Indie
LitKicks Reviews: January 2007
by Levi Asher on Thursday, February 1, 2007 07:55 pmOkay, so I'm way way way behind on all the review copies various nice people have been sending me. Things are getting out of control here in LitKicks-land, and even though I remember writing a bunch of reviews just last month a new pile of novels, memoirs and chapbooks has arrived, and I'm doing my best. If you've sent me a good book and I don't get to you this time, I will hopefully be posting another set of reviews very soon.
Anyway, since I am clearly drowning in review copies, here are just a few rules for anybody who is thinking of sending me something:
1) No audio CD's please. I don't review audio CD's. This place is about books.
2) Please send only one of your books. Not two. Not fourteen. How should you decide which to send? Send the best one. Doesn't take a genius.
3) I am happy to review either self-published, small press or large publisher titles. But it must be published. Please do not send me a stack of 8.5 x 11 paper, because I will not review it.
4) Please include the URL where readers can buy the book, so I can include it in the review. If you don't have the book for sale online, that can only mean you're not serious about trying to sell it, in which case I'd rather not review it.
5) No, I don't read every word of every book I review here. I have a day job, you know. I read the ones I like best, and I take a long hard look at the rest.
With that said, let's take it away with this month's batch.
1. Street Love by Walter Dean Myers
Jersey City poet and young-adult author Walter Dean Myers has a smooth, colorful style, and Street Love presents an appealing verse-dialogue collage of urban characters dealing with hard issues. The characters have names like Junice and Sledge and Damien, and the poems have titles like Junice and Damien, Kevin and Damien, Junice in the Supermarket and Junice with Damien and Melissa on the Bus to Memphis. At its best, this is hip-hop poetry, stirring and direct:
I have to open my sister's mouth
And fill it with thoughts as hard
As stones she can practice her lines
She needs to speek clearly
As she lies
"Melissa" I will say
"Miss Ruby will run the house
She'll make fried chicken and okra
Hamburger and broccoli
And when her mental hat flies
Off down some weird and wondrous
Street she will not chase it
Will not ramble as she talks
Or twist fragments of the past
Into a hopeless stew of
Neverwasness.
It's not always that good, and the street-chic imagery is occasionally overbaked -- but then, it is being marketed as a young adult book. I think this ultimately romantic book of story poems could make a great Valentine's day present for a grown-up too.
2. The Cat's Got Nothing On Me: How I Lived More Than Nine Lives by Conrad Boilard (as told to Sam Costello).
Truly, the cat has nothing on this spirited old codger, who is remembered by a delightful self-published book (and a classy website). Conrad Boilard served in the Army Air Force during World War II, raised a loving family back home, and battled lymphoma and other diseases as an older man. He has a great attitude, and this book truly serves to contain the spirit of a likable man. What better reason is there for a book to exist?
3. A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum
A Day of Small Beginnings takes place in a Jewish shtetl in 1905, where the spirit of a recently dead elderly woman is suddenly called up from the grave to help a young teenager in a horrible situation. This novel is very much in the tradition of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the gorgeous cover art evokes Marc Chagall, a la Fiddler on the Roof. I admire the craftwork, but I can't get past the I. B. Singer/Sholom Aleichem connection. I've got at least two Singer books on my next-to-read pile, and how can I be convinced that a modern-day homage will provide me something the original won't? If you've already been through the old masters, though, you will probably enjoy this book.
4. City Woman by Linda Lerner
Linda Lerner, who I've seen and heard at many New York/East Village poetry readings, writes intense neo-Beat poetry with a driving urban vibe. Here, she confronts a hobo in front of a White Castle:
Damn you! your silence is asking too much ...
If I could make someone
rise up from his ashes
unmyth the phoenix
If I could do it & believe it is happening
I could give you the things that
hurt too much for words ...
Linda Lerner is an expert poet, and this is one of her better books.
5. You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I am by Tao Lin
What more can I say about Tao Lin, who I've written about before? There is only one word to describe his style, and it's French: faux-naif. He pulls it off very well, and sometimes he's very funny:
I'd like to see a movie and kill someone
I need to check my email then kill myself
I know that good news will arrive only by email
I'd like to see a movie with you then go home and check my email
can we kill someone in a supermarket
That's my kind of poetry.
6. Nam Au Go Go by John Akins
Okay, well, John Akins broke my second rule; he sent me two books. One is Nam Au Go Go, a raw prose account of his years as a Marine in Vietnam. The other is On The Way To Khe Sanh, which revisits the same territory in blank verse.
I like the way the two formats work together, the poems much more sardonic than the prose, which often takes off into tough-guy storytelling:
As I kneel filling the first canteen, a whoosh thuds into the bank just to my left. It's a dude, enemy, 92 mm mortar round. The barrage erupts up the slope and the 82 mortar rounds and 152 artillery roundswalk along our position. I light up in terror. Do I stay put or run for my hole?
Between the verse and the prose, a disturbing undertone of anger and anomie animates the author's true-life tale, which rings with poignant truth.
Anyway, since I am clearly drowning in review copies, here are just a few rules for anybody who is thinking of sending me something:
1) No audio CD's please. I don't review audio CD's. This place is about books.
2) Please send only one of your books. Not two. Not fourteen. How should you decide which to send? Send the best one. Doesn't take a genius.
3) I am happy to review either self-published, small press or large publisher titles. But it must be published. Please do not send me a stack of 8.5 x 11 paper, because I will not review it.
4) Please include the URL where readers can buy the book, so I can include it in the review. If you don't have the book for sale online, that can only mean you're not serious about trying to sell it, in which case I'd rather not review it.
5) No, I don't read every word of every book I review here. I have a day job, you know. I read the ones I like best, and I take a long hard look at the rest.
With that said, let's take it away with this month's batch.
1. Street Love by Walter Dean Myers
Jersey City poet and young-adult author Walter Dean Myers has a smooth, colorful style, and Street Love presents an appealing verse-dialogue collage of urban characters dealing with hard issues. The characters have names like Junice and Sledge and Damien, and the poems have titles like Junice and Damien, Kevin and Damien, Junice in the Supermarket and Junice with Damien and Melissa on the Bus to Memphis. At its best, this is hip-hop poetry, stirring and direct:
I have to open my sister's mouth
And fill it with thoughts as hard
As stones she can practice her lines
She needs to speek clearly
As she lies
"Melissa" I will say
"Miss Ruby will run the house
She'll make fried chicken and okra
Hamburger and broccoli
And when her mental hat flies
Off down some weird and wondrous
Street she will not chase it
Will not ramble as she talks
Or twist fragments of the past
Into a hopeless stew of
Neverwasness.
It's not always that good, and the street-chic imagery is occasionally overbaked -- but then, it is being marketed as a young adult book. I think this ultimately romantic book of story poems could make a great Valentine's day present for a grown-up too.
2. The Cat's Got Nothing On Me: How I Lived More Than Nine Lives by Conrad Boilard (as told to Sam Costello).
Truly, the cat has nothing on this spirited old codger, who is remembered by a delightful self-published book (and a classy website). Conrad Boilard served in the Army Air Force during World War II, raised a loving family back home, and battled lymphoma and other diseases as an older man. He has a great attitude, and this book truly serves to contain the spirit of a likable man. What better reason is there for a book to exist?
3. A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum
A Day of Small Beginnings takes place in a Jewish shtetl in 1905, where the spirit of a recently dead elderly woman is suddenly called up from the grave to help a young teenager in a horrible situation. This novel is very much in the tradition of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the gorgeous cover art evokes Marc Chagall, a la Fiddler on the Roof. I admire the craftwork, but I can't get past the I. B. Singer/Sholom Aleichem connection. I've got at least two Singer books on my next-to-read pile, and how can I be convinced that a modern-day homage will provide me something the original won't? If you've already been through the old masters, though, you will probably enjoy this book.
4. City Woman by Linda Lerner
Linda Lerner, who I've seen and heard at many New York/East Village poetry readings, writes intense neo-Beat poetry with a driving urban vibe. Here, she confronts a hobo in front of a White Castle:
Damn you! your silence is asking too much ...
If I could make someone
rise up from his ashes
unmyth the phoenix
If I could do it & believe it is happening
I could give you the things that
hurt too much for words ...
Linda Lerner is an expert poet, and this is one of her better books.
5. You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I am by Tao Lin
What more can I say about Tao Lin, who I've written about before? There is only one word to describe his style, and it's French: faux-naif. He pulls it off very well, and sometimes he's very funny:
I'd like to see a movie and kill someone
I need to check my email then kill myself
I know that good news will arrive only by email
I'd like to see a movie with you then go home and check my email
can we kill someone in a supermarket
That's my kind of poetry.
6. Nam Au Go Go by John Akins
Okay, well, John Akins broke my second rule; he sent me two books. One is Nam Au Go Go, a raw prose account of his years as a Marine in Vietnam. The other is On The Way To Khe Sanh, which revisits the same territory in blank verse.
I like the way the two formats work together, the poems much more sardonic than the prose, which often takes off into tough-guy storytelling:
As I kneel filling the first canteen, a whoosh thuds into the bank just to my left. It's a dude, enemy, 92 mm mortar round. The barrage erupts up the slope and the 82 mortar rounds and 152 artillery roundswalk along our position. I light up in terror. Do I stay put or run for my hole?
Between the verse and the prose, a disturbing undertone of anger and anomie animates the author's true-life tale, which rings with poignant truth.
Books: Too Damn Expensive
by Levi Asher on Monday, January 29, 2007 07:41 pmDid you hear that the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah CD costs $28? But that's only during the first year, after which the CD will be re-issued in a less expensive package for $15.95.
No, you didn't hear that, because the music industry isn't dumb enough to sabotage their profits by making audiences wait a year to buy new releases (that's right, even the music industry isn't that dumb). The book publishing industry, on the other hand, is that dumb.
I wrote last year in these pages that two-tier book pricing has got to go. Many people agreed with me that the common practice of publishing new books in expensive hardcover editions for the first year is archaic and elitist as well as an obvious buzz-kill for curious potential readers. But some people close to the industry explained to me why we are stuck with two-tier pricing despite the system's obvious flaws: publishers are addicted to the sugar rush of automatic library and book club sales, and they won't sacrifice the hardcover profit margin even if it means missing the chance to connect a great new book with an eager buying audience.
I think the "addiction theory" explains a lot, and I wonder if it's time for an intervention. For now, let me just state an obvious fact as simply as I can: $28 for a book is absolutely ridiculous. We live in an age where hit singles cost $.99 and new albums cost $9.99. Publishers wish that literary authors could be as popular as top bands, but they price their best talents out of that market.
I see it happen over and over: promising new writers who should be marketed directly to collegiate and alternative audiences are instead forced to cool their heels on the "rich people shelves" for a full year (the year in which the book might be getting great reviews and endorsements). By the time the paperback comes out, nobody remembers that it got great reviews. It really doesn't take a genius to see that this system doesn't work for either readers or writers, and it doesn't seem to work very well for publishers either.
Here's the good news: many publishers do get it, and we're seeing more and more literary paperback originals (like Scarlett Thomas's compelling The End of Mr. Y, which I am enjoying now). Some books are also being published in simultaneous hardcover/paperback arrangements (like Jason Shinder's Howl: The Poem that Changed America), a smart move that allows the best of both formats: sturdy premium editions for libraries and collectors and affordable editions for eager readers, both available at the same time. This is a solution that works.
But change isn't coming fast enough. Maybe it's the writers themselves who need to speak up and request affordable pricing (but this won't work for many of the first novelists who would most benefit from inexpensive books, because they are least likely to demand control over packaging and pricing). I hope more and more writers will speak up about this, and maybe some bloggers like me can make some noise about the issue and make a difference too.
No, you didn't hear that, because the music industry isn't dumb enough to sabotage their profits by making audiences wait a year to buy new releases (that's right, even the music industry isn't that dumb). The book publishing industry, on the other hand, is that dumb.
I wrote last year in these pages that two-tier book pricing has got to go. Many people agreed with me that the common practice of publishing new books in expensive hardcover editions for the first year is archaic and elitist as well as an obvious buzz-kill for curious potential readers. But some people close to the industry explained to me why we are stuck with two-tier pricing despite the system's obvious flaws: publishers are addicted to the sugar rush of automatic library and book club sales, and they won't sacrifice the hardcover profit margin even if it means missing the chance to connect a great new book with an eager buying audience.
I think the "addiction theory" explains a lot, and I wonder if it's time for an intervention. For now, let me just state an obvious fact as simply as I can: $28 for a book is absolutely ridiculous. We live in an age where hit singles cost $.99 and new albums cost $9.99. Publishers wish that literary authors could be as popular as top bands, but they price their best talents out of that market.
I see it happen over and over: promising new writers who should be marketed directly to collegiate and alternative audiences are instead forced to cool their heels on the "rich people shelves" for a full year (the year in which the book might be getting great reviews and endorsements). By the time the paperback comes out, nobody remembers that it got great reviews. It really doesn't take a genius to see that this system doesn't work for either readers or writers, and it doesn't seem to work very well for publishers either.
Here's the good news: many publishers do get it, and we're seeing more and more literary paperback originals (like Scarlett Thomas's compelling The End of Mr. Y, which I am enjoying now). Some books are also being published in simultaneous hardcover/paperback arrangements (like Jason Shinder's Howl: The Poem that Changed America), a smart move that allows the best of both formats: sturdy premium editions for libraries and collectors and affordable editions for eager readers, both available at the same time. This is a solution that works.
But change isn't coming fast enough. Maybe it's the writers themselves who need to speak up and request affordable pricing (but this won't work for many of the first novelists who would most benefit from inexpensive books, because they are least likely to demand control over packaging and pricing). I hope more and more writers will speak up about this, and maybe some bloggers like me can make some noise about the issue and make a difference too.
The Bankrupting of Publishers Group West
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 09:16 pmIt was the summer of 2003, the nadir (for me) of the post 9/11 economic crash in New York City, and I was making ends meet by teaching web development classes at a night school on Long Island. As I walked to the train, my boss called. "Don't bother coming in tonight," he said. "We're having a little problem."
It took days for me to get the truth about what exactly the problem was: the school was going out of business. What about the $1400 paycheck they owed me? After a few more days, the truth that I wasn't going to ever get paid sank in. I was now a creditor of a corporation that had filed for Chapter 11 protection, which basically means I'd worked for free the last four weeks and there was nothing I could do about it. The fact that I was depending on this money to pay overdue bills didn't mean a thing.
I managed to get by, but it was a hell of a rough patch, and I can only imagine how numerous large, medium-size and (especially) small independent publishers are reacting to the news of the impending bankruptcy of Advanced Marketing Services (AMS), the parent company of the long-running and well-managed major book distribution company Publishers Group West.
The result of this bankruptcy is that the publishers who use PGW's distribution service are not going to get paid for books that have already been sold. The publishers may also lose access to the inventory of unsold books in PGW's possession. Since Publishers Group West was pretty much the Starbucks of the independent book distribution economy, this is no minor problem for publishers who were living on the fringes of financial survival (and, given the nature of the publishing business, this describes many of them).
What's most aggravating is that Publishers Group West was not failing. They were taken down by their incompetently run parent company, AMS, despite the fact that they were a profitable operation. AMS chopped the legs right off their cash cow, and one can only hope the corporate crooks (yes, crooks, see links below) will face criminal charges. Is this the Enron of the bookselling industry? Yes, in fact, it is, and we may lose some of our most beloved small publishers as a result.
For the real scoops, here are two updates from Ed Champion and Galley Cat, who've been dogging the story the way good reporters do. I'm very eager to continue to learn more about how a fuck-up like this can happen to a profitable company.
It took days for me to get the truth about what exactly the problem was: the school was going out of business. What about the $1400 paycheck they owed me? After a few more days, the truth that I wasn't going to ever get paid sank in. I was now a creditor of a corporation that had filed for Chapter 11 protection, which basically means I'd worked for free the last four weeks and there was nothing I could do about it. The fact that I was depending on this money to pay overdue bills didn't mean a thing.
I managed to get by, but it was a hell of a rough patch, and I can only imagine how numerous large, medium-size and (especially) small independent publishers are reacting to the news of the impending bankruptcy of Advanced Marketing Services (AMS), the parent company of the long-running and well-managed major book distribution company Publishers Group West.
The result of this bankruptcy is that the publishers who use PGW's distribution service are not going to get paid for books that have already been sold. The publishers may also lose access to the inventory of unsold books in PGW's possession. Since Publishers Group West was pretty much the Starbucks of the independent book distribution economy, this is no minor problem for publishers who were living on the fringes of financial survival (and, given the nature of the publishing business, this describes many of them).
What's most aggravating is that Publishers Group West was not failing. They were taken down by their incompetently run parent company, AMS, despite the fact that they were a profitable operation. AMS chopped the legs right off their cash cow, and one can only hope the corporate crooks (yes, crooks, see links below) will face criminal charges. Is this the Enron of the bookselling industry? Yes, in fact, it is, and we may lose some of our most beloved small publishers as a result.
For the real scoops, here are two updates from Ed Champion and Galley Cat, who've been dogging the story the way good reporters do. I'm very eager to continue to learn more about how a fuck-up like this can happen to a profitable company.
More LitKicks Reviews: December 2006
by Levi Asher on Thursday, December 7, 2006 09:49 pmHere's more good stuff you might enjoy:
Deep Cleveland
by Levi Asher on Monday, July 24, 2006 07:43 pm
A serious poetry chapbook publisher is a rare thing, and that's why I'm so impressed with Deep Cleveland, a long-running street operation emanating from the famously gritty Northeast Ohio home of Stiv Bators, Hart Crane and, of course, d. a. levy, who Deep Cleveland publisher Mark Kuhar dedicates all his work to.
d. a. levy killed himself in 1968. A Cleveland poet named Russell Salamon was levy's close friend at the time. Salamon is still writing, and his Woodsmoke and Green Tea is a delightful surprise. Salamon has a confident voice that combines a Frostian attention to the details of nature with a Brautigan-esque taste for surreal fantasy. I'm not even sure why I find verses like this so compelling:
She met him at the intersection
of the front door and water falling
from a great height. He entered
the pool of cold meltwater. Fish
slicked around his knees
Later, the poem ends:
they selected a moist fern
under a canopy of redwood
trees, and throbbed, space
in space, in morning fog.
Andrew Lundwall is another poet published by Deep Cleveland. I met Andrew when we performed together at a reading years ago and I know him to be an intensely serious young devotee of surrealist and Dada poetry. His new Klang is a smart and enigmatic work that boldly puts forth lines like this:
so sink that oyster meat with a handful of beer
Lundwall's work reminds me of the artist Matthew Barney; it's enthusiastically and extravagantly anti-logical. I like his poems best when he allows a bit of music to creep in, though, as in this verse from Obstacle Course:
debatable tiara
sundown
funny dollars
filling the slots
crazy-eyed some
funky ballot
income
in a whiskey sling
spilling fuel sideways
playing pachinko casino
So far I'm two-for-two with the Deep Cleveland poets, and Mark Kuhar's own e40th and Pain makes it a sweep. Mark Kuhar has been a frequent contributor to LitKicks in the past, and appeared in our Action Poetry anthology. Kuhar's poems are always filled with music, a loud beatnik-inspired hard jazz, and they are filled with passion as well. Witness:
welcome to cleveland (now leave)
yr vast pools of ethnic color & imagination,
intricate architecture, neon dirty boulevards,
cheeseball neighborhoods, shady characters, heavy cuisine, thick lake consciousness,
tangle of bridges, winding shine of river,
ore freighters & sailboars, motorcycles, muscle cars,
rust & rivets, tarnished bronze & dusty pearl,
storm clouds, brick roads, factory smoke & hearth fire,
acid rain, sweat & sex, tattoos & gasoline,
yr soundtrack of rock & roll, polka, classical symphonies
& garage band euphoria (wrapped up in an inferiority
complex a mile wide) welcome to cleveland (now leave)
I encourage you to check out the Deep Cleveland catalog, which you'll find here.
Does a Novel Need a Road Map?
by Levi Asher on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 02:23 pmI enjoy reviewing indie/small press publications here on LitKicks, and when I do I never hesitate to critique the packaging, the marketing and the graphic design as well as the writing. I have no patience for badly published books, and in our age of easily affordable high-quality printing, design and promotional resources, I believe poverty or "indie status" is no excuse for sloppy work.
One set of reviews I put up two weeks ago was probably crankier than usual, as I complained that three out of five books were virtually dead on arrival due to bad packaging decisions: an intriguing book about a soldier in Vietnam that couldn't decide whether to bill itself as memoir or fiction, a comic novel about a deep-country hillbilly musician with a computer-generated cover illustration that looked anything but deep-country, and an well-written but obscure-looking novel called Stet that failed to provide any explanatory text -- no back cover summary, no review excerpts, nothing -- as to what the book contained. I quickly concluded that nobody will read this book, since the author is not a known name and the book package presents no compelling reason to dive in, and that was the end of my review.
I then received an email from James Chapman, the author of Stet, who was vexed at my rude dismissal. He pointed out that the book's publisher, Fugue State Press, had included a press release with my review copy, and I responded that I never read press releases when I review a book, since I'd rather see a book the way I would if I picked it up on a bookstore shelf. Why, I asked Chapman, would anybody publish a novel by a new author and fail to provide any text on the back cover to let me know what the novel contains? What would possibly motivate me to devote many hours of my life to reading a book when I have no idea what reward awaits me inside?
Here's what Chapman wrote back:
"A book is the artifact of a very special experience, and it should absolutely not contain any crap on it, no advertising language, no blurb language, no language that goes against the language of the book, which is sacrosanct. If I ran a church, I would advertise it in the newspaper, but I wouldn't put a neon ad for the church right on the altar."
I appreciate the author's response, but I still feel strongly that back cover blurbs and review excerpts are essential to the "selection process" every reader goes through when looking at a new book. A publisher who presents a blank back cover on a novel by an unknown author, in my opinion, must not be thinking about how potential readers are going to look at this novel. The purist approach Chapman describes sounds admirable, but I don't think it translates into reality. I am simply not going to devote my time to reading a book without some idea why I should read it. A novel needs a road map, and to fail to provide some explanatory text when publishing a new author is, in my opinion, a fatal mistake.
What do you think? When you consider reading a book by a new or unknown author, how much influence do the back cover blurbs and frontpaper promos have on your decision to read or not to read?
One set of reviews I put up two weeks ago was probably crankier than usual, as I complained that three out of five books were virtually dead on arrival due to bad packaging decisions: an intriguing book about a soldier in Vietnam that couldn't decide whether to bill itself as memoir or fiction, a comic novel about a deep-country hillbilly musician with a computer-generated cover illustration that looked anything but deep-country, and an well-written but obscure-looking novel called Stet that failed to provide any explanatory text -- no back cover summary, no review excerpts, nothing -- as to what the book contained. I quickly concluded that nobody will read this book, since the author is not a known name and the book package presents no compelling reason to dive in, and that was the end of my review.
I then received an email from James Chapman, the author of Stet, who was vexed at my rude dismissal. He pointed out that the book's publisher, Fugue State Press, had included a press release with my review copy, and I responded that I never read press releases when I review a book, since I'd rather see a book the way I would if I picked it up on a bookstore shelf. Why, I asked Chapman, would anybody publish a novel by a new author and fail to provide any text on the back cover to let me know what the novel contains? What would possibly motivate me to devote many hours of my life to reading a book when I have no idea what reward awaits me inside?
Here's what Chapman wrote back:
"A book is the artifact of a very special experience, and it should absolutely not contain any crap on it, no advertising language, no blurb language, no language that goes against the language of the book, which is sacrosanct. If I ran a church, I would advertise it in the newspaper, but I wouldn't put a neon ad for the church right on the altar."
I appreciate the author's response, but I still feel strongly that back cover blurbs and review excerpts are essential to the "selection process" every reader goes through when looking at a new book. A publisher who presents a blank back cover on a novel by an unknown author, in my opinion, must not be thinking about how potential readers are going to look at this novel. The purist approach Chapman describes sounds admirable, but I don't think it translates into reality. I am simply not going to devote my time to reading a book without some idea why I should read it. A novel needs a road map, and to fail to provide some explanatory text when publishing a new author is, in my opinion, a fatal mistake.
What do you think? When you consider reading a book by a new or unknown author, how much influence do the back cover blurbs and frontpaper promos have on your decision to read or not to read?
Hugh Fox: Way, Way Off The Road
by Doug Holder on Thursday, June 1, 2006 10:37 am
Note: Doug Holder is the founder of Ibbetson Press and the publisher of "Way, Way Off The Road ..." by Hugh Fox, edited by S.R. Glines.
When you whisper "small press" in the ears of many 60's era poets and publishers, one of the first responses you will get is "Hugh Fox." Fox was a founding board member of the Pushcart Prize, a publisher of a well-regarded avant-garde literary magazine Ghost Dance founder of the seminal organization for little magazines and small presses COSMEP, a reviewer of thousand of chapbooks, magazines and books, and the author of the first critical study of Charles Bukowski. In his memoir of the small press movement, Way, Way off the Road, Fox quotes Charles Plymell, a City Lights-published jazz poet and the first printer of ZAP Comics:
"... the generation that came after the Beats, was overpowered by the Beats themselves. All that media hype. My god, the media fell in love with them. They were practically rock stars. And the post-Beats, the Hippie-Yippies, whatever you want to call them, were lost in the Beat's shadow. They were and still are invisible!"
Plymell defined the group of poets Fox feels he was part of. Fox was solidly in his 30's, a nerdy academic, equipped with a Ph.D and a foundation grant, when he picked up a copy of Crucifix in a Death Hand by the "dirty old man" of poetry Charles Bukowski. Fox was thrilled by the Buk's use of language and felt a new door was opened for him outside the stagnant air of the academy. Fox wound up doing a critical study of the man. Here is an account of his first meeting with Bukowski:
"So I'd gone over and found him in this motel-hotel place in Hollywood. You know, the usual tattered, potted palms out in front, everything kind of run down."
Fox told Bukowski that he wanted to do a critical study of his work. Fox was sick of Eliot and Pound, and wanted a taste of the wild side. Here is Bukowski's response according to Fox:
"... Nothing wrong with Eliot and Pound, they're some of my best friends, he answered, got up and started emptying the wall of bookcases that contained all of his printed work, all the books, all the magazines. Went into a closet and started taking out suitcases and throwing the books and mags inside."
Bukowski said: "Ok I can trust you. I'm gonna give you the whole schmear. And if you find any duplicates, keep them."
Fox wound up writing the first critical study of the man, as well as studies of A. D. Winans and Lyn Lifshin, and began his life as a wandering-Jewish scribe, recording the comings, goings, happenings and personalities in the small press for the last 40 years.
Fox recounts his years at COSMEP, a seminal press organization, that he was a founding board member of, and his years of publishing the avant-garde lit mag Ghost Dance. Fox, who admits he has a very manic side, has written literally thousands of reviews of poetry books, chaps, and small press publications, as well has edited the groundbreaking anthology The Living Underground.
Way, Way Off The Road ... is not a straight narrative. It reads the way Fox talks. It is written in a rapid fire stream of consciousness style, so that often the reader has to catch his or her breath. His description of fellow writers is often inspired. Here is a portrait of a down-at-the-heels Richard Nason, a movie critic for TIME magazine:
"And when he'd come into the office out of the Captain Midnight dark, you always smelled the booze on him. Pickled full time. Fedora. Sports jacket. Topcoat. Remnants of former glory. Only when he pulled his topcoat off there would be five pens in the front pockets of his sports coat, all of them uncapped, leaking into the coat itself, another uncapped pen in his shirt pocket also leaking, so it looked like he had been harpooned and was bleeding blue blood.'"
br /> Fox has an inquisitive, fascinating, and hungry mind, and he covers a wide range of subjects from drug-induced writing, ancient Indian cultures, men's sexual prowess and perversions, you name it. In the books there are countless anecdotes about personages from the world of the small press like Harry Smith, Len Fulton, Richard Kostelantz, Allen Ginsberg, "The Boston Underground," Bill Costley, Sam Cornish , Bill Blatty and Donald Hall. Fox has an original take on them all.
In ways Fox's literary history reminds me of Howard Zinn's writing. He gives you a view of the outsider, and how the outsider views things. This is a history you won't find in the classrooms, although it should be there. Fox makes darkness visible, with this iconoclastic, zany and compelling memoir.
Indie Reviews: April 2006
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 11:50 amSlushpile recently presented a sporting rant that mocks annoying people who self-publish and then get way too excited about themselves. It's a good article, though it leads to the depressing conclusion that the future of literature remains in the hands of the large robotic corporations that occasionally bestow the magic word "published" upon a tiny selection of writers. Here at LitKicks, we've always supported the little guys in publishing, and we're happy to profile worthwhile new small press books, self-published books and poetry chapbooks. If you've got an independently published book you'd like us to review, we'll take a look. Here are a few we checked out last month:
The Garbageman and the Prostitute by Zack Wentz is a thrill ride down transgression alley, and if you go for this kind of thing (fragmented violent narratives with creepy psychological undertones) this book will probably please you. Wentz gets high marks for energy and consistency, because every sentence seems constructed for mind-numbing impact, and the excellent artwork (here's a sample, an animated version of the cover) neatly captures the mood. I did have trouble finding a clear plot in this book, though. I'm not sure if the plot is there or not, but I never found it. The Garbageman and the Prostitute is published by Chiasmus Press, and boasts a surprising array of endorsements from the likes of William Vollmann, Steve Aylett and Michael Hemmingson. The promo materials compare Zack Wentz to Richard Brautigan, Kathy Acker, Charles Bukowski, P. K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon. I see Acker and Pynchon here, but I don't see the simple, clear communication of Brautigan or Bukowski.
J Milligan's Jackfish has a great setup. A humanoid creature of some kind emerges from the ocean near Coney Island in Brooklyn, and gasps painfully to accustom himself to breathing air. Apparently this guy -- the Jackfish of the title -- is more comfortable extracting oxygen with his gills, which is mainly because he lives in the mystical underwater land of Atlantis. He's on some kind of noirish secret mission, and the whole thing reads kind of like City of Glass meets Aquaman, which is not a bad thing at all. In the end, it's not the suspense but rather the well-placed details (like the deep, jarring pain the fish-guy feels when forced to breathe air) that put this story over. Jackfish is published by Soho Press, a fairly large New York-based independent publisher that hasn't been swallowed up by a corporation yet, at least not as far as I know.
Not Having an Idea is a slim and expressive book of poems by Californian poet Donna Kuhn. Her work has a visual and visceral sense, marrying the random psychological splices of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to a distinctly feminine aesthetic:
particles of goat head fencing
cardinal of slouched fencing eyehole
smear a plot of murder i don't understand
fencing a platinum blong 4-plex
petty venders smoke up
i bend for your sandpapers
antlered sadness
Kuhn's book is a Lulu production, and so is Dutch-booked by Warren Weappa, a longtime friend of LitKicks. This is an ambitious and openly disorganized novel about a hapless sad-sack stuck in the ambiguities of his own mind, The best example I can give of this book's sensibility is Weappa's comically self-defeating comments to me as he sent it: "I don't want a review. I just want somebody in the world to read it." Well, Weappa is getting a review whether he wants it or not, because as I explained to him in my reply, I can't stand the responsibility of being the only person in the world to read anybody's book. The author's apparent agony about his book is very fitting, because the main character -- like the author, an expatriate in Asia -- suffers from the same endearing inability to seize the day. In the first two pages alone, he is referred to as "your antihero", "your valueless villian", "your working-class protaganist", "your serial loser" and "your clueless correspondent". John Kennedy Toole created a good book out of this type of self-deprecation (although, appropriately, he died before it was discovered). Reading Dutch-booked, I'm not sure whether to sympathize, laugh or yell at the author to shake it off.
Taking the Rest of the Week Off by Erik Linzbach is a humble, attractive chapbook that speaks clearly and simply, and I like it:
How you've changed
gone from the stereotype
divorce raged child
to the calm, secure
judgemental hawk,
flying high above all these
others, the rats from high school,
whom you'll eat one by one
by one, and you'll hate yourself
when they're all gone,
and no one can see your
new limitless brilliance,
no one can read your
gut check, relentless prose,
and you're once again found all alone.
Finally, it's not a book at all, but I've been meaning to point you all to Bear Parade, an online poetry exhibit designed by Gene Morgan and featuring enigmatic poet Tao Lin, the self-proclaimed Reader of Depressing Books who writes behind a mask of playful innocence and never breaks character. I like the clean presentation of this poetry exhibit, and I am looking forward to Lin's upcoming first hard copy publication, which he has promised to send me for future review.
That's it from the indie side of the street. I also have a few titles from more established publishers to review, and this will be up soon.
The Garbageman and the Prostitute by Zack Wentz is a thrill ride down transgression alley, and if you go for this kind of thing (fragmented violent narratives with creepy psychological undertones) this book will probably please you. Wentz gets high marks for energy and consistency, because every sentence seems constructed for mind-numbing impact, and the excellent artwork (here's a sample, an animated version of the cover) neatly captures the mood. I did have trouble finding a clear plot in this book, though. I'm not sure if the plot is there or not, but I never found it. The Garbageman and the Prostitute is published by Chiasmus Press, and boasts a surprising array of endorsements from the likes of William Vollmann, Steve Aylett and Michael Hemmingson. The promo materials compare Zack Wentz to Richard Brautigan, Kathy Acker, Charles Bukowski, P. K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon. I see Acker and Pynchon here, but I don't see the simple, clear communication of Brautigan or Bukowski.
J Milligan's Jackfish has a great setup. A humanoid creature of some kind emerges from the ocean near Coney Island in Brooklyn, and gasps painfully to accustom himself to breathing air. Apparently this guy -- the Jackfish of the title -- is more comfortable extracting oxygen with his gills, which is mainly because he lives in the mystical underwater land of Atlantis. He's on some kind of noirish secret mission, and the whole thing reads kind of like City of Glass meets Aquaman, which is not a bad thing at all. In the end, it's not the suspense but rather the well-placed details (like the deep, jarring pain the fish-guy feels when forced to breathe air) that put this story over. Jackfish is published by Soho Press, a fairly large New York-based independent publisher that hasn't been swallowed up by a corporation yet, at least not as far as I know.
Not Having an Idea is a slim and expressive book of poems by Californian poet Donna Kuhn. Her work has a visual and visceral sense, marrying the random psychological splices of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to a distinctly feminine aesthetic:
particles of goat head fencing
cardinal of slouched fencing eyehole
smear a plot of murder i don't understand
fencing a platinum blong 4-plex
petty venders smoke up
i bend for your sandpapers
antlered sadness
Kuhn's book is a Lulu production, and so is Dutch-booked by Warren Weappa, a longtime friend of LitKicks. This is an ambitious and openly disorganized novel about a hapless sad-sack stuck in the ambiguities of his own mind, The best example I can give of this book's sensibility is Weappa's comically self-defeating comments to me as he sent it: "I don't want a review. I just want somebody in the world to read it." Well, Weappa is getting a review whether he wants it or not, because as I explained to him in my reply, I can't stand the responsibility of being the only person in the world to read anybody's book. The author's apparent agony about his book is very fitting, because the main character -- like the author, an expatriate in Asia -- suffers from the same endearing inability to seize the day. In the first two pages alone, he is referred to as "your antihero", "your valueless villian", "your working-class protaganist", "your serial loser" and "your clueless correspondent". John Kennedy Toole created a good book out of this type of self-deprecation (although, appropriately, he died before it was discovered). Reading Dutch-booked, I'm not sure whether to sympathize, laugh or yell at the author to shake it off.
Taking the Rest of the Week Off by Erik Linzbach is a humble, attractive chapbook that speaks clearly and simply, and I like it:
How you've changed
gone from the stereotype
divorce raged child
to the calm, secure
judgemental hawk,
flying high above all these
others, the rats from high school,
whom you'll eat one by one
by one, and you'll hate yourself
when they're all gone,
and no one can see your
new limitless brilliance,
no one can read your
gut check, relentless prose,
and you're once again found all alone.
Finally, it's not a book at all, but I've been meaning to point you all to Bear Parade, an online poetry exhibit designed by Gene Morgan and featuring enigmatic poet Tao Lin, the self-proclaimed Reader of Depressing Books who writes behind a mask of playful innocence and never breaks character. I like the clean presentation of this poetry exhibit, and I am looking forward to Lin's upcoming first hard copy publication, which he has promised to send me for future review.
That's it from the indie side of the street. I also have a few titles from more established publishers to review, and this will be up soon.
Plugging
by Levi Asher on Thursday, March 9, 2006 11:59 pmThe LitKicks book Action Poetry: Literary Tribes for the Internet Age was chosen as one of five finalists for the Lulu Blooker Prize in the fiction category.
I'd like to thank the contest's esteemed judges for making this decision, and I'd also like to thank the great LitKicks writing community for making the book happen. More than anything else, I want to brag about the fact that I totally called this one, Babe-Ruth style, back in December over at Metaxu Cafe. I knew we'd at least make it to the final round, because the writing in this book is that good.
Will we go all the way? Well, some of the other finalists look pretty good, so I'm going to refrain from calling it a second time (even the Bambino knew better than to push his luck). If our book doesn't win, the book I'd most like to get beaten by is Keith Thompson's novel Gus Openshaw's Whale Killing Journal, an appealingly bizarre sendup of Moby Dick featuring a white whale with a scar in the shape of a double letter 'B' on his forehead, which his hunters believe stands for 'blubbery bastard'.
We didn't have the budget for any big whales or other special effects when we published Action Poetry in 2004, but we hope we still have a chance.
I'd like to thank the contest's esteemed judges for making this decision, and I'd also like to thank the great LitKicks writing community for making the book happen. More than anything else, I want to brag about the fact that I totally called this one, Babe-Ruth style, back in December over at Metaxu Cafe. I knew we'd at least make it to the final round, because the writing in this book is that good.
Will we go all the way? Well, some of the other finalists look pretty good, so I'm going to refrain from calling it a second time (even the Bambino knew better than to push his luck). If our book doesn't win, the book I'd most like to get beaten by is Keith Thompson's novel Gus Openshaw's Whale Killing Journal, an appealingly bizarre sendup of Moby Dick featuring a white whale with a scar in the shape of a double letter 'B' on his forehead, which his hunters believe stands for 'blubbery bastard'.
We didn't have the budget for any big whales or other special effects when we published Action Poetry in 2004, but we hope we still have a chance.
Indie Writer on Exile Island
by Levi Asher on Thursday, February 9, 2006 09:57 pmIf you're a Survivophile like me, you might have noticed that one of the new season's characters is a writer. I'm pretty sure this is a Survivor first, and so I was curious enough to look up his stats.
Turns out his name is Austin Carty, and he's the author of one self-published novel, Somewhere Beyond Here.
It's apparently the story of some kind of twisted mother-son relationship, and the opinions on the Amazon page are deeply divided. The plot sounds intriguing enough, but I'm sorry to say the cover design is a disaster. The Venetian script font and the amateurish composition all scream out "designed by my high school art teacher who has Photoshop". Other details are similarly askew. The fact that Amazon lists the publisher as unknown drives home the point: this ain't Knopf.
A few ISBN lookups reveal the book's registered publisher, Trafford Publishing, which appears to be a respectable business. Unless their staff artists designed the cover, in which case they're not.
Anyway, LitKicks officially supports the effort of Austin Carty to win Survivor: Exile Island. He's 24, looks a bit doofy, doesn't talk much, and I get the feeling he lives with his parents back home. I'm guessing his biggest literary influences are a Dave Matthews Band CD and half a Dave Eggers book. But writers have to stick together, and we stand behind Austin Carty to win the million for all of us back home. The tribe has spoken.
Turns out his name is Austin Carty, and he's the author of one self-published novel, Somewhere Beyond Here.
It's apparently the story of some kind of twisted mother-son relationship, and the opinions on the Amazon page are deeply divided. The plot sounds intriguing enough, but I'm sorry to say the cover design is a disaster. The Venetian script font and the amateurish composition all scream out "designed by my high school art teacher who has Photoshop". Other details are similarly askew. The fact that Amazon lists the publisher as unknown drives home the point: this ain't Knopf.
A few ISBN lookups reveal the book's registered publisher, Trafford Publishing, which appears to be a respectable business. Unless their staff artists designed the cover, in which case they're not.
Anyway, LitKicks officially supports the effort of Austin Carty to win Survivor: Exile Island. He's 24, looks a bit doofy, doesn't talk much, and I get the feeling he lives with his parents back home. I'm guessing his biggest literary influences are a Dave Matthews Band CD and half a Dave Eggers book. But writers have to stick together, and we stand behind Austin Carty to win the million for all of us back home. The tribe has spoken.
