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Bob Baldock

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Robert "Bob" Lee Baldock (b. April 30, 1937, Dayton, Ohio).

Biography

Introduction

Bob Baldock was one of the few U.S. citizens to participate in the Cuban Revolution as a combatant in Fidel Castro's unit based the Sierra Maestra in 1958. He went on to have a substantial career as a bookman. For twenty years he worked at Moe's Books in Berkeley, California, then he initiated and cofounded the successful Black Oak Books, a store distinguished by its influential series of author readings. After being forced out of Black Oak Books, he went to work for KPFA Radio, the first listener-sponspored FM radio in the U.S. For over twenty years he produced public events for KPFA, principally presenting writers. He is a poster artists and created original posters for all events. He is also a maker of fine art prints, broadsides, and paintings.

In The 26th of July Movement, Cuba

After graduation from Sewickley High School, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Baldock studied for two years at Ohio University in Athens, (1955-57), receiving military training in the Army ROTC program, training that proved significant when Baldock became a combatant in the 26th of July Movement insurgency against Fulgencio Batista led by Fidel Castro in Cuba. He became aware of the Cuban Revolution seeing movie newsreels in Akron, where he was working at a B.F. Goodrich rubber plant in the fall of 1957. He went on to work at the New York Herald Tribune as a copyboy; there he had privileged access to ticker-tape coverage of the Cuban insurrectionary movement as well as to maps and press passes.With a college friend who knew Spanish he made his way to Havana in the spring of 1958. From Havana the two made their way to the Sierra Maestra, where they became part of Fidel Castro’s group of' rebel combatants,[1][2][3][4]which included (besides Castro) Celia Sánchez, Haydée Santamaría, and Camilo Cienfuegos. Baldock remained in this group for five months until becoming ill with bacillary dysentery. Baldock and his friend were then moved covertly out of the country through an underground network consisting primarily of small Catholic churches. When reaching Miami he was hospitalized. At that time Baldock met with a United Press representative to whom he gave the two notebooks of his observations and interviews, consenting for them to be used as needed by UP. These notebooks were subsequently lost.

Career as Bookman

Back in New York City in August, 1958, Baldock enrolled in Washington Square College of Arts & Sciences, NYU, and studied journalism for a semester while working at the Marboro bookstore on 8th St., then at Paperback Gallery. An important friend met that year was Anaïs Nin [5] In 1959 he went to Europe. His short story "Salt Air,"[6] received a contest prize and was published in Olympia, the bi-monthy review published by the Olympia Press in Paris. [7]; he was given work as a proofreader and copywriter at Olympia Press, the controversial publisher of William S. Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch and Nabokov’s Lolita. For several months he worked (in the absence of owner George Whitman) in the bookstore Le Mistral, later renamed Shakespeare and Company after the famous bookshop founded by Sylvia Beach.

In 1962 Baldock settled in Berkeley, California, where he soon began a major work stint at Moe’s Books, hub of counter-culture and anti-war activities in the 1960s and 1970s on Telegraph Avenue; he helped build this store into a four-storey emporium of used, new, and remaindered books with an art and antiquarian shop on the top floor. [8][9]

During those years he collaborated with letterpress printer Wesley Tanner designing and printing the broadsides given out freely at Moe’s Books. In 1974 he began a series of paintings, portraits of African-American subjects. Roughly sixty works were completed. A selection of these were presented at a one man show at the The Art Co-op, (later the A. C. C. I. Gallery in Berkeley. He also designed a number of book covers for W.W. Norton & Company, including a series for Norton’s reissue of works by Rainer Maria Rilke in the 1990s.

In 1982, after twenty years at Moe’s Books, Baldock started Black Oak Books in north Berkeley, with partners Bob Brown and Don Pretari. As president of the corporation he undertook a popular series of in-store readings, showcasing many authors of international repute, including Carlos Fuentes, Czeslaw Milosz, Edna O'Brien, Isabel Allende, Eduardo Galeano, Alice Walker, Gore Vidal, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said, Alice Waters, Tom Wolfe, and others. In connection with these readings, many broadsides were produced, a number of which Baldock designed.[10][11]

Not long after separating from Jeanne Forest Baldock in 1985, he met his future wife, writer and translator Kathleen Weaver; they were married July 13, 1989. Through her he became involved again in radical politics, specifically in Nicaraguan[12] and Salvadoran solidarity work. In 1989, he left Black Oak, following a hostile takeover of Black Oak Books by his partners.[13]

In 1992 he was the recipient of The Decca, a lifetime achievement award (named after writer Jessica Mitford) bestowed for “outstanding service to the reading community” by the Northern California Independent Booksellers’ Association.

Events Producer and Poster-maker, KPFA Radio

Baldock then started working for KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM, in Berkely. In the next two decades he produced over three hundred public events with writers and occasionally musicians, fundraisers for KPFA and the Pacifica network. He made original posters, a number of them silkscreen, for all events[14]. These events were recorded for radio broadcast and audio webcast, with recordings eventually made in DVD format as well, for use by non-profit organizations.


Works referencing

  • Cometbus, Aaron. The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah, Cometbus #51, Bloomington: Microcosm Publishing, 2008. A history of Berkeley bookshops.
  • “Former Castro Follower Now Insurance Man.” Columbus Citizen, byline Bill Gold, Columbus, Ohio, c. late 1959.
  • Lives That Changed the World: Fidel Castro, 2007. Discovery Films: Exploration Production, Toronto, Canada. Features Baldock and several others who speak about the effect Castro had on their respective lives.
  • “Los Baldock: una imagen en dos tiempos.” Juventud Rebelde, 16 February 1992. Internacionales, by-line Marina Menéndez, Havana, Cuba.
  • “Palace Coup at Black Oak,” Express, Berkeley, July 14, 1989.
  • “Sewickley Man Visits Cuban Rebel Chief,” Pittsburgh Press, c. August, 1959, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  • Williams, Gerald, "Paris, Porn and What Passed for Love," New Letters, Vol. 66, No. 2, pages 102-120, 2000. Recalling Paris and working at Olympia Press.

Publications by

  • Bob Baldock, “Designing a Bookshop Especially for Readers.” AB: Bookman’s Weekly, May 19, 1986. On the ethos of Black Oak Books.
  • “Salt Air,” Olympia Review. No 4, April, 1963, Paris: Olympia Press. A short story.
  • “Since He Left Us,” in On The Finest Shore: Poems and Reminiscences of Moe, Berkeley, 1997. Obituary tributes to Moe Moskowitz, owner of Moe’s Books. print and online (to link click “Cached” on the site) : http://www.moesbooks.com/pages/A-Tribute-to-Moe.html - Cached

Novels in manuscript

  • Bright Sidewalks, 1961
  • Walkers Errant, 1959, fictionalized account of Cuban experience.

Letters archived

  • Letters to and from Anaïs Nin
  • Letters from Robert Baldock to Anaïs Nin: Box 32, Folder 5; Box 33, Folder 1; Box 33, Folder 7; Box 33, Folder 8; Box 36, Folder 2; Letters from Ana ïs Nin to Robert Baldock, Box 33, Folder 7. In Anaïs Nin Papers, UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections, Manuscripts Division, Charles E. Young Research Library, Los Angeles.

Book cover designs

  • Alegría, Claribel and Darwin J. Flakoll. Ashes of Izalco, trans. Darwin J. Flakoll. Willamantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1989.
  • Cortázar, Julio. Nicaraguan Sketches, trans. Kathleen Weaver, W. W. Norton, 1989.
  • Emerson, Gloria. Winners and Losers, paper edition, New York, London: W. W. Norton, 1992.
  • Morales, Arqueles, Peace Has Yet To Be Won, Selected Poems from La paz aún no ganada, trans. William Greenwood. Santa Cruz: Green Horse Two, 1974.
  • Rilke, Rainer Maria, editions by W. W. Norton, New York, 1992-94. Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke; Letters To a Young Poet; Sonnets To Orpheus; Rilke On Love and Other Difficulties; Duino Elegies; Stories of God. The cover designs feature original paintings by Baldock.
  • Weaver, Kathleen, Peruvian Rebel, The World of Magda Portal, With a Selection of Her Poems, Penn State University Press, 2009.

References

  1. ^ Photo: Baldock with Castro http://www.flickr.com/photos/54390584@N03/5036744657/
  2. ^ “Former Castro Follower Now Insurance Man,” Columbus Citizen, byline Bill Gold, Columbus, Ohio, c. late 1959.
  3. ^ “Los Baldock: una imagen en dos tiempos,” Juventud Rebelde, 16 February 1992. Internacionales, by-line Marina Menéndez, Havana, Cuba.
  4. ^ “Sewickley Man Visits Cuban Rebel Chief,” Pittsburgh Press, c. August, 1959, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  5. ^ Letters archived: to and from A. Nin
  6. ^ “Salt Air,” Olympia, No 4, April, 1963, Paris: Olympia Press.
  7. ^ Williams, Gerald, "Paris, Porn and What Passed for Love," New Letters, Vol. 66, No. 2, pages 102-120, 2000. Recalling Paris and working at the Olympia Press.
  8. ^ Cometbus, Aaron. The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah, Cometbus #51, Bloomington: Microcosm Publishing, 2008.
  9. ^ On The Finest Shore: Poems and Reminiscences of Moe, Berkeley, 1997. Obituary tributes to Moe Moskowitz, owner of Moe’s Books. print and online (to link click “Cached” on the site) : http://www.moesbooks.com/pages/A-Tribute-to-Moe.html - Cached
  10. ^ Bob Baldock, “Designing a Bookshop Especially for Readers.” AB: Bookman’s Weekly, May 19, 1986.
  11. ^ Bhattacharjee, Riya. “Black Oak Books Moves Out,” Berkeley Daily Planet, June 04, 2009. http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-06-04/article/33030
  12. ^ Cortázar, Julio. Nicaraguan Sketches, trans. Kathleen Weaver, W. W. Norton, 1989. Cover by Baldock
  13. ^ “Palace Coup at Black Oak,” Express, Berkeley, July 14, 1989.
  14. ^ Posters: for KPFA Radio; UC Berkeley Graduate Journalism Dept; UCB International Studies Dept, (nearly 300 silkscreen & digital posters for public events). Some are posted on line: http://www.kpfa.org/events/kpfa-sponsored-events/kpfa-sponsored-past-events
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