Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 5

Exile of the Imposters

Man suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. Illustration from Kranken-Physiognomik / by von K. H. Baumgärtner / 1929. Credit: Wellcome Collection

As the Spurl Editions Board of Directors has long known, St. Drogo has been ill. Contrary to the rumors spreading from village to village, it is a physical malady that eats away at the legendary editor-in-chief, turning his tongue yellow, making his teeth dusty, and causing the skin on his elbows to flake off and bleed buckets; there is nothing the matter with his mind or editorial acumen (and there never has been). Naturally, the apprentices have taken on more and more responsibilities, which has led to inter-organizational friction, but with protocol changes and a swift ramping up of apprentice supervision and discipline, it was believed that much of that friction was in the past. All have now rallied behind St. Drogo, who for the last six months has not left his cave-room as he has focused on his physical recovery, but who nonetheless has not hesitated to make his opinion known to the apprentices and the Board when necessary via messages he has scrawled on ruined paper in his own elbow blood.

Thus, one of St. Drogo’s dictates was silence. Total, complete, absolute silence. It has been the rule from the beginning, a few hastily penned communiqués notwithstanding. The books are to speak for themselves, St. Drogo explains. In fact, St. Drogo insists that Spurl Editions’ future publications bear no words or images on their covers at all. The books are to be jacketed in a sheet of thick rough paper of some nondescript and unappealing color, maybe the greenish-brown of swift excrement, but certainly no more lurid yellow or orange meant to draw crowds in the square. The books are also to have no more descriptions, and obviously no blurbs, which are widely considered (at least in the academic literature) to be demeaning to the intellect, the spirit, and the body. That was St. Drogo’s vision, which, contractually, Spurl Editions can do no more than execute.

But on Saturday, March 25, of the year 1452, a group of imposters presented a false face of Spurl Editions to the world. These imposters appeared before an audience of dedicated, earnest book-printing afficianados and defrauded them, lying to them without a care. The event was purportedly a discussion between a Spurl Editions “editor” and the Spurl Editions author M. S. Coe. The “editor” betrayed her ignorance of the nature of Spurl’s project almost immediately, discoursing freely with the author on irrelevant literary topics rather than giving thanks to St. Drogo for his visionary approach to paper production. The event was done in collaboration with various other imposters connected to the press Sublunary Editions, a printing house based in a northern village that, day in and day out, must struggle against the rain that seeks to soak their paper and render their text blurry and unreadable, without any Board of Directors to institute apprentice-labor protocols to save their paper from ruin. And given that Sublunary has been in the midst of this concerted effort to stave off the rain and expand to new villages—these efforts surely taking up all their time—it can only be assumed that the individuals masquerading as the editor-in-chief, and author and translator of the new Sublunary book The Whore at this “event,” were imposters too.

The Board of Directors having interviewed every apprentice and convened internally for a full report and accounting, it is clear there is only one path forward. Although Spurl Editions is proud of its new publication of The Formation of Calcium, and believes the book’s author bore no ill will toward St. Drogo when she appeared at the “event”—perhaps not realizing the gravity of the calamity that was unfolding—the press must now destroy all copies of the book. All those who seek a copy must obtain it now, before they are burned. There are still a few copies that are not too sun-damaged available through the usual means. After the current stock is destroyed, the apprentices will create a new version of the book with a St. Drogo-approved cover: unidentifiable, bearing no name, no author, and no description. The book is to speak for itself, and the Spurl Editions imposters are to be exiled, or shot.

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 4

A Novel Discovery, a Grueling Triumph

I was hired as an associate editor at Spurl Editions toward the beginning of the year, the board of directors insisting that it was time for the “bedraggled press” (their words) to make a fresh start. Having cut my teeth as an editor at various children’s magazines, I had never read a Spurl publication, and looking over the book descriptions that they posted around the village, on random street corners, always either too high or too low for my 4’6” frame, they frankly did not appeal to me. The seemingly adventurous Arthur’s Whims came close to the type of book I might acquire an excerpt of for my children’s journals, but then I saw that the book bore chapter titles like “Pornography” (that’s it, just “Pornography”) and “Children’s Podiatry,” and that was the end of my interest in that. I wasn’t shy with the board about my misgivings about joining this press, but they were so persistent; and of course, who amongst us hasn’t heard of the legendary editorial giant St. Drogo? When he came to wine and dine me, taking me out for avocado carpaccio and tomato seeds dusted with cumin, I couldn’t resist the opportunity. Over espresso dregs I agreed to a six-month editorship, writing my six-page list of wage-and-hour conditions on various napkins, as St. Drogo’s eyes widened. I am proud to say that I am both the youngest and by far the highest paid worker Spurl Editions has ever had, and between my new salary and all the decreases in my monthly expenses that have come with moving to this tiny awful village (close neither to the ocean nor to my friends, with nothing to do here but climb mountains despite the endless heat), I am on my way to a well-earned early retirement after three grueling years of work.

But the point is not to inspire you readers with my financial acumen. It is to make an announcement. I have succeeded in steering the focus of this small press to what are sure to be fertile grounds. During my first weeks as associate editor, the apprentices would bring me manuscripts every day that were nearly unreadable. These manuscripts were all written by authors long dead, or were works long out of print, and they were uniformly hideous. “The discarded tales of Giovanni Boccaccio!” one apprentice cooed, pressing a 1,200-page manuscript toward me. “Who?” I picked up the pages and tossed them at the apprentice (a signature St. Drogo move). Another came in boasting that he had uncovered the true identity of the anonymous author of Lazarillo de Tormes, had tracked down his last remaining descendant, and through torture had obtained from that person a never-before-seen picaresque left behind by the dead Spanish author about a blind, mad prisoner. After my Boccaccio outburst, a single withering look at this second apprentice was all I needed for the apprentice to gather his things, mumble a thousand apologies, and scurry away.

With the apprentices banished to their corners, I was on my own, just as I liked it. I went down to the mail hut where the apprentices received the submitted manuscripts. I shooed the workers out of there and got down to business. I tore open the packages and looked for one thing in the wrinkled, worn pages: a sign of life. Actually, not figuratively. I wanted living authors.

At last I found them. In a stack of hundreds of packages, there were two manuscripts whose authors were unmistakeably alive. I let out a tiny shriek-laugh of excitement. Both were written in sparkly colored gel pen on lined paper—already a sign of youth and freshness. The authors had also clearly sprayed the pages with some kind of lavender-opium smell, which I found deeply satisfying, and had pressed wildflowers here and there in the books (one of the flowers was poisonous, alas, and caused me to faint and hit my head against the wall; but I refuse to believe the author intended this result). Anyway, they were doing all they could to stand out, the poor souls, surely not realizing the change that had happened at Spurl Editions.

After skimming the two manuscripts and finding them to be fresh and youthful, I tucked them under my arms and took them straight to the board of directors. I presented them to the board: the first, a novel, The Formation of Calcium, by M. S. Coe, which followed a lunatic woman as she abandoned her family and established an inspiring new life for herself in the Americas, all told from her unusual perspective. The second, a short story collection by Michael Jeffrey Lee, describing various drifting characters whose thoughtless optimism in the face of so many metaphors for death (there were rivers, burned-out houses, inhospitable new towns) was bracing in an era of so much negativity. I concluded my presentation to the board by stressing that these authors were living, and this was a once-in-a-century opportunity.

The members of the board of directors were concerned, of course. They could not understand how we could publish two authors with the first initial M. But I was ready for this backlash. I explained that Michael Jeffrey Lee would absolutely not go by M. Jeffrey Lee, or even M. J. Lee, but would maintain his full name. Similarly, I explained that M. S. Coe would not disaggregate her name. So, our readers would not be confused, or at least not overly so.

That seemed to placate the board. But they wanted to know, why these two authors?

They are brilliant, I explained. The works are exceptional. There’s nothing like them in the canon of the dead.

The board members mumbled unhappily amongst each other.

At last one member wanted to know who were the other living contenders.

I shook my head to indicate that these were the only two. This is a true opportunity for us, I said. This is what you hired me to do!

At that point, all eyes turned to St. Drogo, who had sat hunched over himself in the corner, silent this whole time, patting his grotesque pet (that ferret-, rat-, lamb-, dog-like thing). He motioned for me to give him the manuscripts, which I did; I was calm, happy, indifferent to those feelings of anxiety that plague so many of the older generation. And I remained calm, happy, and indifferent for the next thirty-six hours as St. Drogo painstakingly read every page.

Until at last he looked up, put the pages neatly back together, and nodded yes.

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Check out M. S. Coe’s forthcoming novel The Formation of Calcium now, with more information about Michael Jeffrey Lee’s upcoming short story collection coming soon!

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 3

A forthright account of St. Drogo’s return

Three Hunting Dogs, by Konrad Witz, circa 1440/1445

You asked me to report about the current state of Spurl Editions. I believe you thought to do this because you believed I would have positive things to say, now that St. Drogo is back, and thus you could communicate positive news to the shareholders. You could issue platitudes like, now that St. Drogo is back at the helm, Spurl Editions is looking forward to its best season yet. And Spurl Editions has put its controversies with the interim editor behind it. St. Drogo is making top-notch acquisitions. Etc. Of course I am an honest person and I will only tell you the truth, which is that the St. Drogo who returned is not the same St. Drogo who left. I was St. Drogo’s apprentice for many years before he went into the desert. He abused me on a regular basis and called me the harshest names. Of course he blamed me for the mishap with the copyright page of Thomas Bernhard’s The Cheap-Eaters. (It is by now well-known that there is a glaring omission on the page; the words printed on acid-free paper are nowhere to be seen.) He told me every day that I would never be anything more than an incompetent apprentice because he personally would never recommend me for another job. No matter what I did, he was unhappy. He was a glum, ugly little man. In his letter of resignation he complained about being kept in a cave and forced to eat the strictest diet, but he couldn’t have lived any other way, as everything made him miserable, even the wood carving of a sea-monk that I made and gave him to decorate his area, which he refused to accept because it would be a distraction to him, so he said. Still, I loved him. If it weren’t for him, I would have had no intellectual job at all. I would have been working at the stables or cobbling shoes, not proofreading literary fiction deep into the early morning hours. He took me under his wing and sustained me. He told me to cut off my family and my friends, to never speak to them again, because he was my family and friends now. And he became all of those things to me. I dedicated myself to him and I never regretted it until he returned.

He has a gruesome little animal with him now. I can only describe it as a cross between a ferret, a rat, a lamb, and a dog. It is skinny, jittery, bald in spots, and has an incredible overbite and bloody gums. He thinks that in this awful creature he has found his symbol, just as St. Jerome has his lion and St. Christopher his little child. But a lion is a beautiful animal, and this hideous thing of St. Drogo’s climbs up his arms and perches on his shoulder, licking the inside of his ear and making horrific semi-sexual whimpering sounds. St. Drogo does not correct the thing and in fact takes the creature everywhere with him. He claims that the creature sustained him while he lived in the desert. He says the creature went out every morning and killed some other animal, surely even more disgusting than it, and brought the carcass back to him, wholly untouched, to St. Drogo’s amazement, and that this was how he survived those many days and nights out there. When the cold set in, the creature would go out and find a place to nestle in, then lead him there. When he became thirsty and, hallucinating, went rambling through the sand dunes, the creature would find him an oasis. He never calls the creature by the same name twice, but always refers to it as some fruit or vegetable; my sweet pea, my little banana, blueberry shortstacks; it is all equally nauseating. And of course, with such a distraction circling him at all times, yawning and gnawing its scabs, St. Drogo hardly works. It is as though he is not responsible for a publishing company at all. Instead I do all the work of responding to the increasingly hateful correspondence we receive. I package our books to be shipped to the nearby villages, although our shipping materials are growing low, as St. Drogo has not arranged for them to be replenished. I man the one book stall we have left by the river, which no one visits anymore because they don’t find my conversation appealing. Now I hear rumors that the board of directors would like to expand my role even more. But unless I am finally given a position with the corporation, I want no more responsibilities. This apprenticeship has gone on long enough, and today all I feel toward St. Drogo is the deepest resentment.

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 2

Mea culpa from the Board of Directors

“Stoned.” An illustration from Fuzz Against Junk by Akbar Del Piombo.

We want to take this opportunity to recognize that our decision-making these last few months has at times strayed from the standard you rightly expect. As members of the board of directors our goal is to increase the valuation of this corporation while marginally enhancing the state of literature (we say marginally because literature is static, like history, neither improving nor worsening, but shifting imperceptibly and incoherently; everything has already been written, and if it has not been written, it has been said, and if it has not been said, it has been thought). It is obvious to us now that we placed too much pressure on Saint Drogo, our former editor, that we did not understand what he was going through, given his yearslong confinement to a stone cell and strict dietary and recreational regimen, and we regret that we did not take the time to find out. Saint Drogo served as perhaps the shrewdest editor this village press has seen, bringing us a study of refection by the preeminent Austrian documentarian Thomas Bernhard. But due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, he felt compelled to resign, and the interim editor who replaced him has made a series of costly decisions whose harm we acknowledge.

It is by now well-known that the interim editor acquired a work of true debauchery that is not fitting for this high-minded press. That is Arthur’s Whims, by Hervé Guibert, translated by Daniel Lupo. His decision was made alone; he consulted no one; and, we are told, he made this decision having read only a thirty-page excerpt that was delivered to him by a sea monk, so he says, while he lay on the beach excessively sunning himself and contemplating the mysteries of the sun (whose rays, he says, control the growth of his yellow-green toenails). The book had never appeared in English before, so he gambled. Thus he did not know there were chapters lustily depicting the podiatrist’s profession or fleeting pornographic scenes, nor of course did he know that the work would deviate so far and in such a grotesque fashion from the usual and respected literary depiction of the saint. Nonetheless this was only the tip of the iceberg.

Our surveillance team informs us that the interim editor urinated on book galleys and had to be physically restrained from doing the same on books en route to be distributed, that he drank and used root intoxicants to such excess that he was unable to proofread although he signed the solemn proofreading acknowledgement (“SPA”), that he submitted hundreds of lewd cover designs which he scribbled himself on the paper provided for him to draft contracts (all of which were immediately rejected and burned), that he kept small misshapen dogs and other animals and assigned to them the highest ranking editorial roles, that he vomited into clear jars that he arranged on the bookcase where our titles once stood (from the darkest to the lightest colored jars), and that in fact he exposed himself during a meeting at which a decision was made with which he disagreed. That decision, of course, was to terminate him.

We hope that our mea culpa will be read not only by our shareholders, readers, and workers, but also by Saint Drogo. We believe he has vanished into the desert to focus on his journey to rectitude. No one has heard from him, not even his youthful surveillance companion who returned to the village alone, and who has since taken a hallowed vow of muteness. Thus perhaps it will be some time before he reads this communiqué. Nonetheless we are hopeful, knowing what an illuminated and illuminating thinker he is, what a hardworking person he is, and refusing to believe that he has left Spurl Editions forever behind.

Printed on acid-free paper.

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 1

An awful lacuna: Saint Drogo’s letter of resignation

Illustration from Thesaurus thesaurorum, ca. 1775, France

I would like to first make it clear that I had no intention for my tenure as editor-in-chief to be as short as it was. When the townspeople—all corporate shareholders to some degree of Spurl Editions—approached me and asked me to take on this responsibility, I was delighted. As is by now well-known, to protect the townspeople from viewing my hideous appearance, I had moved into a small cell and have been subsisting there on the most rancid barley and the cloudiest water that is provided to me through an opening in the stone wall by a goblin of a man who I am sure only means me harm. Confined to this cold hole, my sole occupation for a decade was studying religious texts, and these texts, by the way, had been seeming more and more hollow to me. By taking on the editorial direction of the town’s publishing house, my day-to-day life would become rich, or so I believed. I was provided pen, paper, and the many manuscripts that had been delivered to the town but had gone unread by a previous editor whom I shall not name. Among these manuscripts I made a sublime discovery: The Cheap-Eaters, a novel by Thomas Bernhard, describing a man who regularly eats lunch and walks through parks. I did not hesitate: I made the acquisition and worked diligently on its production. The handsome volume was soon shipped to towns, villages, and hamlets throughout the southern foggy region.

Yet it was not long after this that the majority shareholder of Spurl Editions, who happens to be a trustee and reports directly to corporate counsel, came to my cell for a meeting. The shareholder held a slim volume that a press in the next town had recently published. I immediately recognized its name and design, but I could not fathom why this book would be a subject for our meeting. The shareholder slipped the book to me through the opening in my cell and asked me to turn to the copyright page. He asked if the page disturbed me, to which I candidly answered no. Then I saw it. Five words, or four, if two words that are hyphenated are to be counted as one word.

Printed on acid-free paper.

“As an editor, your responsibility is the copyright page, correct?”

I nodded, although this gesture was absurd, given that the shareholder could not see me through the stone, and I was not so short that I would be visible through the opening.

“I never thought to add this language. I have to deeply apologize. What does it even mean?”

The shareholder snapped back, “That’s neither here nor there.”

I remained silent for some time, hoping that my apology would resonate with this important person who held so much of my life in his hands. I did not want to return to a life of studying religious texts. It was clear that I had made a grave error, and that the shareholders would soon be meeting to discuss my fate; corporate counsel was likely aware of the error, too.

“We will need to consider this further,” he said. “The workers have been instructed to cease production until this is corrected. Goodbye.”

I looked at the copyright page again. Printed on acid-free paper. My head swam; I wanted to vomit. My thoughts began to spin out. Would this painful absence hurt readership? This awful lacuna. Surely there was something superior about acid-free paper compared to acidic paper. What kind of person would go from stall to stall, picking up and comparing books, and ultimately choose the book printed on acidic paper and not the one printed on acid-free paper? Only a madman, only a person who wanted to flout convention and stain his fingers with acid. As an editor I did not want this kind of reader. The shareholders of Spurl Editions did not either. When I took on this role, I envisioned clean, healthy readers, their hands spick-and-span, their minds ready for wholesome reflection. Not filthy greedy fingers whose skin was peeling off.

The book, The Cheap-Eaters, entered my mind again. Obviously I had failed it. The man who ate economical lunches and walked through various parks would be misunderstood now. I knew this. It had reached the wrong readers. They would ascribe a nasty quality to it: call a logically ordered book “obsessive.” Sympathize with insignificant minor characters. This was bad enough, but on top of this misery was the fact that my failure would allow the other towns’ presses to flourish. This was a year when my town needed every bit of help. Our doctor had been fatally mauled by a beast from the mountains, and the townspeople were falling ill with strange diseases, so that they could not work in the same diligent spirit as in years past. In trying to make our situation better, I had made it worse.

Well, there was no choice then. I did not want to wait in agony for the shareholders to meet, for corporate counsel to explain to them what I had done wrong. For them to vote.

I would rather step aside. It has been a humbling and gratifying experience to be editor-in-chief of Spurl Editions from April 1183 to August 1184. If there is one positive thing that I can express about these recent events, it is that they have brought me closer to God. No longer do I dread my existence. I am a “cheap-eater” too. I embrace eating what the goblin serves me through the wall, whatever it is. It is a sign of the goblin’s love for me. I embrace my religious study, for it keeps my fingers clean. My failure will not define me.

I will end by expressing my sincere apologies to all who were affected.

Saint Drogo