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Publishing

World War II-era Armed Services Editions boosted troop morale and fostered a new generation of readers

February 3, 2015 - Richard Oram

Cover of Armed Services Edition of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."

The book, When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning, celebrates the importance of the Armed Services Editions. Published between 1943 and 1947, these inexpensive paperback editions were given to servicemen on the frontlines. As Manning points out, not only did the editions achieve their principal purpose of raising morale, they encouraged a whole generation of readers who retained their appetite for reading when they returned home. Possibly a few stopped bullets or shrapnel. It’s necessary to remember that the cheap paperback edition was still a novelty at the beginning of the war, having been pioneered by Penguin Books in England and Albatross Books in Germany during the 1930s.

Armed Services Editions were made possible by a group of publishers called the Council of Books in Wartime. This group collaborated by eliminating royalty payments and arranging for the production and distribution of paperbacks in the most inexpensive possible formats. The Ransom Center has a couple of connections with these books. Although there are larger collections at the University of Virginia and the Library of Congress, we own more than 1,400 of the books, most of them shelved together as a discrete collection in the stacks, while some are kept with other editions of our major authors, such as John Steinbeck. Because they were printed on poor-quality wartime paper that is now brittle and brown, each is protected in a simple acid-free enclosure, invented by the Center’s Conservation department in the 1980s, and called a “tuxedo case.” Students of publishing history can use the collection to study which books were most successful (Manning concludes that books with a touch of nostalgia or sex were particularly popular with soldiers, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was one of the best-selling titles, even though it was considered a flop when first published in hardback during the 1920s). The books were generally published in an oblong format, with the cover notation “This is the complete book—not a digest.” In all, some 125 million copies were produced.

Among the founding members of the Council of Books in Wartime was Alfred A. Knopf, the eminent literary publisher (the massive Knopf, Inc. archive is here at the Center). Ironically, Knopf was famous for encouraging high production values in his own trade books, but he immediately recognized the importance of encouraging reading and raising morale and contributed a number of series titles by familiar authors in the Knopf stable, including thrillers by James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler and more literary works by Thomas Mann and Sigrid Undset.

In the postwar era, a number of paperback reprint publishers capitalized on increased demand for books, the availability of new outlets for cheap editions, such as chain department stores and drugstores, and Americans’ newly enhanced disposable income. Pocket Books debuted in 1939 and became well known after the war for its lurid covers, which, as Louis Menand points out in an illustrated recent New Yorker piece, graced not only the unabashed pulp of Mickey Spillane but also higher-toned works by William Faulkner and James Joyce. Ballantine and Bantam editions flourished, and the era of the mass market paperback had arrived. Nearly every prominent American hardback publisher developed a line of paperback books. Oddly, Knopf, Inc. was a holdout, arriving late to the game with Vintage Books in 1956.  But it was the Armed Services Editions that gave the American paperback its big push.

Please click on thumbnails below to view larger images.

Cover of Armed Services Edition of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."
Cover of Armed Services Edition of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective "tuxedo boxes." Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective “tuxedo boxes.” Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective "tuxedo boxes." Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective “tuxedo boxes.” Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective "tuxedo boxes." Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective “tuxedo boxes.” Photo by Alicia Dietrich.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: Albatross Verlag, Alfred A. Knopf, Armed Services Editions, Ballantine, Bantam, Council of Books in Wartime, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James M. Cain, Knopf Inc., Molly Guptill Manning, paperback, Penguin Books, Publishing, Raymond Chandler, Sigrid Undset, The Great Gatsby, Thomas Mann, Vintage Books, When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, World War II

Keep Austin Weird: McSweeney’s McMullens and everything else

June 2, 2014 - Amy Armstrong

Cover of Jordan Crane's book "Keep Our Secrets," which uses heat-sensitive ink.

The McSweeney’s archive, which the Ransom Center acquired in 2013, is now open for research. This is the final installment in a four-part series of blog posts highlighting items from this dynamic and diverse collection.

It’s 2011. Venturing into children’s literature seems like a natural evolution for McSweeney’s. The line between McSweeney’s adult and children’s books may seem blurry to some readers. You know what I mean if you’ve ever given your child one of the “board books” in Lisa Brown’s “Baby Be Of Use” series and received a blank stare and little-to-no good response. A parent might be confused by the brightly illustrated, pictorial stories that instruct your wee little one on the method for making mommy and daddy a martini or changing the oil in the car.

Or you might relate if you’ve ever delighted in handing your fifth-grader one of the encyclopedias in the Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey series. My favorite is Your Disgusting Head. Or the fuzzy (I don’t mean warm; I mean literally fuzzy) novelization of Dave Eggers’s and Spike Jonze’s screenplay, The Wild Things, based on Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are. These aren’t really for kids, but they’re a lot of fun no matter how young at heart you may be!

McSweeney’s marketed its children and young adult book imprint with the tagline “For Kids Who Love Weird Books.” The books definitely have the McSweeney’s design aesthetic. Many feature dust jackets that unfold into posters, and one even features heat-sensitive ink. Frequent McSweeney’s collaborator Jordon Crane’s board book Keep Our Secrets includes this tip: “For best results read this book with a hairdryer.” The McSweeney’s collection came complete with a hairdryer and is certainly the only collection at the Ransom Center with such a tool. The series features not only amazing illustrations but amazing stories. S. S. Taylor’s The Expeditioners and the Treasure of the Drowned Man’s Canyon is the first in a series and was a Nominee for the 2014–2015 Texas Bluebonnet Award.

Since being weird is no longer a stigma, I’m anxious for my own 1-year old, Simon, to be a weird kid. You see, being different is not only OK, it’s celebrated. Everything about McSweeney’s celebrates difference. From the namesake of the company, Mr. Timothy McSweeney himself, to the experimental design of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, to publishing books like Lemon (Lawrence Krauser), Real Man Adventures (T. Cooper), It Chooses You (Miranda July), and others that bring to print stories that comfort those who’ve always felt like they’ve never “fit in.” The publishing house also shines a light on the often ignored voices captured in the Voice of Witness oral history series that highlights human rights abuses in this country and around the world.

In fact, McSweeney’s wants to help inspire the upcoming generations’ crop of McSweeney’s writers.  Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s helped establish a non-profit tutoring and writing center, 826 Valencia in San Francisco. Under the umbrella organization 826 National, seven more centers have opened in Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Boston. Many writers and artists donate their work in support of 826 National with the proceeds of many McSweeney’s books going directly to further the work of the tutoring centers.

So, read, write, and be weird!

Please click on thumbnails below to view larger images.

Front of promotional postcard for Lisa Brown's "Baby mix me a drink."
Front of promotional postcard for Lisa Brown’s “Baby mix me a drink.”
Back of promotional postcard for Lisa Brown's "Baby mix me a drink."
Back of promotional postcard for Lisa Brown’s “Baby mix me a drink.”
Cover of Lisa Brown's "Baby fix my car."
Cover of Lisa Brown’s “Baby fix my car.”
Cover of Jordan Crane's book "Keep Our Secrets," which uses heat-sensitive ink.
Cover of Jordan Crane’s book “Keep Our Secrets,” which uses heat-sensitive ink.
Jordon Crane's board book "Keep Our Secrets" includes this tip: "For best results read this book with a hairdryer." This hairdryer came with the archive. Photo by Pete Smith.
Jordon Crane’s board book “Keep Our Secrets” includes this tip: “For best results read this book with a hairdryer.” This hairdryer came with the archive. Photo by Pete Smith.
Fur samples for novelization of Dave Eggers's and Spike Jonze's screenplay, "The Wild Things," based on Maurice Sendak's classic "Where the Wild Things Are." Photo by Pete Smith.
Fur samples for novelization of Dave Eggers’s and Spike Jonze’s screenplay, “The Wild Things,” based on Maurice Sendak’s classic “Where the Wild Things Are.” Photo by Pete Smith.
Cover of Dave Eggers's "The Wild Things," based on Maurice Sendak's classic "Where the Wild Things Are." Photo by Pete Smith.
Cover of Dave Eggers’s “The Wild Things,” based on Maurice Sendak’s classic “Where the Wild Things Are.” Photo by Pete Smith.

Filed Under: Cataloging, Research + Teaching Tagged With: 826 National, 826 Valencia, Baby Be Of Use, Books, children’s literature, Dave Eggers, Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey, It Chooses You, Jordon Crane, Keep Our Secrets, Lawrence Krauser, Lemon, Lisa Brown, Maurice Sendak, McSweeney’s, Miranda July, Publishing, Real Man Adventures, S.S. Taylor, Spike Jonze, T. Cooper, The Expeditioners and the Treasure of the Drowned Man's Canyon, The Wild Things, young adult books, Your Disgusting Head

Oodles of Doodles: McSweeney’s first novel

June 2, 2014 -

Hand-illustrated cover of Lawrence Krauser's novel "Lemon." Photo by Pete Smith.

The McSweeney’s archive, which the Ransom Center acquired in 2013, is now open for research. Founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is considered one of the most influential literary journals and publishing houses of its time. McSweeney’s publishes books, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer magazine, the food journal Lucky Peach, and the DVD-journal Wholphin. This is the second in a four-part series of blog posts highlighting items from this dynamic and diverse collection.

It’s the year 2000. McSweeney’s and the rest of the world came through the threat of Y2K unscathed. It’s a new millennium, and new millennium readers want to experiment, take chances, and conquer new frontiers in reading. In 2000, McSweeney’s published its first novel: Lawrence Krauser’s Lemon, which tells the story of a corporate memo writer who begins an intimate friendship with a lemon after his girlfriend breaks up with him. Lemon perhaps set the tone for McSweeney’s books, as one reviewer called it “handsome, smartly written and deeply eccentric.”

A unique love story deserves a unique cover, but one unique cover would simply not do. How about 10,000 unique covers? This line of thinking inspired Dave Eggers’s and Lawrence Krauser’s “Oodles of Doodles” cover idea. The first 10,000 books were wrapped in a blank dust jacket containing only the title and author rubberstamped in various places on each cover—Krauser’s blank canvas. Over a period of about three months, for about three hours a day, Krauser drew unique doodles on 9,812 Lemon dust jackets, making each copy a unique, one-of-a-kind original. Krauser didn’t quite make it through the 10,000 print run, but illustrated an additional 1,000 covers for the Dutch translation, for a grand total of 10,812 unique books.

The Ransom Center currently holds three copies of Lemon: one blank copy and two with unique doodle covers.

Since publishing Lemon, McSweeney’s book publishing division has grown into McSweeney’s Books, which publishes nonfiction biographies, memoirs, and criticism; a long list of humor books including the “Baby, Be of Use” series by Lisa Brown and the popular Haggis-on-Whey encyclopedias; art books with portfolios by Marcel Dzama, Dave Eggers, and Art Spiegelman; and Beck’s Song Reader, a music album that exists only as richly illustrated individual pieces of sheet music.

McSweeney’s other book imprints include McSweeney’s Rectangulars; Believer Books, collecting writing from the magazine’s contributors; McSweeney’s McMullens, which publishes books for young children and young adults; Voice of Witness, a nonprofit series of oral histories documenting contemporary social injustices around the world; Collins Library, reprints of forgotten classics edited by Paul Collins; McSweeney’s Poetry Series; and McSweeney’s Insatiables, a food and cooking imprint.

Please click on the thumbnails below to view larger images.

Blank cover of "Lemon" by Lawrence Krauser. Photo by Pete Smith.
Blank cover of “Lemon” by Lawrence Krauser. Photo by Pete Smith.
Hand-illustrated cover of Lawrence Krauser's novel "Lemon." Photo by Pete Smith.
Hand-illustrated cover of Lawrence Krauser’s novel “Lemon.” Photo by Pete Smith.
Hand-illustrated cover of Lawrence Krauser's novel "Lemon." Photo by Pete Smith.
Hand-illustrated cover of Lawrence Krauser’s novel “Lemon.” Photo by Pete Smith.

Filed Under: Art, Books + Manuscripts, Cataloging, Research + Teaching Tagged With: “Baby, Art Spiegelman; Beck, Be of Use”, Books, Collins Library, Dave Eggers, Haggis-on-Whey encyclopedias, Lawrence Krauser, Lemon, Lisa Brown, Marcel Dzama, McSweeney's Insatiables, McSweeney's McMullens, McSweeney's Poetry Series, McSweeney's Rectangulars; Believer Books, McSweeney’s, Paul Collins, Publishing, Song Reader, Voice of Witness

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