Proper Tales Press 40th anniversary essay: Cameron Anstee

He Counted His [Small Press] Fingers, He Counted His [Small Press] Toes

“Perhaps it’s also a way of life.”

—Stuart Ross, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer

I knew of Proper Tales Press before I’d held any of the books in my hands. I’d surely already encountered the name in various places—print and online—but the first time I began to understand the scope of Stuart’s work in the small press was when I read Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer circa 2006 (a book I purchased at Richard Coxford’s late-great Bytown Bookshop in Ottawa). To that point, I’d primarily understood the small press as something distant in time and space. It happened mostly somewhere else, and mostly in the past (this, of course, was due to my own ignorance). Confessions opened a thousand doors (especially for a kid trying to find a way in from Ottawa, already outside of the centres of Canadian small press) via names of writers and presses and bookshops, via trivia and complaints and support, and most of all, via Stuart’s enthusiasm and generosity saturating every page. It is those characteristics years later that define not only Proper Tales but Stuart’s life in the small press for me.

On occasions where I have the opportunity to talk about my own small press publishing, I steal from Stuart, paraphrasing his assertion that he publishes books he wishes he’d written. I don’t know where he said this first—I probably encountered it in Confessions—but it stands in for the enthusiasm he brings to his publishing. I know of no editor or publisher who speaks with such force and love for every single title he publishes—first books, last books, books in-between. In his publishing, his heroes receive the same love as young writers he has just met. The enthusiasm is in his hand-drawn covers, consistent with the earliest years of the press; in the occasional “vertebrate” book, like the astonishing collection of Ron Padgett’s collaborations; in his loving typesetting, which has more joy and excitement in it than much chapbook design; in his ushering of young writers through chapbooks to trade books, and established writers from trade books back to chapbooks.

(I first met Stuart at the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival in the basement of a decommissioned church, which I now live only a couple blocks from. I think he was launching Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. I had him sign a copy of Father, the Cowboys Are Ready to Come Down from the Attic—an early Proper Tales title. He signed it with humour and kindness—“all the best with your writing. Please excuse the penthouse-letters scenes.”

(I had the book because my dad had the book. He gave it to me along with another of Stuart’s—Henry Kafka and Other Stories. This book is another early site of interaction—albeit unbeknownst to Stuart or me at the time. Stuart had been in Ottawa in the 90s to launch the book at a bookstore where my dad worked. Dad had to take me to soccer practice and so could not stay for Stuart’s reading, a fact reflected in the inscription—“For Rod, Hey, happy soccer!”))

I haven’t published a title of my own with Proper Tales, but I feel I’ve benefited from the press and from the animating forces of Stuart’s small press life all the same. Stuart consented to publishing a chapbook with my own Apt. 9 Press years later—something I was incredibly proud of having done. He was travelling to Ottawa to read with lifelong friend and collaborator Michael Dennis at Ottawa’s long-running Tree Reading Series. Apt. 9 was very young at the time—is still young today up against 40 years of Proper Tales!—and it was a great act of trust for Stuart to send me a manuscript when I approached him. Apt. 9 chapbooks by both Michael and Stuart were launched that night and I sat in the crowd astounded as two of my small press heroes read from chapbooks I’d stitched.

To my great joy, I was able to buy a copy of the first Proper Tales chapbook—Stuart’s own He Counted His Fingers, He Counted His Toes—from jwcurry’s room 3o2 books. Buying it from jwcurry, one of the foremost small press practitioners / collectors / archivists / bibliographers / booksellers / etc. in Canada, was in keeping with the small press ethos of Proper Tales but also reflective of the kind of small press labour Proper Tales has performed and encouraged others to perform over 40 years. Stuart’s work pushes a reader to look more closely at the literary ecosystem one inhabits, and to consider how one wants to participate in that world. Amazon doesn’t care about the small press, but room 3o2 sure does. Even the title of that chapbook seems to gesture presciently at taking stock of oneself, one’s surroundings, and one’s integrity.

Proper Tales is the part of Stuart’s work that has left perhaps the most visible race—that is, bibliographic trace—in Canadian small press history, but it is only a piece. Think of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and Meet the Presses, and his street bookselling, and his recent imprints with Mansfield and Anvil, and his editing (literary and copy), and Mondo Hunkamooga and his scores of little magazines with fabulous names, and Patchy Squirrel, and his own writing (not sure how he finds time for that!)…. In nearly all of those works Stuart is promoting others, collaborating, and working to keep his small corner of the small press upright and tidy and moving. Over the course of 40 years, his corner has become a vital point-of-entry for some, a shelter for others, and a consistently surprising and exciting library for the whole community. His recent Harbourfront Prize—presented for both his writing and his support and encouragement for the literary community—reflects the range of this ongoing work.

The point I am trying to make is that 40 years is amazing, and it is amazing beyond the folded and stapled bindings of Proper Tales. The essays in this series—lovingly curated by rob mclennan some 26 years into his own small press life—show a cross-section of some of the lives and writing Stuart has shaped in different ways.

And please forgive me. In this essay I’ve indulged in personal digression, but this too I think is rooted in what Proper Tales has meant to me. One of my favourite elements of Stuart’s small press practice is the way that his work deliberately intersects with so many other small press folks, and the new intersections it makes possible simply by creating places for others to meet. He finds so much joy in the small details and chance encounters that have accrued over 40 years and that has provided me with this opportunity to sit down and think about Stuart, and about his influence on my small press life, and about how lives intersect relentlessly in the small press. Stuart—thank you!

Cameron Anstee lives and writes in Ottawa ON where he runs Apt. 9 Press and holds a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature from the University of Ottawa. He is the author of one collection of poetry, Book of Annotations (Invisible Publishing, 2018), and editor of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins (Chaudiere Books, 2015).