Enemies and Friends by Tim O’Brien remains one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by the synaesthesia press.
Published in September 2001, the book brings together two short stories by O’Brien in a dos-à-dos format, with one story beginning from each cover and meeting in the middle. Both pieces originally appeared in The Things They Carried. This edition marked their first separate publication.
The book was illustrated by Fritz Scholder.
That still sounds a little improbable to me.
Tim O’Brien is one of the most important American writers of the Vietnam era. Fritz Scholder was one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century. Bringing the two together in a single publication felt less like publishing and more like assembling a dream project.
The edition measured approximately 6 by 7 inches and consisted of six pages per side. Every copy was printed letterpress. French fold. The deluxe issue was limited to twenty-six lettered copies bound in cloth. Each was housed in a custom slipcase fabricated from 12-gauge steel and handmade by a local blacksmith. Originally priced at $250, the edition sold out immediately and was oversubscribed before publication.
The regular edition consisted of ninety-nine copies hand-sewn into Olive Larroque, a beautiful handmade French paper. Priced at $125 upon publication, I long believed that edition had also sold out—until I discovered a single copy tucked away in my archive.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder how I pulled it off.
Steel slipcases. Letterpress printing. Handmade paper. Tim O’Brien. Fritz Scholder.
At the time it simply seemed like the thing to do.
Today, copies occasionally surface in the rare-book marketplace, usually through specialist dealers. Whenever I see one, I’m reminded that some books arrive as publishing projects and others arrive as challenges. Enemies and Friends was definitely the latter.
It’s still one of the achievements I’m proudest of as a small-press publisher.
