Dear friends,
This past Monday, Rose Garden Press held what would be their last book launch ever. It was held at our shop. Their beautiful small press is shutting down. Over the past few years they have produced a number of wonderful books, many of which have improved our shelves. They are rare in that the two Michelles who run the press are entirely sweet and lovely people. They do not drip with pretension or ego or Great Literary Purpose. If they do, we didn’t see it. We saw two people choosing, beyond reason, to make simply beautiful books, to be lovely in their own right as bookmakers, and to engage and support those they meet along the way. It occurred to us that night, while we were chatting with them, that many of the people we met through the bookshop are known by us by the books they collect. The Rose Garden people are known to us by the books they make. This is an interesting distinction.
We both chatted about it on the way home. We are not bookmakers. Sure, we’ve made zines and have written books, but to put yourself on the book making end of things is really a test all its own. We decided that we relate to book collectors. Both of us have our pursuits. True crime, horror, small press, weirdo stuff, and the beautiful volume, are things we get excited about as people. So when a customer comes in and goes bananas over a book on trains we can relate. We both get really excited in someone else’s shop when we find something we’ve sought for years. But book making? Jason took a hand-press bookbinding class eons ago and learned that it was one of the hardest things you could ever do with your time. A book, like a manuscript, is really a collection of thousands upon thousands of little decisions. If any of them are made incorrectly, the whole thing can fall apart.
We’ve hosted a number of bookmakers in our shop over the years. Rose Garden Press and Baseline Press both come to mind when we think of beauty. There is a graceful exasperation in the eye of a person who loves making physical books. It is like the look in a parent’s eye who has spent eight hours with their toddler. Basically, you’re raising someone you love who is hellbent on careening into disaster every minute of their life. Day upon day passes. Disaster waits around every corner. If you can accomplish bedtime with them happy and safe you’re a hero. Likewise, if you are a book maker, and you can get that book into the hands of collectors without errors (physical and compositional), you are also a hero in our eyes. Books are deceptively complicated. To make something truly beautiful takes a will and focus that is an art all its own. It’s an invisible art. Most books hold their success in them like ghosts.
When we think of book makers, we think of the public face they must put on to sell their stuff. We think of them hustling at Canzine or at Eden Mills or locally at launches and readings. That public face often holds a visible strain, perhaps made as selling the thing is the last stop along a long trek of quiet effort. If they’ve made it look easy then the work has been even harder. If they appear graceful, then the strain has taken its toll inside. We feel lucky to be part of a vocation that collects these wonderful eccentrics, a vocation that lets us meet them when the work is done. Much like anything worth doing, like building a local community hall or garden, or writing a book, it is extended, hard, near invisible work. It’s messy and fraught and puzzling, even disastrous. When it all works though, when it comes together like a local church choir finally hitting those bloody notes right, the results can be transcendent. Everyone is sitting around together, all seeing a beautiful thing. Hugh finally harmonized properly. That’s worth witnessing.
It is worth the time.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
