The Zero-Tolerance Factor

Back in 1988, my father came to stay with me for two weeks, to prepare his final manuscript. He brought his Royal typewriter in the car, and he typed on whatever paper was at hand, including old stationery from schools where he’d taught. When he passed away in 1992, I knew I would eventually publish his poems.

Last year, I told designer Stefan Bucher, a client who has become a good friend, about my long-simmering project, and he graciously offered to design the book. When I showed him the manuscript, I said that I had already “recreated” the poems in Quark, taking great care to be faithful to my father’s spacing. {This exercise had really heightened my appreciation of my father’s skill and precision on his manual typewriter.} Stefan looked at a couple of pages of my father’s manuscript, smiled, and simply said, “Please have it scanned.” I never would have thought to publish those original pages!

The manuscript was scanned on the Linotype Hell Topaz flatbed scanner at Typecraft Wood & Jones, where I have worked for ten years. More than just the poems, I also wanted the book to be a visual piece – even though my father had envisioned a simple chapbook. I thought about his 400 slides that I have seen and loved for years. So, I had them scanned, and Stefan selected the 37 images in the book. He also suggested some pairings of photos and poems. My wife Janet and I completed the pairings, and Stefan finished up the layout.

There’s another chapter to the production: I went down to San Miguel de Allende, where my family had lived from 1967 to 1972, and I took twenty digitally-printed copies of the book with me. In San Miguel, I met Susan Page, who runs the San Miguel Authors’ Sala. She loved the book and said, We’ve been wanting to do something connected to the Beats for a long time. So, she and Harry Burrus organized an event that looked at the presence of the Beats in San Miguel.

San Miguel has had a long connection to the Beats. Allen Ginsberg had been there. Neal Cassady was in San Miguel while we were living there in  ’68, and my parents met him. Harry Burrus invited Neal Cassady’s son John to our event, and he came. George Walker, one of the Merry Pranksters, also came. George spoke about the bus Further and hanging out with Jerry Garcia, who was playing high schools for free at the time. He recalled that Jerry was trying to decide if he should be a graphic artist or a musician! It was a great event – blending the history of San Miguel and my family – and it forced me to finally get the printing of the book underway.

On July 11 ANDLAB Gallery held an opening for The Zero Tolerance Factor show. Friends and supporters of the gallery, of Typecraft and of poetry turned out to look at 23 inkjet prints of the spreads in the book. Several of the prints sold, as did many copies of the book. If you’d like to purchase a copy of the book or one of the prints, please email me: dmayes@typecraft.com.

The Zero-Tolerance Factor was printed at Typecraft on Mohawk Navajo {100C and 80T}. It allowed us to capture the nuances of the original manuscript pages while maintaining the color and brightness of the photographs. We have worked with many uncoated papers, and Navajo has been consistently great.

David Mayes is a printer with Typecraft Wood & Jones in Pasadena, California. His clients in the AIGA Los Angeles design community have given him a great appreciation for art and design. The Zero-Tolerance Factor would have looked completely different if he hadn’t waited twenty years to produce it.