An Interview With Clint Marsh
Clint Marsh is the editor of Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine, a well-loved zine among the occult and pagan community. Clint also authored The Mentalist’s Handbook. He is a journalism graduate from the University of Iowa, and has built a career as a writer, editor, and designer. Clint foudned his publishing company, Wonderella Printed, in 1993. Under its auspices, he produced Red Rock Black Sun, artist Will Cloughley’s spiritual account of the Grand Canyon. Clint also carries out design work, having designed layouts for a number of titles from Three Hands Press.
The Occult Library wrote to Clint to inquire about his longstanding experience in zine subcultures, his work with both Wonderella and Fiddler’s Green, as well as other matters related to the magic of printed material.
OL: Clint, thank you for taking the time to offer us this interview today. While your work with Fiddler’s Green is perhaps most familiar to folks in the occult community, your prior work with Wonderella publishing works like Phooka, The Mentalist's Handbook, and the work you carried out with Jeff Hoke in The Museum of Lost Wonder stands alone in its own right. What was the crux of your transition from those periods to your work with Fiddler’s Green?
CM: Thank you. It's an honor to be interviewed for the Occult Library. The seeds for what grew into Fiddler's Green have been in my writing and publishing from the beginning, although it took me about 20 years to really understand how best to bring them to fruition.
I started Wonderella Printed in 1993, when I was 18 years old, and that's still the overarching name I publish under. For the first few years, I published a fairly standard monthly zine, Real Life, which chronicled a few of the DIY music scenes in Iowa, where I grew up and was living at the time.
Occultism has been a preoccupation of mine since childhood, and occult topics increasingly crept into my zines in the years to come. This was a slow emergence, tongue-in-cheek at first, as I was uncomfortable writing about magic and other esoteric subjects, but I felt driven to do so anyway.
About five years in, I published four issues of Phooka, filtering my writing through the Reginald Bakeley persona, a drunken fairy-hunting aristocrat, with generous amounts of humor and irony. I later expanded on that work, which was published by Conari Press as Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop. When I collaborated with Jeff Hoke on the zines that would later be collected by Weiser Books as The Mentalist's Handbook, I got a little more comfortable in my skin, offering psychic instruction with only a dash of humor.
I think it was oncoming middle age that put me in the right frame of mind to finally be honest with myself and my readers about what I truly wanted to write and publish. I was about to turn 39, and had just returned to California from a year away. Jeff and I were discussing alchemy over pints of cider on the lawn at the Pelican Inn, near Muir Beach in Marin. It was such a perfect afternoon, and I felt that if I could bottle the feeling I had, it could feed me forever. Later, at home, I came across a reference to Fiddler's Green, which is the name of a pleasant mythic afterlife for sailors and other adventurers. The legend just served it all up to me then and there, and I poured as much of that spirit as I could into the first issue of Fiddler's Green.
Many readers are attracted to Fiddler’s Green, not only for the quality of its writing, but for its aesthetic production. You have previously stated that the parish publications of the early 20th century were a great source of inspiration for you. What is it about these parish editions that you found so special?
I've always enjoyed short-form publications, including zines and other ephemera that present an idea concisely, and for a niche readership. I also like the nimble nature of zines—how the writing can transition from high concepts to incredibly personal reflections. Parish magazines have a lot of that, too. They are written in service to their church, and to the grander ideals of their religion, but are also full of mundane news: Tom and Judy got married; three babies were born into the congregation this month; here is a list of parishioners who are ill, please include them in your prayers.
With Fiddler's Green, I wanted to write about esoteric topics in as down-to-earth and helpful a manner as possible, the way it seemed that parish magazines always have. So on the cover of the first issue, I included the line "A Peculiar Parish Magazine." This led me to think about what a "peculiar parish" could be, and how the readership might make up such a group, as disparate as it might be.
OL: Fiddler’s Green is unique in its breadth of authorship & artistry. How do you retain such diversity while also remaining true to the aim of the publication?
CM: Everything comes down to the human experience of life, which I believe is the root of magic and occult understanding. I wanted Fiddler's Green to look at magical and fantastical phenomena—superstition, fabulous beasts, demons—through the lens of everyday life. I was able to give some examples of this in my writing for the first two issues, comparing anxiety to the basilisk of medieval legend, for example, or self-confidence to the battle magic seen in movies. These essays were very personal, but transcended my own experience to provide practical help for anyone who read them.
In the years before I started Fiddler's Green, I'd been part of the Esoteric Book Conference hosted by William Kiesel, of Ouroboros Press, in Seattle. Getting to know some of the other small-press occult publishers reminded me of how I'd made similar connections in the zine scene, and that helped bring me out of my shell and just be more human with these topics. It's what I encourage from the magazine's contributing writers and artists as well. Magic and wonder are often thought of as something supernatural, but to me they seem intertwined with what it means to be human and alive, and that's something that's relatable to everyone, once they feel welcome.
OL: Clint, what was your initial introduction to zine culture, and what spurred you to begin crafting your own zines?
CM: My parents were small-business owners, and I inherited my entrepreneurial spirit from them. As kids, my brother and I spent a lot of evenings at their office, staying out of trouble by learning how to use the typewriter, goofing around with the photocopier, and teaching ourselves simple computer programming. I think that kind of free-rein access to office equipment certainly put me in the right headspace to publish zines, which were part of the larger desktop publishing revolution of the 1980s and '90s. There was a comic book shop in town, and I would linger around and dig through all the boxes of older comics and magazines, sometimes finding more homemade, DIY stuff, which had the added bonus of being cheaper. These experiences impressed upon me that I didn't need anyone's permission to write and publish my own work. When I was in high school, a friend showed me the Factsheet Five book The World of Zines, which was a directory of contemporary zines. I ordered a few through the mail, and within a year, I published my first.
OL: Along these lines, many are struck by the ability for Fiddler’s Green to maintain a fine edition quality while also retaining the feel of a traditional zine. How were you able to strike such a careful balance here?
CM: In the mid '90s, my zines helped me get a few jobs at local newspapers, and a few years later scored me an unpaid internship at a book publishing company in the San Francisco Bay Area. One thing led to another, and over the course of my twenties I'd had several jobs in writing and publishing. I picked up a lot of skills and contacts through that experience, and continued to publish zines on the weekend.
When I was about 30, Karima Cammell and I started a book imprint as part of Castle in the Air, her shop in Berkeley. We had little idea what we were doing, but we had lots of curiosity and drive to learn. It was kind of the grown-up version of the office I knew as a kid. I was able to apply everything I'd learned in my DIY and professional careers. The work we did really improved my skills and broadened my vision as to what a zine could be. The paper selection and the foil-stamping on the Fiddler's Green covers are part of that, along with how I use the internet to reach new readers, contributors, and shops.
OL: Your design work is also notable, particularly as it appears in many editions published by Three Hands Press. What kind of background led you into not only design work, but work with occult publishers?
CM: My publication design education evolved alongside everything else over the years. I just did what I could to the best of my ability. My first zines were hand-lettered and mocked up with scissors, tape, and glue, as that was cheapest and most expedient. Putting pen to paper, essentially drawing what I wanted to see before slapping it on the photocopier, helped give me a physical sense of "what goes where." I still occasionally scribble out thumbnail sketches when I'm trying a new design. This slower physical process just suits me better and helps me to learn. I did, however, teach myself to use standard layout software pretty early on, and have been using my current setup for over ten years. As for reference books, when I'm starting something new I usually reach for The Elements of Typographical Style, by Robert Bringhurst, and The Chicago Manual of Style.
I'm grateful to have met Daniel Schulke through the Esoteric Book Conference, and to have worked on a few titles for Three Hands Press. We've been able to share advice and contacts with each other, which is traditional among fellow publishers.
OL: Over the years, your work has expressed the special quality of forming and enriching magical, occult, and pagan communities. In your experience, what calls you to build community in such a special way, and what is the most fulfilling reward of this work?
CM: My publishing has always had a social element to it, from my early coverage of the small-town music scene to the more amorphous peculiar parish engendered by Fiddler's Green. As processes, writing and publishing can be remarkably isolating. The work requires a lot of alone time. But I love people, and I want to share what I've created, so I always look for ways to include as many people as possible in my projects. This was the basis for starting the Peculiar Parish Bookshop, selling books and zines from similar publishers. I think what I find most fulfilling is to be able to make these connections, be it putting a new zine in someone's hands or getting to know creators who've followed their own path to arrive at a similar place as to where I find myself.
OL: As Fiddler’s Green steadily approaches its ninth & tenth editions, do you have any plans to mark such milestones? Can readers expect an anthology as the zine grows?
CM: My main goal is to keep going. I have a tendency to allow projects to get more and more complicated, slowing them down until they collapse under their own weight. I can see how this could happen with Fiddler's Green if I continue doing things the way I have. It's been taking me longer to produce each new issue as I've developed the smaller zine lines and grown the Peculiar Parish Bookshop. I think I've discovered the limits of what I can do with these projects as a one-man show (albeit with the help of over 100 contributing writers, artists, musicians, and publishers), so I'm in talks to get some help with order fulfillment. This will allow me to produce new works more quickly and to turn enough of a profit for all this to continue to be my full-time job. I will have to overcome some of my perfectionism and stubborn DIY spirit, but I feel that I must keep going. I just love the work too much to quit.
A Fiddler's Green anthology is a big dream of mine. It would be a massive undertaking, and quite expensive, but I can imagine what it would take. It's certainly possible, given the right resources. For the time being, I've been reprinting my own essays from earlier issues of Fiddler's Green as standalone pamphlets, such as Nine Defenses Against the Basilisk and Our Bogeys, Our Shelves.
OL: Clint, we thank you for your time, and for your dedication to enriching the literary aspect of our community. All best wishes for the future as we look forward to your forthcoming works.
CM: Thank you!
