Depression Dog

by Toby Olson. The Perishable Press Limited (201 North Hay Hollow Road, Mount Horeb, Wisconsin 53572 USA), 2003. Unpaged [20 pp.], illus. Cloth, $775.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens,
Department of Art,
University of Northern Iowa,
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0362, U.S.A.

ballast@netins.net

The author of this book of fiction (described on its title page as "Chapter Four and Chapter Ten from the as yet unpublished novel The Bitter Half ") is a prolific American writer who has authored more than 30 books of poetry, fiction and essays. Eleven of those were published in connection with the celebrated book artist and assemblagist, Walter Hamady (Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin), the founder and proprietor of the Perishable Press Limited, which broadcasts from a wooded farm near Madison, Wisconsin. A papermaker and letterpress printer, Hamady began his now-legendary "private press" 39 years ago, when he was only 24. Since then, he has published 128 limited-edition artists' books, while working with more than 80 writers, among them such familiar names as Robert Creeley, Loren Eisley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and W.S. Merwin. Each time he produces a volume (typically in editions of about 100 copies), he cooks up and brings to the table a visual-tactile bouillabaisse of the various facets of book design and production, including inks, paper, color, typesetting, illustration, letterpress printing, binding, marbling and so on.

Unlike most inheritors of the Arts and Crafts tradition, from the very outset, Hamady has never simply "printed books," in the mere sense of printing a text on a page. Rather, he orchestrates all its components into a complete "work of art," so that each book is so astounding that it falls outside the normal realm of what we might hope to encounter in life. As a result, a single copy of a Perishable Press book sells for hundreds of dollars (often thousands), and editions are eagerly, quickly acquired (as works of art) by individuals and institutions throughout the world, including book museums at Harvard, Yale, the Newberry Library, the British Museum, Oxford, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Library in Stockholm, and so on. Not surprisingly, his efforts have gained him enormous prestige, with his books being chosen repeatedly by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (in various years) as the best-designed books in the country. In this latest volume, he not only collaborates with the author, but also integrates the work of four illustrators (Jim Lee, Henrik Drescher, Peter Sis, and David McLimans), who produced ten line-art images to complement parts of the story. As firmly as do all his books, this new one also demonstrates why his work is so widely admired and owned.

One indicator of Hamady's presence (and in ways it is this that defines him) is his refusal to permit a thing--or a word or a thought or a tangible form--to remain simply as it is, as if he were haplessly driven to reconfigure everything: to reshape and reform and restructure to the point that it must be compulsive. Having mastered a skill or traditional craft (such as papermaking, typesetting, letterpress printing, or bookbinding), his immediate impulse is to outdistance that practice; to lampoon his expertise; and to purposely act in a way that is "wrong," to arrive at an end that is even more "right." For example, in one of his handmade books (a collection of poems and paintings he called John's Apples, 1995), the binding is designed to look unfinished; while in another (titled Nullity, 2000), an actual intact letter key from an old typewriter is bound in as part of the cover itself. In Depression Dog, there are times when he typesets a page from the text but intentionally fails to stabilize the type, so that letters are hopelessly shifted and squeezed. I myself have fallen victim to his high jinks, because in an earlier book (titled Traveling, 1997, from his wacky and much sought after Gabberjabb series), he deliberately shredded a copy of my rare book on Art and Camouflage (1981), then used the ground-up pulp to make a handmade page of paper in each copy of his book--imprinted with the word "camouflage"--so that my book is now concealed within his.

I was first drawn to Hamady's art (his collages, assemblages and handmade books) in the mid-1970s, and thereafter assumed that his genius lies on a level that most of us only observe. Thirteen years ago, when I initially sent him a note, it was with some hesitation, and, having assumed that he was arrogant, I did not expect to receive a reply. Not only did he answer immediately (signing with one of his spurious names, such as Walter Semi-Hittite Hamady, WshH, or Voltaire the Hamadeh), he replied with such exuberance that he has never stopped writing, sometimes flooding me with two or three letters in rapid succession, regardless of whether I answer or not. And just as he burlesques himself by adopting nicknames, he delights in playing comparable tricks on my rural mailman by never addressing his letters to me, but instead to a grab bag of ludicrous names (all of whom apparently reside at my farm), such as Roy Ball Bearings, Corps du Roy, Rhoidamoto, Roy Blastoff Behrens, R Bobo, Roi d'Hoity Toit, and so on. Only recently, when a heavily insured package arrived from the Perishable Press Limited containing a review copy of Depression Dog, it could not be fully delivered until it was signed for by myself, the addressee, who was listed on the package as Bob O Bare Ends. Accustomed to Hamady's handwriting, and savvy to his postal pranks, my stalwart mailman did not flinch.

In Depression Dog, as in all his books, Hamady's understanding of color stands out as a primary virtue, and yet it would be wrong to say that his books are "colorful" in a more prosaic, simple sense. He uses color in his books (less so when he makes his collages) in a way that is skillfully nuanced, by which I mean that he applies the most whispered distinctions (it reminds me of the well-known phrase "just-noticeable differences"). In some cases, the contrasts are so understated, so unobtrusive that most likely only those who see color attributes (hue, lightness and saturation) at a level comparable to that of a wine taster, will notice the adroit ingenious forms that he creates by placing on a page, for example, the slightest warm off-white, against a textured cool off-white, against an ink that hints of green — and so on and on.

Hamady's extraordinary artists' books are about many many things, far too numerous and complex to embrace in a single, simple review. I would urge anyone who is genuinely curious about such phenomena to move on beyond just reading about Perishable Press books, and to somehow find an immediate way of touching at least one of them. Nothing can substitute for the experience of holding in ones hands an object as unforgettable as Depression Dog--of feeling the tooth of the imprinted sheet, of seeing the rise and fall of the ink, and of slowly but joyfully turning the page to the next welcome surprise.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 19, No. 1, Autumn 2003.)