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My Days in the Mimeo Revolution

All of us around the Rebel Worker, a mimeoed mag in Chicago, were fascinated by the printed word. We saw it as a joyous means of expression, vital to the development of ideas, key to changing the world and perhaps even history itself. It seems that actually, we choose our past, just as we choose our future. The past serves as guide though the dark forest of the Present.

Our proto-surrealist Rebel Worker group met each other first at Roosevelt University, then a hotbed of political ideas. Basically, we were “anthropology students run amok.” We decided, having read from Emma Goldman to Lenin, that we needed a journal and a place. So we got an old storefront at 713 Armitage Avenue in Lincoln Park. Not too far away were taverns where Haymarket anarchists used to hang out. After finding the place, we moved in books from family, from Maxwell Street, from City Lights, and from London’s Freedom Press. We did have some access to the newspaper Industrial Worker. (They printed a piece on bookshop folks who tried blueberry-picking in Michigan.) But our youthful ideas, rock ’n’ roll, blues, surrealism, went far beyond what they would print and we knew that we needed our own means of expression.

The main group consisted of Tor Faegre, Bernard Marszalek, Robert Green, Franklin Rosemont, Larry DeCoster, Dotty DeCoster, and myself. We were soon joined by Joan Smith, Charlotte Carter, and Simone Collier. We had a small, very difficult mimeo, probably a Rutherford Neostyle, that we used to publish a few leaflets directed to RU and the first Rebel Worker. But then, we managed to collect enough money ($150) to get a better one, with a motor, not a hand crank. It was a Gestetner mimeograph and it seemed fantastic after the hand crank—though everything still had to be collated. Typing the stencils was difficult work as mistakes were almost impossible to fix. Thus, misspelled words. We bought our wax stencils by the box from George’s Supply on Halsted Street. Later, he introduced an electric stencil machine that printed the Rebel Worker 6 cover. We had to bring him the copy. The need for collating brought us together for collating parties. These sometimes got out of hand because of passionate political discussions. Thus, pages out of order. But a good time, anyways.

Thanks to the IWW we had addresses of many people, friendly bookstores, and alternative spaces. We would send out sample copies or fliers and we’d get actual subscriptions. We were always behind on our issues, but subscribers were patient. Sam and Esther Dolgoff in New York got them around. Gotham Bookshop took some. We sent them to City Lights and Berkeley, CA. Soon we were actually printing 3,000 copies of an issue. We advertised the other mimeoed pamphlets we’d produced. A bestseller was Mods, Rockers, and the Revolution. Then Blackout! (on the NY electric power failure), and Revolutionary Consciousness, and others. Postage was very cheap.

Planning to visit Freedom Press in London, Franklin and I were rejected at Heathrow and ended up in Paris. There, by objective chance of the most wonderful sort, we were stranded with the Surrealist Group and André Breton. But in Easter 1966 we tried again and stayed with Charles Radcliffe and Diana Shelly. This too was a fantastic encounter as it seemed that our minds were on fire with ideas. But we were also down with flu. Charles borrowed a mimeo from Freedom Press and we got to work writing and typing stencils. I got mine finished first. Charles typed in the sun on some scaffolding on the front of his Redcliffe Road place. I huddled around the paraffin stove. Somehow we produced the London Rebel Worker in days. The mimeo had to go back to Freedom Press for their use. Diana kept reminding us that “it was impossible and we were all crazy.” Perfectly, true. And definitely feverish. She had the burden of going to a day job. We got Rebel Worker together in time for the big May Day parade in Hyde Park. We sold practically every one of them. I remember the marches and their banners emerging from the fog. Later in the day, there was good weather and Spring! We went home . . . still sick.

Charles and Chris Grey got together and mimeoed their small mag Heatwave. This has to be some of the most passionate English prose ever. They built a connection to the Situationists in France but found them on the stuffy side. This they certainly were but I always thought there was a black humor in it all. Paul Garon, living in Louisville, KY, corresponded on the blues with Radcliffe, who let him know that his “Journal of Addiction” had been published in Heatwave.

Paul came to our bookshop in Chicago to see if he could find a copy of Heatwave and meet us. We were pretty suspicious of Paul at first. But then he mentioned Peetie Wheatstraw and I knew who he was. So Paul, who had just written a book on Peetie published in London called Devil’s Son-in-Law, became one of our good friends through this mimeo small mag connection. The celebration of the blues became an important aspect of surrealism in the U.S.

One of my favorite mimeo stories: Some of the kids from the grade school across the street came over and asked if they could use our mimeo. They were maybe nine years old. They said they wanted to do an anti-war leaflet. So Bernard helped them do the stencil and printing. They distributed it at the school, calling for an anti-war demonstration in the schoolyard at lunch the next day. And they did it! There was a large demonstration of kids; they even made their own protest signs, organized completely by themselves. (I knew the war was doomed.)

Why did it change? Some of us went different ways. By the ’70s, Bernard Marszalek had learned how to run an actual printing press and bought a Multilith. He printed my first book, poems called Athanor, and went on to open a co-op printshop in Berkeley.

Franklin and I tried hard to get his first book, The Morning of a Machine Gun, offset printed without success. It was poems but contained a manifesto we had written in Paris. Most Chicago printers had no use for radicals. Finally, we went to Liberation Press, the SDS printshop. They had a press. It was an offset press Chief 10. It was pretty old. I joined the printshop staff (my grandfather was a printer) and worked in the SDS national office from 1967 to 1969. The book came out in spring ’68, just as we were shaking up the world a little. Heady day to be there. Never will forget it.