--Illustrations such as these, yes. Though it would be hard to detract
from this particular book.
--It is a standard book--a standard type of book.
--I fear that it is.
--What kind of illustrations would you favour?
--For many books, none at all. In these books of current fiction the
pictures are either futile or else detrimental to the development of
the plot. They give the game away, so to speak, when the author may
wish to hold the story in suspense. The effort to avoid this disaster
accounts for the multitude of undramatic pictures you see in books.
--Your theory of no pictures should appeal to the publishers but I
doubt if the illustrators will stand with you.
--Illustration is a trade as well as an art.
--True. But we are trying to limit the inquiry to the artistic side at
present. When, then, according to your deductions, would illustrations
be called for?
--When they can make a stage-setting for the story. When they ornament
it or suggest it, perhaps, instead of reveal it. Impressions and
"atmosphere" instead of literal diagrams with a cross marking the spot
where, etc.
--But perhaps people like the cross marking the spot where.
--We are limiting the discussion to the artistic side, are we not?
--What about the half-tone process of engraving?
--The process is a way of doing a thing that cannot be done cheaply by
any other means.
--Do you consider it a process that adds to the artistic possibilities
of book printing?
--You mean according to the standards that prevailed in the earlier
days of the craft?
--I do. Yes.
--According to those standards it seems to me that half-tones
will always have to be considered as necessities forced upon the
book-printer. They demand a kind of paper that is never a satisfactory
book-paper. In the case of the kind of books we are talking about
the relief line methods have always given the most artistic results,
because they are so closely related to the character of type.
One regrets, however, to give up the chances for tonal designs that
the half-tone process provides. Probably the designers and printers
will work out a satisfactory relation between half-tones and type
when the craze for photographic detail passes a little. As things
stand, I should say that the best results are to be had with uncoated
book-papers and with line plates. It is true books are rarely
illustrated this way--current fiction, I mean--but the method might be
used to produce a very attractive and unusual result.
--Then you would condemn the use of half-tones in this kind of book?
--If you mean the usual kind of half-tones printed separately and
inserted, I do. But if you are making a book of travel, for example,
the half-tones from photographs explain and justify themselves.
But on this whole subject of book illustration it strikes me that if
you are to make the design from the start you might as well make it
in harmony with the kind of paper and printing you are planning to
use, and get all the artistic advantage of fitting your means to your
limitations.
* * * * *
Are you familiar with the Christy-Holbein Test?
--Yes. That is to say, I have heard of your applying it, and remember
that the percentages were very much against Holbein.
--Ninety-three to seven, on an average. How do you explain such a
crudity of taste in these groups of people otherwise well educated?
--By the deduction that they are not educated. That is to say that
these people, cultivated in other ways, react precisely like savages
when confronted with pictures or drawings. They "go for" the tinsel
and glitter and are opaque to the higher and more civilized values.
They get the most pleasure from drawings that they think they could
make themselves. This is the basis of the Eight-year-old Formula widely
applied in the department of newspaper comics: "Make your drawing so
that it can be understood by a child eight years old."
All of this is clearly lack of training, because their taste is good in
other matters--music, for example, and house furnishings.
--You would deduce, then, that the periodical and book-publishing
industry has failed to train the taste of its public in such matters?
--It has done worse: it has depraved that taste. Because there was,
not very long ago, a fine tradition in this country in the line of
illustration.
--Why should the publishers find any advantage in depraving the taste
of the public--as you say they have done?
--Because they turned their backs on the standards of the publishing
business and became merchandisers solely. They had to sell the goods
and they had to "sell" a big new public. The quickest way to this
public--through flash-and-crash tactics--they adopted. And naturally
ran themselves and the public down hill.
--May there not be other sides to it, too? May it not be that the art
schools are not now producing draughtsmen of a calibre to support the
fine tradition you mention?
--That may have something to do with it. But even that is mixed
up with the other. I think that the chief difficulty is with the
publishers.
--And the public?
--The public will follow if the publishers lead.
V. MR. S.
A. Are you not making the mistake of keeping too close to the
publishers? It seems to me that you will not get at all the facts
behind the situation until you get in touch with the people we sell the
books to. _They_ are the factors that bring about the conditions you
object to. The publisher is merely a machine for selling the public
what it wants.
--Then the publisher has no selective function?
--Absolutely none.
--How does the public bring about the condition we object to?
--Obviously by buying the books.
--I mean to say, how does the public prevail upon you to sell it trashy
books instead of well made books?
--The public is entirely uneducated on the subject of books, in your
sense. People know nothing at all about paper or printing or pictures
or things of that sort. One book is as good as another to any educated
man so long as he can read it. He doesn't know that there is any such
thing as good printing or bad printing or good or bad taste in making
books. Under these conditions we should be fools to spend money on
features that do not have any bearing on sales. It's a simple business
proposition.
--Would the public that you are discussing buy well made books as
willingly as trashy books?
--Oh, absolutely. It's the books they are interested in--what they
contain, not how they are made. They wouldn't know the difference.
VI. MR. G.
A: What's the use of talking about standards in connection with things
like these? These are not books. They aren't fit to wad a gun with. I
wouldn't have them in the house. Nobody pays any attention to stuff
like that.
There isn't what you would call a book on the table, except this one,
perhaps. That's printed in England and sent over in sheets and bound
on this side. But that one is set in a bastard Caslon. It isn't the
original Caslon but a revision with the descenders cut off. See how
he's got his O upside down!
Those others--what's the use of talking about them at all? It reminds
me of the story about the Chinaman--
--But, Mr. ----, do you not think it possible to get up this class of
books in a manner that would suit you better?
--You can't hope to get anything like a decent book until you do away
with the damnable cheap paper and the vile types. And then you will
have to start in and teach the printer how to print. There aren't more
than a half a dozen presses in the country that know how to print. Most
printing looks like it had been done with apple-butter on a hay-press--
--What you say is unhappily true. What we are trying to find out are
the causes of this state of things.
--The causes are everywhere--all through the rattletrap, cheap-jack,
shoddy work that is being done in every kind of trade. Nobody cares for
making decent things any more.
The only cure is to get back to decent standards of workmanship in
everything again. But the case seems to me to be hopeless. I try to do
printing up to a decent standard--and that is about all any of us can
do. I don't believe you can hope to do much good through your societies
and investigations. I believe in each one doing his own job in the best
way he knows how. That's the only way you can raise the standard. It's
the work you turn out that counts.
AN ABSTRACT OF THE COMMITTEE'S RECOMMENDATIONS
Two main questions resulting from the Inquiry present themselves to
the Committee. The first question is: Is it within the power of the
Society of Calligraphers, of any society, or of Society itself, to
restore to the printing of books a standard of good work? The second
and major question: Are books necessary to the present social state?
I. When the Committee began its work it assumed as a matter of
course that the established standards of printing would serve it as
guide-posts and criteria. It expected to traverse a country where the
highways were in need of repair, perhaps, and the marks of direction
dim, but on the whole a negotiable country. It found a very different
state of things.
Instead of roads to be followed with some excusable discomfort it
found not even trails. Such highways as had once been charted were
obliterated. Not only hair-lines but the most elementary blazemarks
were overgrown and lost beyond any hope of recovery. Instead of
following the planned course of visit and consultation the Committee
was forced to reorganize itself into an expedition of discovery. It has
been fortunate to return at all.
The collected data of the exploration can lead to but one conclusion:
That the whole fabric of Standards of Workmanship will have to be
rebuilt from the beginning. Whether this can be done under the present
state of society is a matter to be discussed in connection with the
second question.
* * * * *
II. Are books necessary to the present social state? The Committee's
finding is, unanimously and conclusively, No.
During the past twenty years many influences have been at work to
wean mankind from the use of books. Automobiles, the motion-picture
drama, professional athletics, the _Saturday Evening Post_--these
operated even before the Great War to discourage the habit of reading.
Since the war the progress of society--culminating, in America, in
the dictatorship of the proletariat--has effectually completed the
process. Books as an element vital to the welfare of the race have been
eliminated.
The Society of Calligraphers is thus freed at one stroke from the
obligations implied in the first question. But there are still books in
existence, and for these the Committee feels a professional concern.
For the Investigation, if it has done nothing else, has disclosed
the most cogent and ineluctable fact: that wherever there is contact
between books and the public, the effect upon the books is deleterious.
So far as the immediate situation is concerned, the public, by
discontinuing the contact, has obviated the danger. But in a period of
revolution no condition can be taken for granted as fixed. It is quite
within the range of possibility that the public, under compulsion, may
turn again to books and reading; and this, the Committee believes, is a
contingency the Society should be prepared to meet.
Publishers as a group promise, for the immediate future, to be a
harassed and unimpressionable body. Influence upon them can be
brought to bear only through public demand. Should a public demand
for books revive, it will be imperative for the Society either to
quench it altogether--a project which the Committee has discarded
as visionary--or to take it in hand at its inception and give it
constructive shape by forcing upon public attention such knowledge of
the more elementary points of good taste as shall make impossible the
further prostitution of standards. As the most direct means to this end
it is urgently recommended by the Committee that the Society take up at
once the study of advertising.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]W. A. DWIGGINS[Illustration]
TWENTY YEARS AFTER: MR. McG., MR. A., MR. L. _and_ THE SOCIETY OF
CALLIGRAPHERS
From _Publishers' Weekly_, Sept. 2, 1939. Copyright 1939 by R. R.
Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
NOTE: _In 1919 the Society of Calligraphers published a pamphlet_:
Extracts From An Investigation Into the Physical Properties of Books.
_In the summer of 1939, three of the people who reported in the
investigation were visited again and their opinions solicited as
to what had happened in the interval of twenty years to change the
physical characteristics of books. Transcriptions of parts of the three
interviews follow._
MR. McG.
Q: Twenty years ago you were kind enough to discuss book-manufacturing
with us.
--Twenty years. Remarkable memory!
--It meant a great deal to us--your help. It was in 1919. We were
conducting an inquiry--perhaps you remember--into the physical
qualities of books.
--Oh, yes! How you could improve them, and so on. Yes.
--Now we are back again--to see what you think now.
--Good. Interesting idea. Ask me questions.
--For instance ... Does it strike you that trade books have improved in
the twenty years?--as physical objects,--packages?
--Packages. Very neat. Sums up the situation.
--We mean, both as implements, tools, for getting a job done; and as
pleasant things to look at, handle, use ... or the contrary.
--Well. Let's see. Yes. I think trade books have improved decidedly in
twenty years. Decided improvement.
--What points of improvement, would you say?
--Well. More care taken with the get-up, margins, format as you call
it, title pages. Real design coming into it. And much more careful
about the type--legibility and all that--paper, suitability for
reading, good surface for the eye, etc., etc.
--You said, twenty years ago, that your directors' lack of interest in
the product hampered you. Since you have been in charge here have you
been able to bring your books up to a level that suits you better?
--Yes ... and no.... Costs have climbed in twenty years, materials,
labor. We've pushed up retail prices, but the manufacturing costs eat
up all we gain. More than eat it up. Less margin now for design or
style or whatever than twenty years ago, I'd say.
--That looks like faulty adjustment somewhere, doesn't it?
--Situation needs adjusting, certainly!
--I mean, maybe you are paying out money for quite unnecessary features.
--Possibly.
--Not a strictly _factual_ meeting of the conditions, perhaps?--not
"realistic," as the dictators say. Have you ever thought how you might
study the market-product relations from an entirely new and fresh angle?
--Now there! ... that's interesting ... I have. I've thought a lot
about it. When I get off into the Maine woods and look back at it
there's one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb. We've got into
a rut. The whole trade has. Not a shadow of a doubt about it. We let
ourselves be ruled by a whole catalog of standards and values and
"musts" that are as dead as the dodo. Standards inherited from an
entirely different state of society. A thousand years different, you
might say. It is amazing how conservative a tribe we are, we book
people.... Take the cover of a book, for example. Take this cover
here, for instance. We spent a lot of trouble and money dickering
it up--worry about the colors and the design--cost of dies, cost of
stamping, cost of foil ... and not a soul will ever see it! It's all
hidden away under the jacket, and it'll _stay_ hidden under the jacket!
All this book-cover stuff is ... what's the word? ... vestigial--like
your appendix--something no longer used--something useless left over
from an earlier stage of evolution. Did you ever see anybody in a book
store turn the jacket back and look at the cover? Did you ever hear
of a cover that helped sell a book?--to the slightest extent? No. And
when they get 'em home and read 'em and lend them to their friends the
jacket stays on. Never comes off. Book-covers are just expense--useless
expense--the decoration and things, I mean.
--You would do away with covers, then?
--No. It's got to be in boards--people want them that way--it's one of
your "realistic" details.
--In your "new angle" volume would you have the insides as you do them
now?
--No. There again I'd let the demand shape the product. Your market
doesn't give a hang about the type and printing so long as they can
read it.
--That sounds like twenty years ago!
--I know. Very likely it does.
--Haven't things changed?
--Not much. It's as true now as it was then.
--But all this talking and writing and lecturing....
--Two or three thousand persons, perhaps--two or three thousand have
become "book conscious" as they say--the limited edition crowd. I'm
dealing with the ten million.... There's a lot of whoosh in all that
book beautiful stuff, you know.
--Mr. ---- thinks it helps to tell them about type and paper, etc.
--I know. It doesn't. They don't understand his little notices--it's
all shop talk. He likes 'em. He thinks they give the books tone, I
daresay. I think it doesn't matter a damn one way or the other. All
that shop detail is zero. They don't care to know and they don't _need_
to know. Just make your book so it will read handily and let it go at
that.
--Have you got this "new angle" idea to a point where you could
describe a book made that way?
--Well. I might. Take the cover--I'd have board covers and cloth. But
I wouldn't stamp them. Bright color. Gay. Patterned cloth sometimes.
I'd have the simplest kind of paper label on the backbone. Printed
from type--standard affair--library label that you could read. No
embroidery, just plain function. On the least expensive terms possible.
Make it a kind of house-trademark feature.... Inside I'd forget all
I knew about fine printing--the art--it's a great art--forget all I
knew--start fresh with the _use_.
--_You_ like fine printing.
--That's right. I do. In its place. The place isn't trade books. You
can't have fine printing in trade books. All you can have along _that_
line is cheap imitation--celluloid collar and no shirt. If you go out
with your imitation fine printing as a mark to shoot at you come back
with what we turn out now, all of us--shabby genteel, to the limit. My
book won't try to get by with a paper collar. My book won't have _any_
collar. It will get down to the basis of realism--a handy, efficient,
_cheap_ tool for temporary use. Read it--throw it away. Who saves a
book now? If you save it, where are you going to put it? In the car?
--That suggests question of size--what do you think about size?
--Oh, small, by all means. For the usual job not larger than the
5-1/2x7-3/4 range. Smaller than that when you can.
--You think people do not want a big package for their money?
--Not when they want a book to read. If we can get the price down
they'll flock to small size, I'm sure. When they pay two-fifty, three,
perhaps they want their poundage. Books for gifts too, possibly--want
'em impressive. But on my basis of a good workable tool they'll like
them small and handy.
--Your point in general, then, is that modern books should be looked at
as temporary affairs.
--Absolutely. Temporary affairs. Like magazines. And they ought to be
_produced_ as temporary affairs. Paper a little better than newsprint,
but not much better--better color, on the warmish side instead of
blue-grey. "Guaranteed by the Bureau of Standards to last three hundred
years." Bosh. Presswork: set your standard at the level of legibility.
That's low--look at the newspapers. Get it so you can read it easily
and let the fine points ride. Give up points of paper and make-ready
to get a cheaper package. You are making a tool, remember, not a
_bijou_--you're making a sound, efficient, easy-working tool--tools
don't need paper lace and fake-leather upholstery to make them
sound--when a tool is efficient it has a style of its own, inevitably.
--Your dictum is, "books as tools."
--Books as tools. Right. But here's a point. All this is on the
technical side. Treat a book as a temporary affair. But while it lasts
I'd take considerable pains to have it be a _lively_ affair. Not
freakish--you can't play tricks with the reading process--but lively,
like a good, interesting talker. Little fresh twists, but hardly
noticeable in detail. A lot of ways to do it in an inconspicuous way.
Mustn't be conspicuous--mustn't interfere with the reading job. Little
touches of ornament in the right places. Pictorial bits--pictures are
coming back into trade books again, in a new form--easy, swift, simple
illustrations that fit in with the "temporary affair" style. Some
of the money saved by a strategic retreat from impossible printing
standards I'd put into things like that--to keep the pages gay and
interesting.
--In this connection, do you think that modern books ought to be
"modernistic" in design?
--Absolutely _not_. As I said a minute ago, you can't play tricks with
the process of reading.... One of the necessities of the modernistic
stuff is the necessity to shock you--to make people jump. You can't set
off firecrackers on a book page every few paragraphs without taking the
reader's mind off the text. You simply can't read in the neighborhood
of modernistic design. It isn't because you are not used to it. It's in
the very nature of the style.... I'm talking about books, of course.
For advertising, it's prime. Have all the modernistic design you want
on your jacket. The more the better.
--And that brings us....
--Yes. I've been waiting for it. That brings us to book-jackets!
--Yes. What do you think....
--Now _there_ you are in another country entirely. Now's the time
to beat the drums and run up the flags and drape the bunting....
All the money you can't afford to spend on covers you _can_ afford
to spend on jackets. Because, first, the jacket _is_ the cover; and
second, the jacket helps directly in selling the book. Jackets are
advertising--posters--billboards--so make 'em shout.
--Attractive?
--If you mean _pretty_, not so important. If you mean oomph,
by all means. Feminine charm, in the prevailing mode.... But
sock-'em-in-the-eye. Make them strong. Make them so people can't miss
seeing them.
--What is your own formula?
--Formula? I haven't any formula.... If I had I think it would be
_contrast_. Contrast with all the other books on the table. Don't
follow anybody's style. Get away from the prevalent "successful" style
of the moment. Take a look at the tables--what would stick out now more
than plain white paper with plain black type? I'd probably varnish it.
Contrast.
--Do jackets sell books?
--Oh ... no. Jackets don't sell books. They _help_. What sells a book
is the stuff inside--story--text. But books need to be _seen_. Jackets
help make them visible.
* * * * *
--You save on covers and spend on jackets. You save on paper and
printing, and put some of the saving into pictorial and design
features. Would you come out with enough saving to get the retail price
down from two fifty?
--I think so. I think if the thing were studied out on our "new angle"
basis you'd find that you not only liked my books a lot better--as
"packages"--but that you'd be able to buy more of them.
MR. A.
Q: One thing I wanted to ask ... you have had a considerable part in
shaping your juvenile department.
--Yes. I have.
--My question may seem a little ... cool.... Do you prepare your
juvenile titles with the children themselves in view--the ultimate
consumers?