Bob Baldock
Encyclopedia
Robert "Bob" Lee Baldock (also known as Robert Baldock) (b. April 30, 1937, Dayton, Ohio
) was one of the few U.S. citizens to participate in the Cuban Revolution as a combatant in Fidel Castro
's unit based in 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, following which 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-sponsored FM radio in the U.S. For over twenty years he produced public events for KPFA. As a poster artist he created original posters for these events. He is also a maker of fine art prints, broadsides, and easel paintings.
, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Baldock studied for two years at Ohio University in Athens, (1955–57), receiving military training in the Army ROTC program, which 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, 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. In Miami, hospitalized, he 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.
in Paris, and subsequently won a $1000 prize. ; He was given work as a proofreader and copywriter by Olympia Press, controversial publisher of William S. Burroughs’ 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.
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 an extensive series of painted portraits of African-American subjects. A selection of these were presented at a one man show at The Art Co-op (later A..C.C.I. Gallery in Berkeley,1980; He also designed a number of book covers for W.W. Norton & Company, including a series for their reissue of works by Rainer Maria Rilke in the 1990s.
In 1982, after twenty years at Moe’s Books, Baldock co-founded Black Oak Books in north Berkeley, with partners Bob Brown and Don Pretari. As president of the corporation he undertook (with the participation of partner Pretari and staffer Victoria Shoemaker) a popular series of in-store readings, showcasing many authors of international repute, including Carlos Fuentes, Czeslaw Milosz, Edna O'Brien, Isabel Allende, Toni Morrison, 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, often printed by the Okeanos Press under Eric Johnson; many of these broadsides Baldock designed; (Eric Johnson went on to design and print broadsides in this series when Baldock left Black Oak).
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 and Salvadoran solidarity work. In 1989, he left Black Oak, following a hostile takeover by his partners.
In 1996 he received recognition for outstanding service to the reading community by being awarded "The Decca," "an award in honor of Jessica Mitford" presented by the San Francisco Bay Area Book Council on the occasion of the 7th Annual San Francisco Book Festival, November 2, 1996.
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton is the 6th largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, the fifth most populous county in the state. The population was 141,527 at the 2010 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 841,502 in the 2010 census...
) was one of the few U.S. citizens to participate in the Cuban Revolution as a combatant in Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
's unit based in the Sierra Maestra
Sierra Maestra
Sierra Maestra is a mountain range that runs westward across the south of the old Oriente Province from what is now Guantánamo Province to Niquero in southeast Cuba, rising abruptly from the coast. Some view it as a series of connecting ranges , which joins with others extending to the west...
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, following which 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-sponsored FM radio in the U.S. For over twenty years he produced public events for KPFA. As a poster artist he created original posters for these events. He is also a maker of fine art prints, broadsides, and easel paintings.
In The 26th of July Movement, Cuba
After graduation from Sewickley High SchoolSewickley High School
Sewickley High School was a public school in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. The school's roots can be traced back to 1834, when it was located in an old log church. In 1894, a new building for the school was built, known as the Richardson Romanesque Sewickley Public School, often affectionately called...
, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Baldock studied for two years at Ohio University in Athens, (1955–57), receiving military training in the Army ROTC program, which proved significant when Baldock became a combatant in the 26th of July Movement
26th of July Movement
The 26th of July Movement was the revolutionary organization planned and led by Fidel Castro that in 1959 overthrew the Fulgencio Batista government in Cuba...
insurgency against Fulgencio Batista led by Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
in Cuba. He became aware of the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
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, which included (besides Castro) Celia Sánchez
Celia Sánchez
Celia Sánchez Manduley was a participant of the Cuban Revolution and a close friend, and rumored lover of Fidel Castro....
, Haydée Santamaría, and Camilo Cienfuegos
Camilo Cienfuegos
Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán was a Cuban revolutionary born in Lawton, Havana. Raised in an anarchist family that had left Spain before the Spanish Civil War, he became a key figure of the Cuban Revolution, along with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Juan Almeida Bosque, and Raúl Castro.-Political...
. 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. In Miami, hospitalized, he 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 In 1959 he went to Europe. His story "Salt Air," was published in Olympia, the bi-monthy review published by the Olympia PressOlympia Press
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane...
in Paris, and subsequently won a $1000 prize. ; He was given work as a proofreader and copywriter by Olympia Press, controversial publisher of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Nabokov’s Lolita. For several months he worked (in the absence of owner George Whitman
George Whitman
George Whitman is the proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. He was a contemporary of such Beat poets as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He is a grand-nephew of American poet Walt Whitman....
) in the bookstore Le Mistral, later renamed Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company or Shakespeare & Company may refer to:*Shakespeare and Company , an English-language bookshop in Paris, France; hosts the annual Shakespeare & Company Literary Festival in June....
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.
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 an extensive series of painted portraits of African-American subjects. A selection of these were presented at a one man show at The Art Co-op (later A..C.C.I. Gallery in Berkeley,1980; He also designed a number of book covers for W.W. Norton & Company, including a series for their reissue of works by Rainer Maria Rilke in the 1990s.
In 1982, after twenty years at Moe’s Books, Baldock co-founded Black Oak Books in north Berkeley, with partners Bob Brown and Don Pretari. As president of the corporation he undertook (with the participation of partner Pretari and staffer Victoria Shoemaker) a popular series of in-store readings, showcasing many authors of international repute, including Carlos Fuentes, Czeslaw Milosz, Edna O'Brien, Isabel Allende, Toni Morrison, 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, often printed by the Okeanos Press under Eric Johnson; many of these broadsides Baldock designed; (Eric Johnson went on to design and print broadsides in this series when Baldock left Black Oak).
Not long after separating from Jeanne Forest Baldock in 1985, he met his future wife, writer and translator Kathleen Weaver
Kathleen Weaver
Kathleen Weaver is an American writer and editor, who was born in 1945 in Sioux City, Iowa.Raised in Polo, Illinois, she went on to study art and political science at the University of Edinburgh. After, she earned a B.A. and M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California Berkeley ...
; they were married July 13, 1989. Through her he became involved again in radical politics, specifically in Nicaraguan and Salvadoran solidarity work. In 1989, he left Black Oak, following a hostile takeover by his partners.
In 1996 he received recognition for outstanding service to the reading community by being awarded "The Decca," "an award in honor of Jessica Mitford" presented by the San Francisco Bay Area Book Council on the occasion of the 7th Annual San Francisco Book Festival, November 2, 1996.
Events Producer and Poster Artist, KPFA Radio
Baldock then started working for KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM, in Berkeley. Over the next two decades he produced more than three hundred public events with writers and occasionally musicians, fundraisers for KPFA and the parent Pacifica network, and for other non-profit organizations. For most of these he produced original posters, initially silkscreened, later primarily digital. These events were recorded for subsequent radio broadcast and webcast, with recordings eventually made in DVD format as well.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.
Selected publications by
- “KPFA’s 60th Anniversary Celebration.” Open Exchange Magazine: #185 / Vol. 36, No. 2, April / May / June 2009 printed & online: http://www.openexchange.org/archives/AMJ09/kpfa.html
- “Salt Air,” Olympia. 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.
External links
- Photo of Baldock with Castro
- Bhattacharjee, Riya. “Black Oak Books Moves Out,” Berkeley Daily Planet, June 4, 2009. http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-06-04/article/33030
- Posters: for KPFA Radio; also for UC Berkeley Graduate Journalism Dept;and for UCB International Studies Dept, (nearly 300 silkscreen & digital posters for public events). Some are posted on the KPFA website
- Luzer, Daniel. The Mail: Reviewing Cometbus, Issue #51: The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah, Columbia Journalism Review, Feb 09, 2009. http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_mail_2.php?page=all