Any thoughts on the LEC The Wonderful Adventure of Paul Bunyan?

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Any thoughts on the LEC The Wonderful Adventure of Paul Bunyan?

1GusLogan
Dez. 26, 2021, 4:07 am

The illustrations appeal to me but the binding looks bad, sheepskin-baaah’d. Happy for any comments, not least on the textual content!

2GardenOfForkingPaths
Bearbeitet: Jan. 4, 2022, 10:45 am

I just finished reading this one - a somewhat random acquisition last year during my search for The Pilgrim's Progress - and hope >1 GusLogan: won't mind if I plonk a review in this thread.

The binding itself is much better than expected. In fact, a nice, solid feeling, little book. I too had assumed it was a sheepskin spine but the Monthly Letter confirms it's a goatskin Morocco leather. I'm not sure why the leather hasn't held up too well in many instances, especially as it has the chemise/slipcase to protect it. Perhaps just a reflection of the quality of leather available at that moment in time.

You may have guessed it's not a real wood veneer on the boards (and slipcase) but rather a printed image, which is actually quite convincing. From the ML and prospectus, I understand this was a cutting-edge process that was only just entering the mainstream in 1945: "great Jupiter, the cost of it!".





The letterpress printing (by Aldus, New York) looks okay – consistent in darkness but perhaps not as crisp as I have seen in other LECs. The impression is very slight – barely noticeable. The paper is an all-rag from Worthy, and it's fine, but it looks and feels just a bit generic to me. I’m no expert.

Being British and having no connection to these folktales and their setting (other than a love of the American landscape and some cherished memories of a trip along the west coast), I'm not a good person to judge the contents. The stories are a rich mixture of frontier life infused with the magical. The men are honest, tough, fight, and tell stories, but they also encounter bizarre animals, upside-down mountains, and lemonade springs. These are stories of how the American landscape was shaped in a real sense (the hard work of the frontiersmen) and in a mythical sense (Paul creates the Grand Canyon by carelessly dragging his gigantic axe along the ground). It's clear from the ML that Macy considers these stories a key element in American folklore and an important counterpoint to the European traditions. In his words, "the hero of American legend must sweat and swear, tell huge good-natured lies, pay little attention to the rules of polite society".

The ML mentions a dissatisfaction with how these stories have been rendered in previous editions, being either too childish or too formal. Therefore, we are told, Untermeyer has written these stories "in a prose, which is poetry". To me, the writing often felt a bit functional, lacking in a flavour and language that would help ground them in the frontier age, and with only occasional flashes of the poetic. I would love to hear what other devotees think of these stories as I have no feel for what they should be like.

The crayon illustrations by Everett Gee Jackson are the stars of the show, and they are excellent and numerous with at least one full-page colour picture for each story (produced lithographically) and miniatures above each title heading (printed in 'sanguine' by photogravure). A painter of some renown, apparently this was Jackson's first foray into illustration and Macy praises the skilled compositions, which he says are more typical of paintings than of drawings.

A 1924 edition of the stories of Paul Bunyan (told by Esther Shephard) was illustrated by Rockwell Kent and the ML briefly dismisses these: ”Paul is found to be as rigidly placed in geometric poses as are the figures in a Grecian frieze”. I’ve seen some of these Kent illustrations and think they look excellent. They express much more of the grit and peril of the frontier as well as the monumental scale of the rugged landscape; they have the traditional look of myth and legend. Macy felt that Kent’s drawings missed the mark and that they rejected the most important aspect of Paul Bunyan: “a fellow in the comic vein, a fellow who, when we laugh at him causes us to remember that we are laughing at the follies and foibles in ourselves”. Jackson’s illustrations brilliantly capture the humour and whimsy of the stories.

Pics below!









3GusLogan
Jan. 4, 2022, 1:09 pm

>2 GardenOfForkingPaths:
Thanks very much indeed!

4UK_History_Fan
Jan. 5, 2022, 9:18 am

>2 GardenOfForkingPaths:
Thanks for your great review and copious pictures. I cannot believe how great your spine condition is in! Mine is crumbling into dust.

5GardenOfForkingPaths
Jan. 6, 2022, 6:14 am

>4 UK_History_Fan: Sorry to hear about the spine on yours! My copy was in the original glassine, which I think helped, but it still has the beginnings of some rubbing at the spine tips. The goatskin leather just seems a bit delicate for some reason.

6Sport1963
Jan. 6, 2022, 5:58 pm

>5 GardenOfForkingPaths: Two issues plague this book, one external, one internal. The external issue is that many of these copies found their way to the hands of younger readers where they were read and looked at a lot. If my household is any example - a favorite book may have been be cracked open and read almost every night for many weeks, or even months in a row. Multiply that by four children and cousins and friends, well that's a lot of use! It's for this same reason that it is hard to find near fine copies of Sinbad the Sailor (not really a children's story, but most people think so), Pinocchio, The Wind in the Willows, and Punch & Judy.

The internal issue has to do with the quality of the goatskin and the tanning process it went through. Bottom line, most Macy-era leathers are of inferior quality, especially the ones produced during WW2 or for several years after. They looked good out of the box, but they didn't age very well. UV light is the great destroyer, but some of the titles (notably Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Melville's Moby Dick) degrade just by contact with the air. There are some rare exceptions, Rocklands has a beautiful Gibbon set, and my copy of Moby Dick (which was in storage for 50+ years) has held up very nicely.



7GardenOfForkingPaths
Jan. 7, 2022, 6:04 am

>6 Sport1963: Great points! Thanks for the informative post. I hadn't considered the use by younger readers. Finding really nice copies of all the Evergreen Tales has been a bit tricky, I'm sure for the same external reasons you mention.

It is a shame about the crumbly leathers. I try to keep it pretty dark in the area I shelve my books to minimise the impact of The Great Destroyer! Congratulations on owning a nice copy of Moby Dick - that's a terrific find. I've all but given up hope of that one and am pondering the Heritage Press edition instead.

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