out of print
September 14th, 2012 | Uncategorized
Speaking of aging, there’s a great post up on Autostraddle about defunct lesbian publications. Really old-time ones like Vice Versa and The Ladder, but also The Furies, Dyke Magazine, Azalea, and Hot Wire. There are links to online archives of some of them!
24 Responses to “out of print”
Thanks for the link! Your post about times past reminds me of riding the elevator in the science library at K.U. back in the late 70’s. Lesbians would write on the walls of the elevator as a means of communicating with each other in this pre-social networking age. Sic transit 20th century, the internet age is much better!
Yes, thank you, that is a terrific article. Love the big collage of covers near the top, and the smaller collage near the bottom. Interesting to see the angry letter of complaint directed at our own Liza Cowan!
This seems like the right place to mention this remarkable catalogue of women’s periodicals from 1968 to 2008 that Maggie Jochild put on her site back in 2008. I’ve been looking through it ever since, I can’t imagine how much work it represents on her part. I’ve seen doctoral dissertations that probably took fewer hours.
I winced a bit when I read Azalea‘s policy statement that “In order to keep the magazine non-elitist and non hierarchical, WE DO NOT EDIT YOUR WORK”- I just wrote a little note about Ezra Pound and R. Crumb, each of whom sent work into the world untouched by editors. Each of them might make some particular elite groups uncomfortable or present some sort of difficulty to a hierarchy somewhere, but I don’t think anyone would say that either Pound’s work or Crumb’s is an unmixed blessing to women or to people of color. And that’s a shame, because either one of them could have accomplished really great things if the right person had edited the hell out of his work. Not that boys like that would have submitted to Azalea in the first place, of course, but how is it fair to expect one person to be both author and editor of the same piece?
Thx for the plus, A, and yes, it was a prodigious amount of work but there was no place else on the web where such a list had been collected. And I was sick of hearing about how the Second Wave had only produced work by white, middle-class women in a handful of cities, when I knew from experience the depth of material I’d been reading during that era. Nothing compares to it now.
The decision to “not edit” was one I appreciated at the time, because our voices as wimmin had been (still are) so tailored to the male gaze. We needed to see what we sounded like with all constraints stripped away. Still do, in my opinion. In addition, for wimmin outside academia, outside urban communities, and otherwise outside standard English, the promise to not edit meant the possibility of hearing ways of speaking we were NOT hearing otherwise. As a writer, it meant I could consider finding my own voice.
I think in small and large ways, it had the effect we hoped for. It was, yes, also problematic as to content. I worked as an editor for a year and our decision to not ask for rewrites made a great deal more work for us. It was, however, very exciting. I kept running headlong into speech, ideas, cultural concepts I’d never imagined. Sorting through the chaff was the work of sisterhood.
Which was not asked for in reading Eliot and Pound. (grins)
Another custom common to the heydey of feminist-oriented publishing was that of crediting sources, not just literary citations but things like “A and I as Facebook friends had a convo about X last spring and he asked me a question which led in part to this essay.” It legitimized the entirety of our community dialogue, helped break down class and race divides, and esp contradicted the socialization we internalize as wimmin that our ideas and speech are not “important” to the issues of the day.
I hear what you’re saying about the value of unedited spaces. That’s always struck me as the great appeal of blogging. On this site or one of a very few others, you can put your ideas out there, be heard, and you might start a lively conversation.
Speaking of aging, another tale from the Cube Farm, guaranteed verbatim:
Yesterday, I had another one of those “Oh, I *AM* really old” moments.
Fred and I were trying to read the information off of a spec plate that was worn into illegibility. A spec plate is a thin sheet of aluminum that is fastened to industrial equipment, such as motors, transformers, gear boxes, etc., and is stamped with the operating specifications, such as voltage, BTU, RPM, model and serial numbers, and other pertinent info.
We got the bright idea to pop the rivets off the plate and try to read the impressions on the reverse side that the stamps had created. We were having trouble reading them, so I suggested we get a piece of carbon paper and do a rubbing, using the inked plate to print the impressions on a piece of paper.
First, we had to find some carbon paper. We went to see Lydia, the 20-ish admin assistant who is so plugged into modern life that she has probably never read a deadwood newspaper in her life.
“Hi Lydia, do you have any carbon paper?”
“Carbon paper.” She repeated the words as if pronouncing an unfamiliar menu item at an ethnic restaurant. She grabbed a set of keys, and we followed her as she bypassed the metal office supply cabinet near her desk, and headed down the hall to the storage room where we keep the cases of copier paper and large rolls of paper for the engineering plotter.
She opened the door and started looking through the boxes on the rack with odd types of paper; colored paper, 11″x17″ paper, cardstock.
“I don’t think it will be there, it would be in a small package like this,” I said, holding up a package of Avery labels from one of the shelves. Lydia looked confused.
“You’ve seen carbon paper, right? It’s like tissue paper with ink on one side. You put it between two pieces of paper or a form, and when you write on the top sheet, the writing is duplicated on the bottom sheet.”
“Why don’t you just use the copier?” she asked.
It was getting too complicated to explain this. I would have had better luck asking her for Kryptonite or dilithium crystals.
“Never mind. Thanks anyway.”
“Now what?” Fred asked.
I suggested we go see Grace. Grace is an African-American woman in her early to mid-60s who is the secretary to the big boss. Her title is really admin assistant, but she calls herself a secretary. In her era, secretaries were smart, capable women who were the sentries at the gates of their bosses’ offices, and secretaries were loyal confidants of the boss. Think Rosemary Woods and Richard Nixon. Secretaries could spell without spell-check, schedule dozens of meetings without Outlook Calendar, and had every useful contact imaginable stored in a Rolodex.
The title “secretary” was a badge of honor to Grace, she worked her way up from the typing pool (another anachronism not far removed from carbon paper) into executive secretary. No one gets to talk to the boss without getting past Grace.
“Hi Grace, do you have a piece of carbon paper we could use?”
Grace smiled. “You came to the right place,” she said, as she opened the bottom drawer of a file cabinet and retrieved the carbon paper. “We don’t order carbon paper any more.”
“Lydia didn’t even know what carbon paper is,” I said.
“I’m not surprised,” Grace replied.
“Do you still use that thing?” I asked, pointing at a wide-carriage Panasonic electric typewriter tucked into a corner of her desk area.
“Sometimes. It’s faster to type an envelope than do it on the computer and fuss with the printer.”
She retrieved a golfball-sized paperweight from her desk and handed it to me. “Do you think Lydia would know what this is?”
It was a typeball from an IBM Selectric typewriter. I studied the metal surface and the latch.
“This was a marvel of engineering and manufacturing. They don’t make stuff like this anymore,” I said.
Grace nodded her head. “I miss my Selectric. I cried when they took it away. I kept the ball.”
“Well, someday we’ll all be in the museum with the Selectric and the slide rule.”
We laughed as Fred and I walked off with our valuable and rare piece of carbon paper.
(… goes back to dusting the cobwebs off of her aging body …)
@HOH: Paper onto reverse of plate, pencil tip held parallel to reverse of plate, and there you have your alphanumerics. For the next time… if Grace should clean out her desk before then!
Just FYI, carbon paper is still used to transfer embroidery designs, and is available through many craft supply houses. It’s the small square size, rather than 8.5×11, but there you go.
You put a piece of carbon paper under your heart
And gave me just a copy of your love.
Each dove and pigeon’ll
Know who got the original
Darling, can’t you see
What you mean to me?
Oh, how you fooled me with those giggles, winks, and nudges.
The love that you gave me was a duplicate with smudges.
‘Cause you put a piece of carbon paper under your heart
And gave me just a copy of your Love!
Thanks so much, Maggie. That is a great job done and a great resource created. I wrote a masters thesis in New Zealand in 1995 about The Circle, later The Lesbian Feminist Circle, the only lesbian newsletter that circulated in New Zealand in the 70s and 80s. It began in 1973 and petered out in 1992 (although the wikipedia page says it ceased publication in 1986, there were, intermittently, a few more issues). My task was relatively easy compared to yours – I found someone who had all the copies, read them and made extensive notes, had a think, then wrote what they’d made me think about. All that took me about nine months.
As far as editing’s concerned, I suspect that the early issues of The Circle were written by a small group of well-educated women. The clarity of the writing definitely changed over the years, and the last few issues were quite difficult to read. One thing that always made me smile was the line on the front cover: ‘This magazine is for lesbians only’. I was never sure how you stopped other people reading it, and indeed the tabloid rag The Truth occasionally used to present shock! horror! exposés of material from Circle (for example, lesbians advertising their meeting time and place in a a country-town newspaper!). In order to obtain and keep a postage discount as a periodical, the publishers had to deposit a copy at the National Library of New Zealand, so I imagine that copy would have been accessible to people who were not lesbian.
I would like to have expanded my study by interviewing the women who had started and maintained Circle, but that would have been a PhD, and at the time it wasn’t feasible – and I’ve now moved to Australia and have other interests. Maybe someone else will be able to do it before it’s too late.
hairball (#5) Dilithium crystals, you say? As in, “We’ve replaced their regular coffee with Folger’s dilithium crystals!”? Sad to say, some young ones who are not up on Federation technology (or the Federation, for that matter) won’t recognize either dilithium crystals or the classic Folger’s instant coffee crystals ad. But fear not! Sometimes, the Olden Tymes make a comeback! Just as cell phones were deliberately modeled on the original Star Fleet communicator, some scientists are planning a table top experiment to create a warp field (yep, that kind of warp field) to displace space on a modest, proof-of-principle, 1 part in 10,000,000. Their work is based not on the discoveries of Zephrym Cochran, but on the mid-90’s theoretical work of a University of Mexico engineer named Miguel Alcubierre. So, I guess warp field strength will be measured in alcubierres instead of cochrans! Here’s the link to the story. Btw, I’ve even heard of a proposal for producing transparent aluminum! Kathryn Janeway, call your office!
Alison,
I dreamed the other night that you were filling in for Tom Tomorrow on the This Modern World strip for a day. I cannot remember the strip I saw in my dream, but I do recall that I thought it was good. You had to draw it in his style, and I was just amazed at how you were able to do it but keep your voice.
I remember Jezanna had a particularly withering quip, and she was winking, but that’s about all I can recall. Oh, yes, while reading the strip in my dream, I also had the dream-thought that you had done a DTWOF version of A Charlie Brown Christmas (Mo was Charlie Brown). If you ever do such a thing, can I get down on the pre-order list for the DVD with commentary by cast and creator?
All best,
Alex
@Alex the Bold (#11)
Mo as Charlie Brown? I love it. Two characters who exclusively have striped wardrobes, although CB’s duds have zigzags. I wonder how AB handled the linear vs. zigzag stripe conundrum. Who holds (and pulls away) the football for Mo when she tries to kick it? I can see Sydney as Lucy in that character. Stu would be Linus, playing the piano. Lois as Pigpen, perhaps? Sparrow as Sally? There are more DTWOF characters than Peanuts ones, and no anthropomorphics such as Snoopy. I guess he’d have to play himself.
L’Shanah Tovah, y’all
(… goes back to dipping her apple slices in honey …)
@Dr. E (#8)
Provenance of those lyrics, please. All I’m coming up with using my Google-fu is The Muppet Show (Rowlf singing the song with various guests).
@Kate L (#10)
“We’ve replaced their regular coffee with Folger’s dilithium crystals!”
You have officially won the “She snorted her tea out her nose” award for that one. Fortunately, my sinuses needed a flush. Also fortunate that my tea was devoid of lithium (although the jury might be bi-opinionated on that score).
(… goes back to looking for signs of intelligent life on Earth …)
News flash… the Columbia University library is busy acquiring comics and graphic literature:
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/09/17/graphic-novels-comics-get-scholarly-treatment-at-columbia/
Quoting from the article:
—
Graphic novels and the comic form – or what Ms. Green called “marginalized literature” – have crept into the mainstream in the form of television shows, young adult novels and Hollywood blockbusters. Preserving their history and documenting their rise from fringe to pop culture shows a further elevation of comic books as an art form.
To Paul Levitz, former president of DC Comics and associate professor at Columbia’s Center for American Studies, the acquisition of such a collection “means we won.”
“The kinds of people who really love science fiction, fantasy and the imagination, tended to be not the most popular kid in school. Not the hero of the school,” he said.
[…snip…]
Before Ms. Green started her graphic novel collection, the university’s libraries held only a handful of graphic novels and comics. Now they contain more than 2,600. While the mechanism for acquiring other collections, such as in Ms. Green’s main field of expertise ancient and medieval history, has been established for decades, there’s no concrete methodology in acquiring graphic novels and comics for library collections. That means that Ms Green has to go to various comic conventions to hand-select titles that are added to the collection.
“My job is much cooler,” she said. “I’m not the only librarian who goes to Comic-Con, but I’m the only Columbia librarian who goes.”
[…snip…]
“Today, while publishing and creation can happen anywhere, there is a huge creative community in NYC. You can’t toss a stone in Brooklyn without hitting a cartoonist,” said Ms. Green. “So, clearly, while cartooning and comics don’t have to happen in NYC any longer, there is still something about this town that brings people to us.”
—
Now there’s a librarian to love.
I also note that some former Brooklynites, such as AB, are now located in Vermont, another place where you can’t toss a stone without hitting a cartoonist.
(… goes back to looking for her own librarian to love …)
@hairball of hope (#13)
The song was sung in the Muppet Show <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOSJnYh_brI&feature=player_embedded".
The name of the song is “Carbon Paper” by Abe Burrows and published by Carabe Music. I found this out by getting on the Muppet Wiki website.
Re #12, I recently was told that the “Peanuts” Empire refused to allow any copyrighted material to be used for a book about Charles Schulz. So here’s what the designer did for the book jacket: http://www.amazon.com/Schulz-Peanuts-Biography-David-Michaelis/dp/0060937998/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348152091&sr=1-8&keywords=charles+schulz
Just fyi, “out of print” is preserved in the archives. The Sophia Smith Collection has an extensive collection of periodicals from back in the day. I’m sure the Schlesinger at Harvard also has an awesome collection. NB, we also have Ms. Bechdel’s papers. Keep ’em coming.
As someone else has already noted, “Carbon Paper” was written by Abe Burroughs, best remembered today as a writer on Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I don’t know the context in whih it originally appeared. Probably a radio variety show, back when they had radio variety shows. And carbon paper.
I learned it off the Rowlf the Dog (Jim Henson) album “Ol’ Brown Ears is Back!” which I cannot recommend highly enough.
…except he spelled his name “Burrows”.
Cathy#17:
Hmmm. I wonder about what you were told about David Michaelis’ biography of Charles Schulz. The book doesn’t seem to show any evidence of not being allowed to use copyrighted material.
For one thing there are something like 250 strips included in the body of the text. Moreover, this was an “authorized” biography, meaning, in this case, that the author had “full access” to family members and archival documents.
(In any case, in addition to having enjoyed the biography, I kind of like the cover. I thought it was quite clever. Once during a visit to the Peanuts museum in Santa Barbara they had shirts with this designs [the “Charlie Brown shirt”] for sale. I always regret not buying one –not that I could remotely have fit into it, but still… [On the other hand, I still carry my receipt from the “Warm Puppy” coffee shop at the adjoining ice-skating rink in my wallet.])
But, yes, copyrights are sticky things. The Peanuts material often comes up during discussion of the legal concept of “laches” which says, roughly, if it can be shown that you were aware of any violation of a copyright in your possession, and you did not adequately defend the copyright, then the copyright risks being voided, and the related material falling into public domain. The unfortunate result is that you sometime ends up with these horror stories of, as you say, “The Peanut’s Empire” bringing a suit against some well-meaning vet who painted a picture of Snoopy on the side of her barn in the woods of Buccolia, Maine.
NLC, 21, there was a similar story about J.K. Rowling a few years ago. Her lawyers stomped on some innocent Harry Potter fanfic, there was a backlash, and she gave the same explanation that you gave. It’s hard not to think there could be a better way to enforce copyright, that could make the relevant distinction among intentions, but I don’t have it. Of course “intellectual property” is a hot topic these days, and… ugh, I don’t want to go there!
I’m not familiar with the Schulz bio, but it is a great cover design.
Re #21, thanks, NLC. I heard the story about the refusal to grant permission to use “Peanuts” material from a participant at a copyright workshop I organized recently. The instructor, an attorney from the Copyright Office, never questioned or challenged her. I’ll have to find out where she heard that story.
Laches is an interesting issue–as is the question of whether laches applies to copyright violations. Federal courts in many jurisdictions have held that laches is not an available defense when a statute of limitations exists for filing a claim (the copyright law creates a limitation period of three years); other courts are more flexible, however. The Supremes might need to weigh in some day.
Akin to your story of the vet in Maine with Snoopy on the barn, in 1989, Disney threatened to sue a day care center that painted some Disney characters on its exterior walls. They didn’t even start with a polite request to remove the images. One of the defendants told reporters, “I don’t think anyone driving by is going to confuse this place with Disney World.” Hannah Barbera did the cool thing of repainting the day care center with images its own characters at its own expense.
Cathy,
About #17. Think of what it says about Schulz’s genius that just a zig-zag for a cover and the “Peanuts” typeface, and we all (probably) know exactly what the book is going to be about.