Seymour Chwast and Push Pin Studios

I recently found this 1971 FSG edition of Knut Hamsun's second book, Mysteries (1892). Another enjoyable cover by Seymour Chwast (see my previous posts).***

I also discovered an incredible collection of Push Pin's work: The Push Pin Graphic: A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration. The hardcover edition seems to have been remaindered, so the thrifty (at least the thrifty with shelf space) can pick it up dirt cheap.


It focuses on excerpts from the studio's periodical The Push Pin Graphic (back issues still available from their website). Many issues have a literary theme, for instance, number 11 from 1957 includes Apollinaire's poems "Heart" and "Crown" typeset in the shape of Apollinaire by Milton Glaser (Glaser and Edward Sorel founded Push Pin with Chwast). This is only a partial, poor scan; you'll have to buy the book to read the poems.


Here is Milton Glaser's portrait of Kafka, which accompanied Philip Roth's 1972 essay on the author in Push Pin 59 from '74 (my scan does not do justice to the colors):


The book's product description: "Part design and illustration studio, part pop culture think tank, Push Pin Studios made a phenomenal impact on visual culture from the 1950s to the 1980s, representing an important chapter in postwar graphic design. Founding member Seymour Chwast partners with key figures from the design community -- as well as co-founder Milton Glaser -- to provide a visual history of the studio by way of its signature publication, The Push Pin Graphic. Hundreds of memorable covers and spreads culled from each of the eighty-six inspired and imaginative issues confirms Push Pin's vital role in setting the design curve and influencing the direction of modern visual style. The Push Pin Graphic is the first comprehensive account of a design milestone that continues to influence designers to this day."

I'm waiting for this (seemingly out-of-print) book to arrive, The Left-Handed Designer, which will hopefully include more of Chwast's book covers.

***July 15, 2008 update: back in September 2007, the blogger Rather Ripped suggested that I check out the cover of this Hamsun edition. I like how our digital memories point out the holes in our actual memories.

French Science Fiction

After posting the cover images from the Presence du Futur series, I went on a hunt for actual French science fiction in English translation. I was not surprised to find only a couple collections, though perhaps I didn't search hard enough (ie, I didn't yet buy the 800-page book French Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Pulp Fiction from McFarland Press).*** [Before I continue, I should plug University of Nebraska Press's reprints of early SF titles (disclaimer: I do not know enough about science fiction to correctly use the apparently different terms "SF" and "sci-fi"), including their Jules Verne books. Check out their blog. I also stumbled upon (if you can call searching Amazon for "Jordan Stump" stumbling) Jordan Stump's new-ish translation of Verne's The Mysterious Island.]

My most "bizarre, uproarious" discovery was Damon Knight's 1965 anthology 13 French Science-Fiction Stories. Copies can be found in abundance on the internet.

The uncredited cover reminds me of the Saragossa Manuscript paperback cover featured in this post. Let me blow-up the cat woman's face for you:


I'm very fond of the back cover of this book, which answers the question of how you could possibly market French science fiction to America:


Best of all is the text that appears on the first half-title page (ie, the very first page of the book) under the title "Gift-Wrapped Amour":

"Vanas come gift-wrapped in plastic bags. They are perfect semblances of human females and just made for love. You can train them just as easily as you would a dog to obey even your slightest whim. Their skin is glossy like the pelt of an animal, pale saffron in color, with reddish-brown highlights. They have the faint odor of musk. Their breasts are high and firm, their nipples tawny-colored. They have two great eyes of melting turquoise.

"They were the answer to everyman's dream. But, Slovic made the mistake of falling in love with one!"

Let me rewrite that for you: Everyman Slovic falls in love with the tawny-colored nipples of his pale-saffron robot woman.

Here are the Contents:

--"Juliette" by Claude F. Cheinisse
--"Blind Pilot," "Non Humans," and "Moon Fishers" by Charles Henneberg
--"Olivia" and "Notary and the Conspiracy" by Henri Damonti
--"The Vana" by Alain Doremieux
--"The Devil's Goddaughter" by Suzanne Malaval
--"After Three Hundred Years" by Pierre Mille
--"The Monster" by Gerard Klein
--"A Little More Caviar" by Claude Veillot
--"Chain of Love" by Catherine Cliff

AND THE KICKER:

"Dead Fish" by Boris Vian!

Yes, this book actually concludes with a 12-page story by "a Satrap of the College of 'Pataphysics." Knight thanks Queneau-translator Barbara Wright in his short list of acknowledgments, so perhaps that's how Vian wound up here.

Alternate cover (I guess for the 1972 edition), which includes a hilarious subtitle (this is not my scan):


Here's the other volume I found: Travelling towards Epsilon: An Anthology of French Science Fiction, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and published in 1976 by New English Library. There are various editions available, which I'll probably wind up buying sight unseen for the covers (none of the editions available on Amazon include cover images).


The cover art by Christos Kondeatis reminds me of album covers by Italian prog bands!

More on this book later. I'm running out of steam.

***McFarland Press has a bunch of interesting titles, but because they're geared toward the library market, their books are expensive. Still, these look great:

-- Early German and Austrian Detective Fiction (the description mentions Adolph Müllner’s 1828 novella The Caliber -- published 13 years before Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders of the Rue Morgue" -- I'll have to research that).

-- An entire book about my hero Lee Van Cleef.

-- Czech New Wave Filmmakers in Interviews

-- The Mexican Cinema of Darkness

Another side note: I keep winding up at the website for Black Coat Press, mainly because of recent searches for Villiers de l'Isle Adam (subject of future posts on this site). I found myself there again today because the editors of that French Sci-fi encyclopedia, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, have done some things for them.

YETI magazine

[Cartoon Yeti logo by Frank Lantz -- I created the above image by scanning the spines of Yeti]

Mike McGonigal's Yeti magazine has been around since 2000 or 2001. Its tagline is "Enthused art, music, writing & other stuff."

You may remember Mike from such features as Chemical Imbalance (on this site, he says "My 33 1/3 book on 'Loveless' is recently published, next I'm editing a collection of my old 'zine 'Chemical Imbalance' and preparing a book on sanctified blues"). Yeti is also publishing books, such as Luc Sante's collection Kill All Your Darlings, co-published with Verse Chorus (also responsible for the Cannanes' David Nichols' great Go-Betweens book).

Yeti became my favorite magazine by including a piece on Robert Walser in the first issue, along with features like this spread of "tattoo ideas" by Swiss-born artist Felix Valloton (1865 - 1925):



Yeti secured my undying devotion with this "Coming Soon" page:


Yeti is currently offering reprints of the early issues, a nice service to mankind. Buy them now.

Here are scans of the handsome covers of each issue.


Yeti #1, cover art by Michael Kupperman.



Yeti #2, cover art by Jordan Crane.


Yeti #3, cover art by Jason Miles:


Yeti #4, cover art by Julianna Bright:


Yeti #5, cover art by Saul Chernick:

Francis Picabia, I am a Beautiful Monster

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Julio Cortazar, Axolotl

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

A Journey Round My Skull, NYRB

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Hanuman Books, 2

Another back cover of a tiny Hanuman dustjacket (this one from Max Beckmann's On My Painting). I own about eight in the series now, and this back cover is unique. The others look like this.

Robert Walser, The Walk

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Rene Crevel, Babylon

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Jean Ray, Malpertuis (and Presence du Futur)

I can't say much more than these two have said about Jean Ray's 20th century Gothic masterpiece Malpertuis: Giornale Nuovo and Michael Cisco.


In the intro to his 1998 translation of this 1943 novel, Iain White reports that: "In December of [1955, the year Ray died], due in large measure to the intervention of Raymond Queneau and Stragliati [Roland Stragliati, cineaste and writer], 'who have moved heaven and earth to rescue Malpertuis and indeed Jean Ray, from the obscurity of oblivion,' Malpertuis was republished in France by the leading firm Denoel, in their mass-market S. F. paperback series Presence du Futur."

Here's the cover of the Presence du Futur edition.


I just looked up the Presence du Futur series. Here are some of their covers (I stitched these together though they are not my scans):

Paul Eluard & Benjamin Peret, 152 Proverbs

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

João Guimarães Rosa

July 2008 update. See details of the Third Bank flaps here.

In their most recent print catalog, Archipelago announced a new translation of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa (see my post about that book here). They will use the Portugese title, Grande Sertão. This is exciting news, especially because Archipelago works only with the finest translators (they haven't yet announced who will translate their edition). I'll update this post as more information becomes available.

I've scanned the other works by Rosa in English translation, both from Knopf. Check out the illustrated flaps from The Third Bank of the River.

July 2008 update. See details of the Third Bank flaps here.

If you are impatient to read Rosa, his story "My Uncle, The Jaguar" is contained in the anthology Masterworks of Latin American Fiction, along with stories by Marquez, Infante, Mutis, Carpentier, Cortazar, Felisberto Hernandez, and Ana Lydia Vega. It can be found for pennies (or rather, pennies plus shipping).

The Black Spider, Jeremias Gotthelf, Calder Edition

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus

I finally found a hardcover edition of Locus Solus. It only took a decade.

June 25, 2008 update: One World came through and has announced publication in July 2008. It may take awhile for the books to reach US bookstores.

Atlas Anthology III

I love the tagline at the top of the cover: "Benign Pollution * Enthused Writing."

This early anthology from Atlas Press was edited by Alastair Brotchie and Malcolm Green and published in 1985 with the help of Carcanet. You can still find copies with a little effort and patience.

Get in touch if you can provide scans of (or actual copies of!) Atlas Anthology 1 & 2.

June 2008 update: Read two of the four Robert Walser pieces from this book here.

Atlas's editorial note:

"Thanks to the generous assistance of Carcanet Press, it has been possible to bring the third Atlas Anthology to a wider audience. Readers will decide for themselves whether there is a thread connecting these many differing texts. It seems to us they represent aspects of a shared outlook which has been manifested by numerous groups (European Romanticism, early Expressionism, Surrealism, 'Pataphysics, the OuLiPo, the Vienna Group) and many individuals. One thing is certain: their preoccupations have little connection with the bleak and conventional naturalism prevalent in Britain and the U.S., which seems to owe more to Mrs. Gaskell than the twentieth century. We know from past issues that we have at least a small yet effusive audience, and cannot say whether the wider reception will be that 'climate of warm indifference'* with which the English normally 'welcome' enthused writing.

"Just so long as it's not boring . . . "

"*Title of Martin Seymour-Smith's survey of insularity of English writing, published in Bananas (the last magazine attempting to publish interesting writing in the U.K.) in 1976."

--THE EDITORS

Author included: Hans Carl Artmann, Pierre Albert-Birot, Wolfgang Bauer, Konrad Bayer, Pierre Bettencourt, Peter Blegvad, Andre Breton, Jean-Pierre Brisset, Gunter Brus, Rene Crevel, David Gascoyne, Alfred Jarry, James Kirkup, Karl Kraus, Jean Lorrain, Harry Mathews, Gustav Meyrink, Pasolini, Georges Perec, Benjamin Peret, Oskar Panizza, Raymond Queneau, Jacques Rigaut, Herbert Rosendorfer, Raymond Roussel, Paul Scheerbart, Mathew Phipps Shiel, Kurt Schwitters, Boris Vian, Austryn Wainhouse, Robert Walser, Unica Zurn, and more.

What is 'Pataphysics?

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts: