University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Ballast Quarterly Review Spring 2001 Ballast Quarterly Review, v16n3, Spring 2001 Roy R. Behrens University of Northern Iowa, [email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©2001 Roy R. Behrens Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ballast Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Behrens, Roy R., "Ballast Quarterly Review, v16n3, Spring 2001" (2001). Ballast Quarterly Review. 62. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ballast/62 This Periodical is brought to you for free and open access by UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ballast Quarterly Review by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. II BA LL A ST Q U A R Ballast Quarterly Review Volume 16 Number 3 Spring 200 I. Copyright © 200 I by Roy R. Behrens, editor, publisher and art director. ISSN I093-5789 . E-mail <[email protected]>. SC REN Ballast Is an acronym for Books Art Language KIERKEGAARD Logic Ambiguity Science and Teaching, as well {The Sickness as a distant allusion to Blast, the short-lived Unto Death) publication founded during World War I by The greatest Wyndham Lewis, the Vorticist artist and hazard of all, writer. Ballast is mainly a pastiche of astonish­ losing one's self, ing passages from books, magazines, diaries can occur very and other writings. Puc differently, it Is a jour­ quietly in the nal devoted to wit, the contents of which are world, as if it intended to be insightful, amusing or thought were nothing at provoking. all. No other loss can occur so qui­ The purposes of Ballast are educational, apo­ etly; any other litical and noncommercial. It does not carry loss- an arm, a advertisements, nor is it supposed to be pur­ leg, five dollars, chased or sold. It is published approximately a wife, etc.-is every three months, beginning in the fall sure to be {more or less) and ending in the summer. noticed. To subscribe to Ballast or to order a gift sub­ scription, simply send in a mailing address and T . S . ELIOT five first class U.S. postage stamps for each {The Use of single issue desired. In other words, to Poetry and the receive Ballast for one year {four issues), we Use of Criticism) ask that each reader contribute a total of The chief use of twenty genuine unused postage scamps. Do the "meaning" not send postage meter slips, nor do we of a poem, in accept orders by phone or e-mail. When sub­ the ordinary scribing, self-adhesive stamps are preferred. sense, may be to Short of that, send good-looking, antique or satisfy one habit unusual stamps. In general we do not accept of the reader, to requests from outside the U.S. keep his mind diverted and qui­ et, while the WALTER BENJAMIN poem does its A highly embroiled quarter, a net­ work upon him: work of streets that I had avoided for much as an years, was disentangled at a single imaginary bur­ stroke when one day a person dear to glar is always me moved there. It was as if a search ­ provided with a light set up at this person's window bit of nice meat dissected the area with pencils of for the house­ light. dog. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE {Human, All Too Human) Art makes the sight of life bearable by laying over it the veil of unclear thinking. T R y R V w II ON MERLE ARMITAGE: Th e Impresario of Book Desig n Copyright © 200 I by Roy R. Behrens b y Me r l e Arm it oq e LE FT Ti l le page of book so~·CALLED written and designed by Mer le Armitage, ABSTRACT ART 1939 E. V'-le yh e 1q 3 q Nel"j Yo rk MERLE ARMITAGE Through the IN THE EARLY I 9•0s, shortly after the medium of the novelist Henry Miller had moved back to book, the musi­ the U.S. from Paris, he concluded that a cian, architect, noncommercial artist in America "has as painter, engi­ much chance for survival as a sewer rat." neer, industrial­ Refusing to borrow or to hire out for ist, scientist and "stultify ing work," he sent out a letter invit­ writer may ing support from the readers of The New beco me perma­ Republic, requesting, among other things, nently articulate. "old clothes, shirts, socks, etc. I am 5 feet Here they meet 8 inches tall, weigh 150 pounds, 15 1/2 on common neck, 38 chest, 32 waist, hat and shoes ground. both size 7 to 7 1/2. Love corduroys." The appeal worked and a number of curious mailings arrived, one of whi ch con­ tained a complete tuxedo. "What' II I ever WALTER do with this?" Miller asked a friend, then HAMADY used it to dress up a scarecrow that sat for The book is the a generation on the picket fence in front of Trojan horse of his Partington Ridge house in Big Sur, Cali­ art. forn ia. Among the other gifts was a cash contri­ bution from Merl e Armitage, an Iowa-born book design er, civil engineer, set designer, concert promoter, gourmet, art c-, ll ector, and author. Armitage was also living in Cal­ ifornia, and soon after, when he vi sited Miller's home for the first time, he described his profession as that of an "i mpresario." B A A Q U A R "But I have heard that you were a writer!" replied Miller. "If the truth were known," Armitage explained, "I write books so that I will be able to design them." In fact, Armitage had designed nearly two dozen books by that time, many of which he had also written. But Miller was incredulous: "Does a CLIFTON book have to be designed/" he asked. "A FADIMAN book is a book, and I don't see how you The adjective can do much about it." is the banana peel of the parts BORN IN 1893 on a farm outside of of speech. Mason City, Iowa, Merle Armitage's inclina­ tion toward design, engineering and prob­ lem-solving can be traced back to his childhood. His paternal grandfather had been a friend of J.I. Case, an important pioneer in the development of steam driven farm ABO VE machinery: while a few miles east of the Tit le spread for Armitage home was Charles City, site of Ge orge Ge rs hwin (NV· the invention of the first gasoline powered Longmans, Green and Co mpany, 1938). farm tractor. desi gned by Merle One day as the young Armitage and his Armitage father were helping a neighboring farmer named Wright with the repair of a wind­ MARK mill , a messenger rode up on horseback TWAIN and handed the man a telegram. "He passed Agassiz does rec­ it around," Armitage remembered, "and my ommend authors father read it aloud. It said: 'We flew today to eat fish, at Kitty Hawk,' and it was signed Orville because the and Wilbur." Armitage was just as phosphorus in it impressed by the Immediacy of the makes brains. telegram as by its message: "The two were But I cannot help equally exciting to me: to fly through the you to a decis ion air, to send a message over the wire. Both about the left me absolutely enslaved to things amount you mechanical." need to eat. Per­ His father, according to Armitage, was a haps a couple of dreamer who should never have become a whales would be businessman. Nevertheless, "he had great enough. vision," and, at a time when steers ranged free to graze, he made a fortune (which he later lost in a market crash) on the innova­ tion of corn-fed beef: "Finding that corn grew luxuriantly in the new land," recalled Armitage, his father "conceived the idea that purchasing range cattle and feeding them all the corn they could eat for two months would produce new flavor." It was by his father's influence that he T E R L Y V I E W II became intensely interested in farm imple­ ments, steam locomotives and automobiles, and in engineering and inventing. At the same time, it was his mother (a school GEORG teacher) who encouraged his artistic abili­ CHRISTOPH ties by the choice of the pictures she hung LICHTEN ­ in their home, by the brazen act of painting BERG the front door a bright Chinese red (thus A book is a mir­ creating "a neighborhood sensation"), and ror; if a monkey by reinforcing his early attempts at draw­ peers into it, ing. then it will not His mother's parents. the Jacobs, lived in be an apostle Mason City, which Armitage described as that looks out. "a sweet Iowa town of tree-shaded streets and friendly people," the town that was lat­ er immortalized as River City in The Music Man by Meredith Willson. (It was also for a RUDYARD while the home of Bil Baird, the pup­ KIPLING peteer.) Today, across the street from "I always tell my Willson's birthplace is the Charles H. Mac­ people there's a Nider Museum, a majestic English Tudor limit t o the size Revival home that bears the name of an of the lettering," Armitage family friend, who was also the he said . "Overdo owner of the First National Bank. that and the When Armitage was still a teenager, it ret' na doesn't was a rivalry between MacNider and anoth­ take it in .