The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Richard Charkin is a British publishing executive who has worked in the publishing business since 1972. He has held executive positions at Pergamon Press, Oxford University Press, Reed International/Reed Elsevier and Current Science Group, and is the former Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Executive Director of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. We met in Bloomsbury, London to discuss some of the challenges Richard sees facing the publishing business. Among other this we talk birth control for books, gatekeepers, the exponential growth of scientific research papers, the continuing success of Harry Potter, hitting it big with best-sellers, the elephant and the codfish strategies, the erosion of copyright laws, salami slices, Brexit, the poverty of authors and demise of public libraries, more authors less money, why British and America editors, aubergines and eggplants, literary agents making work, legal monopolies, Penguin Random House, hardbacks versus paperbacks, Bloomsbury, China and cricket, managed economies and free enterprise, bringing Chinese books in English to the world, Mensch Publishing, Time to Go, Guy Kennaway, how to measure commercial success, publishing assets, and the attraction of combining commerce, culture and creativity. 

Throughout my twenties I harboured a strong desire to read the Great Books, but it wasn't until I'd finished university and come across Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan at the now defunct Book Den in Ottawa on MacLaren street, that I started to act seriously on the urge. It, and the 100 books recommended, had and continue to have a profound impact on my life. So, I was thrilled to learn that Anne Fadiman had written a memoir about her father called The Wine Lover's Daughter.   Anne is an essayist and reporter. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, her account of the cross-cultural conflicts between a Hmong family and the American medical system, won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, is a book about books (buying them, writing in their margins, and arguing with her husband on how to shelve them). At Large and At Small is a collection of essays on Coleridge, postal history, and ice cream, among other topics; it was the source of an encrypted quotation in the New York Times Sunday Acrostic. I met with Anne at the Brattleboro Literary Festival to talk, among other things, about opening sentences, erotic relationships with wine, male chauvinism, wine libraries, 900 bottles of wine, childhood poverty, Columbia University, leaving parents behind, Jewishness, Irving Wallace, cut roots, John Erskine, Great Books, The Lifetime Reading Plan and life lessons, prisoners, oaklings, Information Please, Harpo Marx, a patrician mid-Atlantic accent, translating Neitsche, retrieving wives, lovers that don't disappoint, Simon and Schuster, The New Yorker, multi-tasking, self-deprecation, counterfeits, mailing home toilet paper, hatred of television, open-mindedness and The New Lifetime Reading Plan, and the ability to take hedonistic pleasure in books and wine. 

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.   We met in Ottawa and talked about, among other things, his father Murray, a Bernini bronze, African art, reference books, Linda Frum's biography of her (and David's), mother Barbara, the mistrust of optimism, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and women, loyalty, how to become an expert in almost anything, the shock of the Great Depression, 2008, immigration, the deterioration of democracy, the role of political books, Trumpocracy, discovery and threats to sue, Trump: The Novel, the Whitehouse Correspondence Dinner, humiliation as a theme, laughter, Bin Laden, moral development and dilemma, Nick Carraway, publishers' advances, David's novel Patriots, Generals Mattis and McMaster, lying, Tom Wolfe, Donald Trump, vanity, Obama, Karen Horney, negative economics, mobilized voters, the Saudis, Trump towers, tax avoidance, Wikileaks, Putin, Deutsche Bank, Stephen Greenblatt's Tyrant, Shakespeare, Presidents born to great wealth, and standing up for the right thing.

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Shakespeare's Freedom; and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, has edited seven collections of criticism, and is a founding editor of the journal Representations. His honors include the 2016 Holberg Prize from the Norwegian Parliament, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 National Book Award for The Swerve.  Among his named lecture series are the Adorno Lectures in Frankfurt, the University Lectures at Princeton, and the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford. He has held visiting professorships at universities in Beijing, Kyoto, London, Paris, Florence, Torino, Trieste, and Bologna, as well as the Renaissance residency at the American Academy in Rome.  We met at the the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont to talk about his most recent book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, in which Donald Trump's name isn't mentioned once. I, however, make a point of mentioning it frequently. 

"Beowulf Sheehan studied photography at New York University and the International Center of Photography.  His childhood love of stories in books and music grew into an adulthood love of storytellers in the arts, entertainment, and humanities.  Beowulf makes portraits, communicates ideas, and shares the stories of compelling artists and figures who impact society and culture."  His book AUTHOR "captures the essence of 200 writers, historians, journalists, playwrights, and poets from 35 countries, from Roxane Gay to Masha Gessen, Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Karl Ove Knausgaard to J.K. Rowling, and Jonathan Franzen to Toni Morrison." I met Beowulf at the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and there talked with him about author photographs, Helumt Newton, father's love, drawing characters in stories, storytelling, studying what you don't like, business experience, farting around in your twenties, ICP, leaping into what you love, celebrating your subjects' journeys, making novel pictures, Leslie Jamison's photograph, the sidewalks of New York City, the Donna Tartt opportunity, commercial viability, serious photographs, Vanessa Veselka's tattoo, close reading, Harper Collins, Anthony Bourdain, humility and mutual respect, Iman, and vulnerability. 

John Shoesmith is Outreach Librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, and curator of the 2013 exhibition Death Greatly Exaggerated: Canada's Thriving Small and Fine Press which explored examples of the fine book-making craft in Canada since the year 2000 while nodding to Canada's small presses. We met at the Fisher and talked, among other things, about famed printer and book designer Robert Reid, Fraser Mines Revisited, Kuthan's Menagerie, McGill University Press, the Lande Bibliography of Canadiana, Heavenly Monkey, Barbarian Press, Pericles, Crispin and Jan Elsted, Simon Brett, Gus and Will Rueter, the Aliquando Press, Stan Bevington, Glenn Goluska, Margaret Atwood, Porcupine's Quill, Tim Inkster, Walter Bachinski  and Shanty Bay Press, Circus, George Walker, The Book of Hours, the Church Street Press, Gapereau Press, Andrew Steeves, Michael Torosian, Lumiere Press, Hell Box Press, ordering the Death Greatly Exaggerated catalogue, book fairs, and bookplates by Wesley Bates.   

Lumiere Press is the private press of Michael Torosian. In the fine press tradition, the books are composed in lead, hand printed and hand bound. The press is devoted exclusively to photography, and each book aspires in its concept, graphic design, and bookmaking craftsmanship to be the manifestation of its artistic content. The shop's first printing press was acquired in 1981, and in 1986 the publishing program was launched with the publication of Edward Weston: Dedicated to Simplicity. I met with Michael in his Toronto workshop. We talk here, among other things, about Edward Weston and his son Cole, simplicity, abstraction, the homage series, self-education, the octavo format, Mohawk letterpress paper, harmony, marketing, Aaron Siskind, modernist photography, idols, completionists, Walter Gretzky, The Complete Photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, composition, the photo album, the book as the medium of photography, Glenn Goluska, privates presses as the vision of individuals, Stan Bevington, antiquarian book dealers, Buffalo NY, instincts and good taste, Printing for Poetry, matching typefaces to the times, recording conversations, a 10-zillion-photograph-a-minute universe; ambition, research and Saul Leiter; Eduard Steichen, and the Lumiere Press archive at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. 

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet in Toronto. He has worked as a book columnist for The National Post, and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of three books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough, and Strike Anywhere, a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Toronto Life, The Walrus, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University and a finalist for the Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism. I met Michael at his home in Toronto to talk about his essays in Strike Anywhere (Porcupine's Quill, 2016) Canadian Poetry, Rupi Kaur, Al Purdy and Wordsworth, common speech and common sense, Carmine Starnino and The Lover's Quarrel, John Metcalf, Leonard Cohen and schmaltz, John Thompson, Dante, Scott Griffin, the Saudi arms deal, Margaret Atwood, MacBeth, long-form investigative journalism, crime reporting, self-interest, radical truth-telling and men crying.   

Elaine Dewar – author, journalist, television story editor—has been propelled since childhood by insatiable curiosity and the joy of storytelling. Her journalism has been honored by nine National Magazine awards, including the prestigious President’s Medal, and the White Award. Her first book, Cloak of Green, delved into the dark side of environmental politics and became an underground classic. Dewar has been called “one of Canada’s best muckrakers and “Canada’s Rachel Carson.” We met at her house in Toronto to talk about her latest book, "The Handover: How Bigwigs & Bureaucrats Transferred Canada's Best Publisher and the Best Part of Our Literary Heritage to a Foreign Multinational;" about the history of McClelland and Steward, Jack McClelland's love of Canada, Canadian authors and Canadian Literature, government funding of Canadian publishers, nationalist policy, Avi Bennett, the University of Toronto, Penguin RandomHouse, oligopsonies, deep throat, tax credits, improperly given grants, "Puts," $16 million worth of debts, cleverness, Robert Pritchard, diversity of thought, lies, money made re-issuing The Handmaid's Tale, Canada as the first post-national country, benefits of economic nationalism,  bureaucrats, how Canada works, Canadian stories, and solutions. 

Peggy L. Fox is the former president and publisher of New Directions, was Tennessee Williams’s last editor, and is James Laughlin’s literary coexecutor. She lives in Athens, New York, where we met to talk about, among other things, her career at New Directions, Tennessee Williams, the Chinese poet Bei Dao, Norfolk confetti, contacts and connections, James Laughlin's literary influence, letter writing, re-introducing deceased giants, Barbara Elpler, W.G. "Max" Sebald, Gore Vidal, and New Directions's colophon design.