Recollections of a Presenile Old Codger [2]
 

Those who know me vaguely, perhaps even those who think they know me rather better, or even know me well, not to mention the ordinary two-legged creatures who don't know me at all, are liable to think—when they think, that is, which not everyone does—that I am first and foremost a printer, and that, as a printer, I am nothing more than a foul-mouthed, backward-looking devotee of old-fashioned hot-metal typesetting. Or next to nothing else. If that's what you think of me, potential reader, assuming you actually exist, or young lady reader of my dreams, "ce que tu te goures, ce que tu te gourres" (Both spellings are possible in French, even though Queneau opted for the first.) Approximatively: boy (or girl), are you wrong! Wrong, wrong! Of course, there's a grain of truth in these misleading assumptions, but that's by no means the whole story.

I learned typography, because everything can be learned, even the trade of international criminal or head of state (which amounts to much the same thing). I learned it to make books, and only to make books, so that I could master every aspect of the process, from writing my own texts—or choosing someone else's—to the finished product, taking in the layout, any illustrations, the printing, and the folding of the printed sheets along the way. But before I learned that damned hot-metal typography, I had learned screen printing with some friends who, like me, had taken part in the events of May 1968. And it was by screen printing that I made my very first book.

The year was 1973. I was in my first year at Estienne, the Paris printing school, but I had already had my own screen-printing workshop for some time, a workshop I had built with my own fair hands, apart from the squeegees and the ink, which I bought from Tripette et Renaud. At Estienne in the 1970s, you simply did not talk about screen printing. Screen printing was taboo. Letterpress, offset, and rotogravure were our trinity of goddesses, to whom we were expected to give thanks at every hour of the day and night. Things have changed since then. Screen printing is now accepted there, and the religion of Estienne has become monotheistic. These days, they worship that cow, IO—or rather, 1 0—the goddess of all things digital.

So, 1973. Classes were over, summer was beginning, and with it came an overwhelming urge to make a proper book. I mentioned the idea to a friend (someone I rarely see these days), and we decided to work out the contents together. Twelve texts that might be called poems (or might not…), six by each of us. Each of us would illustrate three of our own texts and three of the other's. I would take care of the layout and the actual production, using screen printing, while my collaborator went off on holiday.

I was bursting with enthusiasm, filled with an indescribable happiness at the prospect of embarking on this adventure. It was my first real book layout, and I conceived it so that the book would be impossible to leaf through. When you hold it in your hands and try to turn the pages, all you see is blank paper. I was rather pleased with myself, I can tell you. I then hand-lettered the texts with a brush on the transparent film used to expose the screens, and turned our drawings into films for printing as well. July and a good part of August went by in the making of the book, right through to the final assembly. Sixty copies, in A4 format, five of them not for sale.

It was while making this book that I discovered the wonderful possibilities of manual screen printing. Of all printing techniques, it is the only one within the reach of ordinary mortals like us that allows white (or any other light colour) to cover black (or any other colour) without becoming dirty, remaining truly white or retaining its original hue. A quasi-mystical technique that makes immaculate conception possible, even for donkeys and great big oxen. A genuine miracle for those of sound mind!

To tell you that I am still proud of this book today would be an exaggeration. I still appreciate the practical achievement, certainly… but as for the contents… The title of the book is an exquisite corpse that my friend and I came up with together, the first and best of a little series. The cover drawing was done by Nicolas Stavropoulos, who was in charge of the visual arts workshop in Villejuif, where we attended classes in drawing—still life, the nude, clothed poses—and in lino and woodcut printing. We printed our engravings, of all things, on a lithographic press!

There is no need to be ashamed of one's early work. This book is the first tangible witness to an evolution that was my own. The same is true of anyone who ventures into creative work, unless he or she is irredeemably hopeless. So, here it is. I'm not passing judgment on it. I'm simply showing it to you.

Click to browse and read

As those curious enough to leaf through the PDF I made from a copy in my personal collection will have noticed, this book contains a great many blank pages. The explanation lies in the structure of the layout. Each text is illustrated by an image, and the text and image are printed on one side only of a separate sheet. They face one another, tucked inside a four-page folder, whose first page bears the title of the text. The first six texts are by Michel Tabanou, who illustrated the first three; I illustrated the last three. The next six texts are mine: Tabanou illustrated the first three, and I illustrated the last three.

You are perfectly entitled to like it or dislike it. Make the most of that freedom, in every possible way, while you can. Before long, freedom of opinion may no longer be quite what it is today…

A Quixotic Table of Contents
 

To my friend Jean-Paul Goujon

“You didn’t post your usual piece last Monday…”
“Nope…”
“Couldn’t be bothered?”
“Nope. I was ill…”
“Oh! And that stopped you writing your post?”
“Well, yes… I wasn’t much in the mood. I decided the best way to nurse myself back to health was to do absolutely nothing.”
“And did it work?”
“Well, yes, a little. It does you good to do nothing every now and then. Gives you a rest. And rest can be a bit of a cure in itself, sometimes.”
“Yes, but not always…”
“No, not always… but in this case, yes. A little…”
“And are you going to write your post after all?”
“Well, yes. I’m writing it right now…”
“Oh, I see… In that case, I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thank you…”

I’m not one to complain, but some people are really quite… Anyway, let’s move on.

Now, let’s see… Ah, yes! A little while ago, certain people—ill-mannered souls, no doubt—responded to my work with a rather eloquent curl of the lip and remarks along the lines of: “Er, don’t take this the wrong way, but all that stuff you write about printing and technology… well, how shall I put it? We couldn’t give a damn!” Always a pleasure to hear, isn’t it? So, just to be absolutely clear, I’m not changing the subject to please them. Not at all. I’m changing it because, as someone once said, I simply can’t be bothered to carry on with the usual stuff. I’m not feeling particularly sprightly or full of beans just yet.

I’ve therefore decided to indulge the devotees of fin-de-siècle literature—that is, literature from the end of the nineteenth century—and its early twentieth-century successors. Some fifty years ago, there weren’t all that many of us who knew about this literature, let alone appreciated it. Nowadays, you can hardly get a foot in the door for the crowds. Times change. It’s like the weather: things are warming up.

So here’s what I propose. I’ve taken an issue of a literary magazine from a shelf in my library—one within easy reach, which isn’t true of all of them. I picked it more or less at random. Did chance do me a good turn? I think it did, but you can be the judge.

Les Chimères

A poetry magazine, published on the fifteenth of every month

Paris, 76 rue du Rocher

Volume II, No. 11 — 15 February 1909 — 28 pages
Editor-in-chief: Adrien Bertrand
Editorial committee: Guy Robert du Costal, Alfred Machard, Claude-Léon Mercerot, Vincent Muselli, Henri Grach
Secretary-general: Henry Bertrand
Administrator: René Emanuelli

Contents

Émile Boissier, “Annick” — A poem dedicated to Frédéric Mistral, consisting of eleven quatrains in ten-syllable lines.

Guy Robert de Costal, “Sonnets” — Two monosyllabic sonnets, the first of which I simply cannot resist quoting, in french, of course:

La More

Dort
Son
Corps
Blond

Sur
Le
Lit
Dur.

Frêle
Sœur
Qui

Gît !
Pâle
Fleur…

Roger Vincent, “Souvenir” — “Chanson” — “Idylle anglaise” — Three poems: a sonnet; a poem comprising six quatrains of three seven-syllable lines and one two-syllable line; and a poem of ten quatrains in eight-syllable lines.

Adrien Bertrand, “La Douleur” — A poem dedicated to Théo Mittelsten Scheid, consisting of six six-line stanzas in alexandrines.

Alfred Machard, “Une escapade” — A short story featuring the child characters the author was so fond of.

E. Aubel, “Sonnet” — A sonnet in alexandrines, dedicated to Louis Perris.

Gaston Guilleré, “Mimodrame” — A sort of prose poem featuring the character of Pierrot.

Vincent Muselli, “Poème” — A poem consisting of three quatrains in alexandrines, dedicated to Édouard Marye.

André Petit, “L’Éveil de l’été” — A sonnet in alexandrines.

Edmée Delebecque, “Supplique” — “Dédicace” — Two poems in alexandrines: the first consists of seven quatrains, the second of sixteen lines.

Xavier Thylda, “Celles qui passent…” — “Dormeuse” — “Stances” — Three poems in alexandrines: two sonnets and a poem of two quatrains dedicated to Guy Robert du Costal.

André Petit, “Nuit” — A sonnet in alexandrines.

“Une Matinée” — An anonymous review of a literary matinée held at the Lemoine Hall, 17 rue Pigalle.

Finally, a statement by Adrien Bertrand announcing his resignation as editor-in-chief of the magazine so that he could take up the mantle of secretary to the committee charged with erecting a monument in honour of Catulle Mendès, who had recently ceased to be immortal.

***

“Tell me, sorry to butt in again… These chaps in your magazine aren’t exactly household names, are they?”
“No, they aren’t.”
“And if they seem rather partial to women, they don’t appear to pay them much attention. Not a single woman in the contents… So why are you bothering to write about them?”
“Oh, just to make them a little better known…”
“Right… Fair enough. But do you really think your pathetic little blog post is going to make your second-rate poets famous?”
“No, probably not… But perhaps some newly converted fin-de-siècle enthusiast might be tempted to dig a little deeper and take an interest in one or another of them. You never know…”
“Hmm… Possibly. But now that I think about it, your obscure dreamers seem a pretty reactionary bunch, what with their sonnets on every street corner. Not exactly modernists, are they? They don’t seem to invent much, with all that ice-cold classicism of theirs. They churn out alexandrines by the yard…”
“Fair point… But they do help us build up a little picture of the period. The Symbolists are more or less behind us, and Dada won’t be long in coming. In the meantime, there they are, these fellows… still here, just before the Great War comes along and kills them.”
“Hmm…”

Inking Table
 

Not so long ago, as you may remember, I announced here that all the newly arrived Stanhope was still missing was an inking table before the press would have everything it needed to get properly to work. Well, that’s sorted now. The Stanhope has its inking table. And it has even more than that: it now has its very own cans of cleaning fluids, each one sporting a fine label printed in the workshop—black lettering on fluorescent orange paper, so you can’t possibly miss them. Come on, let’s have a look at the pictures…

The four cans are sitting on the Stanhope’s bed, each with its handsome label and each filled with its own particular cleaning fluid. They are lined up in front of the two-handled hand roller: acetone, F-type solvent, C-type solvent, and white spirit (also known as turpentine).

And here is the homemade inking table, cobbled together from all sorts of odds and ends, some of which have been kept for years with the thought: “These little bits and pieces might come in handy someday for making some sort of thing or other. You never know!”

But, but… oh horror!… we discover that the tabletop, made of genuine glass more than 5 millimetres thick, is absolutely filthy. Quick clean-up!

There, that’s better. With the tabletop this clean, even if we want to ink in white, there’s no danger of dirtying the colour… provided, of course, that the inking roller itself is properly clean too.

The table has only three legs, but they are fitted with casters, so it can easily be moved around. It wasn’t a deliberate decision to give it only three legs. It’s simply that, in our stockpile of odds and ends for making things out of, we could only find three. So we made do with what we had.

But admit it, it does have a certain style, this little table, with its Art Deco glass and its pretty embossed tin edging. Doesn’t it? You disagree?… Never mind. I don’t care. I like it…

To complete the little setup, let me introduce you to this small box on legs (it has four of them!) which a friend gave me because he no longer had any use for it. I use it to store rags and cans of cleaning fluid. The clean rags, waiting patiently to get dirty, are kept in a small compartment that can be closed with a hinged lid. It’s rather sweet.

The little lid is closed.

The large lid of the box is closed as well…

… and the cans of cleaning fluid can be placed on top. Wonderful, isn’t it?

You can also put other hand rollers on the inking table, smaller ones…
—Yes, yes, very nice indeed, old chap, but when are you actually going to use that press of yours?
—Well, er… pfff… when my back hurts a little less from pulling on the bar… Soon… soon…

Typefounder's hand mould
 

There are days like that when you get up in the morning simply because you have to get up… So you get up, gloomy, thinking to yourself: “Ah! Another new day to get through…” and you set about living it, somewhat reluctantly and under duress. But nothing turns out the way you expected. The day you thought would be long, sad, and boring actually turns out to be filled with joy, wonders, and discoveries. That’s how it is—you can’t stay in the doldrums forever.

It was the contents of the mailbox that changed everything. I wasn’t expecting anything, and in fact I was half expecting a letter bearing bad news from the tax authorities or some energy provider. But instead, there was a large, beautifully made package from—oh, the surprise!—the United States. It was such a beautifully put-together package that it took me quite some time to open it, which only served to heighten the adrenaline and, consequently, the joy of discovering what was inside.

Intense joy… indeed.

What was in the package? A book. But not just any book. An important book. A landmark book. A definitive work on its subject: the typefounder's hand mould. Those moulds, as you know, were used to cast type before automatic typecasting machines were invented in the nineteenth century, followed by typesetting machines; long before the twentieth century brought us phototypesetting, and later the computerised typesetting we still use today. Without type moulds, there could have been no large-scale reproduction of the written word from Gutenberg to the dawn of mechanical typesetting.

So a type mould is no small thing. It is a cultural artifact in every sense of the word. It made the mass reproduction of writing possible; and in itself—in the way it was made, and in the way it evolved over the centuries—it stands as a remarkable expression of technological culture.

Cover.

The author of this book, Stan Nelson, is quite simply the world’s foremost authority on the subject, universally recognised as such. The book is the fruit of a lifetime of research, carried out in every country where movable-type printing has existed since the middle of the fifteenth century.

In other words, it is an indispensable book for anyone interested in traditional printing, in books, and in the technology that made them possible. As Bela, a Congolese author I published back in the last century, used to say: “It's good the Book!” And this one is not merely lavishly illustrated—it is lavishly illustrated in colour, if you please! It is a work of historical and technological scholarship that will be very hard to surpass. One might perhaps write another book on the subject after this one, but certainly not a better or more comprehensive one.

But… I can already hear the grumbling, buzzing away in my ears here and there… Grumbling, after all, is one of our great French national characteristics, a trait we are famous for the world over. We French are always grumbling.
—The book you’re talking about—it’s from the United States, isn’t it?
—Well, yes…
—So it’s in English…
—Well, yes…
—Yes, but we speak French here in France…
—Well, yes… but there’s nothing to stop us speaking English too, reading it, and understanding it. That’s part of being educated, isn’t it? And besides, the pictures are written in “picture”—a universal language. When you come across a book like Stan Nelson’s, you don’t sit around waiting for some hypothetical French translation that will probably never appear.
—Oh really? And why not?
—Because France, so proud of its famous cultural exception, has largely lost interest in traditional technologies—unlike the countries around us. And the little community of people who still care about such things is simply too small for anyone to contemplate publishing a French edition.
So, you lot: if the subject interests you, read the book in English! For heaven’s sake! And talk about it to everyone you know. That way, perhaps, we’ll make this little community of enthusiasts a little less little…
—But you can’t get the book in France…
—I don’t know about that, but you can always order it. Come on, I’ll scan the back of the dust jacket for you. All the information you need will be right there. See how kind I am to you?

Back cover.

—But why did you get it in the mail? Did you order it?
—No. He was kind enough to send me a copy when it was published because I had given him some photographs of a mould that he discusses in the book. A few years ago, I had written a fairly substantial article about that particular mould, but it was never published because the journal it was intended for never saw the light of day.
—So you got the book for free…
—Well, yes…
—You lucky devil.
—Well, yes… You have to have a few little joys in life now and then—or some really big ones—that give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning…

Catalogue de papiers de couverture
 

Une trouvaille lors de la brocante d’hier. La seule de la journée, pas vraiment ruineuse : 2 €, pourquoi se priver ! Ce spécimen de papiers de couverture date sans nul doute des années 1910-1920, période Art nouveau, si l’on en croit les illustrations utilisées. Comme on aime bien cette période des arts graphiques et qu’on ne vous déteste pas non plus, on vous le reproduit en entier, ce catalogue. Z’avez intérêt à apprécier.

La prise de vue un peu trop rapidement réalisée frise l’innommable et le catastrophique. Il vous faudra pourtant vous en contenter. On n’a pas pu faire mieux. On a collé le catalogue sous une plaque de verre pour le raplaplater mais ça a causé des images parasites par réflexion du photographe sur le verre. De plus, on ne sais plus où on a fourré le statif de reproduction qui nous aurait permis d’obtenir des pages rectangulaires ; on a fait la prise de vue à l’arrache…
— Eh, banane ! pourquoi tu ne l’as pas scanné, ton catalogue ?…
— Parce que le catalogue dépassait de la vitre du scanner, pomme à l’eau !

Euh, si on passait aux images après cet échange de fruits et légumes…

Couverture.

Pages 2 et 3.

Pages 4 et 5.

Pages 6 et 7.

Pages 8 et 9.

Pages 10 et 11.

Pages 12 et 13.

Pages 14 et 15.

Pages 16 et 17.

Pages 18 et 19.

Pages 20 et 21.

Pages 22 et 23.

Pages 24 et 25.

Page 26.

Voilà… Plein de jolies couleurs de papier et de jolies couleurs d’encre… à la semaine prochaine pour — peut-être — de nouvelles nouvelles…