[Hoffer, William; GOULSKA, Glenn, et al.]

TANKS [are mighty fine things]

Vancouver: William Hoffer / TANKS, 1986-1987. A complete collection of the ‘subscriber’s edition’. Quartos, of various sizes, housed together in a blue linen covered slipcase (29 x 19.8 cm). The slipcase was made by Rasmussen Bindery. Gilt stamped title to the head of the slipcase. A fine set. Tanks was conceived by Hoffer as a vital operation in his campaign against state-sponsored literature: “[Tanks was] a pseudo-military operation he devised in order to rid the world of arts bureaucracies and the collaborators who keep them in place. A fierce opponent of government subsidies, he sought to expose the system of favours that pervades every area of the arts in Canada and elsewhere” (Kociejowski 2022, 43). TANKS 1.2 - 1.5 are uniformly numbered 38/150 on the colophon pages. Following Glenn Woodsworth, Hoffer’s bibliographer, the consensus among members of the Canadian book trade is that only 85 copies of the ‘subscriber’s edition’ were actually assembled. Tanks 1.6 wasn’t produced (and therefore isn’t included) and The Topography of Typography wasn’t assigned a number in the Tanks series. The print runs for the trade issues of Tanks ranged from 1,000 to 2,500 copies (Woodsworth, Cheap Sons of Bitches: The Publications of William Hoffer. A51). Five books in paper wrappers and two paper portfolios, or seven fascicles in all, comprising:

A. TANKS 1.1
KOCIEJOWSKI, Marius.
The Machine Minders | with illustrations by Maureen Sugrue.
1986. 27 x 19.2 cm. Tied with blue twine into pictorial cream paper wraps. Title printed in black to the upper cover. pp. [2] 1-12 [2]. A fine copy. Three greyscale illustrations by Maureen Sugrue. Two are full-page and the other spans a full spread. Signed in ink by Marius Kociejowski on the title-page.

“The Machine Minders has been published in objection to the continued creation of State Literature through government subsidies to the Arts. The first volume of Tanks will consist of five books, all of which share the characteristic of being objectionable to the government.”

B. TANKS 1.2
KINSELLA, W.P.
Five Stories | with illustrations by Carel Moiseiwitsch.
1986. 27.4 x 18.6 cm. Perfect-bound into pictorial cream paper wraps. Lettering printed in black to the upper cover and spine. Pictorial endpapers. pp. [8] 5-57 [3]. Some smudges and adhesive stains to the verso of the colophon page. Minor rubbing from the slipcase cloth to the bottom edges. Else fine. 10 black and white illustrations by Carel Moiseiwitsch. Signed by William Kinsella on the colophon page.

C. TANKS 1.3
SIBUM, Norm.
Eight Poems | with illustrations by Clifford Harper.
1987. 27.8 x 18.9 cm. Perfect-bound into pictorial cream paper wraps. Lettering printed in black to the upper cover and spine. Pictorial endpapers. pp. [6] 5-31 [7]. Minor rubbing from the slipcase cloth to the bottom edges, else fine. Illustrated with 10 black and white vignettes by Clifford Harper. Signed in ink by Norm Sibum on the colophon page.

D. TANKS 1.4
FALUDY, George.
Corpses, Brats and Cricket Music | Hullák, kamaszok, tücsökzene | Poems by George Faludy | Translated by Robin Skelton in collaboration with the author | with one illustration by Herbert Siebner.
1987. 27.3 x 19.2 cm. Perfect-bound into pictorial grey paper wraps. Lettering printed in black to the upper cover and spine. Pictorial endpapers. pp. [4; ll. 2: tipped barrier sheet and illustrated plate; pp. 7] 12-67 [5]. Minor rubbing from the slipcase cloth to the bottom edges, else fine. A signed and hand coloured lithograph by Herbert Sieber (No. 44/200) is tipped between the half-title and title. A greyscale reproduction of the same lithograph is printed to the recto of the leaf directly preceding the half-title leaf. Faludy’s text was printed in the original Hungarian on the rectos alongside Robin Skelton’s English translations on the versos. Signed in ink by Faludy on the colophon page.

E. TANKS 1.5
SMART, Elizabeth.
Autobiographies | Edited by Christina Burridge.
1987. 27.7 x 19.3 cm. Perfect-bound into pictorial grey paper wraps. Lettering printed in black to the spine. Pictorial endpapers. pp. [6] 5-204 [10]. Minor creasing to a few pages. Minor rubbing from the slipcase cloth to the bottom edges. Else fine. Illustrated with black and white photographs by Donna Guillemin.

F. [GOLUSKA, Glenn] LISSITZKY, El.
The Topography of Typography.
[Toronto:] imprimerie dromadaire [1983; 1987].
27.2 x 19.6 cm. “translated, designed, composed & vandercooked by glenn goluska at imprimerie dromadaire, toronto, january 1983.” Four loose leaves, printed on the rectos only. Housed in a yellow paper portfolio, with the title printed in Gill Cameo Ruled in red to the upper cover. Unpaginated [ll. 4, all loose]. The text was set in Linotype Trade Gothic Condensed, handset Alternate Gothic, and wood type. It was printed in black, red, and yellow on an unidentified white Japanese paper [hosho].

A bibliomystery concerning this title, probably of interest to only a few, was recently settled (largely independently) by both Chester Gryski and Nick Drumbolis: this printing (I won’t go as far as to call it an edition) of The Topography of Typography was originally produced in 1983 for inclusion in the projected third volume of Peter Koch’s Deadstart journal. When the project was abandoned, Koch returned the sheets to Goluska. Goluska later sold the sheets to Bill Hoffer, who eventually included them in the present set. The yellow portfolios containing the Hoffer issued sheets were produced by Goluska in 1987 for Tanks: “the 150 yellow folders were printed in March, 1987. Notes made by Glenn Goluska covering his printing activities from 1975 to 1987 and left with Massey College, provide the details regarding the two printings and the date and number of folders printed” (Gryski 2019, 14).

G. TANKS 1.8
McWHIRTER, George.
The Voyeur and the Countess Wielopolska | with lithographs by Dianne Ostoich.
[Toronto:] The Nightshade Press, March 1987.
28.3 x 19.7 cm. Single sheet, once-folded to produce a bifolium. Printed on all sides. Housed in a magenta paper portfolio with the title printed to the upper cover. Unpaginated [ll. 2]. Two faint smudges to the bifolium’s title-cover, else fine. The text was set in Palatino and printed in black on slightly off-white wove paper. The title was printed in red. With two loose leaves laid in, each printed with a black and white lithograph by Dianne Ostoich. The lithographs are signed and editioned (38/150) in pencil by Ostoich. From a stated edition of 150 copies. Signed in ink by George McWhirter below his text on the second recto. The slipcase opening, which is fixed by a dropped head, is larger on the far right side to accommodate the slightly larger format of this fascicle. Item #363

“Maimonides said that while one could not describe the attributes of God, one could describe what God was not. Culture is much that way; we cannot actually describe what culture is, but must settle for an argument about what it definitely isn’t. And that’s what I set out to do with Tanks.” — William Hoffer (Hoffer 1997a, 8)

“[Tanks was] Bill Hoffer’s quixotic protest against government funding of writing… It’s hard to imagine what was objectionable to the government outside of Hoffer’s fevered brain. As any soft attack of consequence, a complete failure, but as nicely made books which matter, a success.” — G.S. Temple

“The series of books I published in 1987, under the general imprint of Tanks Are Mighty Fine Things, are actually published. They exist, if languishing (like most other books produced in Canada over the last two decades) in a limbo in consequence of a loss of judgement and readership. The economics of publishing literature are silly; there never was much profit in the publishing of important books. I mention it in opposition to the notion of literary industries. Industries just make a profit or die. Literature, if it is literature, is its own justification, its own profit. The self consciously created ‘literature’ we have in Canada is crab-grass; until it dies, there will be no possibility of a proper lawn. Nourished only on the valueless rubbish of Canadian literature, two generations of young Canadians have lost the ability to distinguish the lawn from the weeds. […]

[I] have a lot of copies of the four Tanks books I’ve published in the last eight months. Let me urge you to go to your local bookshops and demand that they buy some. It would be the beginning of a literary conversation occurring in a space larger than one room. Booksellers aren’t supposed to take positions, and they are generally unwise to publish books; I have committed these two heresies only because the silence is so deafening in Canada. I’ve done it in a search for legitimacy in my profession as a bookseller. Besides, I’ve always believed that Canada needs a few more booksellers much more desperately than it needs another thousand ‘writers’. You can manage to keep a sickly crop of so-called writers alive without an audience if you spread the money thin enough. The proof of civilization rests much more powerfully in the number of bookshops a country has than in the number of writers it can boast. Without customers, bookshops die. Without an audience, writing goes rogue and mutates into something other than literature. And that’s the long and short of it.” — William Hoffer (Hoffer 1997b, 29-30).

Price: $500.00