Big Two-hearted River
By Ernest Hemingway
Illustrations by M. D. Ryus
Portland, Maine: Coyote Love Press, 2002. Edition of 85.
11.5 x 10”; 32 pages. Letterpress printed from Monotype Bodoni on clean white Rives de Lin paper with retained deckle at each fore edge. Illustrations are archival inkjet prints. The book is bound in an Indian paper which has the appearance of a muddy river bottom. It is tab sewn onto strips of reeds. A small, inset photograph appears as a window in the front cover.
One of the best of the Nick Adams short stories. Nick leaves the train and traverses the burned out landscape, heading cross-country, orienting himself, from memory, toward the river. We track his interior awareness as Hemingway depicts the details of finding and setting camp, of fishing. In reading, we travel also, if the landscape of camping is familiar to us, to the slowing solitariness of man, woods, and river, to the simple tasks of daily survival highlighted by time in nature. Publisher George Bennington points out that "There is a kind of foreboding at the end [of the story], as well as a darkness throughout." He perceives Hemingway's intention to comment on the horrors of war, as evoked in the description of the burned-out forest land, and on one man's way of dealing with those horrors.
This is a handsomely typeset edition. Square, justified blocks of text are set on the rectangular page, the margins framing them like picture matting. Paragraphs are denoted by inset typographic ornaments, a repeating motif, so that the text runs seamlessly, without breaks for paragraph or compensation for sentence "widows" or "orphans" at the bottom margins. Thus, each text page appears as a mirror image of every other, but for the details of the text itself. Ryus' photographs fit the same dimension and depict a placid river surface, recalling Nick's observation: "The river made no sound. It was too fast and smooth." Ryus' prints appear almost sepia-tone, the originals having been painted upon, their surfaces worked and then varnished to create the unusual coloring.
$325
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Voiceprints
By David Walker
Portland, Maine: Coyote Love Press Romulus Editions, 1989.
Edition of 100.
Edition initially of 100 (75 numbered copies printed on mouldmade Arches, with etchings by Cornell hooked in, and quarter-bound in leather. With 24 copies, a Livres deluxe edition, printed damp on handmade Barcham Green Langley, but with a separate suite of prints.) Type is Monotype Bembo set by Michael and Winifred Bixler. Based on the 15th Century designs of Francesco Griffo for the Aldine "De Aetna" by Pietro Bembo. Designed and printed by George Bennington. Etchings by Thomas Cornell and printed by James Cambronne. Signed by Walker and Cornell.
The graphic device on the bastard title, title page, and covers was made from a recording of the poet pronouncing the vowels and consonants of the book's title on a BK precision 40 MHZ oscilloscope.
$400
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