Undena Publications

A brief history

by Ann West (2024)

     Undena as a venture was born high on a cliff overlooking the sublime waves of Malibu, California, thus the undulating pattern of its logo. The name derives as well from a town called Gli Ondini, an Italian mountain favorite of founder Giorgio Buccellati that alludes to a water nymph. Buccellati, a distinguished professor of archeology at nearby UCLA, along with his academically distinguished wife Marilyn, began their brave adventure toward electronic publishing, a pioneering effort meant to be closely kept in the domain of the muti-lingual scholars of antiquity themselves. This startup occurred even while the concept of ubiquitous personal computers was still a dream.
     At about the time of Undena’s beginning, I was in my mid-twenties and had worked to exhaustion as an English teacher for international students on their way to UCLA admission. I was anticipating a change of pace that would afford me a healthier way to be useful. My husband was a graduate student of Middle Eastern languages and literature at UCLA and had learned that there might be a need for some helping hands at the Buccellati’s budding enterprise. I was intrigued. Driving the short way along the coast from Westwood to their Pt. Dume residence, I little suspected that soon I would be immersed in a new world.
     This other world would represent, in fact, an old world. How had I arrived at a crossroads of people and places with strange-sounding names that somehow seemed vaguely familiar, as if I myself had once been studying such things? (This is a topic to be explored at another time.) Certainly, my husband was a linguist and had traveled the world, but I did not share his cosmopolitan background. I spoke only American English and had never left the US, except once to visit Tijuana.
     On that first visit to the house on the hill, I was a wide-eyed guest. After living in the noisy, crowded environs of urban LA, I took in the beautiful, peaceful grounds and surroundings as if drinking a refreshing glass of pure water. Everything about the Buccellati home was welcoming—a spacious, ranch-style California mood mixed with warm Italian colors and flavors that suited the vibrant owners to a T. Meanwhile, Giorgio, his casual name used by the locals, was quick to show me around and begin describing the demands of the day. I was flying in heaven while simultaneously grounded, ready to obediently serve. This I attribute primarily to the stage set by the learned residents, who would bring in all sorts of characters to join their play. I’ve ever admired how Giorgio and Marilyn can host friends from around the world, be eminently entertaining, and still keep apace their busy schedules with little down time. They are able to completely enjoy life while doing what others might call “work.” And thus, I began.
     Fifty years ago, when this scene took place, is a “fer ways back,” but some things never leave your mind even if a few sequences might turn fuzzy. At the outset of my new publishing adventure, Giorgio related a variety of menial tasks to be completed on my couple days a week. There were trips to the post office (no Internet, remember), organizing the freshly printed monographs into their assigned places in the homestead garage, assisting in responding to customers, and setting up a mini-production line in the humble cottage-industry cum illustrious global publishing outfit. I helped where I could, not the least to gather together some victuals with Marilyn in the kitchen to keep the hungry crew afloat. Marilyn was savvy in fast methods of food preparation with a taste more akin to elite dining on the Mediterranean than modern take out. Before your eyes, out came savory cheeses, crackers, soups, pastas, and beverages enough to keep the various workers tanked up for the next umpteen hours of labor over the emerging books. Of course, all the while we talked and laughed and told stories of remarkable journeys of our past, some verging on the mythological.
     Next came the good part. After I had proved worthy doing small chores, I was allowed a hand at typesetting the actual books. And I do mean “hand.” We used a Selectric typewriter amended with a gadget that pressed a plastic “typit” against the ribbon (during a stationary keystroke) to add an extra character to a letter. Type a letter, pick up the typit, position the device, type a mark, put down the typit, continue typing, up and down—and there were countless marks to make. Each diacritic or accent was needed for some ancient language such as Akkadian or Sumerian in its transliterated form. Fortunately, I did not have to type the wedge-shapes of cuneiform, which were added by other means to the text as illustrations.
     I began with the Namburbi texts. These are fantastic Babylonian incantations used to “avert or ‘undo’ portended evil,” according to an Undena description. I was mesmerized by the English part of the text and hardly noticed the long, slow process of setting down the dense copy with perfection on a page soon to be printed and sent to far corners of the Earth. Here I will add a word in memoriam to my late father, who wisely bought me a portable electric typewriter in my eighth grade (a major purchase in those days) and said it would help me take care of myself. Glory be.
     I don’t know how many manuscripts I typed at Undena, but I would have gone on forever had not the vicissitudes of life intervened. Just the same, those halcyon days in Malibu are close to my heart. It wasn’t just about the publishing, mind you. The cultural climate of the whole was a thing unto itself, an egalitarian spirit upon the landscape that deserves remembering. And there was more. A dear colleague, wife of another UCLA professor, took up the gauntlet and spelled me at that lone typewriter. We were now a manufacturing force twice as powerful to get those singular booklets to the waiting researchers. We also took the liberty to enjoy fresh air and sunny walks on nearby trails and beach heads. Gathering up a small troupe of younger ones, Giorgio would pack some of us into his empty VW van—along with the famous Undena mascot, one personable but stubborn Goaty—to travel la caravane to a nearby nature spot where we might picnic, converse, and breathe in the day.
     The Undena of early times prospered and eventually became a larger endeavor atop another pinnacle, a modern skyscraper in fashionable Westwood Village, which adjoins the grounds of UCLA. Giorgio, always a pioneer, worked with a fellow publishing entrepreneur in the related field of classical studies to produce a professionally typeset version of the Selectric output. The creative genius of the project was a 4-font Wang printer that filled an entire room. It was a monstrous thing compared with the sleek versions of today. Our small but plucky crew now added new skills such as daily commuting, DOS programming, and managing multiple workers and clients as we took on typesetting jobs for others to help underwrite costs of the growing company.
     It became clear after a season that Undena was better suited as a smaller, specialized version of publishing, and the Westwood digs morphed into a cozy office (still on the top floor) in a modest section of the San Fernando Valley ten miles over the hill to the north and close to where some of the workers lived. The work space allowed us to be near our families and concentrate on the expanding list of completed volumes and new series. We were well up to the task, but even that stage of Undena would exist but a relatively brief period of time. The publishing course of the company was destined to follow closely primarily the steps of the Buccellati family, which would find them back in Europe and also at a new site digging in Syria. We all know how the events of world history have affected those attempts, but the intrepid vision of the Undena founders has continued to develop, traveling through electronic tributaries to this day and refusing to be quelled.