Notes on an expatriate's look homeward and on a bookman in a vast, sparsely inhabited region

In recent decades the massive violent uprooting of whole peoples from their homelands has made the plight of the exile, the expatriate, so common as to seem unremarkable. It was not always thus; our poets, historians, and novelists have remarked upon the subject since the beginnings of history. From the Odyssey and the Book of Ruth to Thomas Wolfe and James Joyce the voices of the exile have sounded through our literature. They are voices of many tones, many accents, but common to most is an all-pervasive sense of nostalgia, that barkening back in imagination to a better time, to a better place, to the land of one's nurture. Whether forced or self-imposed, the exile of the expatriate is seldom a wholly happy state. One of the commonest of human emotions, the love of place, seems never so intense as when return to that place is denied.

But the temptation to generalization — especially to over-solemn generalization — must be denied. As a wise, if cynical, Frenchman once remarked, "All generalizations are false — including this one." A recent book by an expatriate — and about France as well, for that matter - demonstrates his point.

Few, surely, knew their native land more intimately or preserved their love for it more nearly intact than the late Francois Denoeu, emeritus professor of French. Although in the course of 34 years of teaching at Dartmouth he came to know, even to understand, some of the alien ways of New Hampshire and Vermont, the pull of his native place, France-Nord, remained unimpaired. His first tribute to his "region natale" appeared seven years after his retirement with publication of his France-Nord (1971). Appropriately, it is his final, posthumous book which now completes the tribute: Hauts-de-France (France-Nord) (Saint Omer, Pas de Calais; Librarie de l'lndependent; 1975. 465 pp. Also available from the Dartmouth Bookstore, $9.95).

The book stubbornly defies categories; it is at once a history of the north of France, a treatise on the linguistic evolution of the French language, vignettes of some of the villages and cities of the area, biographical sketches of the region's famous personages historical and modern, an anthology of poems about France-Nord, and Francois Denoeu's autobiography. If I must choose, then I will call it a history. But like its author it is complex, contradictory, idiosyncratic, and, above all, suffused with the nostalgia of the exile. The technique is in a word — Denoeu's own — "pointilliste."

A stern self-disciplinarian who, it is reported, forced himself to write no fewer than ten pages per day even while teaching full-time, Francois Denoeu produced some 25 books: novels, histories, poetry, textbooks. The honors accorded him by his own nation were also many; he was the recipient of the Croix de Guerre in World War I, Laureate of the French Academy, Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. In his final book the French expatriate handsomely honors the land which had honored and nurtured him.

A current exhibition of the books of David R. Godine '66, publisher, at the Hopkins Center Galleries (September 3-October 17) is of intense intrinsic interest to all who cherish fine books. But its implications — indeed, the fact that it is there at all — are perhaps even more remarkable than the thing itself.

Largely taken over by the corporate giants, commercial publishing now operates on the received wisdom that no trade publisher can succeed without mass production, the volume sales generated by sizable best-seller lists, and multitudes of reprint rights. At the opposite extreme are the few so-called private presses which look upon books primarily as forms of art and publish meticulously hand-manufactured books in severely limited editions almost exclusively for the elite collectors of press books. They proceed on another assumption: enter mass production and mass marketing, exit quality. In between is a vast, sparsely inhabited region.

In this world Godine stands as something of an iconoclast — even better, a successful iconoclast. He has defied the odds on both sides. The mere continued existence of the Godine Press which was started five years ago - to say nothing of the continually increasing quality of his lists — demonstrates the astonishing fact that finely printed and bound books on serious subjects, with little compromising of quality, can succeed in the commercial marketplace.

"We celebrate books," wrote Godine in a recent catalogue, "as both transmitters of information and objects of intrinsic beauty — products which are more than pieces of identical, disposable merchandise to be cheaply produced and quickly remaindered. If a book is worth publishing, it is worth manufacturing well." The books in the Hopkins Center exhibition stand testimony to the Press's commitment to quality.

So also do the honors that have recently come Godine's way. The press's Early Children'sBooks and their Illustrators by Gerald Gottlieb, published with the Pierpost Morgan Library, recently received the prestigious Carey-Thomas award sponsored by PublishersWeekly. Named after two pioneers of American publishing, the award is given annually to a single outstanding publishing achievement. In addition the press was also awarded a special citation — the first time any publisher has been so honored — for the inexpensive poetry Chapbook series, small volumes by contemporary poets which are, as Godine says, "our effort to keep poetry alive and well" in a prosaic world.

Beginning in mid-October Godine will assume new duties as general manager of the Quality Paperback Book Club, a subsidiary of Book-of-the-Month-Club. He will continue to manage the activities of the press, however, and the quality of its books, he vows, will not suffer. Perhaps some of Godine's emphasis on quality may rub off onto the Book Club. If so, the American reader would be even more in his debt.