Robert Clarke on Between the Lines Fighting the Good Fight for 40 Years

Small and mighty was the order of the day when independent Canadian publishers first became a force in this country's culture. The '70s in particular were times of huge expansion, with many small houses popping up. Few had the staying power of radical publisher Between the Lines, however. The house is celebrating their 40th anniversary this year - that's 40 years of publishing politically and socially progressive books that celebrate diversity, equality, and pushing the boundaries of mainstream conversations.

Robert Clarke has been a long-time member of the Between the Lines collective and a BTL editor, so he was the perfect choice to write a graphic history of the press: Books without Bosses: Forty Years of Reading Between the Lines (illustrated by Kara Sievewright).

Robert joins us today to tell us about four decades of defiant publishing, putting together Books without Bosses, and why it doesn't quite work when people call up Between the Lines and ask to speak to "the boss". 

Open Book:

Tell us about your new book and how it came to be. 

Robert Clarke:

Between the Line’s 40th anniversary was coming up in 2017 and someone had the idea of doing a graphic history – we’d been working with a graphic history collective on a number of books, and it seemed to be a good way to tell our story, and celebrate our survival. Not surprisingly, since I’ve been with BTL since close to the beginning I was delegated to be on a history book committee of three or four people. More surprisingly, at a meeting of the committee in the summer of 2016 I found myself being roped in to putting together, or writing, the book – I was the only body available, I guess. I’d been an editor for years, and had done some writing, but this was a little out of my comfort zone. To that point I’d had one good idea and it had nothing to do with the writing – to start the book with a Sergeant Pepper–type illustration showing figures of staff, writers, and influences.

OB:

Is there a question that is central to your book, thematically? And if so, did you know the question when you started writing or did it emerge from the writing process?

RC:

I suppose the idea was, quite simply, to tell our story, the high points, perhaps funny points, and consider how and why we’ve been able to survive. And we wanted it to be based on people’s stories and memories and experiences. Even before I’d started working on it, someone had come up with the title, “Books Without Bosses” – based partly on phone calls that office staff would get, with the callers asking to speak to “the boss.” But Between the Lines is a collective organization and has never had a boss. One of the committee members suggested that the theme might be “prefigurative politics” – that is, a workplace that has survived for years basing its organizational structure in a way that tries to presage what a better future might look like. That’s sort of the theme, but we didn’t want to actually use that term.

OB:

Did this project change significantly from when you first starting working on it to the final version? How long did the project take from start to finish?

RC:

I had the committee members with me all the way, so it wasn’t completely an individual writing effort, which sort of befits us. And then, we also had Kara Sievewright (out on Vancouver Island), a talented illustrator from another collective, working with us.

For the content, we put out the word to people who knew us or had worked with us to get their thoughts and memories and stories. We got a few results, but not enough. I contacted others, former BTLers and authors, and got more input. Luckily I still had a collection of BTL catalogues dating back to the beginning, so I could consult them. We had an old scrapbook I could use for research. And we had minutes from the early years that I poured through – they were the most fascinating material.

When I got appointed to do the writing in August 2016, we were already a little behind schedule. The writing had to be done by December. (At one point that fall committee member Jamie Swift and I were sitting by a pool in the Yucatan going over the script.) The illustrator did a brilliant job, with a lot of editorial back and forth and adjustments. Amanda Crocker in the office scrambled to find the appropriate illustrations. Kara Sievewright, the illustrator, did a wonderful job of taking a rushed script and turning it into a graphic story.

OB:

What do you need in order to write – in terms of space, food, rituals, writing instruments?

RC:

I’ve actually spent the past forty years being a book editor, with a little writing on the side. Now I’m trying to do more writing. But in both roles I need my little office space, the loaded, packed bookshelf, the computer and all it offers, lots of pencils and a sharpener, pads to write on or make notes. Perhaps my most important tool is a swivel chair on rollers that helps me travel across the few feet between my work desk and computer desk and is wrecking the hardwood floor. I usually get up in the morning, make coffee, and get to work.

OB:

What do you do if you're feeling discouraged during the writing process? Do you have a method of coping with the difficult points in your projects?

RC:

Get away from it, go for a bike ride, go to my favourite café for a coffee, read a book, go to or watch a movie, talk to my significant other, not necessarily in that order.

OB:

What defines a great book, in your opinion? Tell us about one or two books you consider to be truly great books.

RC:

There are too many great books, and they are too diverse, to be precisely defined. Maybe a great book, like a great movie, takes you somewhere you’ve never been – it can be a joyful trip, or a rough ride, but maybe you still don’t want to leave that place.. which becomes so full of meaning. I suppose for an example of a great book I’d have to say The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (of course), which a relative gave me on my tenth birthday in 1954. It is still sitting here behind me on my shelf, and I’ve read it many times.

OB:

What are you working on now? 

RC:

I’m about to receive yet another in a long list of massive editing jobs – a great manuscript on the history of the new left in Toronto from the 1960s to the 1980s, a subject dear to my heart. But mainly lately I’ve managed to work on a personal project, a social history of movie-going in Peterborough, Ont., where I grew up and now live, from the first screening in January 1897 to the present day (I hope, if I ever get there). And I have a website for that project – now there’s a plug.

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Robert Clarke, of Peterborough, Ontario, is a long-time BTL editor and member of the collective.

Kara Sievewright is an artist, writer, and designer who has published comics in many magazines and anthologies including Plenitude, Descant, World War Three Illustrated, Certain Days: Political Prisoners Calendar Broken Pencil, and Briarpatch. Over the last fifteen years she has created graphics, posters, and websites for many radical and progressive movements. She joined the Graphic History Collective in 2015. She now lives in Daajing Giids Llnagaay/Village of Queen Charlotte, Haida Gwaii on Haida Territory.