BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA Quarterly News-Letter VOLUME LXXVI * NUMBER 3/4 > SUMMER & FALL 2011 IN THIS ISSUE David Rubiales: Oscar Lewis Awardee: PhilipP. Choy George » K. Fox: Introducing Clifford Burke Richard H. Dillon: Dillon on * Books * News from, the Library Serendipity Elected to Membership * * The BOOK CLUB of CALIFORNIA’S mission is to support fine printing related to the history and literature of California and the western states of America. It is a membership organization founded in 1912, and known for fine print and research publications, alike. The Club reflects the diverse interests of book-minded people, and promotes ongoing support of individual and organizational achievements in the fine printing and allied arts, with particular focus on the western regions of America.The Club is limited to 1,250 members. When vacancies exist, membership is open to all who agree with its aims, and whose applications are approved by the Board of Directors. Dues date from the month of the member’s election. Memberships are: Regular, $75; Sustaining, $100; Patron, $150; and Student, $25. All members receive the Quarterly News-Letter and, excepting Student members, the current keepsake. All members have the privilege — but not the obligation — of buying Club publications, which are limited, as a rule, to one copy per member. All members may purchase extra copies of keepsakes or News-Letters, when available. Portions of membership dues in the amount of $32 for regular membership, $57 from the sustaining level, $107 as a patron, and donations — including books — are deductible in accordance with the Internal Revenue Code. OFFICERS President: John Crichton * Vice-President: John Hardy Secretary: Robert J. Chandler * Treasurer: Mark A. Sherman DIRECTORS Directors whose terms expire in 2011 Susan Allen, John Hardy, Mary Manning, Henry Snyder, Malcolm Whyte ft Directors whose terms expire in 2012 John McBride, Paul Robertson, David Rubiales, Anne W. Smith, J.S. Zil MD Directors whose terms expire in 2013 John Crichton, Richard Otter, Mark A. Sherman, Roberto Trujillo, Danya Winterman STAFF Executive Director: Lucy Rodgers Cohen Manager of Finance and Administration: Susan Caspi Programs Manager: Georgie Devereux COMMITTEE CHAIRS The Albert Sperisen Library: Henry Snyder Development: John Crichton * Finance: John Crichton Governance: Robert J. Chandler * Librarian: Barbara Jane Land Membership: David Rubiales * Personnel: John Hardy Programs: Danya Winterman » Publications: Roberto Trujillo Quarterly News-Letter: Robert J. Chandler Strategic Planning: Anne W. Smith Copyright 2011 by The Book Club of California, 312 Sutter St., Fifth Floor, San Francisco, California 94108-4320. Hours: Monday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; and Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m-5 p.m. Telephone: (415) 781-7532, or toll-free at (1-800) 869-7656. Fax: (415) 781-7537. E-mail: Lucy Rodgers Cohen: [email protected]; Susan Caspi: [email protected]; Georgie Devereux: georgie@ bccbooks.org. Website: www.bccbooks.org.This issue of the Quarterly News-Letter, designed, and printed by Richard Seibert, is set in Mark van Bronkhorst’s mvb Verdigris. Cover art by Patricia Curtan. Oscar Lewis Awardee: Philip P. Choy By David M. Rubiales Philip P. Choy is the 2011 recipient of the Club’s Oscar Lewis award for history. He is a prolific writer, panelist, and college lecturer, having co-authored significant books such as A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (1969) and The Coming Man: 19th Century Perceptions of the Chinese (1994); and most recently authored Canton Footprints: Sacramento’s Chinese Legacy (2007). He is also the author of the case report that placed the Angel Island Immigration Station on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1969, Philip, in collaboration with Him Mark Lai, taught the first college course in the United States devoted to Chinese-American history. Most of us who carry the moniker “historian” have arrived at that status in a fairly conventional way, first earning a bachelor’s degree in history, and then graduate school, followed by gaining a position at a college or university. Philip, however, followed a quite different and unconventional path to the title “historian,” and therefore provides us a much more interesting and inspiring story. Philip was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1926. As with most immigrants from China during the nineteenth century, Philip’s family was from Guangdong province in southern China. His maternal grandfather arrived in California in 1882; and Philip is therefore a third generation Californian on his mother’s side. Philip grew up in the heart of Chinatown in a family of butchers — his grandfather and father were both butchers trained in the “western style” of butchering — a trade that he would learn and practice himself. Philip understood the precarious and limiting boundaries that surrounded the ethnic enclave of Chinatown. Philip states that “we knew our place,” but at he Book Club of California 68 T the same time his parents sought to instill pride in his Chinese heritage by sending him to Chinese school in the evenings, after he had attended public school during the day. The teachers at the Chinese school emphasized to the students that as Chinese they were from an older and more prestigious civilization than white Americans. But Philip, in spite of the Chinese nationalism that surrounded him at the school, thought to himself: “If we are better, then what are we doing here (confined to Chinatown) in this situation?” Thus, at a young age, began his penchant for skepticism, a necessary characteristic for a future scholar intent on debunking the historical mythology of the dominant culture. During his student years in Chinatown Philip was always interested in history, particularly in the role of the underdog, with whom he strongly identified. He was also intensely interested in the role of the Chinese in the American West, understanding that his own roots and identity as an American would be found in that history. He stated in an interview with the author that “without knowledge of your own history you are not a valid person.” Galileo High School was the closest high school to Chinatown and Philip attended it, but at the age of sixteen, already a proficient butcher, he left BOOK CLUB THE IS CELEBRATING ITS <£entemttal! A grand variety of events, publications, and activities will take place in zoiz, H Do you have special memo¬ ries of BCC gatherings, camaraderie, and/or publi¬ cations? Write about them for a special issue of The Quarterly News-Letter. submit proposals to: [email protected] - Quarterly News-Letter 69 Galileo without graduating and went to work at a butcher shop in Sacramento. He worked there for two years — World War II was now underway — and then returned to San Francisco and enrolled at San Francisco City College and waited for the draft board to call him for induction into the US army. He was able to complete two semesters before being called up and then served uneventfully in the US Army Air Corps in the American occupation of Germany. He returned to California in 1948 and enrolled in the School of Architecture at UC Berkeley, using the GI Bill to finance his studies. Philip received his architectural degree in 1952 and began practicing his profession. For the rest of the 1950s and most of the 1960s, he devoted himself to work and family, but his interest in history, specifically Chinese-American history, had not diminished. In 1968, two events converged in his life that would propel him into the role of an influential and respected historian. The first event was the student strike at San Francisco State College that began in November 1968. The strike was led by the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) which demanded that the college create an Ethnic Studies program and nationally desired the U.S. Government to end the Vietnam War. Drawing energy both from the Civil Rights Movement and the anti¬ war movement, the strike effectively closed down the college and dragged on until the early spring of 1969, when the college administration finally agreed to create a School of Ethnic Studies. The war, of course, continued. The second event occurred simultaneously; not in the turbulent atmosphere of college protests but rather in the quiet offices of the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHS A). The CHSA was founded in 1963, and in 1969 Philip became its president. Since its founding, but especially after the rise of the ethnic studies movement, the CH SA had been fielding requests from educators for material about Chinese-American history. Those requests had multiplied as the protest-era of the 1960s had gained momentum and the historical society decided to prepare something that could be given out as a matter of course, thereby avoiding the repetition of effort. The end product was A History of the Chinese in America: A Syllabus, researched and written by Philip and two collaborators. Him Mark Lai and Thomas W. Chinn; Philip was listed as the editor, while Choy and Lai were listed as associate editors. Their work is far more than a syllabus, which is a The Book Club of California 70 misnomer, for it is actually an eighty-one page outline with interesting detail. On page fifty-eight, for example, the reader is informed that in Yuba City, in 1884, the owner of the city’s first cannery announced that no Chinese would be employed in the new enterprise, but then had to backtrack when he discovered that nobody else knew how to make the cans and Chinese workers had to be hired after all. This episode demonstrates that Chinese immigrants were not merely victims at the hands of others but were able to practice “self-agency,” the ability to control events from a disadvantaged position. The Syllabus reflected the training of its three authors. None of the three were trained academic historians, but each was trained in a profession or craft that required great attention to detail and accuracy. Philip was an architect, Him Mark Lai was a mechanical engineer, and Thomas W. Chinn was a printer who worked at the presses of Lawton and Alfred Kennedy. Each author was also instilled with a passion for the stories of their Chinese immigrant ancestors and their contributions to California society. Philip modestly states that “I didn’t know what I was doing; I just had a conviction of what needed to be done.” The first printing of the Syllabus was printed by the Kennedys, who did not charge for the work. It has since been reprinted several times. Carey McWilliams, in his book Brothers Under the Skin (1943), wrote that “It would be impossible to trace the history of the Chinese in this country without at the same time writing the history of California from 1850-1900.” The Syllabus now provided credibility to McWilliams’ provocative assertion. The Syllabus was presented at a one-day seminar, and afterward Philip and Mark Lai were approached by the History Department at San Francisco State College to teach a course in Chinese-American history, the first, as noted above, to be taught at a college in the United States. Philip was under no illusions about the motivations of the administration of the college. He knew that the administration had acted under pressure and not entirely out of conviction, but he also knew that he and his teaching partner, Mark Lai, had something valuable to offer the college. The two of them, who were close friends, had traveled throughout California collecting Quarterly News-Letter 71 material for the Syllabus. They had good material that no one else had put together in such a manner. Once the class began, however, Philip found himself in an ironic twist, facing student activists who distrusted him for his willingness to cooperate with the college administration by teaching the class — even though they themselves had demanded that the course be offered. But he was not intimidated by them because, as he has said, “I knew what they needed.” Philip continued to teach at SF State for several years and also later taught at UC Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, and community colleges, as well. His resume as an historian grew with each succeeding decade after 1970. He presented at numerous historical conferences, authored articles for the California Historical Society Quarterly, consulted on various historical projects and exhibits, and authored or co-authored two more books devoted to the history of Chinese Americans. He also, from 1965 to 2000, maintained a private architectural practice. He is currently working on a tour guide for Chinatown, his birthplace. Introducing Clifford Burke By George K. Fox Introducing CLIFFORD BURKE and telling his complete story could be a daunting task and worth a book in itself. This will not happen this evening at our Oscar Lewis Awards, but I will supply a personal touch. I would like to share my stories of Clifford. My first job in San Francisco after arriving in 1963 was with the Wilson- Rich Paper Co., who at that time were the West Coast representatives for the line of fine English and Asian hand-made papers imported by the New York firm of Andrews Nelson Whitehead. Among other duties, I was in charge of their distribution on the West Coast. In 1966, while the whole social and political protest movement was in full swing in the Haight Ashbury and Berkeley, a scruffy fellow with a beard kept showing up at our warehouse South of Market to buy 8 V2 x 11 copy paper in 10 ream boxes, which he would carry away strapped on the back of his motorcycle. The Book Club of California 72 I remember clearly that he would come to the warehouse, approach the shipping clerk—an old rough Italian guy—and say, “Pickup for Cranium Press.”The response was, “the what press?” and Clifford Burke would just reach up and tap the top of his head. “Oh, okay, your paper’s over here,” and off Clifford would go, down the Federal Street alley with twenty reams of paper on the back of his motorcycle. After this happened a few times I decided I had better find out what this Clifford Burke was up to. I went out to 642 Shrader Street in the Haight Ashbury to find the tiniest print shop I had ever seen, a miniature store front. Inside, there was Clifford pounding away on an 11 x 17 Multilith offset press, printing flyers and handbills for the War Resisters League, the Psychedelic Shop, and other politically active protest groups in Berkeley. We talked. What Clifford wanted to do was print books. He had become interested in type and printing in college, while a summer job in 1962 for a small newspaper fascinated him. At his Cranium Press he installed a small Chandler & Price letterpress and his work began in 1966 with his first book, which I believe was Richard Brautigan’s Galilee Hitch-Hiker, originally printed at the White Rabbit Press in 1958. At the time, he was heavily influenced by local poets Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, and Brautigan, and he wanted to print books of contemporary poetry. Clifford and I became friends. I would visit him often and we would talk paper and printing. I would supply him with paper for his book printing needs and watched as he matured typographically and moved from offset to letterpress. Soon he rented larger quarters at 243 Collins Street, where he lived upstairs and had his printing shop in the basement. There he collaborated with folks like Holbrook Teter and the eccentric artist/illustrator Michael Myers, who met at Cranium and then formed their Zephyrus Image Press (1970-1982). During this period Clifford apprenticed with the designer printer Peter Bailey at East Wind Printers. Then, in 1968, he began a lifelong friendship and apprenticeship with Adrian Wilson over on Telegraph Hill, and studied calligraphy with John Tarr and Thomas Ingmire, all the while printing his own projects at Cranium. Quarterly News-Letter 73 For ten years, between 1966 and 1976, Clifford Burke participated in that tradition in San Francisco. His mentors were the poet Lew Welch and the printers at Auerhahn Press, Dave Haselwood and Andrew Hoyem; Jack Stauffacher, the Greenwood Press; and Graham Mackintosh of White Rabbit Press. During those years at Cranium, Clifford worked at various times with nearly every poet associated with the Black Mountain, Beat and Post-Beat schools of writing and he produced over one hundred books. Among them were Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen, David Meltzer, Bill Bathurst, and Gino Clays-Sky. Clifford, in turn, became a mentor to many of the young printers and bookmakers in the Bay Area. The Five Trees Press women—Kathy Walkup, Jaime Robles, Cheryl Miller and Cameron Bunker—and the folks at Turtle Island Press come to mind. In 1977, Clifford closed Cranium Press and moved with his then wife Fenicia and two daughters to Anacortes, Washington. There he continued to work as “Clifford Burke, Printer” and published under the imprint of “Margaret’s Press,” named after his daughter. Clifford is the author of several books and articles on the printing craft including Looking At Fine Printing (1975); Printing It: A Guide to Graphic Techniques for the Impecunious (1981); and Type from the Desktop: Designing With Type and Tour Computer (1990). In 1980, Clifford came to my friend, the late David Belch, and myself as publishing partners in Scarab Press with the concept to publish his manuscript PrintingPoetry:A Workbook in Typographic Reification (1980). This was to be a guide to the craft of fine bookmaking addressing, particularly, the concerns of small and private press printers who print contemporary poetry. David and I found this an unusual project to publish a hundred-page book for the author, who also designed and would physically print the book, for which we were lucky to have William Everson contribute a forward. The book sold well and also was available in sheets for binders and was even followed by an exhibition of those bindings sponsored by the Hand Bookbinders. The late Peter Howard’s Serendipity Books has one for sale at $300. T he Book Club of California 74 This book also guided his future. As Clifford states, “through the following years of writing, environmentalism, community work and raising kids, bits and pieces of the old Cranium Press stayed with me until, finally, through the discovery of the book Printing Poetry,Virginia Mudd and I met, and in 1990 combined our lives and resources into the printing studio and publishing venture, Desert Rose Press, and to our rural home in the Northern Desert of San Jose, New Mexico, where we now live.” And, to top it off, Clifford is spending his time playing the baritone saxophone. Recently, Clifford and Virginia gave his library of poetry, as well as his own books on print and typography, to The Book Club of California, where they are almost completely cataloged and shelved. We give great thanks for this donation. Welcome back to San Francisco, Clifford Burke. Dillon on Books Richard H. Dillon Am ERICANS TOO young TO have LI ve D through the 1930s may hold a somewhat skewed view of that decade following Wall Street’s Crash of 1929, although the Great Depression did take place during the “Dirty (Dust Bowl) Thirties,” a time of national tension only ended by the greater stresses of World War II. But it was not all doom and gloom in the 1930s. Remarkable achievements were made in engineering, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s pet projects: Grand Coulee Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Boulder Dam. Here, in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were treated to engineering that approached sculpture in the form of the Golden Gate Bridge; and we celebrated the twilight of peace with the Golden Gate International Exposition, a charming world’s fair on man-made Treasure Island (1939-1940). Back East, New York’s Broadway blazed with bright lights; and Hollywood produced movies of distinction, even wit. As for literature, there was an accelerated shift in style to the robust prose of John Steinbeck and Ernest