With Dreams or Sweat: Portrait of a Small Western Press

F R A N K L A U R E A N O Riverdale, California With Dreams or Sweat: Portrait of a Small Western Press There are many types of small presses. Some are linked with univer­ sities, others are endowed by foundations, still others are the offshoots of cooperatives and communes. But the most common, frequently most interesting, certainly most controversial — because they tend to be more willing to publish non-standard, experimental work — are one-person operations such as Seven Buffaloes Press, which is operated by Art Cuelho, a California farm boy who now resides in Big Timber, Montana. Claiming not only the West, but all of rural America as its inspiration, Seven Buffaloes Press is named for Cuelho, who was called Seven Buffaloes by Crows with whom he worked as a fire fighter for five years. That name, with its connotations of both blue collar toil and Indian mysticism, captures well the spirit of the press. Because he has never lost touch with his rural western roots, Cuelho has produced a unique selection of books that, against considerable odds when one considers how quickly small presses tend to go in and out of business, continue to win excellent reviews and attract wider audiences. Cuelho is tough, a survivor in a perilous profession, and many of the books he publishes are tough too. He has also published three periodicals: the award-winning Black Jack ( 1973) which, according to The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, features “rural poems and stories from any­ where in America, especially the West” ; Valley Grapevine ( 1978) , which prints material from California’s San Joaquin Valley; A Hard Row to Hoe ( 1982), a newsletter reviewing books on the rural West. Many novice writers have first found print in his magazines; most of his books — Seven 94 Western American Literature Buffaloes presently has 21 titles in print — have been written by writers who first were published in one of his journals. Cuelho has no academic affiliation, no cooperative support. Instead, he supports his family with what his publications earn, plus seasonal labor, real labor: irrigating, logging, tractor driving, you name it. As a small press publisher, Cuelho is unusual in that he is not an urban intellectual but is a man of the soil, born and raised on a family farm in the Riverdale area of Fresno County. Little wonder that his publications have featured a working-class perspective shorn of romantic illusions. He has said, “I can tell if someone has really sweated in that valley sun or if they’re faking.” He is also a strong artist in his own right, a writer with a deep sense of place. But more than a sense of place is necessary to keep a small press alive. Even with the grants his publications have won, and the continued praise his books earn, life is hard, because alternative publishers lack the distribution network that buoys mainstream publishers. Many potential buyers ignore smaller presses because they are not in the habit of consider­ ing them ; class adoptions, for example, are rare. Says Cuelho: “There’s a dark cloud over my ten years as a publisher. Working at it for 10 to 12 hours a day seven days a week, and still bringing in only 4 or 5 hundred bucks gross each month. It’s only worth it if you realize the literary ground gained.” Recent material published in Small Press Review and Coda indicates that distribution and mass media reviewing — both of which alternative press people claim are tied to the massive advertising budgets that established publishers boast—remain major problems. One of Cuelho’s publications was not long ago given a glowing review by a noted scholar in Studies in Short Fiction, as prestigious a journal as exists in the field, but the review was printed over a year after the book’s release and reached only a small, academic audience. “It was a great breakthrough,” he says, “but it didn’t affect sales much.” Sometimes it seems that nothing he can do, since he has no advertising budget at all, affects sales much. “I have $40,000 worth of books to sell now, and...