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

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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

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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.

The answer after the jump… maybe

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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.

(more…)

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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.

(more…)

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In the United States, “socialism” or “socialist” can be a dirty word. Many people would perhaps rather admit to being a parking-ticket scofflaw, or tearing the wings off butterflies.

But not Alan Maass. In his book The Case for Socialism, published in 2004 by Chicago’s very own Haymarket Books (with an afterword by the late Howard Zinn), he proudly admits his political affiliation. And he wants you to join him.

In a slim 127-page volume (it fit easily into a patch pocket of my cargo shorts, with room to spare), Maass, a writer for the weekly Socialist Worker, pursues an ambitious agenda. He argues that capitalism has to go. It must go today.

According to Maass, not only our economy but our whole way of life is rapacious, based on the principle of winner-take-all, with only a few real winners sitting immovably at the top. The result is a kaleidoscope of destructive chain reactions for those of us farther down the food chain: declining wages, abysmal health care, famine, environmental degradation, wars.

Click here to read on.

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In addition to the Paper Thoughts and Paper Spam that was posted on our Paper Blog at the recent Science of Obscurity event, we had a Paper Discussion Thread raging as well! The subject is a real hot-button issue in the lit world: nerds.

We think so too. <3

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We received this in the Chicago Underground Library mailbox the other day and I could barely restrain myself from ripping it open (wanted to preserve the envelope) and failed miserably at keeping water off of it as I…ahem…took it into the loo with me.

Gabriel Levinson and just one of his lit-related projects, DEUSEXPAGINA, will be at the Printers’ Ball and it should be interesting to see what his “live experiment in literary quantum mechanics and wholly fabricated reviews of wholly fabricated books” should bring. Check out details here. Stay tuned for a typewritten interview with Gabriel and more about, and from, DEUSEXPAGINA.

– Thùy Ngô

Continue on for the literary quantum mechanics and my shame…

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“Dan adds the fact; I add the color.” David Facchini says with a laugh, in describing the symbiotic working relationship that he has with his brother Dan when they put together the book, Muldoon: A True Chicago Ghost Story, with their father, Rocco Facchini. On top of the fact that they are brothers, which creates a whole ‘nother layer of human dynamics, “The creative process and the learning process of how people work is different, you know. Dan works very linearly and I work outwardly.”

Dan, who co-wrote the book, explained his father’s particular aversion to using a machine to record his thoughts. “He wanted nothing to do with a tape recorder. Didn’t want to record himself talking. He couldn’t find his train of thought that way. He said that if he started writing it would start flowing.” Interesting point to ponder when you understand that this all started as an oral tradition of Rocco Facchini regaling his sons and their friends with Muldoon ghost stories, especially around Halloween.

The book was four years in the making, from 1999 to 2003. “There was a lot of road blocks that came up but we got over them.”

(more…)

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Our Paper Blog at our recent Science of Obscurity event attracted some thoughtful posts, some paper spam, and a few discussion threads, including this one on nerd-dom and the event itself.

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