A PQ Interview
A long, long time ago, I can still remember. . . Paperback Quarterly, Billy Lee's pioneering zine about paperback collecting. Billy and his wife, Charlotte Laughlin, were the driving forces, but I hung around as "contributing editor." This was back in 1978, before the Internet, before anything like the network of collectors and fans that exists today. But we did what we could. One of the features of the magazine was interviews conducted through a form of written correspondence known as "letters." First a request for an interview would be composed on a "typewriter" and then it would be "mailed" to the person we wanted to interview. If the person consented to the interview, we'd go back to the typewriter and compose it. When it was completed, we'd mail it. The interviewee would then type the reply and return it by mail. All this took a while, but we did get a few interviews done. Because we didn't want to take up too much of the person's time, and because we didn't really know what we were doing, the interviews were short. Some of them might be of interest, however, so I thought I might put a few of them here on the blog, like this one with Norman Saunders from Volume 1, Number 2 (Fall 1978). If there's any interest, I'll try to do another one or two.
A long, long time ago, I can still remember. . . Paperback Quarterly, Billy Lee's pioneering zine about paperback collecting. Billy and his wife, Charlotte Laughlin, were the driving forces, but I hung around as "contributing editor." This was back in 1978, before the Internet, before anything like the network of collectors and fans that exists today. But we did what we could. One of the features of the magazine was interviews conducted through a form of written correspondence known as "letters." First a request for an interview would be composed on a "typewriter" and then it would be "mailed" to the person we wanted to interview. If the person consented to the interview, we'd go back to the typewriter and compose it. When it was completed, we'd mail it. The interviewee would then type the reply and return it by mail. All this took a while, but we did get a few interviews done. Because we didn't want to take up too much of the person's time, and because we didn't really know what we were doing, the interviews were short. Some of them might be of interest, however, so I thought I might put a few of them here on the blog, like this one with Norman Saunders from Volume 1, Number 2 (Fall 1978). If there's any interest, I'll try to do another one or two.
9 comments:
I'd love to see more of these. I read all of them back then, but it's been a long time.
It scares me to think how long.
And yet it seems like yesterday . . .
Absolutely. That's what's scary.
Yes, I'd like to see more of them also.
Please, sir, may we have some more?
More! MORE!
Wow. Well, at least one fellow blogger has been known to go one about my relative youth, and I certainly began thinking fanzine-ish thoughts for the first time not long after this was first published...but goodness, how time flies from late pubescence to smack-dab middle-age...
Yes, please, more if it's not too much trouble or doesn't break too many staple-bindings...
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