A Different Stripe

Mind the Small Print

This is brass 4 point Times Roman, which will eventually be used to typeset a miniature book, made by P & S Engraving in East Sussex.

P & S is one of the last places on earth where you can actually find type and tools to hand-make books, especially something as rare as this. The type will have to be set with tweezers, and the book itself will probably need to be read by a magnifying glass.

I was lucky enough to be able to visit P & S last month, and I insisted they show me some of the handmade versions of the type we use here at NYRB (of which Times Roman is a rare but recurring one).

A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.

Shane at the enotes books blog points us to The Chronicle of Higher Education's useful and proper gloss on publishing terms. We herewith submit an alternative list, a sort of Devil's Dictionary of the publishing world, "Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms."

From the Chronicle:
Blurbs: Spy magazine used to have a column called "Logrolling in Our Time": In pairs of reciprocal blurbs, authors would puff each other's books. Don't ask your mother for a blurb (unless she's a famous author in your field). Blurbs can help buyers to situate your work by seeing the intellectual company you keep.

According to Tom:
Blurb: A brief noise that embarrasses everyone.

Chronicle:
Publication date: A date, six to eight weeks after the bound book is available, before which news media are not supposed to review the book (to allow it time to get from the warehouse into the stores). Often, with scholarly books, the official pub date comes and goes accompanied by radio silence.

Tom:
Publication date: A sliding holiday based on the phases of the moon.

And so on.

Photo of a printer's devil from the photostream of One Lucky Guy

The Wonderful O(bama)

Not to be confused (please!) with another book of the same title, James Thurber's follow up to The Thirteen Clocks, The Wonderful O, which looks like this:

and is being re-released by The New York Review Children's Collection next year.

"Low price on Spirits of the Dead!"

    "I got a great deal on a Spirits of the Dead.  I am having so much fun with my Spirits of the Dead, that I recommend you get one for yourself.
    "Head on over to check out a Spirits of the Dead to get your Spirits of the Dead today!"

Google alerts turn up some odd things. This alert was sent to us because the page it points to contains the words "Andrei Platonov." But it appears really to be a dummy blog with automatically generated posts mashing up generic enthusiastic reviews with items (in this case dvds) sold on ebay, and intended to lead the unsuspecting to a virus-y doom.

This mash up—of Histoires Extraordinaires, a film version of three Poe stories, directed by Vadim, Malle, and Fellini—is a Gothic story in itself. Imagine a kind of auction place for souls of the departed. What kind of fun is this blogger having with his Spirits of the Dead? Chilling.