The Swift Years

In colonial times, a popular way to spread the news and your opinion was through pamphlets. One of the most famous American pamphleteers was Thomas Paine and his renowned “Common Sense” pamphlets. He was instrumental in informing the public about why they should resist the British and embrace a new way. That radical liberal idea was that they could be a country not ruled by a god-ordained king, but by free thinking men.

In the 80s I decided to embrace this form of writing. I started publishing “Swift's Eye.” Named after Jonathan Swift, an English satirist who probably did a few pamphlets himself besides writing clever books like “Gulliver's Travels.”

So while I scribbled witty satirical short stories and labored on numerous blockbuster books, I took time to pen some clever and biting political rhetoric and put them in a handy, user-friendly form. A paper pamphlet.

As a side note, I thought I was really clever because part of their charm was that I tried different folding techniques for the pamphlet. Most were fold in half, then in half again, but I once tried a tri-fold, often set a page up that required it be completely unfolded and often ran typed across folds. Okay, it might not have been that clever.

I created them on a typewriter so I always had to have a mock up in order to know how far to type and whether I needed to turn the page upside down to type the next page (because of the fold). There were some pages I used what is called “press type” as you have to press it down with a special tool. It's a real slow process and you had to use something to make sure it was level. So this pamphlet was pretty labor intensive. Nowadays it would be so easy with the use of a computer, but back then about the only people with those were engineers, computer programmers and a few rich people.

Like the colonial time pamphleteers, Swift Eye was political. I mainly attacked Reagan, but often had something about the environment or other hot topics of the time. Of course, as a satirical short story writer, most of the time it was funny or humorous. My favorite one was the one that made fun of Reagan's wife penchant to turn to astrology for answers.

In total, I think I only had five to six issues of Swift’s Eye. I liked doing them, but because they were so labor intensive and I never thought they made as big of an impact as I desired, I lost interest in the mode. Instead, I just hunkered down and put more energy in putting the same ideas and concepts in my short stories. Many of those got published and to keep them alive I included them on my web site so they’ll live on in the electronic world for years.

James Thurber would have approved of my pamphlets because not only were there clever articles and statements, but many interesting images. Maybe not as good as his cartoons, but still fun for the reader.  Yes, you guessed it. This blog not only acts as a way for me to put my pamphlets in the electronic universe, but it’s also a way to look fondly back at the 80s. Ahhhh, the 80s.

Ahh, James Thurber