W. A. DWIGGINS 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?

—The question's quite proper. I am glad you asked it—it goes straight to the heart of a big trouble about children's books.... The children themselves in view, eh? The ultimate consumers.... No. I am sorry to say, we do not. We can't. Because children do not buy books.... You see, a juvenile, like any other book on our list, has to please the person that's likely to buy it. And that means, a book to please adults—a book that a grown-up will mark down as something a child ought to like. Ought to, you see—the adult's judgment, not the child's. We can't get past it. We can't find out what the child really does like. When children rally to an author, or a style of book, then we get a glimpse of the children's state of mind. But that is our only contact.... All our new ventures have to be baited and primed to catch the fancy of the mothers and the cousins and the aunts—against the interests of the ultimate consumer, you might say, when that is necessary. Sometimes a juvenile runs to large sales purely on the strength of adult appreciation alone, like Ferdinand, for instance.... If it were possible, there is nothing I should like better than to deal with the children direct. I have children of my own. I think I understand them ... to a certain extent. I think I could please them. Once or twice—this is a confession—I did take a direct hand—made a couple the way I thought they ought to be. My judgment against the child's, eh?... Complete failures—drugs.... I couldn't move them—couldn't get past the censor—couldn't sell the grown-ups.

—Have you ever thought of ways for getting into direct touch with the children?

—I can see no practicable way. As the case stands you can't penetrate the Adult Front Line.

MR. L.

Q: This scheme of Mr. McG.'s for a different kind of book—what do you think of it?

—If he can control his "decline from a high estate" I am with him, emphatically. Books need to be cheaper. Books vis-à-vis market certainly need to be studied all over again—from a new base line. I agree with his findings about shabby-genteel. And I'm sure that I'd like his "cheap" books much better than the kind I buy now, if he can liven them up as he suggests. The question is, can he stop his "strategic retreat" at the right point? It's like inflation: easy to start, but...! He drops the standard of material and process—will his proofreading go down hill too?... Many French books in paper wrappers—made at the lowest cost-level, badly printed on cheap paper—have an air and a style that our own more expensive affairs can't quite achieve. Somebody laid a finger on them. Who, in Mr. McG.'s scheme, is to be this somebody whose touch creates liveliness and interest? A highly important factor in the product!... If we can get the liveliness and interest, we will be glad to trade more expensive paper and printing to get it. Our books are pretty dull.... But, just inferior printing on cheap paper, without the lively touch and style, is going to bore us worse yet!

—You mean dull in content?

—I mean dull optically, visually.... Like—to put it into terms of sound—like a long, droning recital of a tedious story—no inflection—no climax—no motion. ... I like Mr. McG.'s figure of a "good, interesting talker."

—You'd spice it up with "modernist" feeling?

—No. He's right, there. No fireworks. Keep the explosions outside the book.

—You have used "contemporary" design.

—Yes, but you'll notice, not in places where reading is going on.... Another point: letting the market set the tone is not good merchandising. The market needs to be led, by a tone a little higher than its average taste.... And Mr. McG.'s good tool isn't made by majority vote in Congressional committee—it's made by somebody who knows, expertly and practically, just what the tool is intended to do and how it works.

—You are for "books as tools."

—I am for books as tools—and that means cheaper books.... I think, too, that a lot of the things that make books expensive are false value—brummagem.... But the trade is so firmly established in the tradition of false-front and bustle-rear that I'm afraid it's going to take an awful tussle to get it back to real values again—to the tool basis—to the simplicity and directness and general fitness-for-its-job, for example, that makes a carpenter's plane a masterpiece of appropriate design.

COMPOSED IN ELECTRA TYPES