John Martin, "an adventurous independent publisher who brought out the raucous work of the poet Charles Bukowski, as well as the writing of other offbeat literary rebels like Paul Bowles, John Fante and Wyndham Lewis," died June 23, the New York Times reported. He was 94.
Martin founded Black Sparrow Press in 1966 as "a shoestring operation that he ran out of his home for years" with the help of part-time assistants and his wife, Barbara Martin, who designed the books. The company became well-known, as John Martin "promoted, encouraged and printed the vast, uncompromisingly demotic and self-reflexive work of Bukowski, a West Coast cult figure who drew hundreds to his readings and whose books were reportedly among the most stolen from bookstores," the Times noted.
Martin launched Black Sparrow to publish Bukowski's work. As the manager of a large office supply store in Los Angeles, Martin had access to a printing press and published some of Bukowski's poetry, which he distributed to friends. He guaranteed Bukowski $100 a month if the author would quit his post office job and write full time for Black Sparrow.
Among the books that followed were the novels Women (1978) and Pulp (1994), the story collection Hot Water Music (1983), and the poetry volume The Roominghouse Madrigals (1988). "The flood continued long after his death in 1994 at 73, guaranteed by the large volume of his unpublished work," the Times noted.
In the documentary film Bukowski: Born into This (2003), Martin said the legendary poet would be "as well thought of in 50 years as Walt Whitman is now.... He's the butt of every joke. He doesn't turn on people and make them look stupid. Bukowski is neither wise, smart nor cool. He's us."
While still working as an office supply store manager, Martin began collecting first editions of work by writers he admired. The collection helped launch Black Sparrow when he sold the books in 1965 to the University of California at Santa Barbara for $50,000. By 1969, he had quit his job, enlisted Bukowski as well as poets like Robert Creeley, and was working 80 hours a week out of his small Los Angeles apartment.
"He read a lot of different people in the beginning, and then it just grew," Barbara Martin said. "I sat at the dining room table and designed the books."
Black Sparrow also published early works by Joyce Carol Oates (nine novels by 1980), John Ashbery, and Ron Loewinsohn. Other books on Black Sparrow's list included Paul Bowles's Things Gone and Things Still Here (1977) and Collected Stories (1979). Martin republished the British writer and artist Wyndham Lewis's The Complete Wild Body (1982) and The Apes of God (1981). He also "revived the fortunes" of the 1930s Los Angeles novelist and screenwriter John Fante with the republication of his 1939 classic, Ask the Dust (1980), featuring a foreword by Bukowski.
When writer Richard Kostelanetz visited Martin in 1980 for an article for the New York Times Book Review, the publisher was living in a spacious villa in Santa Barbara. Black Sparrow, operating out of the pool house, was grossing $500,000 annually and releasing 15 new titles a year.
Martin sold Black Sparrow to HarperCollins in 2002. He also sold his backlist, his inventory of 96,000 books, and his contracts with living authors to Boston publisher David R. Godine for $1.
"He never published anyone because they would sell," Barbara Martin said. "He published them because he liked their work."