Norbert Blei

The Non-Stop, 100 MPH, One-On-One, 1 Question/1 Answer Interview
From: Cook, Marshall To: Norb Blei Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 1:33 PM Subject: Question #1- with a long wind up before the pitch
COOK: You trekked to the wilds of Door County from Chicago and holed up in a chicken coop. You tried your hand at community journalism (with your gorgeous assistant, Lovta DuMore X.) and wrote a wonderful book about the adventure. You wrote some fine books on Door County. And then (but not before?) you leapt (slid? were drug kicking and screaming? relapsed?) into publishing. How did Cross Roads Press come about? You may also answer the implied question ("Are you out of your skull?") if you wish. BLEI: I came from Chicago, yes. Born and bred. With both Al Capone’s infamous ‘Cicero’ and Czechoslovak/neighborhood credentials as well. Language of the streets—book joints, strip clubs, race tracks. And ethnic folk—foreign tongues, tastes, traditions. And though I presently roost in an authentic chicken coop (which I’ve occupied since 1976--having bought into the beautiful rural Wisconsin landscape in l968 during the Second American Revolution) I am still writing about Chicago, still hearing street voices, and will till the cock crows a final dawn for me. Though the distance between me and the city grows greater each day. Silence is golden and good. Memory and desire--all a writer ever needs. Wherever in the world he happens to finds himself Chicago was the best training ground imaginable for a fledgling scribbler, and I owe much to the city of the big shoulders. My introduction to and love of small press/little mags is a direct result of my `growing-up-writerly’/existentially in Chi Town USA. Discovering and realizing the city’s great literary history and how every Chicago writer I revered, at one time or another (especially in the coming-out years) was nourished by the little mag/small press phenom, whether his/her name was Sandburg, Algren, Masters, Anderson, Hecht, Farrell, Bellow, Wright, Hemingway, Brooks, etc. (or Harriet Monroe, the founder of Poetry Magazine) . Add to that the Chicago newspaper tradition—where young writers were born, made, (ala Sandburg, Royko, Petrakis, etc.) and kept alive writing articles and book reviews, thanks to old editors with young hearts. Add to that, some of the great used bookstores and bookstore owners such as a guy named Paul Romaine [see Chi Town by Norbert Blei for a complete profile], who had an intimate knowledge of the city’s literary history, not to mention a reverence for small presses, little mags, and left-of-center politics. Plus connections with Hemingway, Faulkner, Wright, Algren, and Europe of the 20’s. He was my Lost Generation, my Left Bank of Paris, my Avant-Garde, my knowledge of the New Masses, Mexican muralists, and much of Russian literature. He pressed great small press publications in my hands which I bought for next to nothing (priceless today, many of them), which I read, studied, worshipped and, most of all, remembered. Remembered where `it’ all came from, when it became my time . The publishing bridge from there to here, or here to there: my own first publication of a first short story in a little magazine in the early 1960’s (printed on a ditto machine) that paid me three copies—and immediately disappeared from the face of the earth. But—I was born in print! A certified short story writer. And would (in time) be born again! And again! From the tiniest, most lackluster little mags (The Castle…Buddhist Third Class Junk Mail) to better and better quality independent (december magazine, Kayak, Wormwood Review),and university-sponsored literary quarterlies (Minnesota Review, Midwest Review, Madison Review, Tri-Quarterly, Kenyon Review, etc. Culminating in time in a first collection of visual/experimental writing (The Watercolored Word-- Quixote Press, Madison, Wisconsin!);a first collection of short stories (The Hour of the Sunshine Now--Story Press); The Second Novel (december press); a first collection of nonfiction (Door Way—Ellis Press), etc. I never forgot where I came from. I truly worshipped and continue to worship and support in whatever way I can, the smallest of the small presses, the least likely to succeed of any and all little mags. Which is all any writer can do, must do—given what’s never happening in New York and the major publishing conglomerates these days, where too many books are manufactured not written, most of them hyped in all the same places, for all of the same reasons, and nobody ever knows your name coming in from the outside sans connections. I continue to believe as I did in the beginning that the conscience of serious American writing is born, bred, and remains in the little magazines and small presses. No, you will never appear on the New York Times best-seller list. No, your audience will remain small—but dedicated and, hopefully, supportive. No, you are never going to make enough (or any) money—or be able to afford a house in nouveaux riche Door County. But, if you are a real writer, you will find your own way to exist, to keep on doing what you’re doing, always trying to do it better. Many are called but few have the balls to choose a lifetime of insecurity. And if you have to ask: "Do I have the talent?" You can’t come in. Find another way to drive yourself crazy—and get paid for your plight. Including health insurance. Now, where was I? What was the question? Oh, the origins of Cross+Roads Press. And how/why did I leap, slide…or was I drug into the publishing venture, kicking and screaming??? I think a good part of my answer has already been stated—except for this. In my `writer’s world’ meanderings in Wisconsin, Chicago, Milwaukee. Madison, Minnesota, the Midwest…the West and Southwest, Mexico, Central America, Europe…in train stations, cafes, parks, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, bodegas,…in high school college, graduate school classrooms, in workshops (including my annual `writing intensive’ workshop at The Clearing, in Door County, where I have taught every June for going on 30 years)…I come across so much good writing, so many aspiring writers of all ages who are already `there’ or waiting at the crossroad, uncertain of the next move. And I think again of all the bullshit I’ve been through, all the uncertainty, insecurity. All the rejection (which is always there waiting for you, no matter how long you’ve been at this game or how good you think you might be)…And I think again of all the great little mags and editors who opened windows and doors for me, who kept me alive, and I look around the writing scene and I am struck again by how few opportunities exist for a writer to get his or her work in print, especially in book-form. (Alas, some things never change) And so I concluded : I guess it’s time I put my two meaty hands in that greater literary river of word-time and see what I can do in that same spirit of all those who helped me. But, in keeping with a truly independent nature, as both publisher and editor (a one-man band) if I’m to do this, I can do it only on my terms. After all, it’s my time and money. And I have little of either. And I will not go a-beggin’ for grant money! So, without going into too much history of attitude and conviction, suffice it to say: I decided that instead of creating a small, literary magazine (which I would truly love to do—still!—but obviously cannot), it seemed to me that perhaps the best thing I could do for other writers was offer to print their first book (their first `chapbook’), though in a few instances, for reasons I don’t care to spell out at the moment, I will print a perfect-bound book as well. Once my decision was made to print chapbooks only (in a limited edition of 300 copes @ $6 a chapbook—occasionally 500 copies if the circumstances merit) the next order of business was: who or whom do I print? I can’t print everyone who thinks he’s a poet because his high school teacher once told him so. I can’t open the door wide to any and all unsolicited manuscripts. I don’t have the time to entertain fifty or more submissions a month. Rule #1. My personal writing life with all its own demands comes first. And must be protected. I’m a publisher only second—or third. Rule #2: I will not destroy the credibility of the press by publishing my own work. This is not for ME, but for her, him, them.) Biggest Obstacle #1: If I am to succeed as a publisher on my terms I must make it known, understood, accepted that--You send me a ms. out of the blue, it will come right back to you, unread, from the icy center of my cold, cold heart. I got to the writer. The writer does not come to me. Thank you. How do I know who? what’s out there? what’s good, what’s not? What I’m missing? Trust me. I've published 18 chapbooks and 4 broadsides to date A quarter of the chapbooks I’ve published sold out in the first few weeks. Almost three-quarters of all the chapbooks I’ve done are sold out, never again to appear as a Cross+Roads Press original. Many of the writers I’ve published have gone on to other publishers with other books (a large part of my original intention—CR+P as a launching pad). Further note: I do not reprint any chapbooks regardless of how well they sell, preferring instead to put whatever monies on hand and out-of-pocket in the next book, the next author. My singular desire with each new title: to just break even on the costs. Do I not plenty of good writers out there by setting up a situation that insures our paths may never cross? Undoubtedly. Do I feel any guilt over this? None whatsoever. Because this is all I can do. Which is more than a lot of others ever try to do. This is all I can do. All one man can do. Given everything else I must do. I have yet to publish a writer without some track record of publishing credits of a few or many good poems, stories, essays, etc. If the credentials are there—but no first book--that usually piques my interest, especially if what I read pleases me. I'm always on the look out for 'different’. "Different' and pleasing is what I like. But back to the beginning, for the end: The press came about because I wished to fill a need based upon my own life as a writer, then and now. Of course, anyone at my stage of the game (writing since the early 60’s), is "out-of-his-skull" to get into publishing. That’s a given. And I say to the reader: "Why the hell aren’t you doing this instead of me? Take up some of this burden, whether you’re young, middle-age, or on social security. I’m tired and broke and can’t keep doing this to myself much longer." Granted, there are some rewards. (Alas, not monetary). And this, perhaps, is the hardest to explain. I’m not sure many publishers can `go there’. Explain this or even care to explain it to themselves. I’m talking about the real joy one feels in his bones when you’ve `put someone out there.’ A writer you found and believe in. A writer who’s work you feel the need to share—for the first time. This plus the joy the publisher feels, sensing how the writer must feel when she holds her first book in her hands for the first time, opens it, breathes it all in. Welcome to a small and private moment of literary history. Your book. Your name. Your writing. You’ve arrived—at the first station. Don’t stop now. And don’t expect too many gifts like this along the way—without giving of yourself when needs be. I won’t even go into the publisher’s exhilaration of securing the original manuscript (or advancing the idea) of the book. The correspondence. The editing. The rewriting suggestions. Or (for me) the sheer joy of pulling a book together. Finding the right artist/art for the cover. Choosing the color, ink. paper, font, type-point. The whole long process. Calling upon my graphic arts/computer genius down the road from me (Jan Mielke) to assist in the last dance—putting it all on the screen for a final look before shipping it off to the printer. Bending over her shoulder, watching her work her fast fingers, mind, imagination on the keyboard and screen. Laying everything out as I visualize it/we see it, till I know/we know it’s there. Yes…yes. THAT’S IT! And so off to the printer and the usual long wait till the inevitable moment of anxious arrival. Tearing open the first box of books, tearing off the shrink-wrap. Holding one copy in-hand…studying the cover, front and back, smelling the paper and ink, thumbing through all the pages, three or four times. Smiling to yourself. Loving it! Remembering what it was like for you, that first time.