The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher by Kim Bancroft (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher by Kim Bancroft Gioia Woods Kim Bancroft, The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2014. 384 pp. Paper, $20. Literary culture in the American West was deeply shaped by independent publishing in the twentieth century. Berkeley’s iconic Heyday Books, founded in 1974 by Malcolm Margolin, is among the most significant of these institutions. Kim Bancroft’s as-told-to memoir The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin relies on hundreds of hours of recorded interviews with Margolin, his family, friends, associates, and staff to tell an engaging story about one of California’s and the West’s most influential institutions. In lively prose, Bancroft—the great-great-granddaughter of the founder of the University of California’s Bancroft Library—captures what she calls Margolin’s “truly unusual character, the company he keeps, and the company he has created” (viii). What’s clear from Bancroft’s story is that Heyday Books was a leader in publishing about environmental concerns and Indigenous cultures in the 1970s, and has maintained its integrity as an independent publisher by continuing to build community. “What Heyday has allowed me to do,” Margolin tells Bancroft, “is to create a real community, to be really useful, to create a home for certain people and certain ideas” (42). The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin proceeds chronologically, beginning with Margolin’s Boston youth and education. During the summer of 1962, Margolin’s life was changed by a trip “out west,” where he encountered for the first time a “wilderness life.” That trip, he recalls, “gave me an identity that I hadn’t had” (35). After graduating [End Page 179] from Harvard, Margolin and his wife settled in Berkeley where he took a job as groundsman at the East Bay Regional Parks. This work inspired him to write The East Bay Out: A Personal Guide to the East Bay Regional Parks (1974) which he typeset, designed, and laid out. Thus began Heyday Books: in a second- story apartment on the corner of Berkeley Way and Sacramento Street. Bookshops proliferated in Berkeley in the 1970s, and Margolin distributed boxes of East Bay Out from the back of his vw bus. Central to the work of writing, publishing, and distributing, Margolin says, was the love and creativity that informed it; the book was a “walking party, a gift” (68). Distributing the book began the process of community building with other small presses, bookshops, writers, editors, and artists that continues to characterize Heyday Books. Margolin and others recall for Bancroft the height of the small press movement, the hiking and backpacking revolution, and the growth of interest in California Indian culture. Heyday Books shaped each cultural moment. In 1978 Margolin wrote and published The Ohlone Way to address both the rising hippie interest in Indigenous life and the paucity of information available on California Native cultures. Researching, writing, and marketing The Ohlone Way caused him to meet and develop relationships with several tribal chairs and cultural leaders. In 1987 Margolin and Heyday started publishing the journal News from Native California. With help from Indigenous leaders, Heyday began sponsoring California Native cultural initiatives, including basket weaving and language preservation efforts. Heyday remains at the forefront of California Indian affairs; Bancroft includes several interviews with Indigenous leaders, elders, friends, and artists that attest to Margolin’s respect and love for Indigenous cultures. Scholars and general readers interested in the material culture of the American West and curious about the ways its literary and cultural life are transmitted will find The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin an engaging book. Bancroft beautifully weaves together a diversity of voices to tell the rich story of Margolin, his independent publishing house, and the community he continues to nurture. [End Page 180] Gioia Woods Northern Arizona University Copyright © 2015 Western Literature Association