RIP, Malcolm Margolin

Malcolm Margolin, who died Aug. 20 at age 84, loved language. Words were his passion as the founder of Heyday, the independent nonprofit press launched in 1974 that grew to include Heyday Books, the Berkeley-based powerhouse publishing company. For 41 years, Margolin ushered forward countless writers, poets, authors and illustrators, whose focus most often was on California Indigenous communities, social justice, beauty and value found in nature, regional and state parks, and Native American culture, traditions and studies.

After Margolin wrote, designed and typeset his first book, East Bay Out, a recreation guidebook to East Bay Regional Parks, he went on to write and/or publish, among others, The Ohlone Way, The Way We Lived and a 2014 biography, The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin. An inveterate supporter of all writers, Heyday has published over 100 books Margolin did not author. He also co-founded two magazines, News from Native California in 1987 and Bay Nature in 2001.

In 2021, there were few outward indications Margolin’s impressive pace was slowing. A new book, Deep Hanging Out, included interviews, archival materials drawn from his News magazine, and roughly 30 articles and essays written about California’s 100-plus Indian tribes. “Deep hanging out” was the phrase Margolin used to describe his approach to source material that came by immersing himself in the social, ceremonial and cultural worlds of various tribes.

When the increasing severity of Parkinson’s Disease signaled the moment for him to pass to a successor his position at the helm of Heyday books, publisher Steve Wasserman was welcomed with grace and generosity.

Behind the scenes, Margolin, man of letters, continued to wordsmith from his home office. I first met him for a planned 60-minute interview that turned into a three-hour conversation. His memories are treasures to collect like gold and keep safely in a memory vault. That first interview took place in Heyday’s original location on University Avenue in Berkeley. Between towers of books, Margolin answered a question about lessons learned during Heyday’s trek to its 40th anniversary. “I haven’t learned anything you couldn’t talk me out of in five minutes,” he said.

With that, he was off and running. He claimed to live in “a state of dreamy confusion,” confessed to not understanding “why people tolerate ugliness” and considered books writers present to him for publication as vessels containing all their hopes. Creating well-written, highly researched books written in authentic voices was essential, but so was establishing a book’s beauty.

“As publisher, it would be such a betrayal to design something less than beautiful,” he said. “Beautiful is not pretty. Pretty is surface, a trick, something that goes away. Beauty is something lasting, that’s just on the edge of scary.”

Margolin in that conversation and dozens in subsequent years expressed gratitude. Born when people remembered the Civil War and an America without automobiles, the Yiddish culture he grew up in, his marriage to Rina Tice, opportunities to experience fear and failure, and finding forgiveness left him feeling lucky. His greatest fear as a publisher, he claimed, was “silence, not bad reviews or a typo.”

Of the many wonderful and wise thoughts expressed by Margolin, perhaps a favorite is found in words that came at the end of that long-ago conversation:

“If I lost every material thing today, I wouldn’t miss a thing. I’ve often thought if I came here one day and this whole thing was an illusion, I’d be disoriented, but I’d walk away and find something else to do. My favorite story is from the Oakland Hills fire. One woman who never had a chance to grab her things; afterwards, people gave her things she’d given them before the fire. In the end, she said all she had was what she’d given away. You know, it’s ironic, Heyday’s move to have goals other than simply meeting margins and making money seems key to present day stability. It seems to be one reason Heyday has survived.”