WANTED!

Louis Strick, RIP

We were saddened to learn today of the passing of Louis Strick, a really wonderful multi-talented and generous man who gave us our start as an author by publishing our first collection of short stories in hardcover back in 1979.  He was an intelligent, warm, funny, astute person whose wide-ranging interests and gift for friendship made him someone we will always admire greatly.  (Our book Autumn in Brooklyn is dedicated to him.)  We used to talk fondly about Midwood High School, which he graduated from exactly twenty-five years before us, in the first graduating class.

We loved hearing his stories about Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, John Ashbery, and other writers he knew.  As his colleague from Meridian Books, the legendary editor Aaron Asher, once said, "Louis Strick was a guy who loved books and publishing and fiction" (Kenneth C. Davis, Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America 296).

Our mom was a calligrapher, as were some of our friends, and Louis Strick more than almost anyone was responsible for the flowering of calligraphy in mid-century America. (See this 1974 New Yorker "Talk of the Town" piece called "Everyman's Art.")  He had an incredible career and a rich life.

Here is the obituary from Westport Now:

Louis Strick, a 32-year Westport resident, died May 12 at the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield following a brief illness. He was 87.

Strick was raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Rosalind and Charles Strick. Growing up near Ebbets Field, he was an ardent fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  In 1940, he became a member of the first class of Midwood High School.

Strick went on to attend Cornell University. His college education was interrupted by World War II, and at age 19 he served as a staff sergeant in occupied Italy.  After the war, Strick completed his undergraduate studies and went on to Columbia Universirty to pursue a Master’s in economics. 

He then wrote a weekly column on the stock market for the Journal of Commerce.  Next he worked as a financial analyst for the investor Fred Stafford.  In the late 1950s, he purchased H.M. Storms, a manufacturer of ink ribbons; their primary customer would become the National Cash Register Co.

During this period, Strick bought a radio station in St. Louis.  WAMV was the first American station to play the hit song “Volare.” In the early 1960s, Strick co-founded a pioneering quality paperback line, Meridian, publishing Philip Roth among others. After selling H.M. Storms, he acquired Artone Ink, whose distinctive bottle featured the letter “a” in the form of an ink drip, an idea of Strick’s that was designed by Push Pin Studios and gave rise to a popular typeface.

In the late 1960’s Strick began importing calligraphic art supplies, distributed through his Pentalic Company.  By making special nibs, pens and instruction books widely available, Strick spearheaded a revival of the calligraphic movement in America;. He also established the Calligraphy Workshop, a school on lower Fifth Avenue.

In the late 1970’s, Strick purchased the Taplinger Publishing Company, bringing out works of literary fiction as well as volumes on modern art, reflecting two of his passions. 

Strick himself was an artist who focused on collage; several of his pieces were exhibited in juried shows in Westport where he lived with Elizabeth for 32 years.

He is survived by his wife of 41 years, Elizabeth, his three children, Ivy, Wesley and Charlotte, a stepson, Simon, seven grandchildren, and two younger brothers, Walter and Stanley. 

We will miss him a great deal and offer our deep sympathies to his family, especially to our friends Wesley, who was the editor of our first book, and to Ivy, who designed the book's beautiful cover.

Monday Afternoon in Bayville: Stehli Beach

We spent a wonderful time this afternoon at beautiful Stehli Beach in Bayville.  It's still not quite warm enough for someone who's spent winters in Florida and Phoenix but it's getting there, and today we can see the promise of summer.

Saturday Afternoon in Rockaway Beach: The Seventh Annual Earth Day Rockaway at MoMA PS1's VW Dome 2

This afternoon we were lucky enough to be in Rockaway Beach to attend the seventh annual Earth Day Rockaway event at MoMA PS1's VW Dome 2.

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Friday Afternoon in Elmont: Visiting Family at Beth David Cemetery

This afternoon we walked all around the large Beth David Cemetery in Elmont to see the final resting places of our maternal grandparents, Ethel and Herbert Sarrett, and our paternal great-grandparents, Frieda and Jacob Ginsberg, and Hannah and Harry Cohen, plus a lot of our Ginsberg great-aunts and great-uncles in the Lenyin - Lachwer Benevolent Association plots. These old Jewish burial societies -- the Cohens are in Adath Israel of Brownsville and New York, and the Sarretts are buried with the Louis Lerner Young Men's Benevolent Association -- have big areas in a large cemetery. We've always enjoyed visiting cemeteries when nobody's being buried, and we're always grateful for the reminder we'll be dead sooner or later, though we are going to be cremated. Definitely we won't be getting the perpetual care of our forebears.

 

Friday Afternoon in Glen Cove: Morgan Park

After a long week, it was nice to spend an hour or so in one of our favorite spots on the North Shore of Long Island, Morgan Park, at the mouth of Hempstead Harbor and overlooking Long Island Sound.

It was built as a memorial by J.P. Morgan to his late wife.

Acquiring the lands surrounding the former steamboat landing, the estate of another millionaire, and the site of an enormous Civil War-era hotel, Morgan brought some of the most skilled landscape architects in New York to work on the design and construction of the park.

When it was completed in 1932, Morgan leased the park to the residents of Glen Cove and Locust Valley for a period of 999 years -- for one dollar.

Morgan Park is the site of the City of Glen Cove's annual Fourth of July Fireworks and the popular Morgan Park Summer Music Festival, held at the stage during July and August.

There were a handful of people around this afternoon, as well as a large flock of seagulls at the pier and a lot of workers readying the park for summer. We've always loved coming here when we've lived in Locust Valley, as we are now. It's great to walk along the beach, especially after a winter in landlocked Arizona.

Cover of New E-book of Richard Grayson's 1979 Short Story Collection WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK

This is the cover for the forthcoming e-book of our first hardcover short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, originally published by Taplinger in 1979.