Publishing on the Margins: A Conversation with Argentine Artisan Publisher and Poet Eric Schierloh

 

I first came across Eric Schierloh’s multifaceted cultural artisanry imprint Barba de Abejas (Bee beard) when I was gifted a copy of Richard Brautigan’s Please Plant This Book. Eager to read the poems in Spanish, my then one-dimensional approach to books, I carefully opened the object unable to overlook the detail in each item. To my surprise, out fell eight envelopes from a peculiar binding that had subverted the traditional text block. Each side of the envelopes donned a poem in either Spanish or English enfolding a seed between each version of the text. Also included was a book of Schierloh’s own poetry written while representing Argentina at the Guadalajara International Book Fair and a hand-painted watercolor portrait of Brautigan. Perusing this offbeat compilation became the defining moment that began to expand my relationship with books, the written word, translation, and the circulation of it all.

Reaching ten years at the end of 2020, Barba de Abejas has released forty-six titles of more than thirty authors, and around 6,600 books along with 1,900 chapbooks—each one made by hand and including ancient text to contemporary poetry. Eric was willing to answer a few questions to discuss artisan publishing and his advocacy for publishing on the margins, outside of the industrial publishing complex.

 

Paul Holzman: What was the tipping point to go DIY and to bring the entire process into your home? Tell me about the moment you decided to plan, lay out, print, and hand-make your first book.

Eric Schierloh: It was at the end of 2010, and it had to do with two things: a certain “disappointment” regarding the dynamics of the industrial publishing system and having come across, by pure chance, the case of Ulises Carrión while in Guadalajara, Mexico. A very talented artist who transcended the frontiers of literature in order to make the manufacturing and publishing of things almost intrinsically linked to writing, Carrión speaks of the modern writer in terms of someone cut off from the material conditions of book production, and that was the exact split I had experienced publishing industrial books in small independent publishing houses. It took me a year and a half to get a grasp on all this and to teach myself the craft of editing (which includes publishing and distribution), the designing of books, and bookbinding.

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REVIEW: The “Untranslatable” Osvaldo Lamborghini’s English-Language Debut

 

The subject of Osvaldo Lamborghini’s impact on Argentine Literature summons a polarity of responses. The late Leopoldo Marechal, commenting on Lamborghini’s seminal El Fiord, said: “It’s perfect. A sphere. Shame it’s a sphere of shit.” On the contrary, César Aira, Lamborghini’s mentor/curator of sorts, extrapolates his singularity—claiming his work to be unparalleled. Academics of the greatest rigor and other heavyweights of the contemporary Latin American literati—such as Tamara Kamenszain and Roberto Bolaño—have unfettered their comments on the writing of Lamborghini as well: the former finding the need to unabatedly analyze, theorize, and deconstruct the dialectic around Lamborghini’s work, and the latter encouraging the reader to enter with caution. With so much contention surrounding his oeuvre, taking on the task of translating any of Lamborghini’s work is a mighty—even ominous—task. It therefore comes to no surprise that a print translation into the English has taken a relatively long time to reach our hands, but it has arrived: Two Stories by Osvaldo Lamborghini, by the intrepid hand of translator Jessica Sequeira.

The written word, for Lamborghini, permeates the conscious with a concise and potent mechanism, boggling the minds of readers with an intelligently savage use of syntax, punctuation, and orthography. I first encountered his antics in El Fiord, his first publication. After quickly scrapping my thesaurus and dictionary, I stumbled between aversion and infatuation, rummaging through a labyrinth of blogs and academic databases for explanations and makeshift guides to the text. After a few years of indulging in the somewhat toxic relationship of attempting to translate El Fiord into English, my notes revealed that a great many elements of his writing transcend conventional translation approaches and decisions, culminating in ever more possibilities for the text. Thus, translation is an important tool for engaging the multifarious nature of Lamborghini’s work, and Two Stories demonstrates that the act of translation proves to be a helpful light while shadowboxing what some call the “untranslatable” Osvaldo Lamborghini.

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Review: Dark

Dark by Edgardo Cozarinsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cozarinsky nos presente un complot que marca la inseguridad de lo que pasa realmente entre Victor y Andrés y sus hábitos de errar por la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Estos dos personajes, junto con el escritor-narrador, yerran como los recuerdos y pensamientos de todos involucrado- incluso el lector mismo. Tanto como la ciudad de Buenos Aires, Dark, deja huellas, mitos, y olores que impregnan palabras y nombres de lugares- como la Isla Maciel. Esta impregnación llega hasta ciertas décadas que chocan con una carga que inspira una plétora de espacios instigadores en la mente, conjeturando el ser Andrés, sus intenciones con el pibe joven, Victor, y además la afinidad que pueda tener Edgardo Cozarinsky a los acontecimientos y los lugares recorridos en la novela. ¿Por qué se toma el rol de sensei callejero, Andrés? Capaz se vea a si mismo en ese joven. Tal vez esté realizando un deseo perdido de ocupar un rol natural y paternal. ¿Puede que esté enamorado con ese joven? Durante el transcurso de bastante nuevo libro de Cozarinsky, la inversión humana se encuentra en juego y en cuestión. Puede ser visto y vivido un muchas maneras. Como dice el narrador " Muchos son los caminos de la ficción."

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