"The Complete Zap Comix: "is it possible for something to be too good?"

Got $500?  Here's a hefty 2014 collection from the Atomic Books site. You may have  to wait in line for a second edition, though -- the first run is already sold out. The Complete Zap Comix is designed by Victor Moscoso and edited by Eric Reynolds, and there are still copies available at the original price.

"Is it possible for something to be too good?  If so, this deluxe set of complete Zap Comix might just be it. This is the most important comics collection to be released in years - bringing together the complete run of the Robert Crumb-created underground comix version of MAD Magazine. It features comics by Crumb as well as S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Spain Rodriguez, Rick Griffin and so many others. This set is worth every penny of its price tag."

Charles Olson, Paris Review 1970: "Until I'm beaten, I'm still boss"

 

 Charles Olson, (1910-1970)

Charles Olson, the six-foot-eight poetic volcano of the Black Mountain school in North Carolina, was not an interviewer's easy subject. He didn't sit still explaining an academic, historical, or linear approach to his creative work, and suffered any interviewer who tried to match fact with idea or theory with practice.  Olson died in January, 1970; his summer, 1970 Paris Review bout is a classic example of Olson's combative ring style with interviewers.

The poet's avoidance of the interview itself was a clue: for three days in April 1969 Olson posted notes on his back door in Annisquam, Massachusetts, offering assurances that the interview would definitely be arranged "if you could afford to see me again." Only a chance meeting on the fourth day ended the game of tag and found the interviewer unprepared. The conversation was an all-nighter, and in the morning the kitchen table was filled with beer cans, ashtrays, and correspondence.

By the end of nine rounds with the poet in top form, Gerard Malaga walks away as dazed as the reader attempting to understand Olson's poetic rope-a-dope replies. Malaga [Warhol associate, painter, and a poet himself] tries to keep punching with a line of academic questions but Olson circles him relentlessly ["God's with this boy" ... "yeah I heard you. Continue without repeating it." ... "that's a dumb sort of block historical question" ... ]. It's a glorious reminder that whatever else poetry may be, Olson made it more than a spectator sport --by the end of the bout there was always the possibility that some blood might be spilled.

It's also a comic masterpiece of creative misdirection. Here's an excerpt :

INTERVIEWER What constitutes a school of poetry? 

OLSON Total change, like the man said; one doesn’t look like boopeedeboop—of course. Carry on, destroy film, take another giant step backwards. Málaga. Take one step backwards. Now, ask me some decent questions. 

INTERVIEWER Is the function of a literary—

OLSON That sounds dirty as hell. Maybe we can take that to the Supreme Court. Yeah, I heard you. Continue without repeating it. 

INTERVIEWER Is the function of a— 

OLSON He’s already conditioned. It’s like a reflex. Atlantis will arise again. Go ahead. God’s with this boy. 

INTERVIEWER Is the function of a literary movement primarily to secure publication of the poets connected with that movement or doesn’t a literary movement or school present a different function or advantage? 

OLSON That’s a dumb sort of block historical question, if I may say so, and typical sort of a Columbia twentieth-century question. 

INTERVIEWER A school is a place where one can learn something. Can a school lose by giving away its knowledge? 

OLSON Oh boy, that’s beautiful. That’s a lovely question. It’s really such a lovely question. Jesus God. I see it. Right through the solar plexus as the pantheon of Black Mountain pharaoh of the exile . . . We all went on to the other fields, other Bull Runs. It’s a marvelous question, though. 

INTERVIEWER Would you say Black Mountain College’s sole existence depended on the part of those artists who took part in the building of it? 

OLSON Oh no. I think, in fact, the man who built it wonderfully enough was not an artist at all, but a man from Charleston—a rare bird.

INTERVIEWER Is a school of poetry necessary in order to gain attention for a group of poets’ work or is it a handicap? 

OLSON I don’t think it’s relevant. 

INTERVIEWER I’m talking about schools of poetry in terms of such as the so-called New York school of poetry, if you’ll pardon the expression. 

OLSON All right, so name them. Poets have no reason to be in the marvelous ITT thing or Inter-World Aviation. 

INTERVIEWER Do you see the prospect of a definitive practical guide in the form of an anthology of the Black Mountain school of poets? 

OLSON Well, I certainly don’t. If the fuckers don’t get along down the trail I’ll kick their fucking asses for them. I’m an old trail man from the woods and if the goddamn stuff doesn’t come down the trail to my satisfaction, until I’m beaten, I’m still boss. ....

Michael Korda: "technology leaps ahead and people simply adapt to it"

 

 

The dire predictions that doom the future of the printed word seem to mount daily. Not to worry: book publishing will adapt in ways undreamed of, and with a quickness that will be astonishing.

 

That's the hopeful forecast in this interview with Michael Korda, author and former editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster, who's well aware that the book business will respond to the commercial expectations of readers as it always has, even as the idea of "the book" itself changes. He thinks that the role of small-press publishers, always precarious, will benefit from technology in the next five years with "a media that's open to everybody ... how they'll make money, I don't know. But then, how do they make money now?'

 

Korda offers a future business model based on the recent history of the music industry: "Nobody would have guessed that people would be downloading individual songs onto their computers and that record stores would disappear. So, you know, a very similar thing is going to happen to reading." The complete online interview by Rob Couteau, excerpted here, is in Raintaxi.

RC: You were saying the form itself is not so important; it’s the book that’s important, and we can’t compare the book in its present form to an electronic book, like the Kindle, but we have to apply our imagination to it much further, in that it might become something that’s just beyond anything we can imagine today.

MK: Well, I think that that’s true. You know, you’re looking at the Model T Ford and trying to predict what road transportation will be like in 2010 . . . ultimately, it’ll still have four wheels, and some form of propulsion, and a steering wheel, but beyond that, you’re trying to imagine something which is beyond imagination, if you see what I mean.

Now, there are two important differences. One is that the speed of progress is now so rapid, and transition is so quick, that the next step in reading-technology will come very rapidly, rather than very slowly. So that there’s not going to be a long lag between its inception and its development, and any changes that take place. Already, the iPad is a huge step ahead of the Kindle. Although whether it’s a useful step ahead for readers remains to be seen. ... it’s a rather large and cumbersome device, which needs to be replaced with something altogether different. But that is going to happen with such incredible rapidity that we really can’t forecast what it will look like. ...my guess is that, in ten years time, it will be in place and that nobody will have a problem with it. It’s just amazing the degree to which things are changing rapidly.

RC: There are a lot of people who say, “Well, I would miss the feel of the book.” But if you really unleash your imagination, it’s actually quite easy to imagine how digital book producers could appeal to the tactile sense; it doesn’t have to be just a visual innovation.

MK: Yeah, no doubt. But you know, I don’t have a clue. The person to talk to about that is Steve Jobs. [Laughs] Because unless he dies first, he’ll probably be the one who will invent it. But it’ll be something quite different. But I don’t think that that’s in any case something that one should be afraid of. People react the same way about a whole variety of things, ranging from smoking cigarettes to using typewriters or fountain pens. But nevertheless, the technology leaps ahead and people simply adapt to it. ...

RC: But other things, other businesses, will be created.

MK: Right. ... The book will continue to be a major factor for as, certainly as long as I live, and maybe as long as you live. But eventually it’s going, in the form of something else.

RC: What about the future of publishing?

MK: It will have to be reinvented with that in mind. Already, I think it’s evident that the major publishers are looking to find a partner in Apple, (and it) will become, in effect, a kind of publishing house. How that will work remains to be seen. There isn’t anyone in the book publishing business who can tell you, because nobody knows at this point in time. But that’s what everybody is clearly attempting to move towards. ...