Discipline

I'm always interested to find out how bookbinders and conservators I meet came to their field. I've never heard the same answer twice. Tonight, I was faced with the same question and the answer I heard come out of my mouth made more sense than I expected it to. It also helped me decide how to write this entry, which I've been toying with for a few weeks. Before I get to my answer, here's the set-up.

Whether creating a book from scratch or restoring an old one, bookbinding has thus far been a very personal pursuit for me. My hands, my eye, my decision. I'm not too worried about pleasing anyone else, unless the work is for the purpose of honing a particular technique, etc. Working at the bindery, however, is 180 from such an approach. Orders come in, product goes out.

Typical of most Americans, I tend to foster a romantic/nostalgic view of blue collar work. Not exactly Norman Rockwell, but close. Indeed, I bring my lunch to the shop and punch in on a clock and wear an grimy apron. My hands are often chapped, burned or bloodied when I leave. There are a lot of interpersonal dynamics at work. We chat and share our snacks and watch the clock together. Somehow, I've garnered the animosity of a coworker. I do have a nemesis, it's true, but not the crabby lady hunched over the bench. Oh, no. My enemy is a glue machine.

She growls and rumbles. She runs on a diet of hide glue and confidence-shredding frustration. She'll try to digest anything you pass through her sticky maw. She's The Beast. In case you have never smelled hide glue, imagine someone decides to binge on tootsie rolls and vodka all night, then upchucks the lot...that sickly sweet bile smell? Yep. That's about right. 

Working with a glue machine is art and science. When I asked my coworker how she managed to do ANYTHING with The Beast, she joked in broken english that she's a rocket scientist. I believe it. Moreover, I believe she is also a yogi. How anyone could tolerate that sound everyday for 14 years--it must require spiritual calm of great magnitude. The crackling blare of low reception top 40 radio hits only adds to the din. Like most lesser mortals, I usually rely on my iPod to drown it all out. 

When I'm at the LC, I track my progress my numbers: how many adjustable covers made or inspected, how many books surveyed, etc. Though I've often thought that I should do the same at the bindery, there just isn't the time. As soon as one batch of this or that is done, the next task has materialized on the bench. Sometimes I have the wherewithal to photograph what I've done.

Such as making boxes. Dozens and dozens of boxes. Or gluing paper backing to hundreds of cloth endpapers. That's what I was doing when I hurt my shoulder.

I felt it coming on. I knew by lunch that I should probably try to alternate with my left hand/arm. I'm not particularly ambidextrous, but I figured I should at least try. I debated with myself about it for a couple more hours before I couldn't not do it. Eight consecutive hours performing any repetitive motion is bad news. The lovely part, though, the part that carried me past my threshold was the out-of-body contemplation that overtook me during that day. I didn't have to think about the client or the workflow or the cost of labor and materials or anything in particular. All I had to do was glue. Align. Fold. Press. Repeat. 

One of my favorite sayings is "Laborare est orare" ["To labor is to pray"]. I tend to interpret prayer and meditations as variations on the same theme, and so it was that day. My mind was far from my body, on a journey of its own, while my body did work in the world. 

I thought about many things. One of which is why I do what I do and how I came to it. It wasn't until my friend asked me tonight that the answer I felt that day translated itself into words. I don't remember what specifically triggered my interest in bookbinding. It was, more likely, an accumulation of factors. The tradition of craft in my mother's family, the life-long obsession with the written word, the dawning appreciation of books as artifacts, and on and on. In my travels, I've witnessed artists at work in their workshops from the time I was little. I've always been fascinated at the way people who have made the same creative gesture over decades appear to be playing a little game with themselves, a little dance of directed motion that results in something elegant and complete. 

So here's my answer, brought to you, in part, by Wikipedia: "In its original sense, discipline referred to systematic instruction given to disciples to train them as students in a craft or trade, or to follow a particular code of conduct." It follows, then, that someone who intently studies a craft and its methods becomes a disciple of it. And it also follows that by pursuing a discipline, one might also become disciplined. 

I became a bookbinder not because of what I want to do, but because of who I want to be. I want to be a disciple. I want to be disciplined by my work. I want what I do to make me a better person. 

Bound & Mutilated

Currently, I'm working two jobs. One is actually an internship [read: unpaid] at the Library of Congress, which might not "count" as a job, and the other is a job job at a commercial bindery. But what, pray tell, do I actually do at said jobs? I'm so glad you asked, because I'magonnatellya....


BOUND


You may or may not have noticed a paucity of bookbinding establishments in the last century or so. If you've never paused to consider how people used to put books together prior to the advent of large publishing houses and their machine made issue, you might not be familiar with the nuances of binding as a craft. At any rate, it used to be that a printer would print a manuscript and then, once purchased, one would give the manuscript to a binder and it would be bound accordingly [that's a very rough summary, but enough to suffice for now]. That's not how it's done these days, yet binderies still exist.

View of the workshop from the back corner

I started work at the bindery around the end of August. They were in dire need of a foil stamper and, though I had almost zero experience as such, my boss was intrigued enough about my experience with binding to give me a chance to learn. I work on an old Kwikprint with a platen that never stays square. There's another, newer Kwikprint that needed a new Robotemp to function. Once the part was ordered, I rewired the thing and it's a much friendlier beast than the other. We also have a Kensol in the shop, but I'm intimidated and haven't made much headway on learning to use it.


There's a learning curve to any job, but not all learning curves involve second degree burns. My hands are looking a bit rough these days....

Burns still healing after weeks

The many facets of expertise that go into making a books inspires me most about binding: paper making, sewing, cord fibers, leather types and tanning, metal furnishings, woodworking, and typeface and ink. It goes on and on, and endless pageant of skills and steps to master or dissect. And that's without even considering content!


Sadly, not all content is created equal. A good deal of the business at the bindery centers around producing case-bound editions of the voluminous minutes of some trade association committee or another. The other large chunk of business relates mainly to the refurbishment of old family bibles.  All of the work comes with its own interesting challenges and frustrations, however, and I don't mean to sound to lofty about what constitutes a worthy effort.

Ta-da! Ain't she a beaut?

Recently, I was asked to tend to an Eastern European [Cyrillic alphabet, but pretty sure not Russian] pictorial history of the Great War. It was an unwieldy thing, long and heavy and nearly 400 pages. The photos were printed on a very pulpy paper and nearly all the sewing holes were blown. The text was on an entirely different paper, sturdier but obviously on the way to serious embrittlement due to acidic content. It had been sewn on a multitude of tapes and overzealously slathered with hide glue which seeped through many of the sewing holes. There were tears and tattered corners, too. In short, it was a nightmare. But what a thrill! It was the first time I had attempted to restore a book that wasn't something I picked up at a used bookstore on which to practice.


MUTILATED


The Library of Congress runs a pretty tight ship. A behemoth, laggard ship to be sure, but tight nonetheless. Security checks at every entrance scan your belongings, and the cloakrooms tuck them away. Patrons clutch clear plastic baggies that hold the few acceptable items they may bring into the reading rooms. As an employee/intern, I go through the same security checks every time I enter or exit the buildings. However, I don't have to turn in my belongings.


The security at the Library makes me wonder about the libraries in ancient Babylonia or Persia or Alexandria. How did they protect their collections? The guards at the Library aren't expecting weapons or bombs, I'm sure, though the procedures act as a screen for those things, too. Exacto knives and other instruments for the quick removal or concealment of valuable documents, prints, etc. are the target contraband. So, in those ancient libraries, did they frisk your toga, or what?


Valuable collections will always be at risk for theft, which brings me to the topic of mutilation. When an especially beautiful print or lithograph is removed from a book, the thief usually has little regard for the rest of the book unless there are other materials they wish to extract from it. The book subjected to such brutality often looks like a domestic violence victim. Parts loose and hanging off, deep cuts into surrounding pages, the binding or stitches busted.


A couple of months ago, my supervisor tasked me with the design and execution of a survey of a collection of mutilated books. These books have sat in a locked cage deep in the stacks for, no joke, about 20 years. Very few people have access to these items, and so they've collected dust seven layers thick. The survey is meant to assess the scope of damage for each item, measure them for storage in a special facility, and give a recommendation about what to do with the poor dears.


Here's a little blurb of something I wrote while contemplating my charges that may inform and amuse:


"Sometimes bad things happen to good books. Or, if not good, then at least innocent. This is not the average wear-and-tear dilapidation all tomes are privy to while facing down the ages upon the shelf. Mutilation is an accidental or intentional act that renders the book incomplete or permanently unusable. They get jammed in conveyer belts, vandalized or even gutted by rogue patrons. Yes, it’s a dangerous life, to be a book. They risk it all in the name of knowledge and, though they have already paid a heavy price, their service does not end there. Here at the library, there exists a kind of purgatory for such casualties. In this knotty labyrinth, folded in its dim recesses, they bear a vast burden. What if their sister copy[s] were lost? What if every other copy like it was somehow wiped off the face of the earth? Here, beneath a tundra of dust, lies the last testament to the author/poet/artist/philosopher—long since harvest of the loamy denizens of earth. Though their spines are broken, their leather rotting and their stitches bust—though irreparably mangled by the cruel vagaries of fate, that same fate may afford them a final glory: as witnesses to the churning eons of history, silent monuments of infinite jest."


That bit about "rogue patrons" is only partly true. The fuller and scarier truth is that a lot of these crimes were perpetrated by people working at the Library. The FBI investigated several of the more valuable holdings damaged in this way and discovered "gutting and mailing" stations in the stacks. This was no E. Forbes Smiley, but an inside job! 


My personal feelings about this may not need statement. Books are sacred, and violating our cultural heritage is sacrilege. As a friend/colleague of mine pointed out, however, my project is a unique opportunity to see a very concentrated selection of books with valuable content. These items have been pre-selected for their beauty or desirability. Most, as might be assumed, come from the Prints & Photographs division. It is as much the greedy eye as the greedy pocket that led to this destruction. 


I get to handle each and every broken piece. It is a sad and wonderful task. I am often awed by what I see. My eye, like all human eyes, is greedy, too. I spend a great deal of my time working on this survey, sitting [usually] alone in a cold, locked cage with thousands of mutilated books. We call it the Mutilated Cage. Sounds like a room in an asylum or a post-apocalyptic prison cell for slave-fighters cum "Mad Max", right? No one screams or bleeds in this cage, though. It's incredibly, deafeningly quiet. 


This is a blog about books and bookbinding and grad school and dreams and all of that, yes. But it's really a blog about me and how those things relate to me. I can't think of a more appropriate assignment for me, personally, than this Mutilated Collection survey. Who better to counsel an amputee than a fellow amputee? We all have checkpoints, we scan the people and their belongings before we allow them into our lives. We decide who has what level of access to particular rooms of our psyche. We know suspicious behavior when we see it. The truth is that, usually, the worst damage that occurs is from an inside job. 

Read Wisely [09/15/2010]

To know used books is to know the indigent, the diseased and the lonely.  Cast offs congregate.  The slave to the White Lady, hiding his tracks, ineffectively, beneath a quotidien red turtle neck, casting his spittle through his broken gates--shucking and jiving and praying there aren't any scuffs on the discs he peddles--what kinda junkie collects that much opera, anyway?  And Jamie Johnson, crying at the bus stop with her busted foot and bad eye, who can't haul herself to a shelter and they don't open til dusk, anyway, and the man at the house she left, well, he pushed her down and went in her panties and took her money and her pills and she can't get no more, I'm gonna die.  I'm gonna die without my meds, can't you help me?   And the quiet man.  And the one who speaks.  And the weeping sores they're not as good at hiding as some of us. 

Books never say no.  Always yielding, without pretense or prejudice--inexaustibly generous with their offering.  A portal, a mirror, a voice to accompany or quiet our residents. A chorus built of tongues, webs and protean desires. 

Science tells us now that the study of quantum mechanics is the study of the structure of consciousness.  The choices we make inform the outcomes manifest.  So whatever informs our consciousness, in turn informs our choices and shapes our experience of reality.  Perhaps a book is a key, then, to a hallway of doors.  And every smile we give or get, and every warm regard or desultory glance, every kindness paid and repaid, the broken families and broken promises, the chemical waves we call love, hate, mourning and ecstasy that push and pull us toward vanishing points--keys, all. 

I cannot express my gratitude for living a life of books.  Two days from now, I won't work at a used bookstore anymore, perhaps ever again.  But its metaphors have not eluded me.  Choice begets reality and so on, ad infinitum.  A random number generator, a kaleidescope.  What enchantment.  Awe and sorrow.

Provenance & Providence [06/25/2010]

Every book has a fate and that fate is its locomotion. It is passed from one hand to another, from one shelf to the next, to languish in an attic here only to be resurrected in a book shop hundreds of miles away. The lives of books mirror human lives in this and many other ways. Though their pages may contain all the wisdom of the world, they cannot access that wisdom. Though, as many great prophets have told us, we embody the divine we are similarly kept from the fountain within us. Dumb encasements, silent testaments to a knowledge we cannot conceive. 

Perhaps this comparison will chafe those seekers among us, those masters of their own fates. After all, we are active, innovative and loud. Books are none of these things. Their passivity is deceptive, however, as one who has been unable to put a book down may testify. Theirs is a silent rapture that snares us into stasis and solitude, generates a shared and secret conversation. For who can divide a man from his own thoughts like the word on a page? Hardly the behavior of a passive object. It would serve us well to emulate books on this account, to speak silently to those who would listen and surrender to the gears of life that propel us, content to embody and deliver the word rather than to possess it.

In a bookshop one can watch such mysteries unfurl, the book shelved or cataloged yesterday or last year finding its next witness. So, too, the equivalent human conjunctions--those invisible lines of influence we trace across each others' paths. Certainly, mundane exchanges outnumber revelations, as grass outpopulates flowers in a field. 

-----

Speaking of chance and fate, I'm still working on a board game based on the experiences of working in or frequenting used bookshops. It's a lot like Chutes & Ladders with book trivia thrown in. I hope to get a prototype made some time this year, now that my schedule is loosening up, so if you'd like to try it out and make suggestions to improve play let me know. I might even come up with caricatures of regulars to use as pieces, like Clue! 

As for reading recommendations:

Atmosphere Apollinaire by Mark Frutkin [a very interesting treatment of one of the lesser known giants of La Belle Epoque]

The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages by Frederick Bodmer

Be excellent to each other. 

Life in a Bookstore [05/13/2010]

I want to share with you a neat find, whose subject matter sparks a lot of interesting ideas [in my opinion]. I've come across a book titled, "Alice in Many Tongues: The translations of Alice in Wonderland". It is exactly what it says, no tricks. 

How strange it is, though, to contemplate a translation of a translation--especially of Carroll's work. So much culture and linguistic history informs his narrative, his playful twists of the tongue, that it seems impossible that it could ever be translated. And there's the rub--it can't. It isn't "Alice in Wonderland" anymore once it's translated, but a parallel--a "looking glass" approximation, if you like, set in a world quite different from the one in which Carroll wrote and thought. The great Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian, once remarked that language is the platform of thought [I'm paraphrasing]. If language is as deeply informed by history and culture as a book like "Alice" makes apparent, then, by extension, history and culture are also the basis of thought. Perhaps I'm rambling, now, and certainly my ideas are not original, but the gears are going and my coffee is still hot. 

For your entertainment, here is a brief list/description of some of our regulars:

-Old Skinny Spanish man who wears a beret, reeks of mothballs and won't leave until he has loudly farted in every aisle

-Varicose Creeper dude who brings in books to trade from dead people's estate sales, hits on our male employees and will engage in endless small talk if permitted

-Coolest Little Old Asian Dude Ever who walks around with headphones on, buys techno CDs and brings us homemade pastries

-Very Shy Illustrator guy with mutton chops who buys graphic novels, talks in hushed tones and always wears black

-Hyperactive Photographer Lady who has/had a sideline Amazon store which supplies her with obscure books that she couldn't sell because she overpriced so she brings them to us by the box-full which is okay because she sometimes buys us coffee or pizza or leaves a tip [seriously?] yes, seriously, she'll give us a fiver and be like "You guys are awesome" 

-Little Old Irish Woman who wears a visible layer of sunscreen on her face and a scarf on her head that makes us feel like we're on the set of "Angela's Ashes"

-Dude Who Looks Like Eric Clapton and gives us knowing smiles

-Really Tall Skinny Guy With a Funny Beard who looks like he should participate in Civil War reenactments

-Law Researcher/Philosophy Buff dude who buys big stacks of philosophy books all at once and seems mellow but will talk excitedly if engaged using words like "ossified", "paradigm" and "epistemology" every other sentence

-Scientology Lady who once brought in a Dianetics book to trade, so maybe she's a reformed cult member? but anyways she's kind of rude and smells like old lady perfume

-Guy of Indiscriminate Origin whose accent I can't place and who always ALWAYS bitches about how much store credit we offer in trade for his books and even tried to bribe me into giving him better deals by giving me a ring

Maybe I should print up playing cards with their faces/specs on them? There are more, but I've got to get back to cataloging. Stay tuned for the next episode!

*Edited to add: I think I might start recommending books once in a while. I don't read fiction very much these days, but once in a while something grabs my attention. If you haven't yet heard of it, check out "Gould's Book of Fish" by Richard Flanagan. It's a novel, but not by any small measure. I find myself wanting to quote long passages from it, the writing is immensely good.

Before we get ahead of ourselves....

As a way to jumpstart this blog and set the mood, as it were, I've decided to repost a few short essays that I originally published as Notes on my FB account. I was working in a used bookstore at the time, but they are good examples of what's to come on this blog.

Without further ado.....