Orientation for new readers. Reconstitution starter pack.
Thank you to readers for all the suggestions about possible on-demand book publishers, in response to the post a few days ago on that topic. I’m working through the comments and emails to figure out some next steps.
I’m highlighting one reader comment here, along with my reply, because the exchange reminded me of some things I try to keep close to heart and top of mind: how important it is to continue to create and share human things that are true, beautiful, good and loving, even while confronting and pushing back against the lies, ugliness, evil and hatred of the globalists and their horrifying obsession with making financial-biological war on living humanity.
Reader comment:
Thinking about physical books — in the 1980s I knew an artisan book binder who was a faculty member in an art school. Also a Turkish business school professor who was a close friend who gifted me a marbled paper by a famed Turkish bookbinder who made the marbled and colorful endpapers for books that were one of a kind. He had rolls of the stuff. I framed mine. I wish I could send it to you! Sasha would like it I think too. We have to remember how special books are, and yours should have a physical form as well for the long run.
Here is a link describing that amazing tradition.
My reply:
Those endpapers are so beautiful. I love the book, paper, bookbinding and printmaking arts. I visited the Cloisters at the Met in NYC a few weeks ago, and was fascinated by the illuminated manuscripts, and one tiny breviary that was about two-inches by two-inches small, with tiny but fully legible writing.
If I had been born in a different time, I think I would have enjoyed a life as a copyist in a monastery or convent. There are some passages in Henry Adams’ Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres — architectural descriptions — that are so evocative.
"...If any lingering doubt remains in regard to the professional cleverness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, we had best return to the great hall, and pass through a low door in its extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some thirteen feet square, beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by a large stone fireplace, and in the corner, a spiral staircase leading up to another square room above opening directly into the cloister.
It is a little library or charter−house. The arrangement is almost too clever for gravity, as is the case with more than one arrangement in the Merveille. From the outside one can see that at this corner the architect had to provide a heavy buttress against a double strain, and he built up from the rock below a square corner tower as support, into which he worked a spiral staircase leading from the cellar up to the cloisters. Just above the level of the great hall he managed to construct this little room, a gem.
The place was near and far; it was quiet and central; William of Saint−Pair, had he been still alive, might have written his "Roman" there; monks might have illuminated missals there. A few steps upward brought them to the cloisters for meditation; a few more brought them to the church for prayer. A few steps downward brought them to the great hall, for business, a few steps more led them into the refectory, for dinner.
To contemplate the goodness of God was a simple joy when one had such a room to work in; such a spot as the great hall to walk in, when the storms blew; or the cloisters in which to meditate, when the sun shone; such a dining−room as the refectory; and such a view from one's windows over the infinite ocean and the guiles of Satan's quicksands. From the battlements of Heaven, William of Saint−Pair looked down on it with envy..."
I have a 1920s Chandler & Price Pilot printing press — a tabletop version they manufactured for teaching — and letterpress type in several fonts, and do linocut printmaking, typesetting and other small projects.
It would be far too labor intensive to set the type and print full books of Bailiwick material, but yes, I love books whose physical form is beautiful and long-lasting, and hope there will be more of them.
Paper books.
The smell of paper.
The feel of paper across your fingertips.
E-books....yuck.
I teach English at the high school level. I recently assigned an outside read for my students and told them that the books need to be real, no eBooks, Kindle, etc. I told them that having a book is a relationship, and that it is tactile as well as intellectual. I received mostly blank stares. Then, today I gave them some time to read, and I overheard a student say to another, "I like the way my book smells." Victory.