“House Snake” by Reynolds Price. Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 1987.

A young Herb Yellin caught the bug for autographs at Fenway Park in Boston. As he grew older Yellin became a serious reader and married the two passions when he began collecting signed first editions. Eventually, his insatiable quest for books led him to establish Lord John Press in 1976 as a way to offer something special beyond the hardback book. The books were often issued in printings of 150 and 300 copies and were signed by the author. The press showed a passion for paper, printing and book binding. The contents were never lengthy, containing an author’s short story, an essay, a speech, a poem, or an excerpt. Lord John Press did not publish the obvious, and this provided something special to the book collector and for the reader who was so devoted to that author.

“House Snake,” a single poem by Reynolds Price, seventeen pages in length, was published in book form in colorful marbled boards with gilt decoration by Lord John Press in 1987. Only 150 numbered copies were printed and signed by the author.

Other examples from the press include:

“The State of the Novel” by Walker Percy (in conjunction with Faust Press)

“Ill Seen Ill Said” by Samuel Beckett

“The Literature of Exhaustion and the Literature of Replenishment” by John Barth

“Acrobats in the Park” by Eudora Welty

and “A Collection of Reviews” by Ross Macdonald.

Lord John Press got its funny name from the founder’s love of these authors: John Barth, John Cheever, John Fowles, John Gardner, John Hawkes, and John Updike. “Lord” is said to have come from his desire “to marry” Great Britain and America. Over the years Yellin published around 100 titles. Lord John Press has since closed and Yellin passed away in 2014.

Written by Lisa Newman,  A version of this column was published in The Clarion-Ledger’s Sunday Mississippi Books page.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf. New York, NY: Knopf, 1999.
The simple wisdom of Kent Haruf’s “Plainsong” is revealed in the choral cast of characters. The interwoven stories stay with the reader long after the book is finished: a watchful teacher, a young pregnant girl who finds support from an unexpected pair of lonely bachelor farmers, a couple of young boys making their way without a mother. “Plainsong” is a story about a community coming together when the most predictable lines of support are absent.

Kent Haruf was born in 1943 and grew up on high plains of eastern Colorado, the landscape that features prominently in all of his novels. A college course in American literature exposed Haruf to Faulkner and Hemingway and changed his aspirations from a biology teacher to literature and writing. After two years living in Turkey as a Peace Corp volunteer, Haruf applied to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop but was rejected. The University of Kansas instead provided a graduate degree but Haruf still longed for the writer’s workshop in Iowa, so he moved to Iowa City in the dead of winter with his wife and baby girl with no placement and a meager job as a janitor in a nursing home. By May, he was finally accepted. It was in Iowa that Haruf developed important writer friendships with Denis Johnson, Stuart Dybek, Tracy Kidder, T. C. Boyle, and John Irving. He also developed his fictional landscape of Holt County, Colorado where all of his novels would be set.

After writing for eleven years, it was his friend John Irving who sent Haruf’s first novel to his own agent at Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Haruf recollects in an essay for Granta: “[Irving] said he had sent fifty writers to his agent and he hadn’t taken any of them, but maybe he’d take me. And he did . . . That was a great day for me.” Haruf had been writing for twenty years and was forty-years-old in 1984 when his first book, “The Tie That Binds,” was published and won a PEN/Hemingway citation and a position teaching freshman composition at Nebraska Wesleyan. Later, he received a more prestigious position at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where he would write his breakout novel “Plainsong.”

In 1998 Haruf’s agent sent “Plainsong” to Knopf, and Gary Fisketjon became his editor. Besides the intense yet never overbearing editing that Fisketjon offered, the two developed a friendship over part of Haruf’s 15-city author tour. “Plainsong” received a National Book Award nomination as well as adoration from a growing fan base. Fisketjon recalls on his blog, “Remembering Kent Haruf”: “Readers who’d taken so much from his work were now lining up to give something—adoration, trust, celebration—back to him.”

Collecting the six novels of Kent Haruf is to collect something of the heart. The stories of Kent Haruf never leave the reader and it can seem somewhat irrelevant to collect the books as objects. However, the stories are more than just stories that touch the heart. These novels read as modern day classics and will endure as classics. Haruf’s first two novels are harder to find as the print runs were smaller and signings were limited. By the time “Plainsong” was published, the print run had expanded to 70,000 and Knopf sent Haruf on national signing tours. Knopf issued a small number of “Benediction” signed as Haruf was too ill to tour.

Kent Haruf passed away November 30, 2014 at the age of 71, but not before leaving us one final gift. “Our Souls at Night” goes on sale May 26, 2015.

Three hundred and fifty independent bookstores across America celebrate their tenacity and appreciation for their customers on Saturday, May 2—including Mississippi Independent Bookstores. National Independent Bookstore was inspired by California’s first Independent Bookstore Day in 2014 which was celebrated by an impressive 93 California bookstores.

One of the most legendary bookstores in California is City Lights in San Francisco, opened in 1953 by poet and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin, a sociology student and publisher of a magazine called City Lights. Martin’s idea was to open a quality paperback bookshop. At that time, paperbacks were sold at newsstands and little thought was given to the impact a small, cheap book could make.

A couple of years after their shop opened, Ferlinghetti heard the first public reading of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg at the 6 Gallery. The poem opens:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.”

Ferlinghetti had started a series of books called City Lights Pocket Poets Series and he famously sent Ginsberg a telegram after hearing Ginsberg read “Howl”:

“I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?”

“Howl and Other Poems” became Number Four in Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Pocket Poets Series, but hundreds of copies of the book were seized by U.S. Customs officials and Ferlinghetti was charged with obscenity. The charges were later dropped when Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the poem had redeeming social importance.

Through Ferlinghetti’s bookstore, his own poetry, the publication of “Howl”–which set precedence for the freedom to publish controversial literary works of redeeming social importance, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, now 96-years-old, embodies everything an independent bookstore and its booksellers could ever wish to be.

Ferlinghetti wrote dozens of poetry books, including America’s most popular selling book of poetry, “A Coney Island of the Mind.” Over the years, the poet has signed paperbacks of his poetry for fans who have visited City Lights bookstore. For serious collectors, Ferlinghetti’s books issued as signed limited editions will have lasting value and beauty.

See all of Lemuria’s first editions by Ferlinghetti here. 

Written by Lisa Newman,  A version of this column was published in The Clarion-Ledger’s Sunday Mississippi Books page.