>
<b>1</b>. Above: flyers for the first two years of Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair.<br><br>
In 2011 the Arts Council cut funding to a number of poetry presses. It might be fun, I thought, to <i>do</i> something, to <i>show</i> what was under threat. I emailed some people. I hired a hall in Exmouth Market – £250 – and some trestle tables. I put together a pamphlet with poems and an essay by Michael Horovitz. Katy in the pub said: No readings? Where was I living, in the 1950s? There happened to be a room above the hall to hire. Chrissy Williams came in and arranged the readings.<br><br>
24 September 2011: 22 publishers, a tight fit. There was a tube strike that day but people came. A woman with a lovely voice who was busking on the street came in and did a set on the stage. People bought books. It <i>happened</i>, and I think what took everyone by surprise was the surge of good will. Random quotes from feedback over the next days: ‘It was like a holiday … People came in droves. Really. Not only did they come, they spent money; <i>lots</i> of money … A book fair can be a revelation and, on Saturday, Free Verse was … With poets, publishers and, most importantly, readers brought face to face, you were reminded of what's actually important and of how much time and energy gets wasted drawing up binary or even balkanised models of the poetry world … The Free Verse fair was inaugurated in a spirit of defiance, collaboration and small-scale entrepreneurship … I am very much hoping this will become an annual event. Judging by the number of people who poured through the doors while I was there (and the number of people leaving with bags as heavy as mine was!) it should be.’<br><br>
The following year the fair hosted 50 publishers over two floors at Candid Arts. Chrissy was up and running, determined that we should make no distinction between the big publishers (with their tiny poetry lists) and the little ones, who operate far and wide. (Cape said no; they couldn’t work out whether the £40 table charge should be costed to the marketing or the publicity budget. Faber, bless them, told us how difficult it would be to get someone to sell books on a Saturday.) We got ACE funding to pay travel costs to presses from far afield and to pay the people running workshops. In 2013 the fair moved to the Conway Hall and Joey Connolly joined the gang; I dropped out the following year. 2014–17: around 80 presses participating each year; welcome assistance from enthusiastic volunteers; readings (both inside and out of doors), workshops, evening events in nearby pubs.<br><br>
In 2018 Chrissy and Joey stepped back and management of the book fair was taken over by the Poetry Society. Chrissy in 2018 (quoted on the book fair’s website): ‘We know the Poetry Society will be able to give [the Poetry Book Fair] a more stable and secure future. We’re delighted that they've agreed to take it on, and look forward to seeing how it flourishes in their hands.’<br><br>
The last Poetry Book Fair was in 2020. The Poetry Society – which receives more than £350,000 per year from ACE, but the book fair is not one its core activities – has no current plans to get it going again. This tends to be what happens when a very small outfit is taken over by a larger one: it disappears.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4pBDopBmfhhU3fnSPTcSIzLBrpMxQntOVLPYE-GHTbHR2bx46FD0jV0-YWVx83VfLaZQw87Oo2S-VVJSsDpu_eRYdyt96H0UBIbb07RMu1s2ykKi-qYhEhtxOQoUciolF1KknMZTNiTNCiQU-e-Kr03W_caDSTq8jonvdfuxmmwX0buj3z58MPQJLD_oO/s1080/SPF%20IG.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4pBDopBmfhhU3fnSPTcSIzLBrpMxQntOVLPYE-GHTbHR2bx46FD0jV0-YWVx83VfLaZQw87Oo2S-VVJSsDpu_eRYdyt96H0UBIbb07RMu1s2ykKi-qYhEhtxOQoUciolF1KknMZTNiTNCiQU-e-Kr03W_caDSTq8jonvdfuxmmwX0buj3z58MPQJLD_oO/s400/SPF%20IG.jpg"/></a></div><br>
<b>2</b>. Above is the flyer for this year’s Small Publishers Fair, to be held at the Conway Hall on 27 and 28 October.<br><br>
The Small Publishers Fair is basically run by two people: Helen Mitchell, who has organised the annual fair since 2012, and the designer and publisher Colin Sackett, who has been involved since the beginning in 2002. Advisers and close supporters are acknowledged on the website. ‘There’s a balance of geography (around 2/3 of publishers come from outside London or around the world) and of diversity of work (artists books, poetry, fine press, zines, etc).’ During Covid, instead of cancelling they ran an online ‘slow book fair’ over two months. The fair is focused, efficient, friendly, relaxed. It generates good will. They have found a recipe and it works and they don’t faff with it. If you want something done well, this – ‘independent, self-funding and not-for-profit’, and run by just two or three people – may be the only way to do it. CBe is honoured to be invited to take part.<br><br>
Of course, you don’t have to wait until the end of the month to buy books. See, for example, the Season Tickets (6 books of your own choice for £40, or 12 for £75) on the CBe <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/" target="_blank">home page</a>.
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-91448166813564165962023-09-25T09:28:00.003+01:002023-09-25T09:28:45.393+01:00Postponed<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglg5XfuK4E0GkM92I7mbFTs7Ih12bL2efgSu4bGBMR8rCWiUVD3U5x1nsyZIS-6mcT08AoRp9lPHGzsM_rfX853HfV75NDtqq9mev4fys3lAbh3xqKCa6LvnkHTMlbd_qQDGG6pAfWTkdgCC3HMyc9hBEylusP-sta53EdUeU2_rm9vv0YfSNJ7KklGTcG/s977/Strand3.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="977" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglg5XfuK4E0GkM92I7mbFTs7Ih12bL2efgSu4bGBMR8rCWiUVD3U5x1nsyZIS-6mcT08AoRp9lPHGzsM_rfX853HfV75NDtqq9mev4fys3lAbh3xqKCa6LvnkHTMlbd_qQDGG6pAfWTkdgCC3HMyc9hBEylusP-sta53EdUeU2_rm9vv0YfSNJ7KklGTcG/s400/Strand3.jpg"/></a></div><br>
A CBe event at the Barbican scheduled for Wednesday this week, the 27th, has been postponed (to 31 January next year) because of poor ticket sales. How many tickets were sold? As many as a tree-surgeon friend could count on his right hand, after having lost two fingers on that hand to one of those chopping machines into which fallen branches are fed.<br><br>
Ouch. It’s dose of realism. Event organisers who schedule Ian McEwan or Zadie Smith or Marie Kondo or Michael Palin can stroll into the box office, quids in; event organisers who schedule small-press writers have to run ten times faster for often, as here, zero result.<br><br>
The Barbican event was ticketed. They pay the writers. Many book events don’t. This is tricky: earlier this month I heard a librarian speak about her unease at having to charge £3 for an author event when for many of the people she wanted to come that was a barrier. The regular charge for book events in London is £10, which equals 2.5 Costa coffees and the food budget for a week for many. We want open access; we want writers to be valued; and it’s depressing how often money gets in the way rather than helping.<br><br>
Once, a friend and I were the only people to turn up to a stage adaptation of Kafka in a pub theatre and they put on the show just for us.<br><br>
On the plus side: for publishers whose authors cannot fill stadia, every reader <i>matters</i>. There are no pictures on the CBe site of authors hand-signing (or rubber-stamping) massed ziggurats of new books. For record, the books we were going to talk about on Wednesday evening are: Caroline Clark, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/clark.html"><i>Sovetica</i></a> and <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/clark2.html" target="_blank"><i>Own Sweet Time</i></a>; Julian George, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/George.html" target="_blank"><i>Bebe</i></a>; Charles Boyle, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/boyle3.html" target="_blank"><i>99 Interruptions</i></a>. Available from the website now, and on the CBe table (with other books) at the <a href="http://smallpublishersfair.co.uk/" target="_blank">Small Publishers Fair</a> in London on 27th and 28th October. Free entry. charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-8362904022773948272023-09-08T12:46:00.000+01:002023-09-08T12:46:16.702+01:00Ducks in a row<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoQT2cXdhSv18i0fqVM8fyFblGkfDdB8MRUQ9D7VxlsdvxZOkN2dCdVC86dOqvQOJjpBeP4unDGeAeDGsyXv6KLfGJDnJnZq58V4iswWqBd9ozotrfv9vX7J6dCvOiyKGc6RmJzaX0c6zMj0HbJhXT0EyI6iNsAt4djJ-bwPR4cK4c1Cu1vk2tDLQ1Nl9X/s1134/IMG_2763.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="1134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoQT2cXdhSv18i0fqVM8fyFblGkfDdB8MRUQ9D7VxlsdvxZOkN2dCdVC86dOqvQOJjpBeP4unDGeAeDGsyXv6KLfGJDnJnZq58V4iswWqBd9ozotrfv9vX7J6dCvOiyKGc6RmJzaX0c6zMj0HbJhXT0EyI6iNsAt4djJ-bwPR4cK4c1Cu1vk2tDLQ1Nl9X/s400/IMG_2763.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Things are happening. Here are some of them, in no particular order:<br><br>
The autumn books, all delivered: Philip Hancock, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/hancock2.html" target="_blank"><i>House on the A34</i></a>; Caroline Thonger and Vivian Thonger, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Thonger.html" target="_blank"><i>Take Two</i></a>; Julian George, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/George.html" target="_blank"><i>Bebe</i></a>; Ann Pearson and Charles Boyle, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/SimplonRoad.html" target="_blank"><i>The Simplon Road</i></a>. There’ll be a launch party for three of these at 49 Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3HZ, on 9 October – email if you’d like to come.<br><br>
CBe now has an Instagram account. This will be run by Vik Shirley, who is helping in other ways too and who is also working with Shearsman and Sublunary Editions. Both I and Vik Shirley will be at the Small Publishers Book Fair on 27 and 28 October at the Conway Hall in London – do come.<br><br>
This month the Redstone Press publishes <i>Seeing Things</i>, subtitled ‘the small wonders of the world according to writers, artists and others’ and with a foreword by Cornelia Parker: an anthology of images posted on Instagram by David Byrne, Roz Chast, Amit Chaudhuri, Jarvis Cocker, William Dalrymple, Elizabeth Day, Peter Doig, Neil Gaiman, Marc Quinn, Jon Ronson, Elif Shafak, Nina Stibbe, Rachel Whiteread and others. Interspersed with texts (‘droll’, says the <i>TLS</i>) by Charles Boyle. Available from bookshops and the Redstone Press <a href="https://www.theredstoneshop.com/collections/all-available-products/products/seeing-things" target="_blank">online shop</a>.<br><br>
An exhibition of objects from <i>The Camden Town Hoard</i>, curated by Natalia Zagorska-Thomas, opens this week at the Bower Ashton Library in Bristol and continues to the end of October. Full details <a href="https://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/camdentownhoard/" target="_blank">here</a>. The book is available here: <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/CamdenTownHoard.html" target="_blank"><i>Camden Town Hoard</i></a>.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGLIbSg24L2YQVIzomuvPw1mOQ1etq4EUJfRR0R5lGEFdaXFuru0USjl6HLzWDeiVZCPPWeo3W7xzit0CkDJNcBZsfJ2zI5L6uIwDOWL5JGjpECgexnGqzFLfQTb8VTCSdHbYMamZPWGgkRRlsFE45xhgmw--LKI66S9Z8WToi_c28rEokQLxPYNk_iPi2/s640/IMG_2755.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGLIbSg24L2YQVIzomuvPw1mOQ1etq4EUJfRR0R5lGEFdaXFuru0USjl6HLzWDeiVZCPPWeo3W7xzit0CkDJNcBZsfJ2zI5L6uIwDOWL5JGjpECgexnGqzFLfQTb8VTCSdHbYMamZPWGgkRRlsFE45xhgmw--LKI66S9Z8WToi_c28rEokQLxPYNk_iPi2/s320/IMG_2755.jpg"/></a></div><br>
A brief history of CB editions, written in instalments over the past decade – <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Farthings.html" target="_blank"><i>Farthings: CB editions in 113 bites</i></a> – is now available exclusively from the website (it’s not an official publication, doesn't have an ISBN and won’t be in bookshops) at the exorbitant price of £10. But if you click a button for one of the Season Tickets on the Home page – 6 books of your own choice for £40, or 12 for £75, post free in the UK – I’ll add in a copy of Farthings for free.<br><br>
I may have to re-think that ‘post free’. Something you don’t want to hear, and nor do I, is that the cost of posting 2nd-class a slim book of poems or prose, which last increased in April this year, will be going up again next month by more than 50p. But to date, all UK orders from the website are post free.charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-47055008488039495862023-08-13T20:50:00.000+01:002023-08-13T20:50:38.801+01:00Table for 6<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuPyEeHXprqP3e80bDA22fHoigYona1M_C9P8mwNXhdB_eJ1Jf8CxGwdwitYC_av8oDHbGOuBy7ZgdH7CYgxumLlq0M83QLrvO-Nn3hnpPHOh1I5wUWENz3eu3sDhV8tU0PFGUtmRE1HyVih8Q-gKsb9zpcGvqBfKZXEfpdcDYiVotZMpsOLIuTgCdwhO1/s2362/IMG_2676.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1883" data-original-width="2362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuPyEeHXprqP3e80bDA22fHoigYona1M_C9P8mwNXhdB_eJ1Jf8CxGwdwitYC_av8oDHbGOuBy7ZgdH7CYgxumLlq0M83QLrvO-Nn3hnpPHOh1I5wUWENz3eu3sDhV8tU0PFGUtmRE1HyVih8Q-gKsb9zpcGvqBfKZXEfpdcDYiVotZMpsOLIuTgCdwhO1/s320/IMG_2676.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Table for six at one o’clock … The four September and October CBe titles are now available on the website: <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/hancock2.html"><i>House on the A34</i></a> by Philip Hancock, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/George.html"><i>Bebe</i></a> by Julian George, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/Thonger.html"><i>Take Two</i> </a>by Caroline Thonger & Vivian Thonger, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/SimplonRoad.html"><i>The Simplon Road</i></a> by Ann Pearson & Charles Boyle. And two recent reprints: BB Brahic’s translations of <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/apollinaire.html">Apollinaire</a> and JO Morgan’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/morgan1.html"><i>Natural Mechanical</i></a>.<br><br>
The new titles: poetry, literary essays, and a couple that booksellers may shelve under fiction (<i>Bebe</i>) and non-fiction: memoir (<i>Take Two</i>), but like a number of CBe titles they are not as clear-cut as that. I know that when I sit down at the table I do want the menu arranged in a way that helps me to choose – starters, mains, desserts; fish, meat, vegetarian – but sometimes it works to just say <i>that one</i>, because I want to be surprised. I may like it, I may not. If the latter, I really haven’t lost much. Maybe think of this table as one big sharing platter. You can have all six books for £40 – or indeed any six CBe titles of your own choice for the same amount: see the Season Tickets on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">home page</a> of the website.
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-48275323058577972772023-07-04T09:21:00.000+01:002023-07-04T09:21:08.291+01:002023–24<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKA5oy8UKqngGwEqP_RZU0dlYtqDbILVFSMKnxI4gFVwMhZGX1G8m2tIgOYQ-jjKnigu4ZAmS6tbT7-hkU_ddeVJQY3-XZeKfaLs0bk_wiBDdFAbUmdfsT6ghmY0Y8p6WwhfsiCjc13bGXFyg8-UkynMbAT38grGA2y3KhdVhRnIkYxDbf4SzRKNWRYJFO/s1178/2023composite.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1155" data-original-width="1178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKA5oy8UKqngGwEqP_RZU0dlYtqDbILVFSMKnxI4gFVwMhZGX1G8m2tIgOYQ-jjKnigu4ZAmS6tbT7-hkU_ddeVJQY3-XZeKfaLs0bk_wiBDdFAbUmdfsT6ghmY0Y8p6WwhfsiCjc13bGXFyg8-UkynMbAT38grGA2y3KhdVhRnIkYxDbf4SzRKNWRYJFO/s320/2023composite.jpg"/></a></div><br>
A slow start to this year: a reprint with new cover of Apollinaire, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/apollinaire.html" target="_blank"><i>The Little Auto</i></a>, translated by Beverley Brie Brahic, winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation, and a reissue in new format of J.O. Morgan’s first book, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/morgan1.html" target="_blank"><i>Natural Mechanical</i></a>, first published by CBe in 2009, winner of the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and Forward-shortlisted (his more recent fiction and poetry have been published by Cape). For the first orders of <i>Natural Mechanical</i> (I’ll stop when I start to get worried) I’ll add in copies of Morgan’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/morgan3.html" target="_blank"><i>At Maldon</i></a> and a Poetry Archive CD of his reading that for free. In September and October, a rush: <i>House on the A34</i>, new poetry from Philip Hancock; <i>Take Two</i> by Caroline Thonger and Vivian Thonger, a memoir of growing up in London in the 1950s and later told in the contrasting voices of two sisters, with objects and playlist as well as stories and playscripts; <i>Bebe</i> by Julian George, a fantasia on Bebe Rebozo, Mafia-related buddy of Nixon in the 1970s, in the spirit of Philip Guston’s drawings of Nixon (coinciding with the opening of a big Guston show at Tate Modern); <i>The Simplon Road</i> by Ann Pearson and Charles Boyle, who have both written novels about Stendhal and write here about literary obsession.<br><br>
Into next year … <i>Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle</i> by Katy-Evans Bush, poems of justified rage delivered with skill and lightness. <i>Do Not Send Me Out Among Strangers</i> by Joshua Segun-Lean, a journal in which on days when the author cannot write he lets photographs, iPhone drawings and paintings speak for him. A playscript, <i>Newtown</i>, by Dan O’Brien, coinciding with the play’s first production. <i>Spent Light</i> by Lara Pawson: one of those books of which many have already said can’t wait (but they will have to). <i>Invisible Dogs</i> by Charles Boyle, the diary of a writer visiting a country in which (officially) there are no dogs. <i>Paris 1935</i> by Jean Follain, the first English translation of an impressionistic prose book by a French poet I hugely admire. <i>Ghost Stations</i>, essays by the scholar, poet, translator, editor and novelist Patrick McGuinness.<br><br>
I need help with this storm of new titles. To say that current sales are sluggish is an insult to slugs – even they can move faster. CBe is run single-handed and has had no Arts Council support for any of its books. I need help in the form of a freelance publicist who has experience and a Little Black Book whose contents will help the new books gain some attention in the world. If you are interested, please email me. If you know someone who might be interested, please let them know.<br><br>
In other news: congratulations to Studio Expurgamento, whose <a href="https://www.studioexpurgamento.com/index.php/exhibitions/bookworks" target="_blank"><i>Bookworks</i></a>, a gathering of mini-artist’s-books by UK, European and Cuban artists curated by Natalia Zagorska-Thomas and exhibited in Havana, Cuba, in 2018 and then at Studio Expurgamento in London in 2019 and most recently at Bookartbookshop, has been purchased by the archive of University of the Arts, London, with proceeds going to the Cuban artists. <i>Bookworks</i> includes work by four CBe writers. There are affinities: without public funding, CBe has published books by more than 50 writers over 15 years and Studio Expurgamento has shown the work of around 80 artists over 10 years. There are two co-publications: <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/blush.html" target="_blank"><i>Blush</i></a> and <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/CamdenTownHoard.html" target="_blank"><i>The Camden Hoard</i></a>. For both outfits, the goal is not profit but survival.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicrAYowtPw5_maZp0T0xUh7ykej2lYM2-vL-vQA0J0JikR8i_a_PB_AF-VjDozDg652OGw_vYopxW1_Qj5RsEzwGhmwYzafy6XJS51YPnxbWzFOUY8OSYWVsY51rFTl7Ugc6tNV1cdpuI60oi2BYB4D7fWbA1nlov6kFLyGvIPsU-l5lImOgMznqPCeXfb/s680/FgjwBp9XEAIe51U.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="680" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicrAYowtPw5_maZp0T0xUh7ykej2lYM2-vL-vQA0J0JikR8i_a_PB_AF-VjDozDg652OGw_vYopxW1_Qj5RsEzwGhmwYzafy6XJS51YPnxbWzFOUY8OSYWVsY51rFTl7Ugc6tNV1cdpuI60oi2BYB4D7fWbA1nlov6kFLyGvIPsU-l5lImOgMznqPCeXfb/s320/FgjwBp9XEAIe51U.jpg"/></a></div><br>
The photo above is here to advertise the Season Tickets available from the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">website home page</a> – 6 books of your choice for £40, or 12 books for £75 (UK addresses only; free postage) – and I need more people to press those buttons because the lady in the post office is worrying that she has done something wrong, why don’t I come to see her as often as I used to?
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-58597523940316594862023-06-30T16:03:00.000+01:002023-06-30T16:03:20.099+01:00Nicky SingerNicky Singer has died, aged 66. Notice in <i>The Bookseller</i> <a href="https://www.thebookseller.com/obituaries/award-winning-author-nicky-singer-dies-aged-66" target="_blank">here</a>. Nicky may not be familiar to most readers of CBe books because, after four novels for adults, she wrote mostly for the readership that publishers term ‘YA’. Her CBe title, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/singer.html" target="_blank"><i>Knight Crew</i></a>, is categorised as a YA book but it got to me, and made me cry, and is serious and strong. She wrote the books that she had to write – latterly, about climate change, migrants, borders, refugees – and when publishers made offers on condition that she change the ending, or simplify her language, she refused their conditions and found other ways of getting her books into the world. She was fierce and dedicated and tireless and had a wonderful laugh and was immensely generous. And she wrote good books.<br><br>
<i>Knight Crew</i> was performed as an opera at Glyndebourne; <i>Island</i> was performed on stage at the National Theatre. Her website includes terrific pieces on <a href="https://nickysinger.com/new/the-good-the-bad-the-opera/" target="_blank">prison-visiting</a> while writing <i>Knight Crew</i> and on money and books as <a href="https://nickysinger.com/new/childrens-books-2015-market-commodities-or-meaningful-stories-a-writers-tale/" target="_blank">‘market commodities’</a>. Below, the day copies of <i>Knight Crew</i> were delivered in 2009; the carrying man is Anthony Thwaite (1930–2021), who had the bad luck to arrive at the house (to talk about the copy-editing of one of his Larkin books for Faber) at the same time as the delivery. Copies of <i>Knight Crew</i> are still available from the website; or email me directly with a post address and I’ll send for free.<br><br>
I was going to write this newsletter about CBe’s publishing programme for this year and early next, but that will have to wait.<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJU980FYiGr2ImvzK2ltH_T8zmr7k2Eb3d4fI1PRBYfDirurOA7WIQsyEAF1ly3y1-BdJ3qvZbtJbtpNcq_hBldBRWfNOYst-csPb-yq0PIWFHOWfuCWLKe6IR88ee60jxDeV-DCccvmsX5afRV9VKARkuN7FHLwHXLPQgSevQgxodaZQFUAR1LRUztzD/s305/kcat.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="210" data-original-width="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJU980FYiGr2ImvzK2ltH_T8zmr7k2Eb3d4fI1PRBYfDirurOA7WIQsyEAF1ly3y1-BdJ3qvZbtJbtpNcq_hBldBRWfNOYst-csPb-yq0PIWFHOWfuCWLKe6IR88ee60jxDeV-DCccvmsX5afRV9VKARkuN7FHLwHXLPQgSevQgxodaZQFUAR1LRUztzD/s320/kcat.jpg"/></a></div>
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-61934666508379028152023-05-10T17:35:00.001+01:002023-05-10T17:35:22.079+01:00Coronation SoupI was named after him and I’m around the same age and I was expecting, I think, at least some kind of tonal recognition of what was on the TV last Saturday, on and off, in the other half of the room, expecting to nod in familiarity, but no, nothing. It was a tin can with sellotaped ribbons, tap it and you can hear how hollow.<br><br>
This, a couple of weeks after the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry report into the minor public school I was at in the 1960s: violence, bullying, sexual abuse, from the 1950s through to the 2010s. Him on the chair with his orb was sent to a similar school in Scotland. They are a continuing institution, these schools: like the royal family, like hospitals, except these ones are designed to make you not better but ill, and then take out your fucked-up-ness on others, and they are good at this and at delivering prime ministers this country votes into power and they have charitable status.<br><br>
I did say ‘the other half of the room’. That’s being a white male of a certain generation who lucked into housing when it was still possible. Others have far, far more reason to be angry. I’m not measuring my anger against theirs. A part of my own anger is of course anger at myself and at my own privileged generation that has wasted what was – late 1940s, early 50s – the promising start of a decent society. Today I put into rough proofs Katy Evans-Bush’s new poetry collection, <i>Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle</i>, publication early next year, which is angry not least at people like me. ‘Goddamn us all & our/ carefully sorted recycling’. She doesn’t take hostages.
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-80763612428761279322023-04-20T21:38:00.002+01:002023-04-20T21:42:06.196+01:00Public schools: stupidity and awfulness ofToday, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry published its report (pdf, 200 pages; will forward to anyone interested) on the bad, horrible, minor public school I went to in the 1960s. Loretto. Violence, bullying, sexual abuse and a culture of silence. I myself was not actively abused (unless I count being told to bend over so that a boy two years older could cane my arse because I had walked on grass or put my hands in my pockets: compared to what others suffered, this was the everyday norm). I got off lightly. I survived (survival is random).<br><br>
Two years ago, up in Edinburgh, I went out to that school and I stood outside the building in which an invited speaker from South Africa told us how apartheid was necessary and good, and I looked from the street (private property: nearer would be trespass) at the building – that window, that room – in which I put a knife to my wrist and wondered and took it away because I am a coward. I still have that Boy Scout knife. In my desk drawer. <br><br>
Loretto is not Eton but it is part of the private-school, public-school delivery system for prime ministers that needs total dismantling. Star old boys from that school include a Formula 1 racing champion and a Tory MP (and Solicitor General for Scotland) accused of sexual assault and child rape.<br><br>
In my last year at that school I was anorexic (without knowing it; diagnosed later). I withdrew. I was feeling but didn’t know how to express, articulate. No one to express <i>to</i>. Culture of silence. Still don’t know. Today, telling a friend who phoned about what I’d been reading today, I only realised how angry I am – not just the ruined lives but how damaged people go on to damage others – when I started breaking up. charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-20838686516224813112023-04-18T12:13:00.000+01:002023-04-18T12:13:26.782+01:00Blue<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyG9ojw3YJDLGQUHEdozNcU64C_dMg20bLFTp3YRvUlHP02E_1XFQ9Hv60W3HHgKCusSae3QFjmkMvKZU-_AWXIs4ahckh0h1pQuTUu-jkoxnRwmB-sMasa4P9M0queZB3rkMEJ1piR5IwXzBSv8WJ3mpCGq2JZP_GTq96UTCRQCLMsIL4F541rIhRQw/s585/TheLittleAutoFrontS.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyG9ojw3YJDLGQUHEdozNcU64C_dMg20bLFTp3YRvUlHP02E_1XFQ9Hv60W3HHgKCusSae3QFjmkMvKZU-_AWXIs4ahckh0h1pQuTUu-jkoxnRwmB-sMasa4P9M0queZB3rkMEJ1piR5IwXzBSv8WJ3mpCGq2JZP_GTq96UTCRQCLMsIL4F541rIhRQw/s320/TheLittleAutoFrontS.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Here’s the cover of a new reprint of poems by <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/apollinaire.html" target="_blank">Apollinaire</a> translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, a book which won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation ten years ago. (BBB’s translations of prose poems by <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/ponge.html" target="_blank">Francis Ponge</a> is also reprinting.) Reprinted not because of public demand – just 2 copies were sold last year – but because if I didn’t have boxes of the thing I’d want to run out and buy this book myself.<br><br>
More numbers. I’ve been writing them in columns for the last financial year (still no spreadsheets). The average number of books sold per year since the start of CBe is around 2,500, and last year was a little below that. No bookshop could be run on that. For the authors’ sake I should be selling more. On the other hand, I’m still here, having stumbled upon a way of doing this that doesn’t require me to abide by all the prescriptions of the <i>industry experts</i>.<br><br>
Stendhal’s <i>The Charterhouse of Parma</i> was written in November and December 1838 and published the following April. I once took on a book in December and, when the author told me he was dying, published it the following February, but in 2023 that’s not usually how it’s done: books are not published for at least a year, often longer, after they are taken on because you need a marketing campaign and Advance Reading Copies and puff quotes on the cover, all the stuff I don’t enjoy and am therefore not good at.<br><br>I don’t think CBe is a throwback. Nor is it the work of a man who lives off-grid in a shed in a field. I use the internet and typesetting software and digital printing and can learn new tricks when it suits me. I mean: when it suits someone of a certain age and temperament. I am lucky and privileged (not rich) to be able to do this. <br><br>
You can buy BB Brahic’s translations of both Apollinaire and Ponge for £16: scroll down to bottom of the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/books.html" target="_blank">Books page</a>. Or have them as part of your 6-books-for-£40 or 12-for-£75 Season Tickets on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html">Home page</a>. I do try.
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-53803427246404106912023-04-10T15:11:00.000+01:002023-04-10T15:11:13.419+01:00A New Season<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgazrCjrFW2gLANnyDB3Jj5_n6-DsXSwaOHfiHs72mSy2chJWtlTRToHVtuAX4Vl_BThSgum-UDmoj-WQPs5sknE50PrUE86HYr_FUSIh1-n2AZTK5z0Uptx74YM38S7bls2P-BrtcaTBe6vLyzaJl6InaP4Ek_kQ1W961LpEf7r8stD0V2ZLRNSDyZaA/s1276/IMG_1997%202.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="1276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgazrCjrFW2gLANnyDB3Jj5_n6-DsXSwaOHfiHs72mSy2chJWtlTRToHVtuAX4Vl_BThSgum-UDmoj-WQPs5sknE50PrUE86HYr_FUSIh1-n2AZTK5z0Uptx74YM38S7bls2P-BrtcaTBe6vLyzaJl6InaP4Ek_kQ1W961LpEf7r8stD0V2ZLRNSDyZaA/s320/IMG_1997%202.jpg"/></a></div><br>
It’s April, and having been asleep since January – at which time the only new CBe title on the horizon was Patrick McGuinness’s essays, carried over from last year – I wake up to find there are now eight, or maybe nine, new books in preparation for publication later this year and early next. <br><br>
For starters, a reissue of J.O. Morgan’s first book, <i>Natural Mechanical</i>, first published by CBe in 2009: winner of the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, Forward-shortlisted, all that kind of stuff and more. His more recent fiction and poetry have been published by Cape. The reissue is in A-format size, part of the little gang that started coming together last year: photo above. Available <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/morgan1.html" target="_blank">from the website now</a>. For the first orders (I’ll stop when I start to get worried) I’ll add in copies of Morgan’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/morgan3.html" target="_blank"><i>At Maldon</i></a> and a Poetry Archive CD of his reading that (from memory: an hour) for free. <br><br>
Among the other new titles: a memoir of growing up in London in the 1950s and later told in the contrasting voices of two sisters, with objects and playlist as well as stories and playscripts; an essay on grief and isolation that has more pages of images than text; a fantasia on Bebe Rebozo, Mafia-related buddy of Nixon in the 1970s, in the spirit of Philip Guston’s drawings of Nixon; the diary of a writer visiting a country in which (officially) there are no dogs; poems of justified rage delivered with skill and lightness.<br><br>
Below, a drawing by Ron Sandford of Dai Vaughan, found last week in a back-issue of <i>Ambit</i>. I hadn’t seen it before. He’s at work in the cutting room: Dai was a documentary film editor. He was also a writer: ‘One of the most imperiously intelligent fiction-writers alive’ – Neal Ascherson. But not alive now. CBe published his <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/vaughan.html" target="_blank"><i>Sister of the artist</i></a> in 2012, a few months before he died, and also a pamphlet of his poems (14 short love poems written in the 1960s and another 14 written to the same woman, re-met after an absence of half a century).<br><br>
Which reminds me … To fund the new titles I do need to keep selling the old ones. <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">Season Tickets on the website</a>: 6 books for £40, or 12 books for £75, post free. (And I’ll add in extras, such the Dai Vaughan pamphlet.)<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAoxonT2mOEOVbim_KOUULojRJ8Lc_a0JdNc2cMQtLHPPKzIqXrVX9LP4jQAttfde-Obrr4DY0Hv6ykLYuw15loIeUj1kRhx2aFi-QeTJdZVC_iQflMoAKYy0SBEMWbJgT-H_ctOE2bKWWlpoZ_yODfLjtdwIzv-Yc2mUSpyB8v1IsoDIbYGxhCwj98w/s945/IMG_1993.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="709" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAoxonT2mOEOVbim_KOUULojRJ8Lc_a0JdNc2cMQtLHPPKzIqXrVX9LP4jQAttfde-Obrr4DY0Hv6ykLYuw15loIeUj1kRhx2aFi-QeTJdZVC_iQflMoAKYy0SBEMWbJgT-H_ctOE2bKWWlpoZ_yODfLjtdwIzv-Yc2mUSpyB8v1IsoDIbYGxhCwj98w/s320/IMG_1993.jpg"/></a></div>
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-47044662484348933622023-01-10T11:12:00.000+00:002023-01-10T11:12:34.204+00:00Plan BBeginning in 2007 with four books and no intention to publish more, CBe has been humming along fine for 15 years: here a prize, there a shortlisting, quite often semi-silence but every one of the books was more than worth publishing. <br><br>
It’s now 2023 and print costs have been escalating and postage costs too; there are other small presses who can sell X’s new novel or Y’s book of poems into bookshops better than CBe can; and I’m into my 70s and getting smaller. From this year CBe will concentrate on publishing, perhaps exclusively, small A-format books, the model being the three books published last year in that size and with covers with image on white card (Agota Kristof, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/kristof5.html" target="_blank"><i>The Illiterate</i></a>; Caroline Clark, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/clark2.html" target="_blank"><i>Own Sweet Time</i></a>; myself, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/boyle3.html" target="_blank"><i>99 Interruptions</i></a>). This will mean goodbye to the brown covers (those books are more expensive to print: retro costs). It will mean hello to more short books: if prose, fiction or non-fiction, say 10 to 20,000 words (rough guide only). And poetry, yes: Cape Editions did poetry in A-format, and so now do NYRB.<br><br>
It feels like a good time to change tack. For the first time in 15 years, I’m entering January without any new titles (other than one delayed from last year) in preparation.<br><br>
An agent or mainstream publisher will probably tell you that a book of prose of between 10 and 20,000 words is not a <i>thing</i> at all. But there are many different ways to skin a cat. CBe has a track record of neither-fish-nor-fowl books which don’t fit easily into the traditional bookselling categories. Is it a duck, is it a donkey? It’s writing. I’m looking forward to seeing what this bastard word count may bring to the surface.<br><br>
Meanwhile, 1: the Season Tickets (6 books for £40, 12 books for £75) are still up for grabs on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">website homepage</a>. Meanwhile, 2: <i>The Camden Town Hoard</i>, co-published with Studio Expurgamento, is the new <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/CamdenTownHoard.html" target="_blank">must-have for this year</a>. There Will Be A Party.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJwipNlkFTIWEJEgFfE4Fa4eDGjUj5brBNP6nUTI-JZExYQ2WDuoubK2kLX6PaZaIUPxj6Sh8KKXQUuXqvU3Gd8drlEw9llgfSPfNA66BfZRncvCg53zoLDHgeZjC6fQyFNMmf9NDFmrgU-1TDOczTb7oJuLHYif2S9-XqNzt58ZMNSrcfRc9aM_RPxg/s585/CTHcoverSmall.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJwipNlkFTIWEJEgFfE4Fa4eDGjUj5brBNP6nUTI-JZExYQ2WDuoubK2kLX6PaZaIUPxj6Sh8KKXQUuXqvU3Gd8drlEw9llgfSPfNA66BfZRncvCg53zoLDHgeZjC6fQyFNMmf9NDFmrgU-1TDOczTb7oJuLHYif2S9-XqNzt58ZMNSrcfRc9aM_RPxg/s320/CTHcoverSmall.jpg"/></a></div>charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-84647930507014885122022-12-06T11:20:00.001+00:002022-12-06T11:20:12.764+00:00Artefictions<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSn-swgSxQlyDOguF7jkbehmHdvjzQVfk6y1Kg1v6ycrCE9xEJvvaGU0ZYkMOquWppP-uU04kDstYG8k5QwPvyfN7TOLXN5xCX0wQK9yQTutp4g_d6kUQpbyUIDgT_GqU9TiEPSq-uNjWRErM-DyN1UIhKxkoRD9Ys-dC26YeDWHhfPAvbsgvc2M5Wxg/s585/CTHcoverSmall.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSn-swgSxQlyDOguF7jkbehmHdvjzQVfk6y1Kg1v6ycrCE9xEJvvaGU0ZYkMOquWppP-uU04kDstYG8k5QwPvyfN7TOLXN5xCX0wQK9yQTutp4g_d6kUQpbyUIDgT_GqU9TiEPSq-uNjWRErM-DyN1UIhKxkoRD9Ys-dC26YeDWHhfPAvbsgvc2M5Wxg/s320/CTHcoverSmall.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Surprise package: files of <i>The Camden Town Hoard</i>, published by Studio Expurgamento with CB editions, were sent to the printer today. Finished books before Christmas, if the stars align. The book can be <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/CamdenTownHoard.html" target="_blank">ordered now</a> from the website.<br><br>
From the introduction by Natalia Zagórska-Thomas: ‘The Camden Town Hoard is a collection of archaeological finds dredged up from a section of Regent’s Canal, roughly between Granary Square in Kings Cross and the London Zoo. The canal was dredged by an unknown person in the spring/summer of 2021 during lockdown. The majority of the objects revealed during this time were removed from the canal towpaths by Camden Council but not before 20 or so most fascinating artefacts were rescued and accessioned into the ExPurgamento archive. Since then the collection has been studied, thoroughly documented and provided with museum labels by a team of highly trained experts from a broad variety of backgrounds and interests … Identifying and contextualising the various objects threw up several new problems related to taxonomical classification. Specifically, it has been noted that the term “artefact” may not be an entirely sufficient or appropriate description of all archaeological material and it is therefore proposed that the term “artefiction” might sometimes be used instead.’<br><br>
Six books for £40, anyone? Or 12 for £75? See the Season Tickets on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">website home page</a>. For yourself or as a gift to someone else (and I’ll do the posting).<br><br>
Last Sunday, at the launch of the archive catalogue of Nick Wadley – artist and art historian, 1935–2017 – at Tate Britain, we had the rare and moving privilege of being able to leaf through his sketchbooks (below). Three books of Nick Wadley’s drawings were published by Dalkey Archive. A pamphlet of 14 of his drawings (‘on bookish and related matters’) was published by CBe in 2012 – copies are available free to the next 10 people who sign up for one of the Season Tickets.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKFxnLSCB_MT-2Ay54DHLU1EwkpUx83BNG4-GoiqbEEwHmFSIdIILDMyby6vl4I7SD8REy_j-WO0kMk_1b1FV0x5yhFDoLe1rSqtG8CgXioIKoZhII3c9PcYflbYoCxQdYIID1ESnU1oSFBmj45U2nVEqlm2RuaE8VokHgnVU_bESpw_o-8Y69ajI1Kg/s945/IMG_1354.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="709" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKFxnLSCB_MT-2Ay54DHLU1EwkpUx83BNG4-GoiqbEEwHmFSIdIILDMyby6vl4I7SD8REy_j-WO0kMk_1b1FV0x5yhFDoLe1rSqtG8CgXioIKoZhII3c9PcYflbYoCxQdYIID1ESnU1oSFBmj45U2nVEqlm2RuaE8VokHgnVU_bESpw_o-8Y69ajI1Kg/s320/IMG_1354.jpg"/></a></div>charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-40533059560011105922022-11-14T14:39:00.001+00:002022-11-14T14:40:11.783+00:000 to around 80 in 15 yearsFifteen years ago this month I collected the first books from the printer, 10 minutes from where I live. I was happy and deeply disappointed: now that I had the bound copies in my hand I could see that the inside margins were around 3mm too narrow. The readers wouldn’t notice, most of them, but <i>I</i> did. An uncle had died and left me £2,000 and the previous August I’d had the notion of spending this money on publishing four books: my uncle’s money paid for 250 copies of each. There weren’t going to be any more. But then there were. Below, the first four books, and a photo taken this summer of every title published to date.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIREFJaldXe-pBTk29nclLgLVaFzT9xuVgaNaLvTbimu_k--C72-RRV1INbZUvob_LMSKmYfhDon784nyQ0cR0lShEzzTaDy40ZQ7rhZx2s0BGeNfQjqgf5ZzWpiRjhPovBzkuxZ7pj4QM_mRJoy8smzmoJCNx8F19PinQ-1CR7xBXICBAP5DD86mtQ/s320/0.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIREFJaldXe-pBTk29nclLgLVaFzT9xuVgaNaLvTbimu_k--C72-RRV1INbZUvob_LMSKmYfhDon784nyQ0cR0lShEzzTaDy40ZQ7rhZx2s0BGeNfQjqgf5ZzWpiRjhPovBzkuxZ7pj4QM_mRJoy8smzmoJCNx8F19PinQ-1CR7xBXICBAP5DD86mtQ/s320/0.jpg"/></a></div><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFPaSQGkx4RmzZeo_DGCJCpiOI5XL6dsJwQS_hFsZ3EwpZA9-SvYWqsnJ7LwHOmiuKARvITBEyf2so62UTedbWWNtxUN4S3aHhjQ79dNfB7Mt4wYTqUddGIOsw_6Hci0pTrdoDHqBap7uokzMhur8gXKeHGFCHrXbx2XHMLZmnIg8nw5FWbM_MagzCxQ/s1181/allbooksA.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="936" data-original-width="1181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFPaSQGkx4RmzZeo_DGCJCpiOI5XL6dsJwQS_hFsZ3EwpZA9-SvYWqsnJ7LwHOmiuKARvITBEyf2so62UTedbWWNtxUN4S3aHhjQ79dNfB7Mt4wYTqUddGIOsw_6Hci0pTrdoDHqBap7uokzMhur8gXKeHGFCHrXbx2XHMLZmnIg8nw5FWbM_MagzCxQ/s400/allbooksA.jpg"/></a></div><br>
The following month, in an attempt to make the books more visible, I started this blog (this was 2007). On the very first day – 21 December – I wrote four short posts, and going back to them is strange. The first post is titled ‘Blush’, which happens to be title and subject of a <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/blush.html" target="_blank">collaborative book</a> CBe eventually got around to publishing in 2019. The second post has the photo, used above, of the first four books. The fourth post has a photo of a schoolroom in Hungary in the 1930s which hung around for a while, waiting to features on the cover of Ágota Kristóf’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/kristof5.html" target="_blank"><i>The Illiterate</i></a>, published this year.<br><br>
A snapshot history of CBe, written in instalments over the years, is downloadable (pdf) from the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/about.html" target="_blank">‘About and News’ page</a> of the website.<br><br>
Also available from the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">website home page</a>, not one but two Season Tickets. The original is still there, 12 books for £75, free delivery, but 12 books amount to a big ask so there’s now a 6-books-for-£40 option as well. If you are wondering what to give X or Y for Christmas, here is your answer. Thank you, everyone who stopped by and picked up a book.
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-11342034635343138882022-09-12T21:23:00.000+01:002022-09-12T21:23:40.138+01:00'Everybody has gone mad"<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2N0gdcfHBpWWWQpMEhOmzLhtoH_debcYsGrN2rllMTWrnEUolTNf_yNFqcM1kOlh04981n2Kbn4_8tMt4lxqopvbPHkvxyJyKLD_5afk0fy-7uTDVta9Zo5F0mC487tp95h4ds7A6lKFZpMSNe-EaLtQ_z7kl9FCwNlathQTEHrFcwGS0ii1mlambNg/s425/People_of_the_Abyss-185.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2N0gdcfHBpWWWQpMEhOmzLhtoH_debcYsGrN2rllMTWrnEUolTNf_yNFqcM1kOlh04981n2Kbn4_8tMt4lxqopvbPHkvxyJyKLD_5afk0fy-7uTDVta9Zo5F0mC487tp95h4ds7A6lKFZpMSNe-EaLtQ_z7kl9FCwNlathQTEHrFcwGS0ii1mlambNg/s320/People_of_the_Abyss-185.jpg"/></a></div><br>
‘They crowned a king this day, and there has been great rejoicing and elaborate tomfoolery, and I am perplexed and saddened.’ That’s Jack London writing about the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 in <i>The People of the Abyss</i>, a book I quote from extensively in the final chapter of <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/GoodMorningMrCrusoe.html" target="_blank"><i>Good Morning, Mr Crusoe</i></a>. ‘The Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans went off to the country for a breath of fresh air, quite unaffected by the fact that 40 millions of people were taking to themselves a crowned and anointed ruler. Six thousand five hundred prelates, priests, statesmen, princes, and warriors beheld the crowning and anointing … throughout the crowd were flung long lines of the Metropolitan Constabulary, while in the rear were the reserves – tall, well-fed men, with weapons to wield and muscles to wield them, in case of need.’<br><br>
‘And now the Horse Guards, a glimpse of beautiful cream ponies, and a golden panoply, a hurricane of cheers, the crashing of hands – “The King! the King! God save the King!” Everybody has gone mad. The contagion is sweeping me off my feet. I, too, want to shout, “The King! God save the King!” Ragged men about me, tears in their eyes, are tossing up their hats and crying ecstatically, Bless ’em! Bless ’em!” See, there he is, in that wondrous golden coach, the great crown flashing on his head, and a woman in white beside him … And I check myself with a rush, striving to convince myself that it is all real and rational, and not some glimpse of fairyland. This I cannot succeed in doing …’<br><br>
Jack London was living in the East End and writing as a journalist, with researched statistics: in this brief chapter on the 1902 coronation – an episode in the continuation of an institution that still, according to the marketing department, unites the nation – he notes that ‘five hundred hereditary peers own one-fifth of England’ and spend ‘32 per cent of the total wealth produced by all the toilers of the country’; and that in London, ‘one in four adults is destined to die on public charity, either in the workhouse, the infirmary, or the asylum’. <br><br>
Read <i>The People of the Abyss</i> (preferably in the 2014 edition published by Tangerine Press, which reproduces the photographs included in the original 1903 edition). Of course I’d also like to sell copies of <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/GoodMorningMrCrusoe.html" target="_blank"><i>Good Morning, Mr Crusoe</i></a>, which is about imperial mythology (racism and misogyny included in the package) and how historically much of Eng Lit has been co-opted by that.
And, officially published this month, Caroline Clark’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/clark2.html" target="_blank"><i>Own Sweet Time</i></a> and my own <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/boyle3.html" target="_blank"><i>99 Interruptions</i></a>. And please be aware that the Season Ticket – available from the <a href="" target="_blank">home page</a> of the website: 12 books for £75 – is still going: started at the beginning of the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, so by now an institution, almost, less history than the monarchy but I hope more future. Actually, now would do.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy6VJq-L72AdnTgY-xmi6v_I1QU5lF5wSTZYRhWF-UdL2F_nOkNTFalFy2nNQWDvnVMXnDjVuGDUJDVopKrFkW272H2VHqjThl_5k8EsFV3vSeJPmOmkFzj5hc7jybQbdSbOKJQUJnruwoFcenn1uh90DU7gGShyfJhUVPgd7LvbUKWGT6vKAFnbZVdw/s1200/London_gritty_life_1902_23.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="870" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy6VJq-L72AdnTgY-xmi6v_I1QU5lF5wSTZYRhWF-UdL2F_nOkNTFalFy2nNQWDvnVMXnDjVuGDUJDVopKrFkW272H2VHqjThl_5k8EsFV3vSeJPmOmkFzj5hc7jybQbdSbOKJQUJnruwoFcenn1uh90DU7gGShyfJhUVPgd7LvbUKWGT6vKAFnbZVdw/s320/London_gritty_life_1902_23.jpg"/></a></div>charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-31145189554651002832022-07-30T14:11:00.005+01:002022-07-30T16:33:34.314+01:00On photographs of books<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpBQflgy_unDFDAtDUJ8-47Vru8TSVbODm3yDoJXPTmM4W8XcfQfQ9VSl2d6R0PqBM-EshmwKINFmVlURy_n5Zg_jCdN7msGLfuQk5uYTMUHkBXOF3pFF-rQAJCnKyxnMvDSwTwb-YfM0122O8KZlfs1NGsR_cQ0NZhmnsKXn02DduuonPqZY-ZrnoMw/s1772/14CB%2011Books.10.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1418" data-original-width="1772" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpBQflgy_unDFDAtDUJ8-47Vru8TSVbODm3yDoJXPTmM4W8XcfQfQ9VSl2d6R0PqBM-EshmwKINFmVlURy_n5Zg_jCdN7msGLfuQk5uYTMUHkBXOF3pFF-rQAJCnKyxnMvDSwTwb-YfM0122O8KZlfs1NGsR_cQ0NZhmnsKXn02DduuonPqZY-ZrnoMw/s600/14CB%2011Books.10.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Way back when, maybe 20 years ago, I wandered by chance into an exhibition of photographs by Martina Geccelli at the Goethe Institut in London: photographs not of the covers of books and not the spines but the opposite of the spines – the loose page edges, gathered but hanging free. In 2010 I got in touch with Martina and in an act of extraordinary generosity she took photos of the early CBe books and said I could use them for free. The above photograph is from a sequence of 14 (deserving fine-art reproduction, better than this blogpost). Another is on the cover of <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/robinson3.html" target="_blank"><i>by the same author</i></a>.<br><br>
Martina Geccelli photographs books like Morandi painted jugs. She now runs <a href="https://raumx-london.com/" target="_blank">RAUMX</a>, a project space within her own studio in north London: ‘an open, intimate platform, outside of the commercial setting of a gallery’. Her <a href="https://www.martinageccelli.co.uk/gallery.html" target="_blank">website</a> (not up to date but still good) has more books and examples of her other photographs (including plastic bags, pallets, and abandoned offices in the World Trade Center in NY, where she had a residency in 2000).<br><br>
99% of photographs of books are photos of <i>product</i>, commissioned by marketing departments. They show flat fronts and elicit comments on the cover design (though frankly, until you’ve seen the spines and the backs this feels premature). Other than Geccelli, one of the very few photographers I know of who is interested in the physical form of books is the Cuban-born Abelardo Morrell. A link to some of his book photos is <a href="https://www.abelardomorell.net/books" target="_blank">here</a>, and below is ‘Dictionary', 1994:<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcsP0qxn-tMuVfuFGpGyBiP7qM7hO1Vt9bcB4I1vn4uI9mMoKzby7Egs5MknyX4vQy6wz8cyOP0KIHmE7scYJYEkmkVX08YUwUIw6e08B7kRDitOldwJlGAhuhyhEciUXN72OwS8V9srpzMwIRxH8Wm0XGE8fJNLLDh6uxpN_guqI474RifMz6GgTMqA/s750/1994_Dictionary.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="750" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcsP0qxn-tMuVfuFGpGyBiP7qM7hO1Vt9bcB4I1vn4uI9mMoKzby7Egs5MknyX4vQy6wz8cyOP0KIHmE7scYJYEkmkVX08YUwUIw6e08B7kRDitOldwJlGAhuhyhEciUXN72OwS8V9srpzMwIRxH8Wm0XGE8fJNLLDh6uxpN_guqI474RifMz6GgTMqA/s400/1994_Dictionary.jpg"/></a></div><br>
Admittedly, Morrell favours books that are old. Books need wear and tear, or dust and neglect, to take on character. Here’s my own copy of <i>Middlemarch</i>, which I took on holiday and left outside on a damp night:<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWgcugNHZ14ylB-qGrZWrEt86u8vxre9eruf7RvDsj6IVL5qu4tLDFhazI10Ty3JFydpuklBg3E1VFNe9dmpDOdwxum2woMCshhpPExJnoOWhiZ_8vmr6klsZJhI29Nx2wx-fLW2rg9n-kY3J9-Qz3mWq8NmF9DCA2mr2U7NCbVRBDMn2W2k1PFF-kBA/s400/spine.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWgcugNHZ14ylB-qGrZWrEt86u8vxre9eruf7RvDsj6IVL5qu4tLDFhazI10Ty3JFydpuklBg3E1VFNe9dmpDOdwxum2woMCshhpPExJnoOWhiZ_8vmr6klsZJhI29Nx2wx-fLW2rg9n-kY3J9-Qz3mWq8NmF9DCA2mr2U7NCbVRBDMn2W2k1PFF-kBA/s320/spine.JPG"/></a></div><br>
*<br><br>
Photos of books being read are a different thing. Among the most famous are the (posed) photos by Eve Arnold of Marilyn Monroe reading <i>Ulysses</i>. What’s going on here? Even if the official message was <i>She’s not just a ditzy blonde</i>, there was no way through: men of a certain ilk like their ditzy blondes to read posh, it’s cute. Adding a link here to the list of books owned/read by Marilyn Monroe, who was far from dumb, won’t change that.<br><br>
The best photos of books being read are the 65 (unposed) photos in <i>On Reading</i> by André Kertész. Here’s a photo of a CBe book being not read, and (posed) the aftermath:<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKj1LTUj79u9Ax_MlT8j6YD2N5MWFoyntjSxSKeeFqKX9VUTkTx9AEhDQKLrXOTZOQIkbd0O9tMAtacNHAX9MuhrlGoky42wHPbaRU007E8CvCLrtck3GlT1KIchTL1g7sGHC-gXaSAO2mcJDbt56vfyYALh6QdFpCftAHXmBB2LpCpnp0aeqUx93LGg/s400/francis.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKj1LTUj79u9Ax_MlT8j6YD2N5MWFoyntjSxSKeeFqKX9VUTkTx9AEhDQKLrXOTZOQIkbd0O9tMAtacNHAX9MuhrlGoky42wHPbaRU007E8CvCLrtck3GlT1KIchTL1g7sGHC-gXaSAO2mcJDbt56vfyYALh6QdFpCftAHXmBB2LpCpnp0aeqUx93LGg/s320/francis.JPG"/></a></div><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimgtmh5ZV9OXsKo4Go7K95Lu03j-sLtPKuVirHyt-LpHTsVxn9xMOioS4K4oDI-HzDppIo_ukyh35lHy0MPfEnsaRzUgREj3wJkDX3v9VKIdzwQD6wEyPruMQWxiRXtyuzprQ4KwghJQUB4WSElFrGJSuc3JrI0g9cAY67x0k9RBEVqFT5HjuaYQuVLQ/s500/mudponge1.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimgtmh5ZV9OXsKo4Go7K95Lu03j-sLtPKuVirHyt-LpHTsVxn9xMOioS4K4oDI-HzDppIo_ukyh35lHy0MPfEnsaRzUgREj3wJkDX3v9VKIdzwQD6wEyPruMQWxiRXtyuzprQ4KwghJQUB4WSElFrGJSuc3JrI0g9cAY67x0k9RBEVqFT5HjuaYQuVLQ/s320/mudponge1.JPG"/></a></div><br>
*<br><br>
A photo I took last week of 15 years of CBe (82 books, 3 pamphlets, 2 issues of a magazine, 1 CD) owes a debt – in concept, not in execution – to Martina Geccelli:<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTgq-swoXVUDIkFgt-Tthwmph_6b82zVLQ7WxEaY9oR4MC0GV9Tg1pCR79TPy0FO-o4yzh13QVNpzcJ5noUm55T9ItxIezfXE9F4h8vBAg_5zkHPgBSqg9D2qvlQiYOo_McAcjN2BMN_0Jg-fO1vGRH466L64sZRJB7k5Brv6ZW9AdS5SkAt-eFMrH3g/s1134/IMG_1119%202.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="832" data-original-width="1134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTgq-swoXVUDIkFgt-Tthwmph_6b82zVLQ7WxEaY9oR4MC0GV9Tg1pCR79TPy0FO-o4yzh13QVNpzcJ5noUm55T9ItxIezfXE9F4h8vBAg_5zkHPgBSqg9D2qvlQiYOo_McAcjN2BMN_0Jg-fO1vGRH466L64sZRJB7k5Brv6ZW9AdS5SkAt-eFMrH3g/s400/IMG_1119%202.jpeg"/></a></div><br>
Here's the official version. And then the whole rickety edifice came tumbling down:<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv9qWkgZhMFoXOWa0nPs-V2sMakn98a6b5YgC2uLmv0UBR6khXRlbMo83KWqqegHPlXee1L0kKyY4X6z36qj3dz6G710-ToFh8LFj6s6ERbRraH1fFeYtX6bSAD_4SR97GazY94oAdiZAKN3kU4ED69-D9dehqLic31wG7i0oBsT7XLxeb_ETUzqDTbw/s1565/allbooksB.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1240" data-original-width="1565" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv9qWkgZhMFoXOWa0nPs-V2sMakn98a6b5YgC2uLmv0UBR6khXRlbMo83KWqqegHPlXee1L0kKyY4X6z36qj3dz6G710-ToFh8LFj6s6ERbRraH1fFeYtX6bSAD_4SR97GazY94oAdiZAKN3kU4ED69-D9dehqLic31wG7i0oBsT7XLxeb_ETUzqDTbw/s400/allbooksB.jpg"/></a></div><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijaGuzvildsoguCNVArxgPveILnfBktURK6uOeBjDUAg4DerJlNBrlCoIZEzmP9wohziNFeR6TsXdfw8Cafst_6dGcYzpcYacNIPRHat4S0rbeV7mIUug4D9NBn8yXCc2G3TwCadGSjYABQmRQiSeyx1L4If-ENssg84G-GuMt1ym5a0Top0FWXobfsA/s992/IMG_1025.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="992" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijaGuzvildsoguCNVArxgPveILnfBktURK6uOeBjDUAg4DerJlNBrlCoIZEzmP9wohziNFeR6TsXdfw8Cafst_6dGcYzpcYacNIPRHat4S0rbeV7mIUug4D9NBn8yXCc2G3TwCadGSjYABQmRQiSeyx1L4If-ENssg84G-GuMt1ym5a0Top0FWXobfsA/s320/IMG_1025.jpeg"/></a></div>
charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-56524023717401767192022-07-23T17:47:00.002+01:002022-07-23T17:47:50.431+01:00Serve chilled<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYZef0OG6hPvkwpu8slKz1NkCI_4uj3oebgcsEryXFYnqeXF4srzHXmDykRCtkmXNWCugEiFOwtNVKTcJExpdeNtfxx3sp72_AD3h2TS08IiBQRmd5MMN_6L-N3B_nLputYCHDoNmLGga9TYsKeK2kN2fgl_ykwUJ6KUjzuEPqNTTEMtW1eNmH031QrA/s1276/Aformats1.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="957" data-original-width="1276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYZef0OG6hPvkwpu8slKz1NkCI_4uj3oebgcsEryXFYnqeXF4srzHXmDykRCtkmXNWCugEiFOwtNVKTcJExpdeNtfxx3sp72_AD3h2TS08IiBQRmd5MMN_6L-N3B_nLputYCHDoNmLGga9TYsKeK2kN2fgl_ykwUJ6KUjzuEPqNTTEMtW1eNmH031QrA/s400/Aformats1.jpeg"/></a></div><br>
Finished copies of all these beauts, pretty little things, CBeebies – I need a series title for them: suggestions welcome – are now in: Agota Kristof, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/kristof5.html" target="_blank"><i>The Illiterate</i></a>; Charles Boyle, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/boyle3.html" target="_blank"><i>99 Interruptions</i></a>; Caroline Clark, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/clark2.html" target="_blank"><i>Own Sweet Time</i></a>. They are small (A-format: 178 x 112mm) and slim (the longest is 82 pages).<br><br>
£8.99 for one of those? Yes, actually. Like the temperatures last week, printing costs are hitting record highs. But if you scroll to the bottom of the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/books.html" target="_blank">Books page</a> on the website you can get all three for £24; and if you press the Season Ticket button on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">Home page</a> you can choose them for £6.25 each. (The Season Ticket has been tweaked: up by £5 in price but more books for your cash, up from 10 to 12 books of your own choosing.)<br><br>
They have insides as well as fronts and backs. I wrote about the Kristof’s <i>The Illiterate</i> <a href="http://sonofabook.blogspot.com/2022/04/agota-kristof-books-not-blurbs.html" target="_blank">here</a>. <i>99 Interruptions</i> is in some ways a sequel to <i>The Other Jack</i>, published last year (but life rarely proceeds in a straight line). Caroline Clark’s <i>Own Sweet Time</i> offers two texts, running parallel on the versos and rectos; for more about ‘one of the most tender and moving books due to be released this year’, listen to this <a href="https://ripplingpages.podbean.com/e/caroline-clark-and-own-sweet-time/" target="_blank">Rippling Pages podcast</a>.<br><br>
There are many precedents. New Directions offer Bolano, Bulgakov, Gogol, etc, in a slim A-format minimalist-designed series titled <i>Pearls</i>. Melville House offer novellas by Chekhov, Maupassant, Kate Chopin, etc, in a wide A-format. OUP offer more than 700 books in their excellent A-format <i>Very Short Introductions</i> series (one of best publishing projects in recent decades; titles range from Abolitionism to Zionism and include Terry Eagleton on ‘The Meaning of Life’). Among the most desirable A-formats – both for their content and because they are now scarce – are the Cape Editions published in the late 1960s and edited by Nathaniel Tarn; below is a handful from my shelves:<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD6MI3lMUHQw_x2wGABHu7dtTWMoyoHY3xnzNFNqVW0-7kp2hiFPPg4aEk5TbADShxH3pyFXLq5HXOaVZqFufJDHak8Or5TH-e6TNK7KQ_346tCt64Lk1zozY3tLjDS2T5rzz5hMERuCOnRIdlTjlzpVfW7d5koi1JQah3DNJn9IhRkr7f1Ktt16Zpwg/s850/Cape.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD6MI3lMUHQw_x2wGABHu7dtTWMoyoHY3xnzNFNqVW0-7kp2hiFPPg4aEk5TbADShxH3pyFXLq5HXOaVZqFufJDHak8Or5TH-e6TNK7KQ_346tCt64Lk1zozY3tLjDS2T5rzz5hMERuCOnRIdlTjlzpVfW7d5koi1JQah3DNJn9IhRkr7f1Ktt16Zpwg/s320/Cape.jpeg"/></a></div><br>
No one is reinventing the wheel here. But these are good wheels. Buy while stocks last. Read within one month of opening. Serve chilled.charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9174931926240040143.post-18568173708747046042022-07-10T09:49:00.000+01:002022-07-10T09:49:53.826+01:00How many books in a caravan?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitoZj-LWOwC9Yv64xrG99QHnSSNTdVP56u6MB-RiwndlA192J03kTrIALIvx7BJFn2yI4ETqW31hMD4EgzCoUknqikqnVVyUyNSZAiIDk1aUlkyIhi1dztkDF7_A15LxTww8NcjrUWfeSLx4BzZ4WyKxuv8byh87QBa8bIxUev8ZUl80YZOXzLKonYmw/s850/IMG_0679.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitoZj-LWOwC9Yv64xrG99QHnSSNTdVP56u6MB-RiwndlA192J03kTrIALIvx7BJFn2yI4ETqW31hMD4EgzCoUknqikqnVVyUyNSZAiIDk1aUlkyIhi1dztkDF7_A15LxTww8NcjrUWfeSLx4BzZ4WyKxuv8byh87QBa8bIxUev8ZUl80YZOXzLKonYmw/s320/IMG_0679.jpeg"/></a></div><br>
Roy Watkins’ <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/watkins.html" target="_blank"><i>Simple Annals</i></a> is on the shortlist of three for the <a href="https://www.englishpen.org/posts/news/arifa-akbar-frances-stonor-saunders-and-roy-watkins-shortlisted-for-pen-ackerley-prize-2022/" target="_blank">PEN Ackerley Prize</a>, which is wonderful news. David Wheatley’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/wheatley.html" target="_blank"><i>Stretto</i></a>, published in June, is reviewed in the current issue of the <i>Literary Review</i>: Adorno and Walter Benjamin are invoked but happily the text is ‘leavened … with moments of properly Beckettian bathos.’<br><br>
I’ve been on holiday (a proper one, with beaches and sunburn and platefuls of fish) and I need more space. Poor sales through the distributor during Covid lockdowns have helped to trigger a formula – relating sales of a given title over the past 3 years to the amount of copies in stock – according to which the distributor is (rightly) entitled to charge storage. Stock reduction at the distributor’s warehouse means the arrival of a van at my front door with boxes and boxes (I’ve lost count) of books. One way to solve the resulting space problem would be to build an aircraft hangar in my back garden. Or I could buy a caravan and ask a friend to let me park it in his driveway. Or – I’m trying to be realistic here – I could sell more books through the website. I commend to you, again, the Season Ticket button on the <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/index.html" target="_blank">website home page</a>: 10 books of your own choice over 10 weeks for £70, free postage. (That’s a saving of at least 25% on each title, I think; if you include Agota Kristof’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/kristof4.html" target="_blank"><i>Trilogy</i></a>, you’re saving 50% on the cover price of that book alone.<br><br>
Two September titles – Caroline Clark, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/clark2.html" target="_blank"><i>Own Sweet Time</i></a> and me, <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/boyle3.html" target="_blank"><i>99 Interruptions</i></a> – are up on the website for pre-order. They are short and small and £8.99 each may seem a bit steep but let me tell you (another time) about hikes in printing costs. If you include them in your Season Ticket choices, of course, you get them for £7 each. These books and Kristof’s <a href="https://www.cbeditions.com/kristof5.html" target="_blank"><i>The Illiterate</i></a> are a new, white-cover look; I’ll write more about this later. <br><br>
If there are any CBe readers who would like to come to a summer party in west London next Sunday, the 17th, email me.<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4roYbGqKvgphRH-sX1SGotQqeojqA33PyP-lhgUttG8-4X0A58HWMYHA9W1-NQzB-6RqeoAbhzFux_o7WBnObpAYopLaHpfgSmt7LkT1Td1jp-tKuWjqbtaIw6yZZVtjj6PK5rkdgeO1RGXeRxT0SRu3R6aTgRXfoBNQI0XC7s260FVN6Jo0wAG0DQ/s850/IMG_0874.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4roYbGqKvgphRH-sX1SGotQqeojqA33PyP-lhgUttG8-4X0A58HWMYHA9W1-NQzB-6RqeoAbhzFux_o7WBnObpAYopLaHpfgSmt7LkT1Td1jp-tKuWjqbtaIw6yZZVtjj6PK5rkdgeO1RGXeRxT0SRu3R6aTgRXfoBNQI0XC7s260FVN6Jo0wAG0DQ/s320/IMG_0874.jpg"/></a></div>charleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16580118367334638930noreply@blogger.com0