This is another little zine I found not too long ago while rummaging through a neglected shelf.
As hard as it is for a geezer like me to believe, some of you are probably so young that you don't remember the days before the Internet, the days when information about old paperbacks wasn't easily available, when you couldn't go to Bookscans and see just about every vintage paperback cover there ever was, when instead of searching through little out-of the-way thrift shops for years for that elusive book, you could click on Abebooks and find any title you were looking for, make another click and buy it.
What we had in those olden times was zines like Paperback Forum, although this one came along a bit late in the game. It was quite professionally produced, and it had a lot of B&W photos of paperback covers in addition to the articles.
Probably the most interesting thing in this issue, and still of interest to anybody into paperbacks, is an interview with Knox Burger, conducted by Jon White. I don't have to tell you, I'm sure, that Burger quite a career in publishing, especially as an editor at Gold Medal and Dell. Piet Schreuders has an article on Bantam Books. Geoffrey O'Brien has a review of Goodis: LaVie en Noir et Blanc, available at the time only in French and which has only just this year been translated for those of us cretins who don't read that language (that's Goodis on the cover, as you can see). Barry Kaplan's article is on paperback novels about homosexuality. And of course there's other good stuff including Michael Barson's review of a couple of books about Dell.
It's hard to explain to someone who wasn't around what a thrill it was to get a copy of one of these zines in the mail, but, trust me, it was. I still get a little tingle even now when I thumb through one of them.
5 comments:
Yeah, I loved the old fanzines. I first found BRONZE SHADOWS in 1970, after the magazine folded, but I was thrilled about the concept of these little magazines. From 1970 on, those fanzines started coming into my mail box. I've sold most of them off now, but still have a ton of them I keep advertising for sale, but with the Internet offering everything at the click of a button, today's fans aren't interested in the old stuff like we were. But what fun we had. Ginger and I published ECHOES for 22 years.
One of the reasons I joined DAPA-EM was to connect with other paperback collectors. PAPERBACK FORUM and publications like it were great, but real people with real books (like you) were even better!
This is not a fanzine I ever saw, but I bet it's a good one. The Burger interview would be especially interesting; he was John D. MacDonald's editor for (I believe) a number of years, and was immortalized as "Emil 'Nogs' Berga" in DARKER THAN AMBER. Ah, the good old days...
It was fanzines that got me into fandom and fan publishing. A friend had a stash of comic crudzines, mostly in ditto and mimeo, that had a spirit and energy I found compelling. I published my own on and off for the next 35 years and I'm still in two apas.
Them wuz the days, Bill!
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