Three women, fallen from grace, are going on a picnic. Three women, excluded
from favor, are running away. Three women, three separate sources of shame,
must make a decision; to fly or fall?

Blank Line Collective presents the Chicago premiere of this turbulent journey. Fridays and Saturdays Sept 24^th – Oct 16^th, 8:00pm at Lacuna Lofts, 2150 S. Canalport. For tickets call 773-325-2119 or purchase online at Brown Paper Tickets. www.Blanklinecollective.com.

Cast: Stephanie Brown, Amanda Lucas, and Melanie Sizemore

“This is the city: Los Angeles, California. I work here. I carry a badge.” –Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb), Dragnet

These are the bookshelves, in the south suburbs of Chicago. I own them. I read the books.

This long and skinny bookcase is the “command center.” A lot of the books are theology and religious studies. It was my major in college and is still my passion. Chicago-related stuff includes two books about the reign of Richard Daley the First (Boss by Mike Royko, Requiem by Len O’Connor), and one about the mayoralty of Jane Byrne (Brass by Kathleen Whalen FitzGerald, probably the best book about a Chicago politician I’ve ever read). I also have a fondness for the social justice jeremiads of Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, who has five spots in the command center. You can just barely see my South Side allegiance if you look at the top of the bookcase. The gold thing on the second shelf is a Russian Orthodox diptych icon. My grandmother emigrated from Russia, and her family was originally of that faith. The picture on the wall at left depicts various Russian Orthodox churches from Moscow and St. Petersburg.

As a true bibliophile, I have problems with overflow. Most of the overflow is here in this old wooden cabinet. Trivia alert: it originally belonged to one of the physicians who developed hyperbaric oxygen therapy back in the 1960s. He eventually gave it to my aforementioned grandmother, who was his housekeeper. Then it went to my mom, and eventually to me. Book to pay attention to, on the far left: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Best vampire novel ever. (And yes, you can definitely tell I don’t vacuum under there.)

But the cabinet was not enough for my overflow. This is why I have milk crates next to my closet. Hello, milk crates! Notable resident of the milk crates: In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I by British journalist David Yallop. Roman Catholic Church + 1970s conspiracy theories about Italian banking = total absorption. Although I must admit I’m not really sure whether or not John Paul I, who reigned for 33 days in August-September 1978 before dropping dead, was a victim of foul play. Maybe you should go find out for yourself. See what kinds of interesting things the Chicago Underground Library can turn you on to.

– Justin Sengstock

Justin Sengstock has been a Chicago Underground Library (CUL) cataloger since May, and a CUL blogger since July. He also volunteers with Call to Action, a national Catholic reform group headquartered in Roscoe Village.

It’s come to our attention that Knee-Jerk Magazine’s One-Year Anniversary is the same night as our first ever benefit, Stacks! Soul Librarian Dance Party.

This is terribly unfortunate since we’re big fans of Chicago-based publishers, digital publishing, and bringing more print into the world. Fortunately, the endlessly creative folks over at Artifice Magazine (see our previous Artifice blog entry here) have come up with a solution:

1) Preorder your Stacks! ticket now ($7 in advance). (At Brown Paper Tickets)

2) Go to the Knee-Jerk party first ($5 suggested donation) & drink free beer.

3) Bike to Stacks!

4) Put on your sexy librarian outfit in the alley.

5) Dance till 4 am.

So what’s Knee-Jerk up to on Friday?

Come celebrate Knee-Jerk’s first year of existence! And while you’re at it, help raise a little dough for its soon-to-be-released debut print issue: Readings by Knee-Jerk authors Billy Lombardo, Zoe Zolbrod & Michael Czyzniejewski. Free beer. Raffles. A chance to win dinner and a movie with Knee-Jerk’s editors. More free beer! Music. And maybe, just maybe, the long-awaited push-up contest between Steve, Jon and Casey.

8:00pm - 11:00pm
Fill-in-the-Blank Gallery
5038 N Lincoln Ave
Suggested Donation: $5 RSVP on Facebook

And us?

Chicago Underground Library is throwing a Soul Librarian Dance Party at Late Bar with DJs John Ciba (East of Edens Soul Express), Lady J (The Merge), MLE (The Merge) and JJ (Windy City Soul Club). Prizes for best ’60s/soul/mod librarian style! Bonus points for braving tweed in August! Photobooth by Glitter Guts!

9:00pm - Midnight
Late Bar
3534 West Belmont Avenue
Chicago, IL
Advance tickets $7, $10 at the door RSVP on Facebook

You can do both! We have the utmost faith in your partying abilities.

Books and booze appear to go together. And now in a potent triumvirate of power: Books and Booze, meet Benefit. And all is well with the world.

The Hideout is holding a benefit for Cook County’s Juvenile Temporary Detention Center this Friday at 9pm. And in case you haven’t heard, we also have our 1st fundraising event with loquacious libation at the Late Bar also this Friday @ 9pm, in case you’re not liquored up enough or wanna’ shake it all off with some booty bumpin’: Stacks! Soul Librarian Dance Party to Benefit Chicago Underground Library.

But first:

*Friends with Benefits*

Buy books for kids! Hideout show to benefit book drive at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center

* *

In order to celebrate the coming school year, enjoy the rest of our summer, and celebrate the passions of youth, the Hideout is hosting Friends with Benefits to buy books for the kids of JTDC. MICHAEL COLUMBIA headlines with their super-hybrid experimental prog pop; VERMA performs powerful psychedelic rock, and RUNNING will electrify your summer night. Prizes will be raffled, fortunes told, and as always, the Hideout offers fine spirits and socializing on the patio. CHANDO SOUND SYSTEM DJs a righteous Dance Party following the bands.

The Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) is the country’s largest youth detention facility, housing up to 500 children ages 10-17 from Chicago’s poorest and most underserved neighborhoods. JTDC is in the midst of a renewed effort to provide quality programming and care to these residents, including creative arts and expression. Reading programs are very popular, with kids connecting to books and stories in ways only an adolescent can.

Organized through Required Reading, an ongoing project to support reading programs at the JTDC, events are hosted periodically throughout Chicago designed to engage the artistic community in serving Chicago’s youth.

Friday, August 27, 2010

9:00pm

The Hideout
1354 W. Wabansia
Chicago, IL 60622

MICHAEL COLUMBIA (http://www.myspace.com/michaelcolumbia)
VERMA (http://www.myspace.com/vermaband)
RUNNING (http://running9586443.tripod.com/mainpage01/)

“In Daddy’s, babies mean blood and nipples are like “lit match heads.” Lindsay Hunter transgresses where others fear to tread.” —Terese Svoboda, author of Pirate Talk

Featherproof Books is ecstatic to be publishing Hunter, the writer you’ve all been waiting for. We’re excited to announce advanced copies are available for review, and Hunter is available for interviews. We’ve also got a killer launch party cooking:

Presented by featherproof books and the Quickies! Road Crew, Daddy’s Book Release Party.

August 30th, 7:30 pm
The Hideout
1354 West Wabansia, Chicago

featuring:

Lindsay Hunter
Lindsay Hunter’s Dad
Blake Butler
Amelia Gray
Aaron Burch
Mary Hamilton
Jac Jemc

Hosted by featherproofer Zach Dodson

With music from DJ Baby Sloth

$10 = Admission + Yer Own Copy of Daddy’s!

If you’ve been to Quickies!, you know: Lindsay Hunter is as sweet as pie, but she’s got one mean, dirty mouth. Watch her work it out in celebration of Daddy’s, featherproof’s fall release. She’ll be joined on stage by her Dad, whose pride will turn to horror as he hears the nastiest thoughts that Lindsay has ever thunk. Will he break down? Someone will.

This show is the last stop on the Quickies! Road Tour, and these readers have been rode hard, and put away wet. See what a real live three-day drunk looks like on stage. Out-of-Towners and featherproofers Blake Butler and Amelia Gray will be joined by Snak Pak Aaron Burch of Hobart fame as well as Mary Hamilton, Quickies! Stagecoach driver, and Jac Jemc, Rejector Collector. They come correct, and they come to wreck.

Lindsay Hunter scares people. Over the course of a young career as one of the most revered short-short fiction writers, and one of the most sought-after public readers, Hunter has freaked out audiences and readers with gorgeous stories about ugly truths. Founder of the acclaimed Quickies! Reading Series, at the Innertown Pub, she’s arguably the most talked-about writer in Chicago without even having a book on the shelves yet.

Featherproof is honored to change all that, with the release of Daddy’s (On Sale Date: September 1, 2010, $14.95, ISBN: 978-0-9825808-0-6, 65 B and W Illustrations throughout, Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West). In Daddy’s, Hunter tells stories like no one else in ways no one else can: A woman struggles to survive her boyfriend’s terror preparations. A wife finds the key to her sex life lies in her dog’s electric collar. A man is haunted by a dream, recalling a long-forgotten truth. This is the stuff of Gaitskill and Homes, the kind of stories played out in backyards and basements, where the neighbors can’t see. A rising star of a literary form whose popularity has recently exploded online. Hunter writes bold, beautiful stories that excise the sentimental from heartache. In this collection of slim southern gothics, she offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read.

The stories are visually imagined as the sort of dirty hooks you might find in the bottom of an old tackle box. The book opens sideways, as a tackle box would, revealing page after page of forgotten horrors rotting amongst the stories themselves. It’s a visual feast meant to lure the unwary.

Lindsay Hunter received her MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. She is the co-founder and co-host of Quickies!, a Chicago reading series that showcases very short prose. In 2008, Quickies! was featured in Time Out Chicago’s Best of 2008 as well as NewCity’s Top 5 New Recurring Reading Series. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Nerve, MAKE, Smokelong Quarterly, Thieves Jargon, elimae, Hobart, Night Train, Cricket Online Review, Fiction at Work, Somnambulist Quarterly, among other places. Her story “Unpreparing” was named a notable of 2008 by StorySouth. Her stories “Tuesday” and “Finding There” were listed in Wigleaf’s Top Very Short Fictions, 2009 and 2010. She received an honorable mention for Glimmer Train’s 2008 Very Short Fiction Award contest. She is currently working on a novel. Daddy’s is her first book.

Linas Jasikevicius
Publicist
Featherproof Books
linas@featherproof.com

“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation

“I didn’t meet Lindsay Hunter; so much as her fiction ran me over. ” —Three Guys One Book

“Lindsay Hunter won’t be caught lie-telling in the name of nice. The miniature stories in Daddy’s are fierce and unapologetic. When the We’s she voices say the axblade was bloody with dirt, what they mean is the neighbor’s swingset creaked and moaned next door and we heard 
a child’s voice say Never ever. When I’m looking again for my next undoing, I’ll crack open Daddy’s, and get the true news they tell us we’d be better off not hearing.” 
 —Kyle Minor, author of In the Devil’s Territory

if somebody wants to use the green background to CGI me onto a like a mountaintop or super nutty outer space landscape or something that would be totally cool with me.

Printers’ Ball has come and gone once more! The launch of our super futuristic Mobile Paper Blog saw many posts from many people, and this one seemed to capture the intent of the event and the spirit of Chicago’s independent publishers…..

And the most beautiful part of all?? If you think it, write it, spellcheck it, send it, and they still don’t print it–the Chicago Underground Library wants it anyway!!! YOU are already part of Chicago’s literary-historical conversation, and we’re going to make sure posterity knows it gosh darnit. Not only do we want your independently published work, but we need it–without it, our map of the connections between Chicago cultural and literary phenomena will remain criss-crossed by dark regions of terra incognita. Donations can be dropped off during open hours on Tuesdays from 6-9pm, and Saturdays and Sundays from 1-5pm.

-Meredith

This print -> digital announcement comes to us via Paper Blog post from our recent Science of Obscurity event! Please join us at the Printers’ Ball tonight, 6-10 at the Ludington Building, 1104 S. Wabash. There will be thousands of mags, books, zines, broadsheets, chapbooks, and media there probably isn’t a name for, all free of charge; workshops, readings, music, performance, demonstrations, MAGIC! The CUL is also proudly launching (alas, without the help of a trebuchet… that would probably really hurt) the Mobile 2.0 beta test version of Paper Blog at the Ball, so look for us and share your thoughts!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

zine (chapbook?) racks at Quimby's in Chicago

You don’t know, but it seems like everybody else does, so you don’t want to ask coz you’re afraid you’ll look like a jerk. It’s cool, we won’t tell anybody. Most of us probably don’t know either, and are just acting like we do…

Everybody kind of knows what a zine is: a little self-”published” booklet, often photocopied on 8 1/2 x 11″ paper, folded in half, and stapled, although there are lots tiny tiny zines, and bigger ones the size of a typical glossy magazine are pretty common, too. When you walk into a bookstore, though, the difference between what we think of as “zine” and what is actually displayed on the “chapbook” rack isn’t so apparent, as most chapbooks available today also fit this description…

A perfunctory online search doesn’t help much, either, mostly turning up info about the chapbook in its original form, inexpensive pocket-sized booklets popular from the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries–the cheap pop paperbacks of the pre-cheap-pop-paperback era.

Early chapbooks contained religious or political tracts, popular stories, poems, and woodblock illustrations, and could be bought cheaply from street peddlers. Most definitions of the “modern” chapbook describe it specifically as a medium for poetry, so it would appear the difference between zine and chapbook is one of content rather than of format. Chicago’s own Liz Mason of Quimby’s bookstore confirms this distinction: “I distinguish zines from chapbooks in that I just say chapbooks are the zines of the poetry world.”

This can lead to more confusion, however, since there are plenty of zines that contain poetry, poetic prose, or at least configurations of words that appear  to function together in some kind of poetic capacity…

One blogger posits that the distinction may be one of intent; that of the chapbook “is oftentimes to provide a foundation from which to build upon and eventually make a larger book of poetry or prose that could potentially entice a publishing company.” But like so many other discussions of this topic, hers–while certainly insightful and illuminating–ends with a question mark.

Maybe it’s as simple as the Seinfeldian-Newmanian equation: all chapbooks are zines, but not all zines are necessarily chapbooks… or wait… is it the other way around? Whatever the difference, there will be plenty of both for your perusal at Printers’ Ball tonight. Hope to see you there!

-Meredith

Usually when we ask you to show us your shelves, we’re referring to the ones that hold books. In the past, we’ve bent the rules to include “Show Us Your Piles” and “Show Us Your Cardboard Box.” Today, we have shelves but they contain a technology far more endangered than your dog-eared paperbacks.

Peter Anton’s greatest fear is that he will no longer be able to find a VCR for his 365 VHS tapes, lovingly numbered and illustrated with representations of the three or four movies and TV shows crammed onto each one. That’s more than 1,200 documents stored on a medium that many argue is actually more stable than its replacement, the DVD. Mr. Anton’s collection includes the classics like Superman, Mary Poppins, Anna Karenina, Lawrence of Arabia, and Funny Face; Oliver Stone epics; documentaries on the apocalypse, DNA, and Remembering Chicago; award show broadcasts; Babe, and, done in miniature beautiful watercolor, The Lion King.

These tapes are on view right now at Intuit, the museum for intuitive and outsider art. Reading through Mr. Anton’s tape collection doesn’t seem like it would locate him outside of anyone’s idea of the mainstream. What sets him apart is his role as an artist and how that’s defined by who he is, rather than the word defining him as it might if he were trying to make a go of it in the mainstream conception of the art world. Biography– his own and that of his neighbors and the city around him– figures prominently in Anton’s art. I had the opportunity to speak to him about his still unpublished book, “Almost There,” a multi-volume document of his life as a performer, organizer of amateur talent shows, and pastel portraitist at street fairs. “Sure this is my life,” he told me as we looked at the volumes, annotated with years and references to key moments on the cover, “but it’s also a history of Chicago.”

A champion of the non-professional, whether in the promotion of his own work or those around him, art is a part of everything he does and something he admires and encourages in others. Like Aaron Wickenden and Dan Rybicky who organized the exhibition, he is a documentarian, whose media happen to be pastel, ink, watercolor, colored paper and glitter. Wickenden and Rybicky’s exhibition is contextualized through photos taken of Anton at work on portraits at festivals, reproductions of photos and letters from his younger years as he tries to garner support for his talent shows, and images of his current home and studio, which are one and the same and which he shares with many many cats. The picture that emerges isn’t Peter as the eccentric outsider artist on display as Monica Westin suggests in her weirdly mixed review on the Huffington Post in which she implicates the audience in the passive exploitation of Mr. Anton and all “outsider artists” by comparing them to passengers allowing a knife fight between two transvestites to escalate for their entertainment. Her main argument seems to be that by introducing the artist and his life, personality, and relationships into the exhibit, we are left with something less than a “real” art show.

This exploitation is an old argument about outsider art, as she acknowledges, and it also points toward what I would argue is a pretty stale conception of the way art should be seen. Why does the presence of biographical detail, ephemera, and contextualizing photographs somehow make the show less viable and supposedly contribute to the denigration of Anton as an artist? Rather than produce labels with historical notes or their own subjective theories on the work like they might if they were curators in a “real” art show, Wickenden and Rybicky’s conversation with Anton’s work takes place through visuals that accomplish the same goal while reflecting the premise that visual and artistic talent can be highly effective forms of communication regardless of whether or not they manifest squarely within the definition or traditional installation format of an exhibition (or a book, for that matter.)

Peter Anton, his cats, and his VHS tapes, in art and life.

Anton is an artist and that’s never questioned in the exhibition. What Westin makes us question is why there can be only one way to be an artist; completely removed from your work and your audience, and, to borrow another term of art, at the mercy of their gaze. To me, this is a much more passive form of exploitation* than the active and celebratory presence of the artist in his work and in attendance at an exhibition. Behind every exhibition, there is always a real person who relates to his surroundings and community in a unique and personal way; for some people, and especially for Mr. Anton, these relations are the substantive element of the work itself.

Peter Anton is currently seeking a publisher for “Almost There.” If you’re looking for a highly personal, visual history of the Chicago area extending all the way to East Illinois, Indiana, then you have found your art, your craft, your history, sense of community, and your memoir of one particularly Midwestern breed of variety show, all in one convenient package, with glitter. It would be a shame if all that but the art were excluded from “real” exhibitions.

*And no, I don’t actually think this is exploitative either.

If you are familiar with the Journal of Ordinary Thought (JOT), then their infamous mantra, “Every person is a philosopher,” goes without saying.  In today’s two-dimensional world the adage holds true. From the informational thresholds of the internet and every “www” we enter into our browsers, it seems like everyone is writing.  I mean it’s clear that blogging has become a somewhat acceptable form of creative venting.  People post everything from daily meanderings to poetry collections and short stories.  The fact remains, for better or worse, the internet is lending people a peculiar voice.

But before blogging or facebooking, before we could verbify social networking tools, the Journal of Ordinary Thought was already an outlet for some of the darkest recessed voices of Chicago.  It still is today, offering a platform for those to create content that is not only true to themselves, but to city and people they know, admire, and despise.  As the internet makes it painstakingly easy for anyone to share the most mundane activities (going to grocery store for sugar! #tweet), the JOT serves as a reminder that there can be meaning and artfulness in the everyday.

Under the Neighborhood Writing Alliance, the non-profit organization based in Hyde Park, the Journal of Ordinary Thought has been a part of the Chicago literary scene for over 20 years.   The Neighborhood Writing Alliance hosts a slew of creative writing workshops in low-income neighborhoods across Chicago.  The workshops, usually held in public libraries, aim to foster creative sparks within these communities and beyond.  Residents from neighborhoods like Albany Park, Bronzeville, and Uptown, spend one day a week creating and workshopping their content, creating a dialogue between themselves and each other.

Along with the workshop leader and volunteers, they finalize their work into a theme that ultimately becomes the published Journal of Ordinary Thought.  Identities and constructs intersect through the pages of the journal, offering snapshots and glimpses of not only Chicago, but what it means to live on the fringe of society. Economy, race, familial ties, education, religion: issues that are discussed at the workshops find their way into the publication.

Like the internet, the JOT taps into a certain kind of democracy. Writers from all demographics are published in the journal every year and the members keep growing.  The journal encourages its writers to interact with one another not through keyboard and screen, but by workshops and print.  By today’s standards that is considered grassroots.  If you need a dose of the “Chicago voice,” and at the moment don’t have time to plow through Saul Bellow’s letters or Stud Terkel’s Division St. (or any other of your favorite writers who have graced this city with their penmanship), the journal is worth subscribing to!

The current journal, entitled, “Into the Banks,” is for Spring 2010.  The contributing writers were a part of the workshops from the Hall and King Branch Libraries, Alexandre Dumas Elementary School, and San Lucas Church.

- Michael Nolledo

____________

In celebration of this year’s Printers’ Ball theme, Print <3 Digital, Chicago Underground Library will release blog posts for every day of July leading up to the Ball. CUL editors, volunteers, and guest bloggers from around Chicago are working around the clock to bring you a preview of what you’ll find and who you’ll meet at the Ball. We’ll also delve into our archives of small press and independent local media for a look back at how we got here. CUL’s model borrows community-building principles from digital culture to strengthen and draw attention to local networks in print, proving that Digital <3 Print, too.

The Neighborhood Writing Alliance will be participating in this year’s Printers’ Ball so be sure to visit them and check out their publication, The Journal of Ordinary Thought.