Archive for publishing
“Farewell to a Poor Bastard”
This 1995 photograph is from the book Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels. It depicts five comics artists who founded a new era and style of autobiographical narrative: Adrian Tomine, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Seth, and Joe Matt. After I purchased this wonderful book and first saw this photograph, I could have fainted. I have just about everything each of them has ever published. Each of these artists has altered how I regard literature, art, and life.
Joe Matt is the fellow on the right. He seemed to disappear a few years ago, to the point that his books were no longer available from Drawn & Quarterly. I asked one of the owners of Olympia, Washington’s Danger Room Comics (you must go there!) what was going on with Joe Matt, and he told me that Seth (second from right, above) stays in touch with him; this seemed to me a courteous and circumspect way to indicate that Matt was not doing well.
It was impossible to love Joe Matt without also being intensely exasperated by him. The love and exasperation weren’t in tension but fed off each other: Caring for him was inextricable from irritation at the myriad ways he exercised his gift for self-sabotage. …
The cartoon Joe Matt was a cheapskate, lazy, shallow, and, worst of all, a swinish boyfriend who neglected his flesh-and-blood partners in preference to chronic masturbation to pornography and fantasizing about other women.
This self-portrait of the artist as a young jerkoff earned Joe an intense cult following who marveled at his gift for self-revelation as well as his impeccable comic timing. The real Joe shared many traits with his cartoon alter ego—but also a warmth that won him many friends. …
I got to know Joe Matt while I was working as a journalist in Toronto in the 1990s. I would occasionally write about Joe’s work and also that of his two cartoonist friends Chester Brown and Seth (who sometimes showed up as comic foils in Joe’s work). I had shown my wife, Robin Ganev, Joe’s just published graphic novel, The Poor Bastard. Robin delighted in the book as an accurate portrayal of the dating scene among young Toronto bohemians in the 1990s. Joe’s portrait of himself as a heel impressed her as an essentially accurate rendering of an all-too-common male type. As my friend the journalist Nathalie Atkinson notes, “Many women love Joe Matt’s comics—in part because he confirms everything we suspected.” Despite enjoying the work, Robin wasn’t quite sure she wanted to meet Joe in the flesh. Like Jacqueline Susann after reading Philip Roth’s masturbatory masterpiece Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Robin admired the work but was reluctant to shake the hand.
As it happened, when she met him, Robin took to Joe immediately. He was witty, self-deprecating, a responsive listener, and disarmingly willing to share personal information.
—
Glionna from Italy
My friend John Glionna has been spending the summer in his ancestors’ home town in Italy, working on a book about the people there. One of the joys of this writer is the way he lets us see rough drafts of the book’s chapters emerge on his terrific blog. His “Pomarica Journal” is dazzling, vivid with the voices of others and with Glionna’s profound friendliness (and a customary goof or two). His photographs are really terrific, too.
(I’ve asked John to create a dedicated photo-gallery on his website. We’ll see what happens!)
My favourite Trotskyists are back strong
The folk at The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) have been publishing two of my favourite radical periodicals, The Worker’s Vanguard and The Spartacist, for decades. I have probably learned more per sentence from these publications than from any other.
The organization’s output slowed to a drip during the pandemic, and I feared that the generations that had kept it going for so long were leaving or dying off; indeed, obituaries were filling the Vanguard. What in fact was happening was not a demise, though, but a debate. These Trotskyists were arguing among themselves about covid lockdowns and governmental restrictions on large gatherings, both of which they originally supported. A growing faction, however, began to see these lockdowns and restrictions as impediments to protest and communist organizing, impediments that undermined class consciousness and supported capitalist exploitation. The growing faction was victorious.
And the group started publishing its erudite propaganda again, at its former, prolific rate. Pick up their publications at your favourite radical bookstore! The Workers Vanguard is still just fifty cents.
Learning or remembering?
My “Usage Tip of the Day” from the great Bryan Garner:
I would like to say I already knew this one. It is pretty to think so, at any rate.
—
My partner gave me Bryan Garner’s Modern English Usage for Christmas (it’s terrific, and right beside me as I type).
Workers Vanguard
My favourite Trotskyists are back with a new issue of The Spartacist. I was afraid that the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), which publishes that periodical as well as the newspaper Workers Vanguard, had ceased operations. No doubt its leadership is getting old; indeed, this issue of The Spartacist has three obituaries of former leading members.
I value these publications for their erudite, brilliantly written propaganda (their word), which has come in handy for me any number of times. I met a couple of their editors back at Stanford University in the mid-nineties, and featured an issue from their Women and Revolution series in my “Writing and the Bill of Rights” classes there.
I hope a younger generation of true Marxist-Leninists takes up the banner. I will miss this voice terribly otherwise.
An editor’s help
An autumn evening, 1979: I was visiting the office of my university’s student newspaper to say hello to my colleagues. Joe Simon, the managing editor, was there. He told me he liked this week’s “Phaedrus,” my regular column, scheduled to appear the next morning. “I changed one word,” he said. “You said a woman’s lips were chartreuse.” Joe had a dictionary on his desk, open to C. I looked. “I trust you meant ‘ruby red.'”
I sure did.
“Where the Sagebrush Grows”
Brittany Bronson’s review of my friend John Glionna‘s book, “Outback Nevada: Real Stories from the Silver State,” really captures Glionna’s gifts and the heart of his charming, striking feature writing.
Most of Nevada’s land — almost 86 percent — is uninhabited by people, covered in sagebrush, and managed by the federal government. That leaves plenty of room for the imagination. Green corporations envision wind farms. Red politicians see a dumping grounds for the nation’s nuclear waste. Even for those who have driven one of those two-lane highways stretching across high desert, it is still easy to assume that there is nothing, and no one, out there.
John M. Glionna sets out to prove the opposite in Outback Nevada: Real Stories from the Silver State, a collection of reported essays profiling the inhabitants of “the real Nevada.” Written between 2013 and 2021, the essays span the rise and fall of President Donald Trump, a worsening drought, and a global pandemic. Glionna lets his subjects serve as the narrators, comedians, and political commentators, and his cast of characters is well curated. They disrupt any assumptions of Nevada as a culturally homogeneous place.
The book’s 45 subjects include a Catholic priest who conducts mass in casinos; elderly best friends who have outlived their cowboy husbands; a Shoshone activist who uses art to comment on the environmental impacts of mining; the Thunder Mountain Indian Monument; and the daily police blotters of the state’s smallest towns, full of “scandal, buzz or scuttlebutt.”
Linda Tirado reflects
This is an excellent interview by WCCO Channel 4 in Minneapolis with author / reporter / photographer Linda Tirado, who was blinded in one eye after being shot by a police offer during a 2020 demonstration in that city. Tirado is both purposeful and poignant here – and instructive; she always wants to teach … and *to show people how*. You will be surprised by some of what she says. (Click on the image to see the video.)
20 years of basil.CA
This week basil.CA celebrates its twentieth anniversary. With some variations, I’ve kept the four-column format used from the beginning (thank you for the inspiration, Arts & Letters Daily!). The main change over the years: Once I shuttered Basil Communications Inc., I wrote about business and the market (and political controversy) a good deal less.
Between 2002 and 2022 I’ve used basil.CA not only as a blog but as a hub connecting to a range of projects: No Contest Communications, my iPhone Blog, photography (general and “straight up“), and … various … other … thingamabobs.
I’m grateful to my readers for swinging by. I’ve tried to keep the place tidy but filled with whatnots to look at and think about, as if you were visiting my apartment as a guest.
Tom Flynn
Tom Flynn died this morning. He was one of my authors back when I edited Free Inquiry magazine, and we worked on various projects together as he joined the Secular Humanist team we had there in Buffalo, NY thirty or so years ago. I liked him very much – always charming, always honest. A super can-do colleague.
We had a few back-and-forths after I moved on, and we followed each other on Facebook. Whenever Tom popped up in my timeline, my thought was always the same: “Well, Basil, now THERE is a man who really has the courage of his convictions. Pay attention.”
From my colleagues’ announcement:
The world has lost a towering figure of American freethought, a man who was both on the cutting edge of secular humanist thought, as well as the foremost caretaker of its rich history. The entire Center for Inquiry family is anguished by the sudden and unexpected death of our colleague, teacher, and friend Tom Flynn at age 66.
Tom held numerous leadership roles during his more than thirty years with the Center for Inquiry, most recently as editor of Free Inquiry magazine, director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum and the Freethought Trail, and former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism.
But this collection of titles does not nearly convey the plainer truth, which is that Tom Flynn was the beating heart of the Center for Inquiry and indeed the wider freethought movement.
A stark rationalist and staunch atheist if ever there was one, Tom was nonetheless brimming with enthusiasm, curiosity, bold ideas, and perhaps most of all, humor. He had a deep love and encyclopedic knowledge of freethought history and devoted himself to the preservation and rediscovery of American freethought’s great untold stories.
At the same time, he was a true visionary whose future-focused ideas about religion, atheism, equality, and the existential crises we face as a global civilization were once considered radical but now seem prescient. He was a virtuoso of the written word, penning not only countless articles and essays but also science fiction novels and the defiantly revelatory book The Trouble with Christmas.
Tom revelled in his various public personas, whether as a pugnacious stoker of controversy, a stubborn atheist curmudgeon (as with his infamous “Anti-Claus” alter-ego), or a wisecracking, avuncular coworker. But at his core, Tom was a man excited about big ideas, regardless of their popularity or public acceptance, and he was eager to share those ideas, bringing to them his unmatched combination of scholarship, eloquence, and humor.
“Tom didn’t believe in magic, but he was magical,” said Robyn E. Blumner, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry. “How else to describe this unlikely combination of brilliance, charm, vision, and roll-up-your-sleeves accomplishment?”
“He saved the legacy of the Great Agnostic, Robert Green Ingersoll, from obscurity. He carried the torch for atheism, secular humanism, and clear-eyed rationality for decades with his powerful and copious writings and speeches—undoubtedly helping to cause the Rise of the Nones. All while cracking jokes and delighting everyone in his orbit,” said Blumner. “And how lucky we were to be part of it.”
“The death of Tom Flynn is a tragedy of epic proportions for everyone who cares about the equality of atheists anywhere in the world,” said Edward Tabash, veteran freethought activist and chair of the Center for Inquiry. “He was our conscience against religious bigotry. He was our conscience against irrational action and thought.”
“His razor sharp humor and wit were simply unmatched,” said Tabash. “The best way that we can honor Tom’s memory and all the magnificent work that he did is to continue to devote ourselves to ending religious bigotry anywhere and everywhere.”
To Tom’s wife, Sue, and to his family and friends, all of us at the Center for Inquiry join you in your grief. He was our family, too.
Tom’s hero, Robert Green Ingersoll, once wrote, “A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.” It will be a long time before there can ever be a full accounting of what Tom Flynn gave to all of us. Now Tom joins Ingersoll in what the Great Agnostic called “the perfect rest,” no longer as a mere admirer but as an equal.
I still can hardly believe the news. Sending condolences to his family and to all of the friends and colleagues we shared.
Larry King
Back in 1988 I appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live! to debate the topic of Near Death Experiences (NDE’s). I was given the role of the skeptic. To me that meant I was there to offer explanations for this very real-feeling sensation that were neither paranormal nor religious. My goal was to “save” the experience rather than “debunk” it, offering a more scientifically sound way of describing the NDE.
The woman sharing the split-screen with me here is Barbara Harris-Whitfield. Considering how pointed my remarks were on that show, she was very forbearing and generous with me. Indeed, after our appearance on Larry King she asked producers of other shows to ask me on to be her debating foil. (We even travelled to Cincinnati to be on an early version of The Jerry Springer Show, which was not the gong-show it would become but which nonetheless sure did encourage ill manners.) Barbara showed me how to be somewhat kinder to others when I argued with them, and she taught me that lesson without embarrassing me. I think of her often, with gratitude.
A word about Larry King. Back in the eighties, the discussion on Larry King’s show could be a good deal more elevated than what people saw in his later years at CNN; there were fewer commercial interruptions as well. To me, though, King’s finest years as an interviewer came when he was on the radio at night in the seventies. He knew everything and everyone and the conversations could really spread out. His curiosity was unquenchable, and he alleviated the isolations of insomnia among his listeners. It seemed he never failed at that. RIP, Mr. King.
The great Tom Toles retires
I had a chance to meet Tom Toles back when I was an editor at the University at Buffalo’s student newspaper, The Spectrum. Tom worked there a few years before me when he was a student and still contributed some of his caricatures from time to time while he was also drawing editorial cartoons for The (late) Buffalo Courier Express and the Buffalo Evening News (now the Buffalo News).
Later, Tom did covers for Free Inquiry magazine, which I edited in the late 1980s. (See cover below.) I believe he contributed his work for free.
Tom is an exceptionally cool man.
—
Update: Toles’ drawings in his university years tended to be more realistic than the editorial cartooning he did afterwards. Below is one of my favourite illustrations by Tom, of University at Buffalo “campus prophet” Michael Stephen Levinson, from 1973.
Happy to help
Leonard Bernstein died thirty years ago today. I always think of Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg on this anniversary. I wrote this ten years ago:
Twice in the last week I have helped to prevent a calamity from befalling a colleague. One colleague was irritated and the other was infuriated to receive my editorial help, though they each requested it. Both will come out “smelling like a rose” (to use an expression my Dad has always loved and that I now love, too).
In my last couple of years in book publishing back in the early 1990s, I spent more than half of my time, it seemed, addressing legal matters: Making sure that my authors weren’t going to get the company I worked for, Prometheus Books Inc., sued for defamation, libel, invasion of privacy, copyright infringement, and the like. Although I did not become an editor so that I could act as an ersatz lawyer, I did enjoy the role, especially because I got to talk to a REAL lawyer, and a great one, Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, a lot.
Stefan provided his services for free, because he liked the books we published. He was a wonderful and brilliant and eclectic man, who reached the highest levels of accomplishment as a musical conductor and mathematician and teacher before starting his career in Law. I didn’t know he’d been a conductor until I called him one afternoon regarding a lawsuit. Leonard Bernstein had died the day before, and for some reason I brought that up with Stefan. “I was his assistant conductor for a year,” he said. “This sounds more impressive than it was. My main job was to have a cigarette lit and ready for Lenny when he came offstage.”
Back to my point: Because of Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, many of my authors *didn’t* besmirch their reputations and *didn’t* get their butts sued. To a person, they were unhappy receiving the help they received, because they believed they didn’t need it. They all asked: What could go wrong?
A calamity is smaller than a comma when it’s born.
Remembering Stefan – and remembering my mentor Paul Kurtz, the difficult boss who introduced me to him – fills me with gratitude. Some very gifted people have shared their time with me.
John Glionna
My dear friend is an endlessly creative and resourceful writer. His recently launched website is a treasure.
Friendships, my own + Ginsberg & Kerouac’s
I received a note from a dear old family friend the other day.
I wouldn’t have noted it, but one of the sites I peruse (“LitHub”) had a piece that last Monday was the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s death. Which means he’s been gone longer than he was here. Apparently, the town of Lowell had a small ceremony. I saw a photo of the grave where some folks had thoughtfully left a couple of bottles of booze. (Or thoughtlessly? He died of alcoholism.) I suppose they should also have a left a copy of [the conservative magazine] National Review.
I am reminded, once again, of the beautiful song “Box of Rain,” by Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter (RIP): “Such a long, long time to be gone; but a short time to be there.”
I replied:
I believe he and [National Review publisher] William Buckley were friends, actually. (One thing about both of them – they had gifts for friendship, Buckley getting an extra bonus point for being friends with his antagonists, too, for the most part.)
My feelings toward Kerouac have gone up and down over the years. He is unique in the Robert Basil pantheon in that respect, where once you’re in, you’re in for good (Barthes, Henry James, Flannery O’Connor, William Carlos Williams …). I once made a disparaging remark about Kerouac’s poetry to a close friend of mine (a Garcia-Lorca scholar and a poet himself), and he gently chided me, taking me through some of Kerouac’s poems phrase by phrase, waking me back up. Kerouac’s prose, it must be said, relies on some vocabulary crutches in ways his poetry doesn’t – but so many of his books are nonetheless absolutely splendid. (I taught Dharma Bums while I was at Stanford.)
And finally, he really really inspired me as a writer. The first Kerouac book I owned was a copy of The Dharma Bums that [my brother] Chris gave me – I must have been 19 or 20. I read about half of it sitting in the back of a pick-up truck zooming down route 17 to Manhattan, surrounded by fall foliage. One of my happiest memories.
To celebrate my graduation from university – this was a solitary activity, because literally *nobody* other than my girlfriend believed I had somehow graduated from college, having dropped out so often and, when actually enrolled, having spent almost as much time hitching around the country as attending classes – I read “On the Road” for the fourth or fifth time, cover to cover, back to front (how I read novels), drinking Miller Beer “ponies” and lying in bed, finishing at dawn. Another one of my happiest memories.
I want to share with you a quite moving piece from the New Yorker: “Allen Ginsberg: The Day After Kerouac Died.” It annotates some journal entries and a poem from “The Fall of America.” (My friend and teacher Robert Creeley makes a few appearances.)
The New Yorker / Allen Ginsberg piece brought some tears.
Memory Gardens
Covered with yellow leaves
in morning rain …
He threw up his hands
& wrote the universe don’t exist
& died to prove it. …
… Jack thru whose eyes I
saw
smog glory light
gold over Manhattan’s spires
will never see these
chimneys smoking
anymore over statues of Mary
in the graveyard …
Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work –
and what’s the work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow.
Shakespeare’s Sister retires
Feminist Melissa McEwan’s blog Shakesville [originally called “Shakespeare’s Sister”] has been around for almost as long as this site, though she has always been much more prolific. Her blog also created its own intelligent, progressive community of readers and commenters. I’m sad McEwan has called it quits.
After nearly 15 years, exactly one-third of my life, I am moving on from Shakesville. …
I love this community. I love writing for you. I love the research and the silly photoshops and crafting nerdy political jokes. I love talking about our individual lived experiences and learning from you. I love helping people find and access resources, or figure out a tough problem, in private communications. I love seeing pictures of your faces, your kids, your pets. I love making you laugh, and I love how often you make me laugh.
I don’t love the nature of the content about which I’ve been writing, especially these last couple of years. But even that would be tolerable, if it weren’t for everything else that I am obliged to navigate as part of being a fat feminist woman writing in public. I don’t need to recount it. You’ve seen enough to know that it is a steep cost, and it turns out that even I have limits. I have reached them.
The truth is that I reached them a long time ago, and I stayed far longer than I should have, and now I’m paying the price with both my psychological and physical health.
So I’m going to go take care of myself. I don’t know what’s next after that. I’m frankly pretty scared, because I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s a huge part of who I am. It is very difficult to let go.
Godspeed, Melissa. And thank you for your work.
h/t Clarissa
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