Chronicle Books Blog

Did I hear someone say books are dead? That prognosis did not stand in the way of the hundred or so bibliophiles who came out on a stormy night to view a selection of books from Bay Area publishers on view in our lobby.

We called it BABE: Bay Area Book Expo. Since the demise of the San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival, there hasn’t been an opportunity for local publishers to showcase their work. On view in the Chronicle Books lobby is a sampling of books published over the last ten years, or the first decade of this new century.

By no means a comprehensive showing of all publishers–a much larger venue would be necessary for that–this is a selection of half a dozen houses plying their craft in the Bay Area. Represented are Ten Speed Press, Jossey-Bass, Gingko Press, University of California Press, McSweeney’s and Chronicle–a representative mix of trade, university, business, popular psychology, and literary genres.

As I mentioned in my remarks to the attendees, San Francisco has a history of publishing: from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books in the 1950s (Howl) to 1960s renegade publications such as Zap Comix (R. Crumb), Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone, Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog to 1990s Dave Eggers’ McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and dot com era must-read, Wired. Not to be left out, Chronicle, too, had its beginnings in the Summer of Love.

What’s curious–and heartening–to me is how the spirit of those publishing pioneers can still be seen and felt in the books on display. Underlying that spirit is a dedication to the art and craft of the book: its design and tactility. This is a humanizing factor as we, a book- and information-consuming culture, migrate from the printed page to the electronic one. Books do and will continue to remind us of the symbiotic relationship between hand and eye and mind. Or, in the words of the commemorative poster that designer Tim Belonax donated to the show, “In Books We Trust”.

BABE is open to the public until Friday 4 March 2011, from 10.00 a.m. until 5.00 p.m. in the Chronicle Books building on 680 Second Street, San Francisco, CA. Book lovers stop by.

Michael Carabetta
Creative Director

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Tomorrow, February 26th would have been Jonny Cash’s 79th birthday. In honor of the day, Sony Music has just released From Memphis to Hollywood, Bootleg Vol. 2.

They’ve posted a slideshow of Jim Marshall’s images of the Man in Black from our book Pocket Cash and are giving away ten CD and book prize packs. Find all of the details at www.johnnycashonline.com.

Below is an excerpt written by Jim Marshall from the afterword of Pocket Cash.

Jim Marshall, February 2010

I first met Johnny Cash when he was hanging out with Bob Dylan at some Greenwich Village nightclub in 1962. We just hit it off. I photographed him at the Newport Folk Festivals. When I came back out to San Francisco in ’64, we stayed in touch.

When Columbia Records agreed to do the Folsom Prison shows—producer Bob Johnston talked them into doing it—John called them to have me shoot the concerts.

There was one other photographer there; I don’t know if he even got inside. I had unlimited access at Folsom; I could go anywhere I wanted. Pop music writer Bob Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times was there—one of his first assignments for the paper. He’s in some of the photos. The album, At Folsom Prison, was recorded on a four-track. John brought his whole show—the Statler Brothers, Mother Maybelle Carter, and Carl Perkins, with the Tennessee Three.

Cash stepped down off the bus just as the steel doors to the prison clanged shut and said, “There’s a feeling of permanence to that sound.” He went into Greystone Chapel and meditated, prayed there for a little bit. It was small, held maybe forty, fifty people. He was going to record a song called “Greystone Chapel” written by one of the inmates, Glen Sherley. He cared about the prisoners a lot. He cared about the conditions and tried to help improve them….

… Johnny had an edge. When John walked in a room, you knew he was there. There was a hint of danger, but I don’t think he was a violent man. You just knew he was there. He had a presence that very few artists have. I think it shows in the photographs.

He didn’t suffer fools gladly. He kept a close bunch of friends that were very tight to him. The people who loved him, loved him fiercely, and vice versa. His wife, June Carter, was his lifeline. I remember when they got back together, about a year before the Folsom concerts. He stopped doing drugs. June kept him off the drugs and saved his life. I think the day she died, he died.

Do you have a favorite Johnny Cash song? Add a comment below. We’ll select five comments at random to win a copy of From Memphis to Hollywood, Bootleg Vol. 2.

Patti Quill
Art + Design

Purchase Pocket Cash and use Promo Code CASH at checkout to receive 30% off plus free ground shipping.

Check out more Art + Design Blog Posts.

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“Here is the diary of a book, and it will be interesting to see how it works out.”

The book here is The Grapes of Wrath—the diarist, John Steinbeck.

“I have tried to keep diaries before,” Steinbeck wrote in 1938 as he began the novel, “but they didn’t work out because of the necessity to be honest.”

My lifelong habit of journaling—and my attempts to be honest while doing so—made “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives” at the Morgan Library & Museum of special interest to me. While in New York City earlier this month, I had the good fortune of visiting the exhibit.

On display were more than 70 journals and diaries: Bob Dylan’s concert tour journal; Albert Einstein’s journal (of equations); John Ruskin’s diary of his chess-playing progress. And Steinbeck’s diary—oversized, almost ledger-like. It was “an attempt to map the actual working days and hours of a novel,” he wrote. “If a day is skipped, it will show glaringly on this record and there will be some reason given for the slip.” It was self-discipline via diary—honesty in the service of efficiency. “This must be a good book,” he wrote. “It simply must.”

Manuscript diary of Albert Einstein (1879–1955), 1922–23. Gift of The Heineman Foundation to The Dannie & Hettie Heineman Collection, 1981. © 1987–present. Princeton University Press and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (All exhibit photography by Graham Haber, 2010. Images courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum.)

Manuscript chess diary of John Ruskin (1819-1900), ca.1880’s. Bequest of Helen Gill Viljoen, 1974.

Here are some lines from Charlotte Brontë’s 1836 journal when she taught at Roe Head, an all-girls school: “I now, after a day’s weary wandering, return to this ark which for me floats alone on the face of this world’s desolate and boundless deluge. It is strange. I cannot get used to the on goings that surround me.”

Manuscript diary entry by Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), in miniscule hand, 1836. Bequest of Helen Stafford Bonnell, 1969. Image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum.

While not a diary of a novel’s progress, Brontë seemed to be privately honing her literary voice. It’s easy to hear echoes of Brontë’s Jane Eyre here, her confessional “dear reader,” and the “strangeness” surrounding Rochester and Thornfield Hall.

And then there was Tennessee Williams’ blue-with-white-polka-dotted journal, featuring the lines: “A black day to begin a blue journal.” At the time, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was a success on Broadway and A Streetcar Named Desire was about to debut in New York. Williams’ career was enviable, and yet his journal is a catalog of melancholy and self-doubt. He was painfully honest in its pages: “Nothing to say except I’m still hanging on,” he wrote. Upon reading that line, I was reminded of Williams’ Blanche DuBois in Streetcar who has “always depended on the kindness of strangers.” A tragic line in the play, I suddenly saw it as desirable—maybe even what Williams wanted. Or I wanted it for him after I read the lines in his journal.

For those of us who journal, it always comes back to “I.” As Joan Didion writes in her essay “On Keeping a Notebook”: “Remember what it was like to be me: that is always the point.”

Illustrated manuscript travel diary by British travelers Mary Ann and Septimus Palairet, 1843. Gift of Arnold Whitridge, 1962.

I started journaling when I was eight. My earliest entries were about overbooked afternoons and looking forward to Fridays when I could “watch television.” (Today, I do not have one.)

My first diary. By “Unfortunately” I meant “Fortunately.”

Ten years later, my friend Jen and I occasionally read aloud our journals’ first lines, which were at once mysterious and revealing, never giving away too much. We had no trouble with honesty in our journals. If anything, we were too honest, verging on overdramatic. Reading our first lines aloud, and hearing how absurd some of our experiences sounded, was the best way to get perspective.

Some of my first lines from that time: “I’ve been scrubbing my favorite dress for the past half-hour—my ‘Juliet dress’ was savagely defiled at Saturday’s Special Dinner.” (There had been a Caligula-themed dinner at the student co-op I lived in—an arranged food fight with 150 people. I still remember the stain on the sleeve. Mustard.)

And this: “I was going to write this morning—at 2:30 a.m., to be exact—but, in retrospect, I think I was too caught up in the whirlwind of consuming emotions that would have surely made for a confusing and emotionally trying entry.”

Some Chronicle journals I have used over the years. I plan to use the Garden Blossoms Flexi Journal and the Sis Boom Flexi Journal next.

There it is—that struggle to be honest, the internal conversation played out on paper. Steinbeck professed to failing at diaries due to the “honesty” issue, but it could be that no matter what is written—even when a journaler sets out to be dishonest—an honesty is always there. It is unavoidable. The honesty is implied.
For me, past journal entries encode messages. While journaling, I may have left some (or even many) moments out—but what I did put down is always meaningful.

On some level, I always know I am writing for a future self, the “me” who might one day read the lines with some relief—relief that the time is now past, or even relief that I lived the entry’s elements just once, if only so that I don’t have to live them again later.

Journaling has never been about getting it all down just right. It’s about capturing a mentality at a moment, and either knowing it will pass, or seeing it through. Steinbeck did that when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath; his diary fueled his writing, kept him honest, made sure that his characters breathed. But when it comes to living honestly—to embracing daily sorrows and triumphs, to owning a day, no matter how mundane—writing a few lines in private pages can be the best way to do that. Sometimes, that is all we can ask of our journals, and all we can ask of ourselves.

Naomi Kirsten
Associate Editor

“The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives” is on exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City until May 22, 2011. Visit themorgan.org for more information.

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Happy 20th anniversary, Stonewall Kitchen!

20 years ago Jim Stott and Jonathan King started Stonewall Kitchen from a small kitchen, selling their products at local farmers’ markets in New England.  They’re now known for an incredibly diverse line of delicious specialty food products available all over the world, in addition to their nine Stonewall Kitchen specialty stores.  Chronicle’s published four excellent Stonewall Kitchen cookbooks (and none of them require the use of any of their products – they highlight all they love about food and what inspires their gourmet food product line).  

I’ve been a huge Stonewall Kitchen fan for more than a decade– are you?  What’s your favorite Stonewall item (I LOVE the Roasted Garlic Onion Jam and Chocolate Chip Pancake & Waffle Mix)?  Let me know if you have a favorite, and what you think of the recipes that follow from Stonewall Kitchen Breakfasts and Stonewall Kitchen Appetizers.  Leave a comment and enter to win my two favorites plus a copy of each cookbook I’ll be giving away at random to a lucky person with good taste.

Cheers,

Peter Perez
Senior Marketing Manager

Stonewall Kitchen Breakfast

Breakfast Pizza

You like to think of yourself as a person with an open mind. You believe you’re always ready to experience new things. So open up to the possibility of a pizza for breakfast—topped with fresh mozzarella cheese, slices of ripe tomato, fresh basil strips, bacon, and eggs baked right on top of the whole thing. If you use pizza dough, the whole pizza takes under 30 minutes from start to finish. The idea is to bake the pizza until the egg white is set and the yolk is still somewhat runny so that when you slice it into wedges, the yolk breaks open and spills on the cheese, tomato, bacon, and crust.

6 slices thick, country-style bacon (8 ounces)

Flour for dusting

1 pound uncooked pizza dough, from the refrigerated section of your grocery store, a pizza parlor, or homemade

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 medium-sized ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced

1 pound fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced

π cup thinly sliced fresh basil leaves

4 large eggs

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat it to 425 degrees F.

Cook the bacon in a large skillet until it is almost crisp, about 3 to 5 minutes [to make it shorter than your standard time for bacon]on each side, depending on the thickness. Drain on paper towels. Cut each piece of bacon in half crosswise and set aside.

Lightly flour a work surface. Cut the dough in half. Roll out half the dough into an oblong or round shape about 10 inches x 7 inches. Place on a clean cookie sheet. Spread 1 tablespoon of the oil on the dough and, using a pastry brush or your fingers, rub it gently over the dough, making sure it covers the whole surface.

Arrange half the tomato slices on the dough. Place half the cheese slices on top and in between the tomatoes. Sprinkle with 1/2 tablespoon more of the oil and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and scatter half the basil over the tomatoes. Arrange half the bacon on top and very carefully crack 2 eggs into the center of the pizza. (If you feel confident, crack them directly on the pizza; if not crack them into a small bowl, 1 at a time, and carefully arrange them in the middle of the pizza.) Sprinkle the egg and the whole pizza with salt and pepper.

Bake for another 10 to 12 minutes, or until the egg whites look set (gently wobble the pan to see if the egg whites look solid); the yolks should still be a little wobbly, and the crust should look cooked and golden brown. Remove from the oven; let sit for 1 minute before cutting into slices or wedges. Repeat with the remaining pizza ingredients. The yolk should spill out when the pizza is sliced.

Each pizza serves 2 to 4

Variation:
Use pancetta instead of bacon. Cook 3 to 5 [change time as for bacon?]minutes on each side.

Stonewall Kitchen Appetizers

Roasted Garlic Bruschetta with Steak Tips

When you want to serve something elegant that can mostly be made ahead of time, this is the dish you are looking for. We roast a whole head of garlic and mash the soft cloves with olive oil. Toasted slices of crusty ciabatta or French bread are spread with the roasted garlic and then topped with thin slices of grilled or sautéed steak tips. There are a variety of additional toppings you can choose from, listed below. This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled to feed a crowd.

1 head garlic, 1/4 inch cut off the top to just expose the cloves

1/4 cup olive oil, divided

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Eight 1/2-inch slices crusty ciabatta, French, or Italian bread

12 ounces steak tips or flatiron steak, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces

3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F.

Place the garlic in a small ovenproof skillet or gratin dish and pour 1 tablespoon of the oil over the top of the garlic onto the exposed cloves. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Roast the garlic for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when you squeeze them or test them with a small, sharp knife. Remove the garlic from the oven and let it cool just a few minutes.

Once the garlic is cool enough to handle without burning yourself, squeeze the cloves from the skin into a bowl; discard the skins. Sprinkle lightly with salt and, using a regular kitchen fork, mash the garlic into a thick paste. Add 2 tablespoons of the remaining oil and pepper the puree lightly. The garlic puree can be made 1 hour ahead of time. Cover and keep in a cool, dark spot; it need not be refrigerated.

Preheat the broiler. Place the bread slices on a baking sheet. Broil them for 1 to 2 minutes, or just until the bread begins to turn a golden brown. Do not let it burn. Remove from the oven and flip the bread over. Divide the garlic spread between the toasts and spread it evenly on each slice. Broil for another 1 to 2 minutes, or until the toast just begins to brown. Remove from the oven. The toasts can be made several hours ahead of time; cover loosely and keep in a cool, dark spot; they need not be refrigerated.

Just before serving, heat a large skillet over high heat with the 1 remaining tablespoon oil. Add the steak tips, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook, undisturbed, for 4 minutes. Carefully flip the meat over, season again, and cook for another 4 to 5 minutes, until the meat is well browned and medium rare inside. Alternately, you can cook the beef on a hot gas or charcoal grill in a grilling basket for 4 to 5 minutes per side. Remove from the heat and let the meat sit for 1 minute. Thinly slice the meat on the diagonal. Place 2 to 3 thin slices of beef on top of each piece of garlic bread and sprinkle lightly with parsley. Add any of the toppings below, as desired.

Serves 3 to 4

Variations:

You can add any of the following toppings on top of the beef and then sprinkle with the parsley:
Thinly sliced jarred sweet pequillo peppers
Crumbled blue cheese or feta cheese
Thin strips of roasted red peppers
Dab of chile paste
Thin slices of sun-dried tomatoes drained of their oil
Julienned strips of fresh basil

Purchase Stonewall Kitchen Breakfast.

Purchase Stonewall Kitchen Appetizers.

Purchase Stonewall Kitchen Grilling.

Purchase Stonewall Kitchen Winter Celebrations .

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“Dan Eldon blazed through his short life like a meteor, leaving a trail… that awes with its intensity and beauty.” – USA Today

The Journey is the Destination, the book that first introduced the extraordinary life of Dan Eldon to the world, is now available in paperback.

Dan Eldon’s life and art have inspired people all over the world to be creative, live boldly, and act on a vision of a better world. Some of the projects and organizations continuing Dan’s work include:

Creative Visions Foundation was founded by Dan’s mother Kathy to train and support creative activists all over the world who are making change through the arts.

The Dan Eldon Project is a line of apparel featuring Dan’s art. Proceeds benefit the Creative Visions Foundation. The current line includes men’s and women’s t-shirts, and can be found at stores across the US.

Shop now for 40% off selected styles!

TOMS Shoes’ Spring 2011 Collection is inspired by the life and art of Dan Eldon. With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One.

Metropark stores carry an exclusive line of Dan Eldon apparel, as well as books and prints.

They recently hosted an amazing launch party for The Journey is the Destination at their San Francisco Store.

Guests made their own journals inspired by Dan’s art

Kathy Eldon spoke about continuing Dan’s legacy of Art and Activism

And a DJ spun jammin’ tunes – check out the video for of the fun:

Lara Starr
Marketing Manager, Children’s

Subscribe to our Chronicle Kids Newsletter.

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