A pressed press The exacting task of printing artful books BY TANYA WHITON

There are books and then there are books. After seeing one of printer David Wolfe’s hand-bound, letterpress-printed editions, your average computer-designed paperback looks a little bit like a Sunday newspaper insert ¾ speedily done and disposable.

On a tour of his Pleasant Street studio, Wolfe leafs through portfolios, flat files, and boxes to show me some of the projects he’s worked on in the last several years: a limited run of Dante’s Inferno, translated by Robert Pinsky and illustrated by Mark Mazur; a book on Portland libraries of the 1800s commissioned by the Baxter Society, entitled Abundant Bibliophiles; some clothbound poems by Maine writer Robert Chute featuring reproductions of Soviet-era artwork.

Wolfe reveals himself to be a guild-style craftsman, plying a once commercial trade that has become a rarified art form. His space is filled with presses and supplies: scrolls of blue hole-punched paper that indicates letters; lead "pigs" which are melted into liquid and turned into tiny, single characters or lines of type; and weighty, intricate casting machines (one dates as far back as 1830). He turns one on, and it makes a small symphony of mechanical whirs, clunks, and clacks, emitting, after a moment, a bar of lead with raised letters, still hot.

"Back in the ’50s, people busted these up," he says, turning the machine off. "I heard the Portland Press Herald took apart about 50 of them with sledgehammers." He shakes his head. Though the process of making a broadside ¾ let alone a whole book ¾ using letterpress technique is incredibly painstaking (each letter must be cast, laid out in sentence form, and spaced), it is also quite sensual ¾ as is the end result. Words are pressed into yielding paper, lending the finished product a depth and gravity missing in contemporary print methods. A mistake, like a missed word, means reconfiguring every line that follows: "It’s not like the computer ¾ if you leave a word out it all scrolls forward. You’ve got to do the whole job in your head," Wolfe says.

For those who have a penchant for tales from days gone by, there are several nonfiction readings this month that will satisfy a range of interests. Wednesday, October 1, Ed Rice reads from his biography Baseball’s First Indian: Louis Sockalexis, Penobscot Legend, Cleveland Indian, at 7 p.m. at Nonesuch Books, in the Millcreek Shopping Center in South Portland. Call (207) 799-2659. Also on the first, author McKay Jenkins excerpts The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and the Assault on Hitler’s Europe, at 12:15 p.m. at the Portland Public Library’s Rines Auditorium — 5 Monument Square, (207) 871-1710.

In the realm of contemporary happenings, on Tuesday, October 14, Amy Sutherland (a former features and food writer for the Portland Press Herald) details the world of competitive cooking in Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America, at 6:30 p.m., at Books Etc. in Falmouth, 240 Route 1. Call (207) 781-3784. Saturday, October 18, at 2 p.m., travel writer James Dodson reads from The Road to Somewhere: Travels with a Young Boy in an Old World, at Borders Books and Music, 430 Gorham Road, in South Portland. Call (207) 775-6110. And on Saturday, October 25, the Maine Humanities Council hosts Pushcart Prize–winner Rafael Campo, M.D., reading from The Healing Art: A Doctor’s Black Bag of Poetry, at 8 p.m. at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress Street, in Portland. Cover is $3, call (207) 828-5600.

Fiction and poetry lovers can get their fix on Friday, October 3, when Longfellow Books’ "Writers Becoming Authors" series hosts 2003 Jane Kenyon Prize–winner L.R. Berger waxing poetic in The Unexpected Aviary, at 7 p.m., at 1 Monument Way, in Portland. Call (207) 772-4045. Or, on Saturday, October 4, when poet Elizabeth Hobbs reads from Poems from the Lake, at Borders Books and Music, at 2 p.m. And for those willing to make a short drive, Mystic River author Dennis Lehane (whose breakout novel has been turned into a blockbuster movie by Clint Eastwood) reads at Colby College’s Roberts Union, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 14. Call (207) 872-3257.

Finally, in the performance vein, the Center for Cultural Exchange presents ReOrientalism, an original multi-media theater piece based on issues surrounding the cultural identity of Arab Americans, Saturday, October 18, at 8 p.m., at 1 Longfellow Square, Portland. Tickets are $22 and $25. Call (207) 761-1545, and Portland Stage Company kicks up another season of Page to Stage discussions, this time with a talk on the Bard’s Comedy of Errors, at the Portland Public Library’s Rines Auditorium at 12:15 p.m.

Can You Haiku? Maine Writers and Publisher’s Alliance hosts a Haiku Writing Workshop with Bruce Ross, Saturday, October 4, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and a free writing workshop, Saturday, October 18. For more information go to www.mainewriters.org or call (207) 386-1400.

Purchasing Power: Help the PPL raise funds for new books by attending a public lecture by mystery master Robert B. Parker, Wednesday, October 22, at 7 p.m. at Holiday Inn By the Bay, at 88 Spring Street, in Portland. Call (207) 871-1700, x759. (Suggested donation $5).

Francophiles Night Out: Thursday, October 23, Lewiston native Rhea Cote Robbins gives a talk on Franco-American Women Writers, at the University of New England’s Maine Women Writer’s Collection, at 7 p.m. Call (207) 797-7688, x 4324.

Tanya Whiton can be reached at twhiton@prexar.com