22 Sep 2008, Written by Laura Pearson in literary, zines, 0 Comments
Melville House Publishing
In Gilbert Adair’s novella The Death of the Author, the narrator—a celebrated literary critic named Léopold Sfax—describes a bookstore where he once worked: “If it was in its material dimensions small and to some might have seemed claustrophobic, [it] was made huge for the chronic browser that I was by the compacted immensities of literature.”
If you’ve ever worked at a tiny bookstore (narrow aisles, teetering piles of overstock, employees generally crashing into one another), perhaps you can relate. Maybe you too have taken refuge in this sense of immensity: all those words, all those worlds captured on all that paper.
When I worked at a little independent bookstore, my favorite task was opening boxes of new books and giving them a pre-shelving perusal, à la Léopold Sfax. I noticed that often the most interesting, most expansive stuff came in small boxes—promising new titles from small indie publishing houses, unadorned by stickers declaring “Now a Major Motion Picture!,” “Oprah’s Book Club,” or “Reading with Ripa.” Admittedly, some of the least interesting lit also arrived in small boxes, but more often than not, the independently published fiction and nonfiction we received and eagerly hand-sold (an effort led by one of my particularly book-savvy coworkers, Javier), crept onto the store’s bestseller list. Thus, while working at a neighborhood book retailer in this Amazon.com-ian age, I took refuge in this fact—that tiny presses can have immense impact.
While unpacking those boxes, I became especially intrigued by a press based in Hoboken, New Jersey, called Melville House Publishing. Their books were wide-ranging in subject matter and dazzlingly well-designed (Simplicity! Originality! French flaps!). I was not surprised to learn that the company had won several AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Artist) Awards for book covers and interior design. When the bookstore hosted a Melville House writer, Benoit Duteurtre, who was on tour for his fascinating novel, The Little Girl and the Cigarette, I took some time to learn about the origins of this fast-rising press.
Melville House was founded by a couple who had no experience in the publishing field: Dennis Loy Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer and creator of the book blog MobyLives, and Valerie Merians, a sculptor and photographer. At first, the two didn’t intend to form a publishing company; their sole goal was to release a book that responded to the events of September 11, and particularly the U.S. political climate at the time. In 2002, they published Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets, and it attracted major media attention—CNN, NPR, Good Morning, America, etc. In a New York Times article from July 28, 2002, Merians said, “We thought [the book] would be very modest. We would hand-sell it just to area bookstores. You know, an out-of-the-back-of-the-car kind of thing.” But one book led to another, and after publishing a work of literary criticism by B.R. Myers, deciding to incorporate, finding a distributor, and figuring out things like printing costs and royalties, Melville House Publishing was born.
From the beginning, Johnson and Merians wanted to avoid becoming a niche publisher. Many small presses occupy a niche, they reasoned, but releasing books in a range of genres, subjects, and styles would enable them to stand out as a truly independent voice. In an interview with Bookslut, Johnson said, “We want to do what Random House does, but we want to do it right.” True to their mission, Melville House has assembled a catalog that is as wide as it is deep: French novels in translation (as in the aforementioned Duteurtre book and Justine Lévy’s Nothing Serious); classic and contemporary novellas (such as Adair’s The Death of the Author, plus a lot of other sharp, previously unpublished prose narratives); avant-garde fiction (from the likes of Stephen Dixon and Tao Lin); and leftist political reportage (i.e., Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by Bernard-Henri Lévy, and Torture Taxi, by Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson). The latter political books made big waves by being ahead of the news. Who Killed Daniel Pearl? was the first source to reveal that US ally Pakistan was trading nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea, and Torture Taxi was the first book to explore the CIA’s rendition program. In fact, the book was being printed at the precise moment President Bush made a public admission of the program’s existence.
Melville House continues its wave-making efforts, but now from a new location in Brooklyn, complete with offices and a sparkling new bookstore. (I’ve seen pictures, and it looks anything but claustrophobic.) Fortunately for the book industry and for readers everywhere, Johnson and Merians show no signs of slowing down. Last year, the press received the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing, otherwise known as the Indie Publisher of the Year Award. At his acceptance speech, Johnson reflected, “Valerie and I entered this business with absolutely no background in it… But the fact is that once we had entered the business we quickly found a huge community, both in and out of publishing, who shared a passion for it and supported our approach to it.” He went on to say that in the aftermath of distributor fiascos and in the midst of financial crises, this community has persevered. “There are a lot of publishers out there right now who deserve an award for creativity by simply staying alive,” he said. Here’s hoping that the life of this fresh, fearless publishing company is very long indeed.
Laura Pearson is a Chicago-based editor and writer, and is Associate Editor for Is Greater Than. She has written music news stories, as well as book, zine, and comic reviews, but her favorite subject to write about is people who are both contributing to culture and creating culture. She is a former Associate Editor at Punk Planet.
View all articles by Laura Pearson.
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