The Waste Land

I am writing this on the fifth anniversary of the delivery of my Vandercook proofing press. It’s fitting that The Waste Land is shipping to mark five years of my becoming a professional bookmaker. It is by far my most ambitious edition, and it is certainly my finest, but I am most excited about the progress it represents.

First, the poem itself.

This is not just “the text of the poem,” but rather the text of the poem which we believe should be considered authoritative. There are many versions of the text out there, each with subtle differences. This text represents what Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue, the world’s two foremost editors of Eliot, consider closest to Eliot’s intention, including dozens of [...] and even an entire line which are often altered in published versions. 

Second, Eliot’s own notes to the poem.

These were written at the request of his first American publisher and are controversial. Many initial readers thought they were an elaborate prank. They are not, but neither are they entirely not not. However they are taken and [...], they are an essential part of the poem’s history. 

Third, Christopher Ricks’ Afterwords to the poem.

This essay was written at my request to celebrate the poem’s centenary in 2022. They contain what I consider to be a definitive verdict on this most important of poems. We are unlikely to ever have a reader of Eliot to match Ricks’ stature or precision. 

Fourth, and perhaps most excitingly, an Editorial Composite of the poem’s earliest drafts.

Christopher and his co-editor Jim McCue spent a decade bringing together the earliest draft material of The Waste Land. Importantly, they posit four “interludes” between the five parts of the poem. The resulting Editorial Composite is twice the length of the published poem.

Exploring these drafts is endlessly fascinating to me. That “Unreal City” was once “Terrible City” or that the entire poem itself was once titled “He do the police in different voices” (an interesting elided umbrella whose shade is still everywhere on the published poem). It’s splendid to see the nascence of a Great Work, seeing that it was not always so great. Plenty of the original poem deserved to be cut. Most of all, one has the impression of endlessness — of containing multitudes. I’ll spoil Christopher's sublime afterword(s) a bit: he says that this poem is the poem with the greatest capacity ever written. That is, it contains and can contain so much. 

The text of this edition has been meticulously considered. The preparation of the manuscripts and typesetting alone took about a year. We care deeply about fidelity to the poem and to drafts even when, practically speaking, it make little experiential difference in its reading. For one small example, at the end of line 253: “despair —”. Unlike its neighbors, there is a space between the word and the dash. And not a full space, a half space. Printing was held up for a day so that we could confirm this easily overlooked quirk and [...]. 

There was a tension in the making of this edition between the book as an art object and the book as an academic reading object. I wanted to do away with all the academic apparatus attending our work — the [...], [...], [...]. Christopher argued to keep them, and he easily won the argument. 

As the finished manuscript came together, I felt dread at the coming task: How to turn this sprawling masterpiece into a fitting book?

I wanted this book to feel neither exactly Western nor Eastern, drawing elements of various design languages together. I wanted, most of all, for the book to feel scriptural, like a religious text to be drawn out and read reverentially. This is how I read The Waste Land, as scripture in the literary religion. “Make literature your religion:” this was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s command in one of my earlier editions. I have tried to follow her advice in this edition. 

At the same time, I wanted a design language that embraced the poem but didn’t smother it. I held back some of my more maximalist instincts and, ultimately, I hope the book has a streamlined and clearcut look to it, despite its ornamentation and elaborate text. For a multiyear project there is always the risk of putting on one too many ornaments and causing the tree to fall over. I hope I have been sufficiently restrained…

The making of this book coincided with my study of the Allen Press. I was inspired by the Allens’ approach to printing and typesetting. I loved, especially, how they did not beat their wonderful handmade papers into submission, but rather allow the type to interact naturally with and within the set flurry. I like the distinctiveness and warmth of their designs, the boldness of their textures and the lavishness of their colors. I think the influence is clear, and the book owes something to the Allens.

My workshop’s modus operandus is the uniqueness of handicraft. If a machine can do it, we don’t, and if a machine can’t do it, we do. Nothing about this book is machinable — literally every paper used would break the million dollar machines of industrial bookmaking if somebody attempted to run them through. 

Christopher and I both care immensely about preserving a poem as intended in print. This means that the constraints of the physical medium should not impose upon the poem. For example, forcing a line break where one does not exist in the poem. For another, splitting a verse passage (“stanzas” in layman’s terms) across pages, giving the impression of a break where none exists. The format of this book was dictated from the start so that no line is broken, and that verse passages end only where a blank line can be rendered as intended, either mid-page or at the end of a page. This is, so far as I can tell, the first edition of The Waste Land ever to preserve the poem’s formatting in this way. This led me to a tall but somewhat narrow folio, preserving intact the text itself while maintaining readability and handling. I wanted a monumental, but not a cumbersome book.  

This format helped to dictate the choice of paper. Thick papers would not do well because they lack drape. Thick papers, furthermore, feel inelegant to me. They are quite literally unfine, in that thinner materials are more difficult to make and work with. (Nobody brags about how thickly they can slice garlic.) I considered washi at first, but found in my mockups that this tipped the balance too much into Eastern bookmaking. So, after finding the Paper Foundation — a wonderful, fledgling mill in England — and sampling some of their wonderful Ingres papers, I realized that a combination of Ingres and washi could be suitable. Ingres, the fineness of the West, and washi, the fineness of the East. Taken together I feel a certain timelessness or placelessness, or perhaps a wandering, which the poem embodies. A German typeface on English paper, beside Japanese washi and Indian ornamentation — all brought together, of course, by an American bookmaker.

With about fifty thousand dollars in handmade paper in hand, I began printing. The first day was the worst of my career. These papers did not behave like the papers I had previously used! My first two runs looked awful. I heard a ping! in the rope of the Sword of Damocles. When I first committed to this edition, I had never actually printed more than a small chapbook myself — and that on machine made paper, from polymer plates and a small chase. The printing of The Waste Land was an enormous challenge. I am ten times the printer I was now, in large part because of how much I was forced to learn. First and foremost, I learned that the “cost” of handmade paper isn’t in the expense — it’s in the time. To print handmade paper well requires dampening (whereas a Zerkall or a Johannot can be printed nicely dry), requires sorting of weights, and attention to the variability of sheets. In other words, you cannot simply set things up precisely and go, but must constantly change your printing to accommodate the paper shifting beneath you. The amount of time I spent printing The Waste Land is probably as much as my next five editions combined. 

This was a new experience for me, taking such a slow and sheet-by-sheet approach. Essentially, taking a handpress approach. I don’t particularly like the work that comes off handpresses; I much prefer what a proofing press can do. However, there are certain circumstances — combinations of paper, type, ink, time — where a handpress outshines a proofing press in my eyes. To be clear: the edition was not printing on a handpress, but a proofing press modified to behave more like a handpress. 

And I printed The Waste Land in a different style than my usual. While I usually take a “gentle but deep” approach to letterpress, this was impossible with this paper. Besides, I had wanted something a little more classic — something where you can almost taste the metal with your eyes. So “gentle but deep” became “hard but shallow” and I am quite pleased with the results — pleased, too, that I could change my printing to accommodate the paper and poem (not a given!). I am pleased to say that printing on handmade paper, while so much more challenging than I anticipated, was such a fulfilling experience that half-or-so of No Reply editions going forward are likely to be on handmade paper, and I have commissioned a press-paper, with my own watermark, handmade to my specifications to harmonize well with my printing approach. 

The covers I painted myself, 

And I executed the binding with the help of my extraordinary apprentice bookmaker Claire. 

I consider this my best book, because it brings together everything I adore in private presswork. It is my most editorially ambitious, my most handmade, the book in which I was most closely involved in every part of the process. It took the most time — as Gaylord Schanilec says, this work is all about time — and it had the harshest disappointments and the most sublime successes. 

Strangely, while nearly every element of this book was made by me alone, this was also the most collaborative edition I have made. The funny thing about being a hand-bookmaker is that nobody ever tells you “No.” Whatever you want — writers are just happy to see their work done up in this way. But much of this book was a tête-à-tête with Christopher, who often told me No or, rather, NO! For example, after reading his astonishing afterword(s), I asked Christopher if the occasion of the centenary warranted the addition of a personal note about the poem – about his now eighty years of reading and re-reading it – he said it did not. “My job as a critic is to notice things about the poem, not to notice things about myself.” I am so grateful to him for entrusting me with his work. 

And I am grateful to you. This book was expensive and took a long time. I have tried to repay the kindness of your patience and support by giving it my honest best. Undoubtedly, if I were to start again today, it would end up better, as I have learned so much in the process of making it. Even so, it stands as my definitive best work thus far, and I am so pleased to share it with you.