Book and literary travel related posts from Nigel Beale, The Literary Tourist. www.literarytourist.com
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David McKnight on Collecting The Beatles
Some years ago I interviewed David McKnight about a collection of Canadian “little magazines” he’d hunted down and later donated to the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Library. It was very easy to get caught up in David’s enthusiasm, and I was really impressed by the catalogue he’d produced. Shortly after our conversation I learned that he didn’t just collect Canadian poetry, he was also a serious Beatles collector.
We stayed in touch. I drove down to Philadelphia where David hosted me at his home for a weekend. We got a lot done. Took the train into New York for the opening of a film about a bookseller; went on a tour of the rare book and manuscript library at the University of Pennsylvania where David worked at the time as director; attended the Allentown Paper Fair where I picked up some old Fortune and New York Times magazines. It was great. A non-stop exchanging of excited thoughts about books, collecting, and cool periodicals.
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I’ve been wanting to interview David about The Fab Four ever since I learned of his passion. He’s a real expert on the band. I was particularly keen to find out about his personal relationship to the music, and of course, about his experience collecting and documenting its impact on print culture, internationally, high and low. Finally, after years of talking about it, we got down to business. The albums, the books - from limited editions to paperbacks - the magazines, the fan zines, the ephemera, the scrap-books, the puzzles. Liverpool. It’s all here.
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Michael Erdman on the history of magazines (and women's rights) in Turkey
Michael Erdman is Head of Middle East and Central Asian Collections at The British Library with overall responsibility for all manuscript holdings in Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chagatai, Coptic, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Syriac.
I talked with him about my recent magazine hunting exploits in Istanbul, and how what we found fits into the overall history of magazine publishing in Turkey. Esoteric, I know, but hey, this is where passion takes you.
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Michael Erdman on the history of magazines (and women's rights) in Turkey
Michael Erdman is Head of Middle East and Central Asian Collections at The British Library with overall responsibility for all manuscript holdings in Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chagatai, Coptic, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Syriac.
I talked with him about my recent magazine hunting exploits in Istanbul, and how what we found fits into the overall history of magazine publishing in Turkey. Esoteric, I know, but hey, this is where passion takes you.
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Andres M. Zervigon on Illustrated Magazines
I first came across Andrés Mario Zervigón’s (Cuban) name while researching a magazine that filled me with awe the first time I saw it.
AIZ, the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Workers Illustrated Magazine) is an illustrated, mass circulation German periodical that was published in Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s (in Prague after 1933). It contains some of the most emotionally charged imagery I’ve ever seen. The best work was by John Heartfield.
Zervigón is professor of the history of photography at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2000 and concentrates his scholarship “on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art." His first book, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (University of Chicago Press, 2012), proposes that “photography’s sudden ubiquity in illustrated magazines, postcards, and posters produced an unsettling transformation of visual culture that artists felt compelled to address.”
Zervigón’s work, says the Rutger’s website, “generally focuses upon moments in history when these media [film, photography, fine art] prove inadequate to their presumed task of representing the visual.”
We start our conversation by unpacking this passage, and then move on to a short history of illustrated, mass circulation magazines, (including VU magazine), then to the life of John Heartfield, and finally to AIZ.
Background here
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Tony Fekete on Collecting Erotica
Tony Fekete is a book collector who for years specialized in collecting erotica. He's best known for the catalogue he produced for a Christie’s auction that took place in 2014 that featured highlights from his collection. More than 200 books, manuscripts, lithographs and erotic photographs went up for sale, including a first edition of My Secret Life (1888), an eleven-volume memoir that describes in detail the sex life of an anonymous Victorian "Gentleman," of which only twenty-five copies were printed. The auction netted Fekete more than a million pounds.
Tony is a mobile bibliophile who travels frequently, primarily by train, in pursuit of books. Born in London in 1954 of Hungarian descent, he worked for Citibank in Eastern Europe during the mid-1980s where he cultivated both his love of books and an appreciation for the region. Today he shares these passions on Instagram and Facebook, posting photographs of his journeysthroughout Eastern Europe, that feature old bars and restaurants that he favours and, of course, highlights from his still significant (and stimulating) erotica collection. I spoke with him via Zoom.
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Siegfried Lukatis on Insel Bucherei, the iconic German book series
Siegfried Lokatis is a retired professor of book history, and former head of the University of Leipzig's Institute for Communication and Media Studies. He is the author of Book Covers of the GDR and is currently working on a history of the S. Fischer publishing house, due out in 2026. We met in Leipzig recently where Siegfried treated me to a tour of the Bibliotop's splendid Insel Bucherei book collection. Founded in 1912, the series now contains some 2,000 titles (and still counting according to Jonathan Landgrebe, head of Suhrkamp Verlag, the company that today produces the books). The series is iconic in Germany and in many ways its publishing history reflects the history of the country. The books are known for their beauty and the care with which they're produced. Qualities include: individual typographical design, exquisite illustration (notably from the thirties - stay tuned) and photography, and printing on wood-free, age-resistant paper, plus they're thread-stitched and bound in decorative cover paper. They served as the model for Allen Lane's King Penguin series.
The Insel Bucherie series includes both well-known and little known texts from world literature as well as art history, non-fiction, poetry, and fairy tales, plus gift anthologies from Germany and around the globe. Subjects covered in my conversation with Siegfried include Rilke and copyright, the decision to publish established, versus contemporary works; Stephan Zweig and the Nazis, poisonous mushrooms, the rarest volume, the Allied bombing of Leipzig, censorship, the separation of East and West Germany, wartime profits, collecting, pornography and more.
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Richard Charkin on Lessons Learned from 50 Years in Book Publishing
Richard Charkin has held senior posts at many major, and some minor, publishing houses in the U.K. over the past 50 years, including: Harrap, OUP, Pergamon Press, Reed Elsevier, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and Mensch Publishing. He is former President of The Book Society, the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association.
His book My Back Pages, An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing 1972-2022 came out in 2023. The book has sold more than 3,000 copies, and is being translated into four languages. It took me a year to figure out what questions to ask him.
Just so you know, Richard has been very good to The Biblio File podcast over the years. Thanks to him I've landed all sorts of great publishing guests. And John Banville! I’m grateful to him for this, and for his being so generous with his time and knowledge, sharing them as he has with me on multiple occasions during episodes that have dealt with, among other things, great publishers, the challenges facing the book business, and how to set up a small publishing house.
I wrote this about him a while back:
Richard does what all great publishers do. He pays attention to what's going on both in the world, and in the world of books. He pays attention to what people are doing and reaches out to them to learn more. He takes an interest. It’s pretty simple. And pretty important. He also lets people know what he's up to. I got to know him through his blog. It gave me a wonderful glimpse into the daily life of a high-powered publisher - the workings of business, but also the workings of his mind, and occasionally his emotions…
His writing invited and welcomed a human response.
I'm happy to have been able to re-connect with Richard again recently, this time via Zoom, to talk about the changes he’s seen, and lessons he's learned, over more than 50 years in the book publishing business, something, more than incidentally, that he's been rewarded for recently in the form of an OBE.
It’s good to see that his exemplary work in, and on behalf of, the publishing business - his “service to literature,” has been recognized.
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Book scholar Jonathan Rose on who used to read Playboy magazine and Why
The last time I ran into renowned book scholar Jonathan Rose (at a SHARP conference) he mentioned that he was doing some work on Playboy magazine. ‘Way more women readers than you’d expect!’ he told me.
Rose is an accomplished author. His groundbreaking and award-winning book, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, first published in 2001, is selling in its third edition and has been translated into multiple languages.
I emailed him recently. He directed me to a paper he’d delivered entitled Readers, Magazines, Playboy, Market Research: The Daniel Starch Reports as Tools for Reading Research, I read it and teed up this conversation on Zoom. Subjects covered include Daniel Starch and his Starch Reports, Soviet readership reports, Stephen Hawking, Woody Allen, free speech, Skyhorse Publishing, gay rights, Hugh Hefner, art director Art Paul, missionaries, free enterprise, Cosmopolitan Magazine, airbrushing, pornography, conventional wisdom, myths, George Orwell and populism
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Karen Etingin on running a vintage poster shop
Karen Etingin is the proprietor of L'Affichiste, a vintage poster shop in Montreal. Here's the scoop: "Working with private, corporate and institutional clients, L'Affichiste deals in vintage posters on a global level. The gallery provides evaluations of private, corporate and museum collections of posters, and is a member of the internationally recognized International Vintage Poster Dealer Association." Karen is the author of Beyond Poster Art in Vienna: The Life and Art of Julius Klinger
We met recently via Zoom to talk about her love and passion for posters, and her experience collecting and selling them.
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Michael Lista on writing true crime, and getting optioned
Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet who lives in Toronto. I’ve followed his career now for some fifteen years. He’s written true crime for the better part of a decade. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey, into a television series for Apple TV+.
We talk here about Michael’s recent book of true crime stories, The Human Scale; about Truman Capote and the non-fiction novel; about listening and details; being honest when talking with people who’ve experienced crises, and how tawdry it is to ask for exclusivity; about examining systems, and how tardy the delivery of justice can sometimes be; about how the story resides in the telling, and how Shakespeare stuck his landings; about in extremis and understanding who we really are; fact-checked fairy tales; competing against YouTube and Netflix; and much more.
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Boris Wertz on ABE Books
Boris Wertz joined AbeBooks.com "the world’s largest Internet marketplace for books" in July 2002 after JustBooks, a similar company he'd co-founded in Germany, was acquired by the ABE. This interview took place in 2006.
After five years as COO of AbeBooks.com Wertz transitioned out of his day-to-day operational role, in 2007, to start a Vancouver-based venture capital business with Burda Digital Ventures. ABE was bought by Amazon in December, 2008.
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Ian Birch on great magazine covers
Ian Birch is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky Magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, [and] Grazia."
His book Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go [ if you want to interview the people who both created the covers and are still alive to talk about it], and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died.
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Paul Wells on Writing Politics for Newspapers, Magazines, Books & Substack
Paul Wells is a leading Canadian political journalist and author. We met at his offices in Ottawa to talk about his impressive career, and his craft writing about politics for newspapers, magazines, books, and now Substack. Topics covered include: observing and interviewing politicians; reading and remembering history; putting events into context; pre-revolutionary Paris; pedagogical magazine writing; helping people; recited formulas, thrown slogans, and knowing you’re being lied to; the difficulty politicians experience making a difference; discussing issues in their full complexities; “the wall of words,” “the significant trifle,” including yourself and analysis in your narratives; paying for Substack subscriptions because you want to comment; filling the ‘weekend supplement’ niche; understanding each other as neighbours; and the secret to a successful marriage.
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Christopher Long on the Genius Graphics of Lucian Bernhard
“Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972) was one of the great founders of modern graphic design. In a career spanning nearly five decades in Berlin and New York, Bernhard laid the foundation for a new language of form and communication. His brilliant posters, advertisements, book designs and typefaces created the very look of the twentieth century and beyond. In this lavishly illustrated book, noted design historian Christopher Long traces Bernhard's life and career, uncovering new truths and demolishing old myths.”
Long studied at the universities of Graz, Munich and Vienna, and received his doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Trained as a cultural historian, his dissertation was a study of the Viennese architect and designer Joseph Frank. He has since written extensively on various aspects of Central European Modernism and has published monographs on a number of notable central European emigre architects and designers in the United States.
We talk about his latest, Lucian Bernhard. I learned about it from Steven Heller’s essential Daily Heller, and was thrilled to see that it was published by Kant Books, based in Prague. All I had to do was to walk about ten minutes from my apartment doorstep to my favourite bookstore, Kavka Books, to pick up a copy.
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Nick Anthony on AI, and writing his first Novel
I interviewed Nick Anthony a year or so ago about his experience writing a first novel and getting parts of it work-shopped. Today I catch up with him to find out what he’s been doing and where he’s at now on the road to getting his first book published.
We talk about, among other things, how AI has helped him in the writing process; subjective and objective readers; the difference between screen writing and novel writing; Noam Chomsky on plagiarism; Elon Musk on Harry Potter; chess; photography; Joyce’s Ulysses; Marcel Proust writing about me going to the corner store to buy a bag of milk; and more.
The “Josh” I reference towards the end of the conversation is Josh Dolezal, who was a recent guest on The Biblio File podcast. He talked about, among other things, the experience of trying to find a literary agent.
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John Sargent on beating Amazon & Google, and saving Books
John Sargent was too young to fight in WW ll but he spent years battling Amazon and Google in the trenches on behalf of publishers and authors, protecting copyright and defending book prices.
John grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. Over forty years he worked at six publishing companies, including Simon & Schuster where he was the publisher of the Children’s Division, and Dorling Kindersley where he was CEO. For the last half of his career he was the CEO of Macmillan. He’s the author of three children’s books and is currently chairman of The Ocean Conservancy.
We met via Zoom to talk about some of the fights he’s had over the years and other stories presented in his new memoir entitled Turning Pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher. We also talk about crying and bravery, McDonald’s, Monika Lewinsky, George Bush Sr., suicide, Donald Trump, fucking sea urchins, and more.
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Joshua Doležal on being a Book Coach
Joshua Doležal is a writer and award-winning teacher with 20 years of experience in publishing and editing. His mentor was Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner.
Josh's work has appeared in more than 30 magazines including The Kenyon Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His memoir Down from the Mountain Top: From Belief to Belonging was short-listed for the 2016 William Saroyan International Prize. He writes at The Recovering Academic on Substack, AND...he's a “book coach”.
What’s a book coach? We met via Zoom to answer this question. Topics discussed include: the roles of a book coach and the qualifications you need to be one; writing tools that Josh recommends his clients use; the concept of defamiliarization; horror films and the element of surprise; three-step strategies for drafting manuscripts; Lisa Cron; James Paterson; turning points, resolutions and reckonings; tent poles and cairns; the importance of discovering things while you write; literary agents; advice for me on my podcast catalogue “book” project; Sting's backlist; pertinent questions to ask yourself if you want to write a book, such as: ‘why are you writing this book?’ and ‘why should readers care?’; plus, much more.
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