i Make Contact: Contributive Bookselling and the Small Press in Canada Following the Second World War Cameron Alistair Owen Anstee A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate in Philosophy degree in English Literature Department of English Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Cameron Alistair Owen Anstee, Ottawa, Canada, 2017 ii Abstract This dissertation examines booksellers in multiple roles as cultural agents in the small press field. It proposes various ways of understanding the work of booksellers as actively shaping the production, distribution, reception, and preservation of small press works, arguing that bookselling is a small press act unaccounted for in existing scholarship. It is structured around the idea of “contributive” bookselling from Nicky Drumbolis, wherein the bookseller “adds dimension to the cultural exchange […] participates as user, maker, transistor” (“this fiveyear list”). The questions at the heart of this dissertation are: How does the small press, in its material strategies of production and distribution, reshape the terms of reception for readers? How does the bookseller contribute to these processes? What does independent bookselling look like when it is committed to the cultural and aesthetic goals of the small press? And what is absent from literary and cultural records when the bookseller is not accounted for? This dissertation covers a period from 1952 to the present day. I begin by positing Raymond Souster’s “Contact” labour as an influential model for small press publishing in which the writer must adopt multiple roles in the communications circuit in order to construct and educate a community of readers. I then examine the bookseller catalogue as a bibliographic, critical, and pedagogical genre of publication that mediates productive encounters between readers and books. I next position the material, affective, and effective labour of the bookseller within the small press gift economy. Finally, I theorize the bookstore as a potential small press archive that functions as a viable counterweight to institutional collection and preservation. My reconsideration of the labour of the bookseller realigns relations between production, distribution, reception, documentation, and preservation of iii small press publications, making possible a more complete accounting of the histories of the book and of the small press in Canada. iv Acknowledgements Thank you to my supervisor, Dr. Robert Stacey, for patience, encouragement, insight, advice, and for reading many, many drafts of these (and other) chapters. Where this work transcends my habits and limitations as a scholar, it is because of your guidance. Thank you to my dissertation committee, Dr. Ina Ferris and Dr. David Staines, for your belief in this project and for your generous feedback. Thank you to my examiners, Dr. Jennifer Blair and Dr. Gregory Betts, for your thoughtful and engaged reports and questions, and for taking the time to read and consider my work. Thank you to Dr. Marc Charron for chairing my dissertation defence. Your support has been invaluable. For funding and financial assistance, thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, and at the University of Ottawa, thank you to the Department of English, the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, and the Graduate Students Association. Elements of this research were published in Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d’études canadiennes, Amodern, and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism; thank you to the editors and readers at each. For tireless patience and invaluable work, without which I could not have navigated this program or completed this project, thank you to the exceptional administrative team of the Department of English: Nadine Mayhew, Elizabeth White, and Philippe Villeneuve. Thank you to the Directors of Graduate Studies in the Department of English I have been lucky to have during my time in the program: professors Victoria Burke, Anne Raine, Lauren Gillingham, and Jennifer Panek. For classes, comprehensive exams, conversations, employment, and many kindnesses, thank you to professors Tom Allen, Gefen Bar-on Santor, Jennifer Blair, James v Brooke-Smith, Victoria Burke, Ian Dennis, Janice Fiamengo, Lauren Gillingham, Craig Gordon, Elena Ilina, David Jarraway, Gerald Lynch, Irene Makaryk, Seymour Mayne, Jennifer Panek, Bernard Radloff, Anne Raine, Geoff Rector, Cynthia Sugars, Andrew Taylor, Trevor Tucker, and Keith Wilson. For solidarity and support (moral, intellectual, and otherwise), thank you to the graduate students that I shared this program with at various stages: Zachary Abram, Tania Aguila Way, Robin Anderson, Jennifer Baker, Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr, Tim Clarke, Marie Comisso, Jody Cooper, Stefanie Duerr, Paul Graves, Neil Hackler, Caroline Holland, Jack Horton, Kja Isaacson, Aaron Kaiserman, Erin Kean, Breanna Keeler, Andrew Loeb, Sandra MacPherson, Nick Milne, Amanda Montague, Krista Murchison, Chance Pahl, Cory Sampson, Arby Siraki, Karenza Sutton-Bennett, Rory Tanner, Lisa Templin, Laura Van Dyke, and Anne Sophie Voyer. For research support, books, conversations, letters, and other acts of generosity, thank you to Tavis Apramian, Nelson Ball, derek beaulieu, Amanda Bernstein, Valerie Bherer, Jeff Blackman, Bridgette Brown, Bill Cameron, Jason Camlot, Barbara Caruso, Michael Casteels, Richard Coxford, jwcurry, Melissa Dalgleish, Dana Dragunoiu, Nicky Drumbolis, Christopher Doody, Donna Dunlop, Peter Gibbon, Michael Gnarowski, Lisa Greaves and all at Octopus Books, William Hawkins, Jennifer Henderson, Dean Irvine, Sara Jamieson, Joe Labine, Ben Ladouceur, Colin Martin, Liam McGahern, rob mclennan, Christine McNair, Jay MillAr, Justin Million, Christine Mitchell, Alexander Monker, Dan Mozersky, Michael Nardone, Michèle Rackham Hall, Stuart Ross, Marvin and Ruth Sackner, Eric Schmaltz, Karis Shearer, Jim Smith, Raymond Souster, Rick Stapleton (McMaster University Library), Steven Temple, Jennifer Toews (Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library), Collett Tracey, Bart vi Vautour, Jeff Weingarten, Grant Wilkins, Grant Williams, as well as dozens of booksellers and too many members of Canada’s small press community to list. My apologies and thanks to anyone that I have neglected to include here. For a house full of books growing up, for hours spent in bookstores, for the “Anstee” discount when I started going to bookstores on my own, and for a lifetime of love and support through this and other projects, thank you to my family: Mom, Dad, Caitlin, Darren, Spencer, Julia, Jessie, Gram and Granddad Anstee, Gram and Granddad Brown, Dana, Mike, and all in our extended family. Finally, for a home full of unconditional love, for listening, for talking, for challenging me, for patience through every detour to every bookstore, for encouragement through the good and the bad, for reminding me that there is a world outside of this dissertation, for making that world a wonderful and exciting place to be, and for your honesty, care, and good hearts, thank you to Jenn, Beans, and Mae. This dissertation could not have been written without you. I dedicate this dissertation to Jenn, to Mom and Dad, and to Raymond Souster. vii Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... ii. Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. iv. Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... vii. List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... viii. Introduction: “the gesture made by a future reader” ........................................................................................1 Chapter One: Defining the Small Press: Raymond Souster’s “Contact” Paradigm .................................................................................27 Chapter Two: “i’m here to support the continuum”: Contributive Bookselling and the Bookseller Catalogue as Small Press Labour ....................73 Chapter Three: “Community not commodity”: Bookselling and the Small Press Gift Economy ....................................................................124 Chapter Four: “it should be gathered together somewhere”: The Small Press Bookseller as Minor Archivist and Curator ................................................168 Conclusion: “what will happen to these books” .........................................................................................215 Appendix A: The Contact Poetry Reading Series: Readers, Locations, Dates ...........................................225 Appendix B: Nelson Ball’s Bookseller Catalogues: A Bibliography .........................................................228 Appendix C: A Gallery of Images ...............................................................................................................237 Works Cited ...........................................................................................................................251 viii List of Figures Fig. 1: Cover, Contact 2.1 (November-January 1952-1953). 226 Fig. 2: Title Page, Contact 2.1 (November-January 1952-1953). 227 Fig. 3: Cover/First Page, Combustion 8 (November