The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

I met with famed Czech writer/novelist Ivan Klima at his home in Prague to  talk about his memoir My Crazy Century. Topics covered include the criminal conspiracy of communism, the impact on his life of the Terazin concentration camp, the thrill of freedom, forests, poisonous mushrooms, communist stupidity and lack of common sense, Potemkin villages, political apathy, great literature describing complications in human relationships, fiction as invention not real life, socialism's lack of productivity, Philip Roth's understanding of persecution, the value of old maps, Samizdat literature, Kafka, and the novel Love and Garbage We're joined by Ivan's son, and grand-daughter, to help with translation, and by a squeaky chair, but I don't have to tell you that. Please keep in mind that Ivan is today a man in his late eighties.

Guy Baxter has been University Archivist at University of Reading since 2008. His responsibilities include caring for the Archive of British Publishing and Printing, the archives of the Museum of English Rural Life, and the Beckett Collection. Guy has worked in museum archives for over 15 years and has advised on several major research projects including Staging Beckett (AHRC), Giving Voice to the Nation (AHRC) and the East London Theatre Archive/ CEDAR (JISC). He is a Trustee of the Beckett International Foundation. I met him at the Museum to talk about the Printing and Publishing Archive, and the Ladybird books collection and permanent exhibition. Among other things we discussing the importance of correspondence to the publishing business, Mills and Boon, file sets, literary biography, reader reports, Tolkien, Stanley Unwin, chance and serendipity, the importance of a general pubic audience, Agatha Christie, police mechanics using the Ladybird experts series, the appeal of Ladybird books to adults, and their conservative nature, the civil rights movement, a whitewashed view of history, diasporic nature of archives, competition, Ted Hughes, the Harry Ranson Center, critical mass, personal relationships and Samuel Beckett and archives-led study.     

Historian John Cole started working at the Library of Congress as a young man in 1966. Most of his books since have dealt with this venerable institution. We talk here about it's influence on American political and cultural life, about Thomas Jefferson as bibliophile, about books comprising a small part of the library's total collection; capturing, cataloging and digitizing the world's intellectual activity, serving the blind, teaching teachers how to use the collection on-line, subjective collecting, documenting thought and the Library's fine folk life collection.  

Stephan Delbos is a New England-born writer living in Prague, where he teaches at Anglo-American University and Charles University. His poetry, essays and translations have appeared internationally in journals such as Absinthe, Agni, Oxonian Review, PEN America, and Zoland Poetry. He is the editor of From a Terrace in Prague: A Prague Poetry Anthology (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011). A collection of visual, music-inspired poems, “Bagatelles for Typewriter,” was exhibited at Prague’s ArtSpace Gallery in May 2012. His first full-length play, “Chetty’s Lullaby,” about the life of trumpet legend Chet Baker, has been produced in New York and San Francisco. His co-translation of The Absolute Gravedigger, by Czech poet Vítězslav Nezval, was awarded the PEN/Heim Translation grant in 2015 and was published by Twisted Spoon Press. Deaf Empire, his play about Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, was produced by the Prague Shakespeare Company in 2017. He is the author of the poetry chapbook In Memory of Fire (Cape Cod Poetry Review, 2016), and a founding editor of the online literary magazine B O D Y. I met Stephan at his home in Prague where we talked about why he moved to the city, American poetry during the cold war, the founding and flourishing of B.O.D.Y., the great poets in From a Terrace in Prague and its functioning as a literary guide to the city, prolific surrealist poet Czech Vítězslav Nezval, the definition of surrealist poetry, the importance of reading and translation to the Czechs and Europeans, the impetus behind writing poems, the poetic tools and real life experiences called upon to create ‘In Memory of Fire,’ and famed Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.

Series: Biblio File in France Better known for its wines, the perfection of its local spoken French, it's cathedral and chateau, the city of Tours France also has a surprisingly rich historical connection with printing and typography. I was in Tours recently and visited the Musee de la Typographie. It may be small, but it's full of all sorts of different kinds of old printing equipment and tools, typefaces, woodcuts and handmade paper. As one visitor put it: "Muriel Méchin, the owner takes you on a personal discovery tour of his museum, including printing off some examples for you to take home on a press from the 1800s. I have been to many printing museums, but this is the first I have found that contains compositors tools such as the Moule à Arçon, a hand-held individual character casting device, that was the forerunner of the mechanical Monotype and Linotype machines hundreds of years later. You can actually handle many of the exhibits which most museums forbid. Muriel has published a very informative book which we were able to purchase; it is chock full of historical information and illustrated with photos and drawings explaining the history of a most interesting industry that goes back many hundreds of years. The museum is free." Since Muriel doesn't speak English, I sat down with his colleague Jean Louis Maitre to talk about the museum and the fascinating printing history of the local region. If you like English spoken with a thick French accent, you'll love listening to Jean Louis. 

I interviewed Lauren Elkin about her new book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London at her apartment in the Belleville neighbourhood of Paris. Stepping off a rather ordinary, noisy street through a large pair of solid French (!) doors, I encountered a lovely, quiet, tree-lined pathway/courtyard en route to "an airy, comfortable writer's home, filled with books, art, plants, and even a piano."   To start with, Elkin suggests that the flâneur is "the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon," and that the fl neuse is a “determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.” Virginia Woolf called it “street haunting”; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s New York."   Nonetheless since the flâneur has not, historically, been a very precisely drawn male character, we should be free, says Elkin, to define the flâneuse as we see fit, not as a female equivalent, but as an entity unto herself.

Yes, the background voices are distracting, but what do you expect, we're in a Welsh pub for crying out loud! Well, actually we're upstairs at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea at a bar surrounded by revellers who have just attended a hilarious poetry vs burlesque mashup down the hallway in the Centre's theatre. So everyone is pretty frisky. The performance kicked off the annual Dylan Thomas Festival.  Dylan Thomas expert Jo Furber is Swansea Council Literature Officer and curator of the Dylan Thomas Exhibition. She also sits on the board of the prestigious New Welsh Review, the country's foremost literary magazine in English. Listen as she fields every question I hurl at her with racing car driver reflexes and dexterity. Here, listeners, is everything you need to know about Thomas and how and why to visit Wales, if you happen to love his literature and poetry...even if you don't, you're sure to get caught up in the enthusiasm (be sure to listen for one of the revellers offering to buy me a drink about mid-way through the conversation). 

Wikipedia tells us that "Thomas Bewick (1753 – 1828) was an English engraver and  author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving , making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating children's books. He gradually turned to illustrating, writing and publishing his own books, gaining an adult audience for the fine illustrations in A History of Quadrupeds. His career began when he was apprenticed to engraver Ralph Beilby in Newcastle upon Tyne. He became a partner in the business and eventually took it over.  Bewick is best known for his A History of British Birds, which is admired today mainly for its wood engravings, especially the small, sharply observed, and often humorous vignettes known as tail-pieces. The book was the forerunner of all modern field guides. He notably illustrated editions of Aesop's Fables throughout his life. He is credited with popularising a technical innovation in the printing of illustrations using wood. He adopted metal-engraving tools to cut hard boxwood across the grain, producing printing blocks that could be integrated with metal type, but were much more durable than traditional woodcuts. The result was high-quality illustration at a low price."  *** In 1978 while working as an artist and printmaker (linoleum cuts, woodcuts and wood engravings), and painting landscapes in oils and watercolours David Esslemont established his own private press in his home town of Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England. Here he published the first of several books with wood engravings by Thomas Bewick and his apprentices: Thomas Bewick: A Commemoration, John Bewick a Selection of Wood Engravings, Luke Clennell: Bewick Apprentice, and Thomas Bewick: Birds These books were printed by hand on dampened paper on a Columbian press and published in limited editions.  Who better then to talk to about Bewick than Esslemont. I travelled out to David's farm in Iowa to discuss Thomas.   

Gaylord Schanilec is an American wood engraver, printer, designer and illustrator. He is the proprietor of Midnight Paper Sales press. Schanilec has "set the standard for contemporary artist’s books over the last 30 years." His highly collected and unique fine press books explore his interests and experiences as well as his hometown Wisconsin landscape and community. From farming culture and the rivers of the Mississippi to an exhaustive inventory of the 24 species of trees surrounding his home and studio in Stockholm, Wisconsin, Schanilec’s wood engravings illustrate local landscapes, historical anecdotes and natural science investigations. He has also featured New York City in two books. Lac des Pleurs is a study of the 22-mile length of the upper Mississippi River known as Lake Pepin.  He is currently working on My Mighty Journey, a book inspired by the 12,000-year-long journey of Saint Anthony Falls, the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi River, from Saint Paul to Minneapolis — a distance of ten miles. Schanilec is a frequent lecturer and leads workshops at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the University of Iowa. His works can be found in the collections of major academic institutions, libraries and museums. I met with Gaylord at his workshop in St. Paul to talk about his life and work. 

David Esslemont is an artist, designer, printmaker and bookbinder. He makes books from scratch, most recently about food, and publishes under his Solmentes Press imprint. He was Artistic Director of the University of Wales Gregynog Press from 1985–97 and has won many book design awards including the Felice Feliciano International Award in 1991. Esslemont’s work can be found in both private and public collections worldwide. (His archive to 2005 is held at the University of Iowa.) I braved the harsh winter weather to visit David at his farm in Decorah, Iowa. We met in his slightly coolish workshop to talk about the history of the Gregynog Press and highlights of its impressive output, his time there as 'controller,' and the establishment of his Solmentes Press and the prize-winning work he has produced since setting it up.