Let's Start at the Beginning, Shall We?

I recently brought this book to Kyle's attention and he was thrilled with it.  I guess it has become forgotten over the years with all the new scholarship and accounts of the Mimeo Revolution and little magazines.  This is a shame and somewhat shocking, because for me, this is the origin from which all subsequent work derives.  Anybody and everybody writing on the Mimeo Revolution has to refer to it.  Anderson and Kinzie's book, published by Pushcart Press in 1978, itself builds off of and brings up to date, the landmark The Little Magazine: A History and Bibliography by Frederick J. Hoffman, Charles Allen, Carolyn F. Ulrich (Princeton Univ. Press, 1946). 

Anderson and Kinize copy the earlier book's format of providing first hand accounts of producing pre-WWII mags and applies it to the publications of the post-WWII era.  This is standard operating procedure for Mimeo Revolution scholarship:  copy the form and format of the Modernist magazine histories.  Modernist scholarship, as should be expected, is light years ahead of that of the Mimeo Revolution.  A case in point is the recent The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines:  Britian and Ireland 1855-1955 Vol. 1.  The second volume on North America is due out in September of this year.  Amazon is currently listing it at a whopping $230.  This is criminal and yet another indictment of academic publishing but I won't get into that yet again.  Brooker and Thacker's book provides scholarly essays that themselves build on the antecdotal editoral accounts in the Princeton University History and Bibliography.  Such is how things progress.  A similar book on the Mimeo Revolution is hopefully on the not too distant horizon.

The Pushcart Modern Documentary History is in essence a source book and an essential one, particularly on the largely forgotten little magazine production of the 1950s.  The essays on Trace, Neon, and Black Mountain Review are good examples.  Creeley's essay on Black Mountain Review has become a classic.  The book continues on into the 1970s.  Rothenberg on Caterpillar is one I really enjoy.  There are 42 essays by various little magazine editors in all and tons of photographs with a great annotated checklist. 

Anderson and Kinzie's book appeared about 30 years after Hoffman et al's book.  We are over 30 years since 1978 and the time is ripe once again for an update.

JB