Yet, for those of you who will soon receive a copy of The Crocodile, you'll find that Dostoevsky himself prominently emblazoned one of these memes on the opening pages. It reads: "Ohe Lambert! Ou est Lambert? As tu vu Lambert?"
Translated this means: "Oh Lambert? Where is Lambert? Have you seen Lambert?"
Is Lambert one of the characters in the story? Why is this French epigraph to a Russian tale set in St. Petersburg inquiring after a French man?
First we must answer, who the heck is Lambert? Let us begin by turning to the New York Times, September 3rd 1864, the year prior to the publication of The Crocodile.
From this seemingly trivial event, the screams of "Où est Lambert?" went as viral as 'planking' did in 2014.
A mere few days after the Lambert incident on the train to Asnieres, the king of Spain visited Paris on the invite of Napoleon III. As they paraded through the Champs Elysées, they weren't met with the usual salutations but rather by 250,000 citizens crying out "Hay! Lambert!"
Napoleon the III was apparently so agitated that he gave an order to arrest anyone shouting it. Indeed 200-300 young men were arrested according to London newspapers. That being said, the impact was negligible given reports that "Lambert" was the first word heard in the morning and the last word heard at night for weeks.
Like the best memes, Lambert went international, reaching St. Petersburg soon after. Indeed the liberal newspaper, Golos, published two feuilletons devoted to Lambert and announced the upcoming local production of a vaudeville show and a drama, both entitled: 'Eh, Lambert!'
Without the proper context, The Crocodile's epigraph may seem to be merely an irrelevant throwaway; yet upon proper examination we see that Dostoevsky is invoking the trifling discourse typical of the newspaper feuilletonists to further underscore the satirical themes in the full story that follows.
Prof. Sarah Young, who penned our introduction, writes "Newspapers traded on gossip and untruth and, much like the tabloid press of the present day, owed their popularity and ability to shape the news agenda to an ability to distract readers from more serious concerns. And the main motivation behind such enterprises was, and remains, money, and the power endowed by money."
Therein lies Dostoevsky's dig into the anti-intellectual influence of capital on publishing—a relationship that surely hit a painful sore spot given the bankruptcy of his personal literary journal The Epoch, which folded immediately after The Crocodile was printed in its ultimate issue.
Dostoevsky's The Crocodile is now shipping! Pick up your copy here.
]]>And the winner is ... 'The Crocodile'!
With all these things in mind, in March 2023 at the home office, we had narrowed down the options that we liked for our next release, but being evenly split between the two, we opted to take a poll from our readers. In the end, we were happy to go forward with the title that you all voted for in our online survey: Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Crocodile.
This particular short story is one that is not very well known by readers, even those who might be familiar with Dostoevsky, which is one of the reasons why we found it a great contendor for our next publication. Additionally, the story has something of a strange aura as it narrates an absurd event that would only occur in a dream or an imaginative children’s story…
Our beautiful handmade leather-bound edition of 'The Crocodile'
But far from being a mere fantastical tale for children, the value of Dostoevsky’s writing and of this particular piece – in our opinion – lies in the fact that the swallowing of a human by a crocodile (sorry for the spoiler!) is described with such nonchalance that it isn’t the event itself that is questioned, but instead it is our own expectation of what is meant to happen in such a story that is turned upside down.
One of the great qualities of literature is its ability to inverse our preconceived ideas of fiction and reality and what is possible inside of these worlds. The Crocodile is one such example that will leave you perplexed with the simplicity of the unfolding events and the casualness of tone that borders on indifference in the way the characters react to the event.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
These tonal subtleties serve to impart the immense humour that underlies this entire story. Now, you might think that Dostoevsky is not particularly well-known for being a comical writer, but if this short story can do anything, it can make you laugh and perhaps prove you mistaken on that perception.
The Crocodile is hilarious in the ways it addresses current affairs of 19th century Russia and its relations to Europe. The crocodile’s proprietor and his mother – both German – are caricatured to the very extreme by their interjections in German and their wholly capitalistic inclinations with regards to the crocodile and its swallowing of Ivan Matveyich. Other aspects like the narrator’s isolation in being the only one that is concerned about Ivan’s wellbeing inside the animal’s body are subtle proofs of Dostoevsky’s sense of ingenuity.
A typical 19th century shopping arcade in St. Petersburg
The political aspirations of Ivan Matveyich also become a source of laughter for the reader as the seriousness of his intentions seem totally ridiculous in the absurd situation that he finds himself in. But maybe Ivan’s total composure in his new environment and his steadfast motivation to become the famous individual he wants to be can be somewhat inspiring in that he shows us that you don’t have to resign yourself to desolation in a seemingly inescapable situation. Rather, it might be worth summoning all one’s energy to try and make the most out of the little time there might be left.
From a different perspective, we can also recognize the value of Dostoevsky’s writing in the modernity that his text exudes; the allusions to the dangers of capitalism, the cultural differences between Russia and Europe as well as the satirical portrayal of Russian high society and politics are all elements that can be compared to our world today (and applied not only to Russia!). So, even without a sense of humour, one can find much value in the social criticism that Dostoevsky employs in this short story.
One of the amazing illustrations by Rohan Eason in our edition
Finally, as you will be able to read in the editorial preface to the story, there is (or was) extensive discussions on if and how these events could really have happened. This, again, falls back on the question of our own expectations for what the realm of possibility and/or plausibility in fiction (and reality) contains. And maybe the lesson that the author wants us to take from this hilariously absurd story is that the fantastic and imaginative might contain more reality than we grant it credit for and that our boundaries of what is (and should) be real are too rigid and should be moved around every once in a while.
After all, great literature has the ability to do exactly that and more.
The story begins...
When it comes to the translation of the text, we were very lucky to come into contact with Dr. Sarah J. Young – a professor of Russian literature at UCL in London (UK) – who was willing to revise the English translation by Constance Garnett in order to create a more accurate and annotated version of the text for this edition. Her expertise in everything Dostoevsky and particularly in this short story (you can read about her interests in Russian literature here) was exactly what we were looking for when it came to putting together an introduction for the text. She seemed like the perfect person for the job! And not only did she adapt the Garnett translation and write a brilliant introduction to the text – she also translated the ‘Editor’s Preface’ at the beginning of the text which is left out in every other English translation of The Crocodile. We are deeply grateful to her for adding this valuable part of the piece to our edition and thus making it so much more special.
Our wonderful collaborator: Dr. Sarah J. Young
In terms of creative additions, we were excited to work together with Rohan Eason, a professional illustrator from England who created some magnificent illustrations to accompany the text.
Inside the crocodile's belly
Lastly, we have to say a huge thank you to our cover designer from Ukraine, Oksana Tarasenko, who managed to incorporate precisely the essence of the story itself into the simple but elegant style and that we like to use for our Century Press cover designs.
We hope that you are as excited as we are about the upcoming release of our Century Press edition of Dostoevsky’s The Crocodile. If you would like to receive a copy with handmade paste paper end sheets crafted by Canadian artist Susan Kristoferson, be sure to order by the end of the month!
- Laura
]]>There are roughly 12,000 photographs of his (archived in the Huntington Library in California) that bear witness to a particular proximity to the people and places that he encountered. When you look at some examples more closely, and specifically the photographs he took of people, you can tell that the camera angle is not positioned from above or far away (as an observer might look at the scene).
‘Fire!’ Korea, 1904
Rather, Jack London took on the role of an equal to the people he photographed by lowering himself and his camera to their level and inserting himself into their reality. As a matter of fact, London shared this style of photography with a small San Francisco-based group of art photographers whose work – “based on the clear and unadorned expression of what was before the lens” – would influence American fine art photography for years to come.
Passengers on the S.S. Siberia en route to Yokohama, Japan, 1904
Now, this might sound obvious, but a person with multiple skills is bound to translate and use one of their skills across their other lines of work. And it is in his writing that we find Jack London (perhaps unconsciously so) portraying the world with a photographic lens.
Whitechapel on a bank holiday, London, 1902
We can recognize the proximity to his ‘subjects’ from his 'photographs' in The Call of the Wild. The novel contains some passages that almost feel as if the author were taking a picture of what he is describing; his skill as a photographer clearly shines through in these scenes. See for example this passage describing Buck:
“A carnivorous animal, living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling with vigour and virility. When Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibrium or adjustment.”
Scholars in the field of 20th century American literature have categorized London’s writing style as naturalist and realist. This means that the descriptions of objects, places and situations is almost scientific in its detail and precision. This is not surprising knowing he was a socialist and photographer. One of the goals of realist writers like London was to analyze physical (fictional) surroundings to explain the causes of certain phenomena and in turn to also exercise social criticism.
The human being who is rooted in his natural environment and therefore inextricably linked to and intertwined with nature is the subject of naturalist literary explorations. And indeed, when we look at the author as an individual who has multiple skills, it seems natural (pun not intended) that we can almost seize Jack London’s photography through his writing.
The dog Jack that inspired Buck in ‘The Call of the Wild’ with the Bond brothers in Dawson City, Yukon Territory Canada, ca. 1896-98
For instance, Buck, the dog-hero of the story, becomes alive throughout the pages of the book, almost as if he were human.
“His muscles were surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour forth generously over the world.”
If we read this passage without the context of the novel, we would be fairly certain it was describing a human being rather than a dog. This method of anthropomorphism—the process through which an animal gains human-like features—is a literary tool frequently used by naturalist writers because it breathes life into the story that describes natural environments and animal characters.
Promotional photograph of Strongheart the dog
Going further, we might say that Jack London’s entire novel and his exploration of the life of a marginal being in our society (animals not being considered as valuable as human beings) points towards a broader criticism of the exploitation of weaker members of society.
Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.
- Laura
P.S. Thanks for reading my first letter for Century Press! You can pick up a copy of our limited edition of Jack London's The Call of the Wild here.
For more information about the life of Jack London, I recommend you watch the short documentary series Jack London : An American Adventure, or read this article.
You can also flip through London’s photographs on the website of the Huntington Library, where they have been archived.
]]>📖 The Story 📖
When deciding what Century Press should tackle for our third release, I wanted to take on a classic that felt familiar to readers, but one that had been modified and adapted so many times since its release that we’ve generally lost a sense of the source material.
For this reason, I landed on Jack London’s The Call of the Wild because despite never having read the novel myself, I felt relatively certain that I could surmise the story based upon movies, second-hand sources, and a present-day collective-consciousness of the novel.
Yet, when I picked up my 1939 Macmillan reading copy, I was startled to find a fast-paced, riveting story that defied my pre-existing notions, and furthermore, my expectations about turn-of-the-century literature. Having just tried and failed (for the second time) to ready Henry James’ The Ambassadors, London’s rambunctious tale of the Yukon gold rush was a shock to the system.
Who better to tell this type of raw story than London himself, who traveled to the Yukon, by way of Alaska, at the ripe age of 21. Here, he lived the prospector life first-hand; him and his party toiled to transport their gear over the Chilkoot Pass, often with 100-pound loads weighing down on their backs.
Through these formative experiences, it’s not unexpected that London reported that "it was in the Klondike I found myself."
In this brutal climate, London found himself, both as a human being, and as a writer. London stayed in the Klondike for almost a year, living temporarily in the frontier town of Dawson City, before moving to a nearby winter camp, where he spent the winter in a temporary shelter reading books he had brought, such as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
The story of Buck the dog-hero, which germinated from his travels, is a tale of survival and a return to primitivism:
“These dog-heroes of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation, and emotion, and by simple reasoning. Also, I endeavored to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution.”
The Call of the Wild doesn’t tell a pretty story, but a powerful one untouched by bookishness, and one that—immediately upon publication—secured London a place in the canon of American literature.
✍️ Introductory Content ✍️
When writing an insightful introduction, there’s something to be said about the value of proximity to the source material. For this reason, Century Press was thrilled to have Jonah Raskin contribute the introduction to The Call of the Wild. A professor at Sonoma State University, Jonah resides a mere 10 km from Jack London’s final resting place in Glen Ellen, California, home of Jack London State Park (and the ruins of the author’s 26-room mansion, ‘Wolf House,’ tragically lost to fire mere months before the author could move in).
Raskin was formerly a freelance journalist covering the 1970s radical counterculture movement interacting with such key figures as Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman, as well as the Weather Underground and the Yippies. In more recent years, Raskin has turned his attention to Northern California writers including London.
A frequent contributor to the Jack London Society, Raskin also served as editor of the book, The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution. With a deep knowledge of London’s oeuvre and life, Raskin adeptly places The Call of the Wild within the larger context of the author’s personal triumphs and tragedies, as well as the state of American literature at the turn of the 20th century.
In The Call of the Wild, London writes about “ecstasy,” which he explains, “comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame.”
Raskin easily identifies London himself as that artist: A romantic and on fire, he surrendered to his unconscious which provided him with free and uncensored access to the emotions, fears and longings he knew as an outsider on the fringes of his own family and society.
📄 A Return to the Letterpress Studio 📄
Similar to our first two releases, The Call of the Wild was entirely printed letterpress by Ian Bristow down in Cornwall, Ontario. It's always a herculean effort to print novel length works on a 1956 Heidelberg platen press, but we think that the gorgeously embossed impressions of relief printing leaves offset or digitally printed novels looking totally soulless by comparison.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Ian pushed the limits yet again with his printing for The Call of the Wild. This time, Ian custom mixed a beautiful blue accent ink to be used for the initial drop caps, chapter numbers, and section openers. The contrast against the black ink came out very handsome and pairs with the slate blue leather and icy blue cotton ribbon to create a consistent, crafted package.
Let it be said that printing two colours on a platen press is no small feat. Since every two-colour page needs to be run twice through the press, it effectively doubles the production time. Furthermore, extreme care must be taken to ensure perfect alignment of the two colours of text.
Like before, we've decided to use Boxcar Press' Flurry paper, which is acid-free, archival, 100% cotton, and most importantly takes a beautiful impression on the press. And thank the lord, London’s book was a bit shorter than The Sun Also Rises, because we had the financial flexibility to add wider page margins on this third release for a more premium look.
There’s also much to look forward to in 2023. Ian’s working to have a second Heidelberg ‘windmill’ press up and running for our fourth book, which should hopefully increase our production capability for next year!
⚒️ At the Bindery ⚒️
We were so glad to continue our relationship with Pergamena for The Call of the Wild. This boutique, family-owned tannery located in New York's Hudson Valley is one of a kind. At their shop, goatskins are cleaned, de-haired, and are vegetable-tanned by hand using techniques and machines that go back generations. Moreover, they produce leather hides that meet our strict requirements for being sustainably produced and traceably sourced.
Beyond having a lovely, natural grain, their leather has a rich, sensual aroma that many of our customers have been gladly taken in by. For The Call of the Wild, we placed a custom order for Slate Blue dyed goatskin leather for our bindings. Always looking to improve, we had even stricter exclusion criteria for hide quality than we did for those that we used for The Sun Also Rises.
We are also working with Studio Carta once more, a small business based in Massachusetts, to supply us with hard to find tight-weave cotton bookmarks imported from Italy. Their icy blue ribbons are gorgeously dyed, and are made with 100% natural materials.
🎨 Paste Papers 🎨
Some readers may recall that the first 50 pre-orders were entered into a drawing for three special editions of The Call of the Wild with handmade paste papers from master Canadian artist Susan Kristoferson.
Immensely talented, her decorative papers were recently acquired by NYC's Metropolitan Art Museum as part of their Paper Legacy Collection and will be included in a collection to be exhibited at the Grolier Club next year.
Susan and myself worked together to design paste paper end sheets that would elevate the fully bound edition to an even greater level. I’m hoping we can expand the use of these papers into more editions for our next book.
Here are the lucky winners: Jayson Powell, Christopher Bowers, and Lloyd Maybaum
Nice going being super quick on the keyboard and supporting us right from the first announcement!
✏️ Illustrations and Cover Art ✏️
We were so happy to welcome back Calvin Laituri, who provided the frontispiece for The Sun Also Rises. This time, we took things up a notch and commissioned four original illustrations. His drawings came out spectacularly, and look breathtaking after being printed letterpress.
If you’re not familiar with his work, Calvin is a Vermont-based illustrator who specializes in scratch-board style illustrations. Calvin is an artist with a singular ability to make this centuries-old technique feel completely fresh. I haven’t found any other artist out there who is innovating like he is.
For the cover art, we had the continued pleasure of working with Mac Pogue, who offered his signature take on this classic novel. Mac created a design that harkens back to the earliest editions of London’s book, while also incorporating some more contemporary elements.
🌅 In Summary 🌅
Personally, I’m feeling super proud of our third release. Every member of our team has been committed to improving upon their techniques and pushing what we’re capable of to the next level. I feel great knowing that the Century Press team is leaving a legacy of beautiful physical objects that are not just built to last, but also made to inspire readers from generation to generation.
Simply stated, we can’t wait to get these books in your hands.
I want to send a huge shoutout to those who've already pre-ordered. Quite honestly, we wouldn't be here without you! Thanks so much for believing in our mission at Century Press.
Lastly, for those still on the fence about placing an order, you have until December 5th before The Call of the Wild moves to its full price of $249 CAD.
Click here to place your order today
Cheers,
Alex
]]>
Not all book leather is made equal
❓ Did you know that if you see a binding made of 'genuine leather,' it's actually indicative that you're dealing with the lowest quality of real leather? In fact, legally, 'genuine leather' needs to only be comprised by a mere 40% of true leather.
💲 With leather-bound books, it's often difficult to know exactly what you're getting (and also what you're paying a premium price for).
😟 Sadly, bindings marked as 'genuine leather' are often several layers of low quality leather bonded together with glue and then painted to look higher-end. You're getting the leftovers after the other, nicer grades have been stripped away. It looks cheap and can end up cracking and flaking like a tatty leather sofa.
🙅♂️ That doesn't fly at Century Press. We believe that great books deserve to be built to last, which is why top-quality materials are part and parcel of our press.
♻️ While some are put off by using these distinctive hides, we think they add a unique characteristic to our books that you won't find anywhere else. Moreover, we believe that utilizing hides with some degree of variation supports our goal to reduce the waste of animal byproducts.
🗽 Our leather-sourcing ethos led us to Pergamena, a boutique, family-owned tannery located in New York's Hudson Valley. Pergamena's mission is to produce and promote sustainable vegetable-tanned leather and parchment.
👨👩👧👦 Their story begins way back in 1550 in Eisenburg, Germany, where members of the Meyer family first took up tanning and leatherwork. From there, the family business moved to New Jersey in 1856, operating in North Bergen for the next 130 years, before settling where they are today in upstate New York.
🧬️ Pergamena is one of the very few tanneries in North America that produces leather suitable for bookbinding. At their shop, the goatskins are cleaned, de-haired, and are vegetable-tanned by hand using techniques and machines that go back generations.
✋ Everything they produce is made by hand. Through their sourcing and production practices, they aim to support forward-thinking agricultural practices and shift the industry one step closer to being sustainable, environmentally-conscious, and socially-minded.
🌲 To this end, all of their skins are vegetable tanned, which is a natural process relying on tree tannins and water. Indeed, vegetable tanning is one of the oldest known forms of leather-making.
🛢 This method stands in stark contrast to the chromium tanning that's used for the other 90%+ of the leather market. This modern approach is used by tanneries who are looking to expedite the process and save money. Chrome tanned products don't appear very natural and often carry a chemical smell. Plus, chrome tanning relies on chromium salts and tanning liquors that must be heavily managed and closely monitored to minimize environmental impact.
⛔️ For these reasons, Century Press eschews chrome-tanned leather entirely.
🚜 Traceability of our animal hides in our supply chain was also of key concern to us. We're pleased to report that the goats whose hides we use are pasture-raised on a family farm in Texas. Here they live a natural life, humanely raised with a strict vegetarian diet, free of antibiotics and added hormones.
👐 When you purchase a Century Press edition, you should know that we've deeply and thoughtfully considered all of its components, especially its leather binding. After all, we spend hours with our favourite books, all the while holding them in our hands. We're offering a tactile experience that's honestly pretty darn hard to beat.
😄 We can't wait for folks to get their hands on our version of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, because the goatskin leather we custom-ordered is magnificent. It has an excellent tactile feel and a gorgeous Oxblood colour. Plus, we think it smells better than a brand-new pair of high-end Italian loafers 😉
Pre-order pricing ends soon, so why not grab a copy from our shop today and save $20 CAD?
For the sake of our readers, I won't bury the lede. I'll be forthcoming in saying that for The Sun Also Rises and all other future Century Press publications, there will be no censorship or editing. All works will be re-printed as originally published.
⏮ Let’s work backwards to see how we arrived here:
To summarize the conclusions from the previous letter:
Before hitting the throttle on re-printing these classic works verbatim, we briefly considered a form of self-censorship common in both online discourse and printed contemporary works: the use of elision. Many of you may be familiar with this technique whereby certain words are truncated after their first letter, followed by an em dash, or a number of em dashes, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks (e.g. X—————).
However, the possibility of elision was soon discarded, since as one of our commenters asked, “where do you draw the line?” At Century Press, we craft our books to last for hundreds of years, which forced me to consider the question: “If someone picks up this book in 100 years, will they even understand which word I’m choosing to elide?”
Plus, 100 years is eons when we think about how fast our culture changes.
To illustrate this point, you can follow two opinion pieces from John McWhorter—an American linguist—in the New York Times. The first, dated April 2021, discusses how the 'N-word' was become unsayable in recent years. A mere 8 months later in January 2022, McWhorter penned a second piece, responding to a new cultural discussion centred around whether the word 'Negro' should be banned.
This sequence of articles underscores that what is considered offensive can evolve over short periods of time. By consequence, choosing to alter the definitive version of a work of literature could seem foolish, or more likely baffling, depending on the views of people a whole century from now.
Thus, while I do deeply consider every component that comprises a Century Press edition, I’ve accepted that my role does not extend to modifying any of the source material.
That being said, while derogatory language and ideas do not warrant censorship in the books we re-print, at Century Press, we do believe that they require examination and contextualization.
You may recognize one approach to the contextualization of classic content if you've watched certain films on Disney+. Here, films such as Peter Pan and Aladdin now come with a disclaimer that appears before the movie begins.
At Century Press, we wanted to go beyond this basic advisory notice, and move one step further by providing our readers with the opportunity to learn from a modern interpretation of a classic text. In many ways, I was very much inspired by an exhibit on indigenous people at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. There, the original diorama remains present, but with new information that provides updated context for the exhibit. When you see these two perspectives super-imposed, you begin to recognize the importance and the power of choosing to confront history head-on rather than surreptitiously changing it and sweeping the past under a rug.
The choice to leave the original text intact and add an educational framing around it was strongly endorsed by the academic contributor to the novel, Daniel Hannah. I think he did a great job analyzing the racial politics of Hemingway’s first novel, and I’m really looking forward to hearing what our readers think about his essay once the books have shipped.
🔁 To bring this discussion around censorship full-circle, I’ll freely admit that I’ve received a few messages from readers suggesting that if I feel uncomfortable encountering derogatory words and ideas, I should refrain from publishing them all together.
However, I don’t think it’s that simple.
‘Classic' novels occupy a special space in the minds of readers, and also myself. For what reasons have these novels been so celebrated and put on a pedestal above others? Should they still be praised and belong to ‘the canon’ today even though there are certain aspects of them that may feel completely inappropriate for 2022? Is the value of what they contributed to literature during the time they were written sufficient to compensate for deficits current readers may acknowledge today?
For me, re-publishing classic works, and finding appropriate literary critics to provide introductions, is entirely about challenging ourselves to spend time in this potentially uncomfortable space. These stories are indisputably ‘classics,’ but what we take from them today has certainly shifted from what someone would take away in the year of their original publication. By offering insightful introductions to classics, it becomes possible to responsibly engage in a conversation with the original text in a way that wouldn’t be available were the novel itself to be re-printed in isolation.
🐶 Woof, big talk, big themes, big ideas.
I feel like I could use a drink after these last two letters, maybe a daiquiri apropos of Hemingway?
Thanks for joining me on this journey, and keep an eye out for a more lighthearted letter where I’ll be reviewing the supporting cast from The Sun Also Rises: the panoply of alcoholic drinks deeply interwoven into nearly every scene in the novel🍸🍹🍷🍺🥂
A huge thanks to everyone in the Century Press crew who has already placed a pre-order for The Sun Also Rises! For those still on the fence, remember you can still save $20 CAD off the list price when you order today.
As usual the comment section is open below, and I’m always eager to hear what’s on your mind.
Alex
]]>While typesetting our edition of Gatsby, I became aware of a little known fact that following WWII, editorial censorship had slyly and silently worked its way into millions of copies of this famous novel. Moreover, this censorship had been furtively enacted by such illustrious publishers such as Bantam Books and Penguin Books.
I won’t re-hash the whole story, but in short, I made a deeply considered editorial decision to participate in a century-long historical conversation about whether it is appropriate for a publisher to modify a word in an original work of literature.
Here, I made the choice not to revert to the original source material, but to instead improve upon a widely disseminated word substitution that has gone largely unnoticed by readers of The Great Gatsby. By doing so, I felt like I was making a morally appropriate decision for a book publishing company in 2021.
My choice to exercise this editorial control led to receiving mixed opinions both in person and online; some approved of the word change, others vehemently condemned my decision.
In the midst of this emotionally charged tempest, I did my best to take all of these comments in stride, learn from and reflect on them, with the goal of defining what Century Press’s approach would be moving forward.
After all, if my goal is for Century Press to become a leading publisher of classic novels, it will be nearly impossible to avoid encountering language that is considered derogatory in 2022 and beyond.
After internalizing and processing all this commentary, I sat down to consider how I would approach our second novel The Sun Also Rises, which not only contains an instance the one word I decided to modify in The Great Gatsby, but numerous others, perhaps more offensive (i.e. the N-word), and appearing with greater frequency.
Unlike The Great Gatsby, there was no historical basis for either an intentional or surreptitious editing of The Sun Also Rises. Also, from a sheer logistical standpoint, the decision to edit dozens of instances of a word fundamentally didn’t make any sense.
Before, things were relatively simple: it was a single word with a long history of editorial revision. Now, where should the line be drawn? I needed to take a step back and really consider: what truly scared me about publishing offensive content?
Well, what are any of us afraid of when we feel the need to censor ourselves from speaking or writing words that may offend? Of course there’s the selfish feeling that we may be judged. Indeed, what if Century Press were cancelled? Should I have my editorial perspective molded out of a desire for self-preservation?
Most of you reading this would instinctually respond: No!
In each of our lives and careers, I believe we should feel comfortable doing and saying what we feel is right, while remaining open to new ideas and information that can change us. We should be willing to make mistakes and learn from them. We should expose ourselves and learn from different groups of people with different ideas.
Therefore we should feel justified to stand up and state what we believe in, not out of fear of censure or condemnation, but because we believe it’s morally correct. As a publisher—tasked with disseminating information and ideas—this notion is extra relevant.
At the same time, since Century Press’s core business is to send words and ideas out into the world, we need to have true empathetic concern with those who will encounter and engage with our books. We must consider the potential for psychologically damaging those reading our books, or worst case scenario, condoning violence against marginalized groups.
Thus, in order to stand on solid ethical ground, I felt it vitally necessary to research and evaluate whether palpable harm could come from republishing language considered inflammatory or damaging.
To this end, I applied some different lenses to analyze this topic of inquiry and approached my research from a few different angles.
First, before diving in to some of my findings, I think it’s valuable to establish that there exists linguistically definable and categorizable groupings of ‘offensive’ language. Essentially, all language that ‘offends’ is not created equally, nor does it elicit the same repercussions, nor does it occupy the same moral territory.
Since this is not going to be a purely philosophical/linguistic discussion, I’ll link this publication by Lynne Tirrell, as it does a better job than I would at disentangling offensive terms as applied to people. Briefly, she writes that there’s a fundamental difference between obscene language (e.g. “He’s an asshole”) and deeply derogatory language (e.g. “He’s a [racial slur]), the latter of which are often tied to systems of oppression.
In her work, she uses the example of the 1990s genocide in Rwanda to argue that an increasing normalization of the use of derogatory terms leads to a greater acceptance of non-linguistic (i.e. physical) actions. In this case, the state-controlled media was promulgating the normalization of these derogatory terms through newspapers and radio.
Fast-forwarding to 2021, social media giants such as Facebook have been blamed for causing religious riots as a result of their inability to monitor and flag inflammatory content on their platform.
While these reports and studies are very much concerning, researchers have yet to causally prove a link between the temporal frequency of deeply derogatory language and the physical manifestation of hate violence in a society.
Moreover, I felt the examples of radio or social media quite far afield from the re-printing of classic works of fiction. For these reasons, my concerns about the detrimental effects of re-printing literature as it was originally written were tempered.
That being said, language in books has been a flashpoint in schools. Take for example Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, which contains numerous instances of the N-word. Here, I think it goes without saying that (quantitative research aside) asking black and white students, who have not yet emotionally or intellectually matured, to read that word aloud in an educational setting would not promote an effective learning environment.
Yet, Century Press’s catalog is not being taught in schools, but instead to adults who are themselves choosing to acquire and learn from our publications. The audience is fundamentally different.
Given this process of research and contemplation, I began to feel more confident moving forward with a framework for how slurs and other derogatory content would be addressed in Century Press editions.
And now to leave you (perhaps) with bated breath! Stay tuned for our next letter to learn how we approached deeply offensive content in our edition of The Sun Also Rises.
We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, so drop us a line on how you’d proceed if you were in the editor’s chair.
]]>📖 The Story 📖
As soon as The Great Gatsby hit the presses down in Cornwall, I immediately began to think of the sophomore novel for Century Press. In terms of classic authors, Hemingway is one that always loomed large in my mind when it came to key figures in 20th century literature, and I felt like there was no better initiation to his work than his debut novel: The Sun Also Rises.
The sparse, yet athletic prose of The Sun Also Rises became the enduring hallmark of his style, which Hemingway himself coined as the 'theory of omission.' The power of this technique, which he honed as a newspaper journalist and deployed in his novels, was recognized by fellow authors such as Virginia Woolf, who said:
Whether due to the mythos that surrounded his personality or his foundational writing style, Hemingway is a subject that deserves to be re-evaluated by contemporary literary critics. After choosing to publish The Sun Also Rises, I knew I needed to find a contributor who could bring fresh eyes and a new angle to this landmark work of fiction.
I was fortunate that my ideal critic was located right here in my home province of Ontario. Daniel Hannah is a professor of Romantic and Transatlantic literature at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. His writing immediately gripped my interest when I picked up a copy of his most recent book: Queer Atlantic: Masculinity, Mobility, and the Emergence of Modernist Form.
In his book of essays, Professor Hannah provides a nuanced examination of masculine privilege, mobility, and the queer possibilities of desire in Anglo-American modernist fiction. As I went through his book, I was stunned to read "queer possibilities" in the same sentence as "Ernest Hemingway." After all, wasn't this man all about heavy drinking, fishing, and shooting nearly every species of large game on the African continent? What was "queer" about Hemingway?
I think readers will be super keen to read his introduction, which explores our notions of this macho writer and his œuvre from a brand-new perspective; one that examines how Hemingway's style works not just to construct masculinity, but to untangle it as well.
📄 A Return to the Letterpress Studio 📄
Similar to The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises will be entirely printed letterpress by Ian Bristow down in Cornwall, Ontario. And if the first book wasn't a large enough project, our upcoming one is even bigger, clocking in at 272 pages long. It's a monumental effort to print a novel of this length on a 1956 Heidelberg platen press, but we think the results leave offset printed novels in the dust.
The amount Ian has learned about printing novels on his press has increased exponentially after the production of The Great Gatsby. As we start printing this month, we feel confident that we're going to be printing more efficiently and more consistently page-to-page. Like before, we've decided to use Boxcar Press's Flurry paper, which is acid-free, archival, 100% cotton, and most importantly takes a beautiful impression on the press.
⚒️ At the Bindery ⚒️
One of the biggest upgrades between The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises pertains to the leather bindings. For those who have been following us since last year, you'll recall that we chose to use surplus sheepskin leather from the fashion industry to bind our debut release.
Using up-cycled leather was actually one the first things I envisioned when starting Century Press, and one of my favorite things about Gatsby. Unfortunately, when we scaled up production, we realized there were manifold challenges to using garment leather (namely issues with ineffective stamping and overstretching of the leather).
In short this meant that a significant portion of the leather we hoped to re-purpose for bookbinding unfortunately ended up unusable. (See picture below for bindings that failed to pass our quality control.) Consequently, we decided to explore other options for leather hides that met our strict requirements for being sustainably produced and traceably sourced.
That's how we came upon Pergamena, a boutique, family-owned tannery located in New York's Hudson Valley. There, the goatskins are cleaned, de-haired, and are vegetable-tanned by hand using techniques and machines that go back generations.
For The Sun Also Rises, we placed a custom order for Oxblood-dyed (apropos for Hemingway) goatskin leather for our bindings. Let me tell you, this leather is magnificent. It has an excellent tactile feel, and smells better than a brand-new pair of high-end Italian loafers.
Speaking of, we are again working with Studio Carta, a small business based in Massachusetts, to supply us with beautiful tight-weave cotton bookmarks imported from Italy. Their ribbons are gorgeously dyed, and are made with 100% natural materials. Plus, they match nicely with the burgundy and gold headbands we're using for this edition.
✏️ Illustrations and Cover Art ✏️
One feature we were super excited to add to The Sun Also Rises was an illustration for the frontispiece. We couldn't have been happier to find Calvin Laituri, a Vermont-based illustrator who specializes in scratch-board style illustrations. Calvin is an artist with a singular ability to make this centuries-old technique feel completely fresh. Plus, this mode of drawing is supremely well-suited for adaptation to letterpress printing.
For the cover art, we had the pleasure of working with Mac Pogue, who put a unique spin on the design for Hemingway's first novel. By pairing a striking, figurative front cover, with an abstract back cover, Mac put together a package that succeeds in feeling both timeless and brand new.
🌅 In Summary 🌅
Thanks for going on this deep dive with me! I'm really excited to get back into writing these 'Letters' in 2022, so expect some more coming to your inbox every couple weeks.
I want to send a huge shoutout to those who've already pre-ordered, especially those folks who've had my back when this little venture first launched in Summer 2021. Simply, we wouldn't be here without you! Thanks so much in believing what we're trying to make happen at Century Press.
Lastly, for those still on the fence about placing an order, remember that you can save $20.00 off the list price when you pre-order today.
]]>Due to Covid, supply-chain bottlenecks have emerged that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Simply put, right now there aren’t enough container shipping containers, dockworkers, and truck drivers to move these books halfway across the world efficiently or at a low cost.
Reading this, I couldn’t help but appreciate that Century Press’ books are printed in Cornwall, only an hour away from my home. Plus, our bookbindery is located a mere 45 minute drive away in Smiths Falls. With a supply chain so local to our headquarters in Ottawa, the last thing on my mind is rising shipping container rates or import/export issues.
When production of The Great Gatsby was moving along more slowly than I anticipated, a colleague suggested that I tell my customers that it was due to Covid-related delays; after all, who wasn’t encountering those? Truthfully, I couldn’t do it, because it was frankly untrue! Century Press wasn’t being slowed down by our globalized supply chain, we just wanted to ensure that we had sufficient time to deliver a high-quality product to our early supporters!
Letterpress printing is not something that can be photographed on an iPhone overseas and approved by email. It needs to have fingers run across it and be viewed at varying angles with different kinds of light. Similarly, how can a leather binding be assessed without feeling it in your hands as you flip the pages?
Making a Century Press edition is not something that can be done remotely.
And on the subject of remote work, for all those out there with Zoom-fatigue, I am with you 100%. In fact, I think I may realistically have a full-fledged Zoom-phobia. One huge benefit of having our suppliers so close is that I can actually talk to them in real life! Besides reducing my ‘screen-time,’ this makes the process of innovating and troubleshooting our books much more effective.
All in all, at Century Press we think that leveraging a local supply chain makes for better books. Plus, supporting the local book publishing economy helps ensure that these jobs—and more importantly, these scarce, valuable skillsets—don't fundamentally disappear from the community.
]]>Up here in Ottawa, my family is getting adjusted to a new baby (Eve) in the house, while down in Cornwall, our printer Ian has been working away with his baby (Charlie the Heidelberg Windmill Platen Press) churning out 500 copies of the Great Gatsby.
In our previous letter we discussed how letterpress printing was lost in the mid-20th century. In this one today we'll chat about how letterpress has undergone a renaissance in recent years, and how we're updating the process in 2021.
Rather than using metal type to imprint text on the page, we are working with photopolymer plates to do our printing. Below is an image of Ian at his platemaker.
The first step in making photopolymer plates is taking the digitally typeset book that we created and having it converted to negative film. In order to make highest definition plates, we require super high-quality negatives to be created from our digitally typeset pages. We work with a Montreal-based team that's been in business for over 34 years to ensure the crispest of impressions.
Once the negative film is combined with a blank photopolymer plate and processed through the platemaker, you have raised text on a relief plate, almost exactly the same as if you hand-set the metal type. Here, I was able to design the divider digitally and have it well translated to photopolymer.
Once the plate is inked and imprinted onto paper in the press, you have the resulting print:
You can check out a video of this process in action that Ian took below.
I think he knows more about printing on a Heidelberg Windmill than just about anyone around these parts. His savoir-faire and commitment to quality mean that each page of our books are a complete pleasure to read.
This video makes the whole process look like a straightforward load-er-up rinse and repeat, hit cmd-P, etc. Honestly, there couldn't be anything further from the truth!
Ian needs to be constantly adjusting and accounting for factors such as the outside humidity to ensure that sheets aren't sticking together and running as doubles. He also needs to be aware of thunderstorms in the area, since a power outage during a print-run could seriously impact the machine. Plus, precise adjustments need to be made before running every plate so that the impressions are deep, but not so deep they bleed to the back of the page.
Last but not least, here's an image of my fully loaded car en route to Smiths Falls Bookbindery. Thankfully I removed the car seats or all the copies wouldn't have fit!
Looking forward to sharing some more content from bindery soon,
Alex
]]>
In my older books, the text was crisp, sharp, and indented into the page, which together created a tactile, multi-dimensional reading experience. Conversely, the text on my newer books reminded me of homework assignments printed on my inkjet printer at home; words sat lifelessly on top of the paper, often a bit blurry and lacking definition.
I soon understood that my older books were printed using letterpress, while my newer books must have used a different method...
Therein lied my question: if letterpress printed books were aesthetically superior to contemporarily printed books, why did they stop being printed with letterpresses?
I was on a mission to find the answer.
So please, join me on this journey through time to learn... "How Letterpress Was Lost"
Considering how revolutionary Gutenberg's printing press was in the 15th century, the process of preparing text for printing (typesetting) actually changed very little over the subsequent 450 years. For nearly half a millennium, individual letters made of metal or wood would need to be individually handset to make the words and the sentences that when placed side-by-side, make a written work.
As you can imagine, the process of creating full pages of text one letter at a time was incredibly tedious and labour intensive. As an example, this meant that a daily newspaper could never be more than 8 pages long in the days of handset type.
It wasn't until an American-German engineer, Ottmar Mergenthaler, invented the linotype in the 1880s that this typesetting process was mechanized. With his linotype machine, a "line-of-type" (get it?) would be created by typing letters into a keyboard and then having those metal letters cast 'on the fly' out of a molten metal cauldron.
You can watch a video of this super intricate, behemoth of engineering in action recorded by a role-model of mine, Andrew Steeves at Gaspereau Press in Nova Scotia.
These linotype machines revolutionized the work-flow for letterpress printing, and were thus a mainstay for 60-70 years because they made it possible for a relatively small number of operators to set type for many pages daily.
However, there were a number of drawbacks to these 'hot metal' typecasting machines:
So, what happened next?
Two technologies would be developed that—by the 1960s—would in conjunction ensure the removal of letterpress from its once dominant role.
The first was...
Phototypesetting
This technique removed metal type from the equation all together, and instead replaced it with photosensitive film. Just like that, all the heavy metal type and machinery could be put away, and typesetting could be performed in a normal office environment, rather than an industrial workspace.
But how does it work?
Essentially, light would be projected through a negative image of an individual letter onto photosensitive film, darkening the film in the exact shape of the letter. Then it would move to the side, and the next letter would be projected through with light.
All the characters in a particular font would be present on a plate, whose movement would be controlled by a machine, as the user inputted different letters into a keyboard.
Furthermore, by combining lenses with these plates, the size of the font could be updated dynamically, which couldn't be performed on a linotype. Below is an image of one of these plates with the Futura font.
Okay I now I must admit that when I learned about the next step, I couldn't believe how crazy it seemed to a millennial who had been using a word processor since 3rd grade.
Here's what happens next
After all the type has been set onto photosensitive film using the photosetting plate, it is then arranged on a 'light table' in the final size as the page which is to be printed. Please see image below :-) Different sections of text would be rearranged into different layouts using rubber cement or wax adhesive (not just for arts and crafts).
Then, the next step (yes it gets better!)
After the film had been organized on the light table with a semi-permanent adhesive, yet another step needed to occur. This layout would be put on an easel and then photographed yet again by an enormous device called a 'stat camera.'
The same-size negative from the stat camera was then used to make the template for the printing press that would be used to repeatedly produce the printed text on paper.
And these templates or 'plates' are the segue into our second technological innovation...
Offset Printing
To begin, letterpress printing and offset printing employ fundamentally different techniques to essentially complete the same task of printing words on paper.
Let's synthesize Phototypesetting and Offset Printing: When the film negative from the stat camera is overlaid on top of a blank lithographic plate and exposed to a particular catalyst (e.g. light or chemicals), it results in a printing plate with two surfaces: one that attracts ink (the letters) and one that repels ink (the blank space).
The diagram below explains how these two technologies are used in conjunction for the printing process.
In an offset printer, the lithographic plates for offset printing are first covered with water, then covered with ink. The non-text areas absorb water, so that when an oil-based ink is applied afterwards, the ink is not applied to that area (because water and oil repel each other).
Basically, that's the lithographic technique: water and oil don't mix.
But what does the 'offset' in Offset printing mean?
Unlike letterpress, where the inked plates are directly applied to the printing paper, in offset printing, the inked plate is first transferred to a rubber blanket, and it is that rubber blanket that inks the printed page coming through the impression cylinder. Ergo, the ink is 'offset' or transferred to another surface before it reaches the paper.
While the most recent ones can still be watched today, the first 1926 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby has been lost to the world. "Lost" means that no prints, negatives, or any other materials of the silent film are known to have survived in any archive. Some enthusiasts clung to rumors that a full copy of the film was archived in Moscow, but this was never substantiated.
Frankly, the largest cause of silent film loss was intentional destruction. These films were viewed as having little future value when their theatrical runs ended. Moreover, by the end of the silent era, silent films themselves were perceived as completely worthless. Meanwhile, the studios could actually earn money by recycling the film for their silver content.
With much excitement, in 1997—71 years after the film was released—the original trailer was located on a severely deteriorated reel of nitrate film by a collector in San Francisco. Once it was copied onto safety film by the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, the film completely decomposed, leaving no physical trace of the original film behind.
Why care so much about this nearly 100 year-old trailer? Today the Jazz Age is one of the most parodied and riffed upon eras in our modern day. And unlike the other Great Gatsby adaptations, this was a film document of the Jazz Age that was actually filmed in the Jazz Age. Check out the restored trailer below.
Above all other considerations, Paramount was hoping for a significant box office payday for their film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, and to this end, they played up the party scenes at Gatsby's mansion for all their scandalous potential.
The critical response to the film version was less than positive. Mordaunt Hall—actually the first official film critic for the New York Times—writes, "The screen version of The Great Gatsby is quite good entertainment, but... neither [the director] nor the players have succeeded in fully developing the characters." He also makes a note, which I found comical, of how 'unrealistic' Daisy's alcohol consumption appeared (see below)
The response from F Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda was far more severe. In a letter from her to her daughter Scottie, she writes: “We saw The Great Gatsby in the movies. It’s ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left.” Can you imagine walking out of your own movie? Sheesh.
Notably, Baz Luhrmann's 2013 version seems to echo the bombastic, sybaritic tone of the long lost 1926 film. While the original film was a mere 80 minutes long, the 2013 version appears to take the same approach, but for a duration of nearly two and a half hours. In a thumbs-down review from The Chicago Reader, the critic states: "Luhrmann is exactly the wrong person to adapt such a delicately rendered story, and his 3D feature plays like a ghastly Roaring 20s blowout at a sorority house."
This time of course, F Scott and Zelda are no longer around to pass judgement on the latest adaptation of The Great Gatsby; however, we do have word that Fitzgerald's granddaughter, writer and filmmaker Eleanor Lanahan, loved it!
"I’ve come all the way from Vermont and I wanted to see what [Luhrmann] did to my grandfather’s book. I do feel Scott would have been proud."
Hmph, I can't help but wonder if he would have!
A reminder to any descendants of F Scott Fitzgerald reading this, you can pre-order the Century Press edition of The Great Gatsby here.
Cheers,
Alex
I wouldn’t advise anyone to judge a book by its cover, but by all means, you should feel free to judge it by how it is constructed.
I recall a high school chemistry textbook that had, by year’s end, begun to shed individual pages one-by-one into my backpack. I tried to reorganize them in the correct order, but soon I had dozens of loose leaves of paper tearing and crumpling as they spilled out of the spine. Today I recognize that this rapid decay of a brand new textbook was not the result of my daily diligent studying (I loathed chemistry), but rather the result of a poorly made binding.
While new technology has certainly made book printing more automated and less expensive, it has assuredly come at the expense of both quality and durability.
Of course readers absolutely deserve to have access to the myriad of books out there in the world at affordable prices; however, I wonder if this rationale holds as true given today’s proliferation of (often free) e-books and relatively affordable e-readers?
And what if we consider the current business model of the paperback publishing industry? In this case, if an author’s books don’t sell, the bookseller retains the right to return them back to the publisher. For mass-market fiction books, it’s estimated that up to 85% of these copies end up being returned to the publisher whereafter they are at best pulped and recycled, and at worst thrown in the trash.
Sure, this pattern may represent a kind of ‘circular economy,’ but wouldn’t distributing predominately digital copies of a book circumvent the cycle of producing low-quality materials only to pulp them and reconstitute the low-quality material yet again?
When designing Century Press’ first book, I considered not just the words of the novel, but also the paper the words were written on, how those pages were bound together, and in what manner the collection of pages were covered. I wanted to make choices that would ensure our books could last for generations. At all costs, I wanted to avoid bringing a physical object into the world that felt designed with the expectation that it would be disposed.
You’ll find below three images that compare my 1974 Penguin Paperback edition of The Great Gatsby to our Century Press edition.
We’ll start first with the paper. The first thing you’ll notice about the Penguin edition is the characteristic yellowing of pages that you’d expect from older books. Remarkably, age is not the key determinant of yellowing but rather the content of the paper, in this case wood pulp, which contains lignin. Lignin is a natural occurring polymer that plays a role binding together the cellulose fibers of the wood. When lignin is exposed to sunlight, it undergoes an irreversible oxidation process, which degrades the polymer, making the molecule absorb more light. This reaction, along with oxidation caused by other chemicals present in the production of wood pulp have the effect of turning the pages yellow.
Notably, cotton paper has no lignin! Ergo, a 500-year-old book made with cotton fiber will often appear in better condition than a 50-year-old novel printed on wood pulp.
In addition to the yellowing, you’ll also notice that there are more fiber inclusions in the Penguin edition as well. The cotton paper we use looks far more uniform, and will over time.
Then, there is the difference in how the words print on the paper. The offset print Penguin edition is occasionally less precise than the letterpress version on the right (notice the ‘c’ in closer and the left side of the ‘w’ in wan). The Century Press cotton paper also appears much fluffier, and takes a nice impression from the letterpress; in contrast, the words on the offset printed wood pulp paper on the left appear to ride on top of the paper.
Next, we’ll move on to the binding of the book.
Evident in the Penguin edition is the presence of brittle, dry glue where the book block was pasted into the paper cover. This type of binding is know as ‘perfect binding’ where all the pages and cover are glued together at the spine. Most commonly, ethylene vinyl acetate is used as the glue for perfect binding. While this adhesive cures quickly (beneficial for mass-production), it’s liable to melt in high heat, and crack in very cold temperatures.
In our Century Press edition, on the other hand, the pages of the book have been sewn together with actual thread, rather than a thick smearing of glue. Securing the pages together in this fashion makes the book far more durable than a glued, perfect bound book.
Think, would you feel more comfortable if your pants were glued together or sewn together?
The last point I wanted to touch on is the spine.
In the Robert Redford edition, the amount of glue needed to secure the page has resulted in some seepage between the individual leaves. By consequence, this means that the paperback book can’t be laid flat on a table to read, nor be opened widely without damaging the integrity of the spine.
When the pages of a book are thread-sewn, no glue exists between pages and the book can be opened wide, laid down flat, and read comfortably. Moreover, by thread sewing the pages, we are able to add a few aesthetically pleasing elements like a curved spine and a colored headband.
In short, this post describes the books we’re trying to make: long-lasting and better-looking. After all why shouldn’t we want the same for our books as we do for ourselves !
A big thanks to all those who’ve pre-ordered so far. For those who are considering, remember you can save 10% off the cover price when you pre-order today.
Cheers,
Alex
When I first read The Great Gatsby in my high school English class, the story was so fantastical that I couldn't imagine that it described a real place. The grounds on which Gatsby’s parties occurred appeared to be taken out of a dream, and the desolate Valley of Ashes with Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s spectacles loomed otherworldly, and larger than life.
It wasn’t until I re-read the novel in graduate school that I fully recognized that the locales described in the novel had real life parallels on Long Island.
Were it not for the map appended to the end of my paperback copy, I honestly wouldn’t have made the connection. Fittingly, I happened to be reading The Great Gatsby as I embarked on a flight from New York City to Boston, meaning that my flight path out of Laguardia Airport took me right over the northern part of Long Island and thus provided an aerial view of the Fitzgeralds’s two ‘Eggs,’ more commonly known as ‘Necks’ outside the domain of the novel.
I recall craning my neck out the airplane window as I matched up the geography on my printed map with the terrain below, and then imagining both Daisy and Gatsby’s houses on opposite sides of Manhasset Bay. I imagined the route the commuter train of the Long Island Railroad would take to Penn Station and the roads that took the characters speeding back and forth from New York City.
In Miles Corak’s introduction to our edition, he goes into greater depth regarding the geographical touch points of The Great Gatsby, and especially what they signify in terms of socioeconomic inequality. I won’t steal his thunder, but after talking to a family member who grew up on Long Island, I became much more interested in sleuthing out the precise equivalents of the book’s key locales.
One of the most iconic images from the novel is that of the ‘green light.’ Early in the story, Nick Carraway recalls watching Gatsby staring across the bay from West to East:
“Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.”
What could this green light have been? My relative, who had spent time sailing in Manhasset Bay as a young man relayed to me that this light may actually have been emanating from an entry buoy in the water. I then downloaded the NOAA Booklet Chart for the Long Island Sound and was able to locate the buoys right there in Manhasset Bay. It was then that I saw it off the coast of Plum Point labeled ‘Fl G 4s,’ which can be translated as being a flashing green light blinking every 4 seconds.
Then I thought that Daisy’s house must have then been right off Plum Point. After all, it would make sense, given that the homes here in 2021 are enormous estates, exactly like the ones from the novel. When we zoom in with Google Maps, we can see the dock that Nick and Gatsby descried earlier. Although perhaps they mistook the light as coming from the dock, when it came from the buoy. Or potentially F. Scott Fitzgerald himself didn’t perceive the difference.
In this way we can almost imagine the actual location on the ‘Eggs’ where Daisy and Gatsby’s homes sit.
While as of today, many of the mansions of the Hearsts and Guggenheims have been torn down as they became too expensive to maintain, the town of Sands Point (or East Egg) still occupies the title of richest town in New York State.
For a deeper investigation into the socioeconomic geography of The Great Gatsby, check out Miles Corak’s new introduction in our edition coming out next month.
]]>In the quest for guidance, I asked a wide range of people for their opinions and somewhat surprisingly received an equally wide range of responses.
Notably, older folks were more inclined to keep the word as originally intended by F. Scott Fitzgerald — after all that is what he actually wrote.
Still, I wonder if Bantam Books would’ve made the same decision in 1945 to swap “guy” for “kyke” if the author didn’t happen to have already died from a heart attack five years prior? Does that mean it’s more acceptable to modify an original text provided the author is no longer living? I’m not certain that’s a good rule to follow…
Perhaps not surprisingly, those in my generation (Millennial), felt more strongly about exercising some editorial privilege and making a change. But if a change were made, should it be silent/unwritten, or should there be a note in the text, whether footnoted, or at the end of the novel? These choices would have clear aesthetic costs and benefits, potentially distracting from the story itself.
That being said, weren’t the existing edits made by Bantam (“guy”) and Penguin Books (“tyke”) also potentially distracting? To me, they certainly create some dissonance and ambiguity of meaning in the fictional context.
In Chapter 2, the shrill Ms. McKee asserts: “I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s way below you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.”
Is a “tyke” or “guy” necessarily a person that’s “way below you”? In my opinion, the meaning of this dialogue, the portrayal of Ms. McKee, and by consequence the nature of all the partygoers who are in attendance at Tom Buchanan’s not-so-secret NYC apartment become flattened. Fitzgerald intends for his readers to find Ms. McKee to be coarse, crass and vulgar, and we do—just not in the intended way.
The act of intentionally—and often thoughtlessly—editing texts, which can result in their concomitant loss of meaning, in order to appear more politically correct seems to be one of the primary arguments against making changes to classic novels.
Indeed, headlines were made roughly a decade ago when a new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn was published that replaced the N-word with “slave.” While the intent of the author and publisher of this edition was to preempt censorship that would remove Twain’s work from academic curriculum, this editing choice is self-defeating insofar as it muddles the meaning of a word used dozens of times in the book.
The N-word and “slave” are not synonyms, in the same way “kyke” and “tyke” are not synonyms.
Along those lines, as a publisher of classic novels, the question of what I would do with Mark Twain obviously crossed my mind. Would I ever publish a book with the N-word in it? Short answer: absolutely not!
Humans, whether fictional or not, use words to describe groups of people. As our culture constantly evolves, the terms to describe groups of people can transition from derogatory to non-derogatory or vice-versa. What remains constant, to a large extent is the actual description of that group (i.e. who we picture in our minds when the word is said).
I don’t believe that derogatory terms for groups of people should be re-printed if an equally descriptive, non-derogatory version of that term can be substituted. A slur itself exists with the purpose of insulting a person or group, not necessarily to describe them.
Like any decision-making framework, there are pros and cons to making any editorial adjustments to classic texts, but importantly here, I’m not advocating for the original edition of The Great Gatsby to be wiped from the historical record. If people want to read the original version, it’s easily accessible in written form, as well as a Tim Robbins audiobook. Perhaps some readers didn’t even know about the mid-century edits until they read this post!
Century Press was created in order to be relevant to the present era. That’s why we emphasize sustainable materials and local production. That’s why we have a new introduction from an economist discussing why The Great Gatsby rings true in 2021. And that’s why I’m exercising my editorial pen to make my own modification to the novel, and choosing to replace the derogatory term “kyke” with the non-derogatory term “Jew.”
Agree? Disagree? Don’t know what to think? Let me know in the comments.
]]>What I didn’t expect was that this process was not very straightforward.
Of course, I considered the smaller stylistic choices such as what words should be italicized vs. bracketed by single or double quotation marks, etc.
Yet, uncovering the existence of censorship in different versions of The Great Gatsby was not part of the plan.
How did I recognize this? In addition to using a 1974 Penguin Books paperback edition to check my formatting and typesetting, I also listened to an audiobook of The Great Gatsby as I read the text and checked for typos and elisions. Surprisingly there’s been some real rock stars like Jake Gyllenhaal who have narrated the book.
In my case, I had the version narrated by none other than Tim Robbins, who played Andy Dufresne in the all-time classic film The Shawshank Redemption. Honestly, it was hard to stay fully focused because I kept on thinking Morgan Freeman would come into the action at any time. Nevertheless, I hunkered down and kept my eyes on the words, and my ears on Nick Carraway/Tim Robbins/Andy Dufresne.
Then, halfway down page 40 I nearly spit my coffee out. What the heck did Tim Robbins just say!?
I replayed it three times before I could believe my ears. In the womanly voice of Mrs. McKee, he declares “I almost married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me.” Why was Andy Dufresne dropping the K-bomb? I quickly referenced my Penguin edition where “little tyke” was written instead. Now I began to piece it together; in the context of the book, the K-bomb made much more sense. “Tyke” on the other hand was acceptable, but really a poorly suited substitution for this word.
What was the source of this discrepancy? I had to get to the bottom of the mystery.
I found the answer in Professor James L. W. West III's book, Making the Archives Talk.
He writes:
Most editions of The Great Gatsby since 1925 print either “kyke,” Fitzgerald’s spelling from the manuscript, or the more commonly found “kike.” But within the first American paperback edition (published initially by Bantam Books in November 1945, five years after Fitzgerald’s death), one finds a plate variant on page 42. The variant occurs between the third impression of March 1946 and the fourth of March 1951. The word “kyke” becomes “guy.”
From “kyke” to “guy” to “tyke…” What a journey this sentence has made! Professor West posits that the public awareness of the Holocaust during WWII likely warranted these changes to the original text. To me, that checks out, but it’s curious that there’s no textual note in any of these edited copies, and by and large, this unmentioned censorship hasn’t been discussed widely in public discourse.
While the edits to Gatsby have been swept under the rug without much notice, the question of censorship in older books has proven an evergreen and divisive topic in contemporary news.
In the USA, this undoubtedly ignited a partisan flashpoint with condemnations of “Cancel Culture” on one side; and on the other, the desire to take a stronger approach to diversifying children’s bookshelves.
So where did I stand? Should I honor the text as originally intended? Should I keep the prior replacement words, “guy” or “tyke”? Should I choose another word entirely?
What would you do? Tell me in the comments.
(To be continued)
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Why do we use this antiquated technique? Simply, it’s for the unparalleled aesthetic effect.
If you haven’t read a book printed earlier than the 1950s, you may not know that the words you’re reading on the page have the capability to possess a completely different appearance. Specifically, with letterpress printing, the ‘words’ themselves are directly pressed onto the paper, leaving a debossed impression in the paper, which you can both see in the light and feel with your fingers. The effect is the exact opposite of the sterile, flat pages that are churned out of an office printer.
You can really see the difference between the letterpressed pages of the Century Press edition of The Great Gatsby vs. my 1973 paperback Penguin Classics edition made with offset printing.
Although letterpress printing is rarely used today, it used to be the predominant form of printing starting from the 15th century with Gutenberg until the mid 20th century. When I first told my step-father about Century Press, he began to reminisce about using these behemoth, metal machines in a high-school printing class back in the day.
However, in 2021, we live in hyper-digital age, where almost any book can be easily put on an e-reader. Despite this, 4 out of 5 books sold today are hard-copy. We undoubtedly enjoy the tactile sensation of holding physical books in our hands. If we’re going through the effort of bringing a novel into the physical realm, shouldn't it be made aesthetically appealing? Certainly ‘the words are the words,’ but would you not enjoy your romantic dinner more by candlelight rather than under the intensity of 5000K fluorescent tubes?
Digital and offset printing today is a largely automated affair using enormous machines that look straight out of those TV programs that infiltrate factories to show you ‘How it’s Made!’ By contrast, at Century Press our books are printed on a 70-year old workhorse machine called a Heidelberg Windmill. This printing press requires a substantial amount of experience to be effectively operated and needs to be empirically and manually adjusted by a trained printer. There is definitely no ‘Print’ button you can hit.
Forged from metal and lubricated with oil, many of these machines have fallen into disrepair with the advent of the digital age and mass produced plastic printers. The artisan knowledge required to repair and use these machines is in danger of being lost for future generations. Even today, letterpress printers must pass around digital scans of the yellowed and torn manuals in order to understand how to operate and troubleshoot these machines.
Unlike our home electronics with their planned obsolescence, these Windmills can live and print forever, provided there’s someone out there who has the body of knowledge to do so. That’s why I have so much respect for our printer, Ian, who operates a one-man letterpress shop in Cornwall, Ontario. He’s keeping this knowledge alive, and fortunately starting to pass some of it to me as well.
A huge thanks to everyone who's placed a pre-order so far, and for those still on the fence, remember that you can save 10% off the cover price when you pre-order today.
Cheers,
Alex
]]>It's been a big day here at Century Press! After months of planning and discussion, I finally received the prototype of The Great Gatsby.
]]>After months of planning and discussion, I finally received the prototype of The Great Gatsby from Laura (a.k.a. The Bookbinder's Daughter) at Smiths Falls Bookbinding. I owe her a big "Thank You" for helping me turn my ideas for a Century Press edition into a tangible reality. She's a third-generation artisan book binder with a heart of gold.
Speaking of gold, the gold foil cover art designed by Rachel Moranis really came out excellent. We were hoping for some extra detail in the stamping, but the up-cycled leather we're using for the bindings is a little more finicky than traditional bookbinding leather. Laura and I had to do a good bit of trial and error to stamp on this garment leather as it's typically treated with silicone and tends to stretch.
We were justly rewarded for our efforts because this leather feels unlike almost any other leather-bound book I've ever touched. I hate using this word, but truthfully, the leather is buttery. I suppose that's the upside of using deadstock leather from a designer clothing brand. It's honestly a pleasure to hold in your hands.
Of course, for all those binding nerds out there (are there any?), the pages of the book block are all sewn together for maximum durability. We have some decorative headbands and a built-in silk bookmark so you don't have the worry about losing yours. Even if you're the type to dog-ear the page, you'll want to avoid it, because the 100% cotton paper is thick with a lovely texture for each turn of the page.
Obviously, I took a fair number of photos of the prototype around the house that you'll either see on the website or social media. I thought I was doing the classic amateur photographer trick (i.e. taking pictures during the afternoon golden hour), but my wife said most of them just came out looking "sexy." I didn't believe you could achieve that in book photography, but I guess it's a good sign for the aesthetic appeal of our first book ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So when can you expect to have a copy of your own?
Miles Corak told me he's finishing up his introduction to The Great Gatsby in the next few weeks, and I'm stoked to read it and get it typeset into the book. Once that's ready, I'm sending it over to Ian Bristow at We Do Printing to make the physical plates before having it letterpress printed. After that, it's off to the binder and lastly to me to hand-number (cool, eh?), before being shipped right to your door.
I've had "arriving Spring 2021," the last day of which is June 20th. Let's just say it's going to be close, but I think I can make it happen :)
Thanks for following and for your support!
Pre-order The Great Gatsby today and save 10% off the cover price.
]]>After making the first test plate, I was really excited to see how the Heidelberg printed on different types of paper.
There's been a number of new papers that have recently been developed that use more sustainable fibers than wood pulp. Mohawk has created some super cool papers based on straw fiber and hemp fiber that I wanted to try out. One feature of these papers is that you can actually see some of the residual fibers in the final paper, which adds a unique effect without being distracting.
I also tested out a 100% cotton paper, which has more traditionally been used for letterpress. This cotton paper is made with reclaimed fibers from the garment industry, and is totally chlorine-free and of archival quality.
At the end of the test, I decided to move forward with the cotton paper rather than the Mohawk versions. While the novelty of these new papers is compelling, both the feel and the impression on the cotton sheets can't be beat. Plus, it's produced with wind and hydro energy.
I'm really looking forward to having folks see this paper in action when we start printing The Great Gatsby.
Cheers,
Alex
]]>When moving into a new place, setting up your bookshelf is a process that truly makes your house feel like a home. As I sat with my boxes of books, I realized that I didn't want to methodically populate the limited bookshelves with the torn-up, used paperbacks from my early years.
Given my limited shelf-space, I'd wanted to emphasize the books that really matter, the ones that have been well-bound, are both enjoyable to be read repeatedly and to display in my living room.
When deciding to purchase a new book, I'd often find that a classic book I wanted was only available for purchase in a mass-produced, budget paperback version or a fragile, antiquarian first-edition, the latter which could run into the thousands of dollars.
I was frustrated: why was there no middle ground for people who wanted quality-made, special books without a tycoon's bankroll?
Thus, I began Century Press with the vision of making books as remarkable as the stories they tell.
- Alex Simon
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