Introduction

 

      Deadlines. I am all about deadlines. XD has run pretty much exactly on schedule despite a litany of crises, which include unemployment, over-employment, domestic calamity, moving, illness, and that's just what is going on at XD Headquarters, let alone the personal lives of the staff.

      I've got a little stress-related health issue I am contending with at the moment and in the midst of rushing to and from work something cover artist Androo Robinson said kept echoing in my head. "Remember when this used to be fun?" I love to read zines, but trying to keep up with the flow the last few months has been overwhelming. I started a new job in June and because of the location I have to drive to work - taking the train to work was one of the reasons I was able to keep up before. Now I am in the car over two hours everyday traveling between Baltimore and the DC suburbs. I like my job and I get to work with books, but the irony is that I haven't read a book since I started working there. So there I was in the car with "Remember when this used to be fun…" stuck on repeat.

      I had already planned on chaining myself to the computer this weekend to try and meet the original deadline. I wanted to be able to blow off the deadline and finish it a few weeks late, but doing that was eating at my very existence, which hates to be late for anything. Thanks to an unpleasant catscan experience I now acknowledge that I need to learn some better stress-management skills.

      What to do…the answer hit me with cartoonish ridiculousness (Bang! Boom! Splat!) - ask for help. I can be astoundingly dense.

      There is only one person I considered asking to help with the nit-picky editorial tasks associated with Xerography Debt: Donny Smith. He has, literally, decades of experience in the zine community, has edited his current zine for ten years, and is even more fastidious and compulsive than I am. I also realized that I call and ask Androo's advice on the zine constantly and this too should be acknowledged. They are both now co-editors for XD.

      While Xerography Debt can be a source of anxiety for me, it is also teaching me how to deal with it.

      The History of Zines series has gotten some great response, so this feature will continue indefinitely. If you have an idea for a column, please get in touch. If you are interested in writing a column, but aren't sure what to write about we have a list of suggested topics.

 

 

Davida Gypsy Breier

October 2003

 

Basic stuff you should know

 

      If this is your first issue, XEROGRAPHY DEBT is a review zine for zine readers by zine writers. It is a hybrid of review zine and personal zine. XEROGRAPHY DEBT has its own freestyle approach. It is all about communication, so each reviewer has used the format or style most comfortable to him or her. Also, each reviewer “owns” the zine in a completely communal, non-possessive sense. We are individual artists and writers coming together to collaborate and help keep zineland flourishing. It is a communal experience from start to finish. Do your part by ordering a few zines from the many reviewed here and, if you self-publish, please consider including a few reviews in your zine.

      Xerography Debt’s reviews are selective. To explain the “system”: Some reviewers choose to review zines they have bought or traded with, some review zines that are sent to Xerography Debt for review, and some do both. Also, I buy zines at Atomic Books, my local zine store, and zine events, so if you see your zine reviewed and you didn’t send it in, that might be where I found it. Generally the only reviews you will read in here are “good reviews.” Constructive criticism is given, but basically we don’t have the time or money to print bad reviews. If you sent your zine in for review and don’t see it listed, wait a few months and see if it appears in the following issue. I read and then distribute the zines to the reviewers about two months before the print date. If the reviewer passed on reviewing your zine, it will be sent out again for the next issue. So, each zine gets two shots with two different reviewers. Ultimately, many of the review copies stay in the XD archives, but some are donated to zine libraries. Occasionally mistakes happen, postal or otherwise, so if you have a question about a zine you sent in for review, please contact Davida at PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD 21078 or davida@leekinginc.com.

      Xerography Debt is receiving more and more zines for review. Until issue #6, complimentary copies were sent to all of the zines reviewed. That just isn’t feasible any more. If I have your e-mail address, I’ll try and e-mail a copy of the review and a link to the new issue on the website. If I can afford the time and postage I’ll send a postcard or letter with the review. If I am unable to do this, please bear with me, I’m doing the best I can.

      It is available for free online (some reviews and artwork will only be available in print) or paper copies can be ordered for $3.

      If you have an event, announcement, or project you would like to share, please get in touch.

      The lack of paid advertising within these pages is deliberate. Despite reviewing our friends and lovers, we try to be somewhat objective and free to do as we please. Needless to say, this brings up the point of needing some help to stay afloat...

 

 

Sponsors

 

We see Xerography Debt as the PBS of review zines. It is by us, for us, with no financial incentive, just a dedication to small press. If you have a few spare stamps or dollar bills to help support us and the zine community, it would be most appreciated. Also, let me know if you wish to remain anonymous. This issue’s sponsors are:

 

William P. Tandy, Jan, Earl, and Ken, Androo Robinson and Maria Goodman, Donny Smith and Mark Hain, Bobby Tran Dale, Dar Veverka, Jeannie McStay, DB Pedlar, Al Cene, Owen Thomas, Scout, Billy McKay, Anne Thalheimer, Ted Mangano, Fred Wright, Julie Dorn, OIPRC.org, BOING (SLC Collective), and a few anonymous benefactors.

 

Editor’s Note

 

There were two reviewers who were unable to complete their reviews. I didn't get the zines back in time to facilitate reviews in this issue. My apologies to those who sent zines and haven't been reviewed yet.  Hopefully they will appear in the next issue.

 

 

Announcements

 

“I’m Julie from Junie in Georgia. I’m repeating my call for submissions for two side-projects of mine. One is on loss—any sort of personal experience that has caused you to grow, to grieve, to change. The format can be words, drawings or both, as long as it can fit an 8 ½ x 11” page. The other one-shot zine is on journals…who keeps them, who doesn’t, how journaling changes over the years, whatever you’d like to share. Deadlines for both zines are November 30th, 2003. Send to Julie Dorn, P.O. Box 438, Avondale Estates, GA 30002”

 

“MOVIN’ ON UP: That’s right, just two days after the Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green, we packed up the entire operation and relocated to our new digs in Toledo, Ohio. Yes, it was ridiculous, and I’d never time it that way again. But our new locale is great! We’re located in the coolest neighborhood in Toledo amidst all kinds of gigantic Victorian homes that could house all y’all if you decided that spending $1k month for a 1 bedroom apartment isn’t where it’s at. ‘What the hell’s going on in Toledo?’ you ask? Plenty before we got here, and who knows what’s about to happen now that we’re on the scene. In addition to some really amazing people in the area, we’re also a stone’s throw closer to Detroit and Ann Arbor, so get ready for an even more concentrated Midwest uprising!

That means we have a new address. The old box will be open for awhile still, but PLEASE UPDATE YOUR RECORDS:

Clamor/ Become The Media/ Allied Media Projects

PO Box 20128

Toledo, OH 43610

phone: Ha! Our offices are still in our home, so we’ll keep that number under wraps for awhile. Drop us an email instead: info@clamormagazine.org”

 

“Well, after seven years I’ve moved out of the Prairie State! Until further notice, please send all orders, zines, etc. to: Low hug, A.j. Michel, 112 Muir Ave, PMB #1057, Hazleton PA 18201. Thanks for your continued understanding and support through my moving. Regards, A.j. Michel”

 

“Hi!  We’re the new editors of The Letter Exchange, formerly published by Steve Sikora in Santa Rosa, CA. In searching the Web we found that you had a great mention of “Lex” on your Xerography Debt #2 page, so we wanted to let you know that although Steve retired from publishing the magazine at the end of 2000 and closed the forwarding service in 2001, Lex is back!  Two former Lexers finally decided to jump into the world of home publishing - we’ve just this spring revived Lex, with the first issue mailed out last week. We intend to carry on in Steve’s tradition, except that we’ve added a basic Web site, www.letter-exchange.com, to function essentially as an on-line brochure. Letters live!

Sincerely, Gary Marvin & Lonna Riedinger

The Letter Exchange, 855 Village Center Drive, #324, North Oaks, MN 55127-3016”

 

“Two things: #1. Free zines! Sell them! www.OIPRC.org - Oasis Away From International Powers of Racism & Classism. 50% fun, 50% activists!  #2.  “Trace of the Hand” All-5-Senses zine experience package: Zine, tape cassette, mini-poster, snack & more!   Domestic  $10.00. Outside USA $20.00.   www.DSAME.com checks, m.o., debit/credit card payment. Transcending cool with love.”

 

“Just a quick note here to let you know that the review site for PANISCUS REVUE has changed. We’re now at http://home.earthlink.net/~paniscus. This new site will be updated regularly, with new audio, video, printed matter, and pork rind reviews constantly being posted. The previous site, www.paniscusrevue.com, is now simply an archive site. (As far as hard copies of PANISCUS go, issue eleven has been finished, and is just waiting for an economical print source while #12 is already underway.) Please note that while there is a new e-mail address (tmcrites@earthlink.net), the hard mail address remains the same: PANISCUS REVUE c/o Tom Crites, P.O. Box 20175, Seattle, WA, 98102-1175, USA.

(Oh yeah, there’s a gallery site up too, at http://home.earthlink.net/~tmcrites)

Thanks, and

Cheers,

Tom Crites,

tmcrites@earthlink.net”

 

“You guys know that Factsheet 5 is back up and running, yeah? www.factsheet5.org

They have a links list for zines: http://www.factsheet5.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index

It’s pretty easy, and the link usually shows up within 24 hours.

Spread the word to other zinesters with sites to register too.”

—Benn Ray, Atomic Books

 

WHAT’S YOUR STORY, BALTIMORE?

This city holds a million stories, most of them unwritten.  Undrawn.  Untold.  And whether you’re a native, a transplant, or just passing through, chances are that one of them is yours.

Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! celebrates all things Baltimore, good and bad.  From the routine to the quirky to the downright bizarre, Smile, Hon is interested in your stories: everything that defines what it means to live - or simply be - in Charm City.  Work, home, neighborhoods, pastimes, nostalgia.  Saturday night, Sunday morning, and everything in between.  Good, bad, and ugly.

Submissions/queries are welcome via e-mail at esp@leekinginc.com, or by writing to Attn: William P. Tandy, c/o Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore!, P.O. Box 963, Havre de Grace, Maryland 21078; www.leekinginc.com/esp

Columns

The History of Zines:

Valerie Solanas

 

By Donny Smith

PO Box 411, Swarthmore, PA 19081

dwanzine@hotmail.com

www.geocities.com/dwanzine

 

“Unhampered by propriety, ‘niceness,’ discretion, public opinion, ‘morals,’ the ‘respect’ of assholes, always funky, dirty, low-down,” Valerie Solanas resisted easy identities.  At various times she was called, or called herself, lesbian, asexual, man-hater, wife, feminist, whore, unwed mother, devoted daughter, intellectual, actress, butch, panhandler, homebody, “super-woman,” psycho, “desexed monstrosity,” stalker, and murderer (although she never succeeded in killing anyone).  She hitchhiked and hustled her way from New Jersey to Maryland to Minnesota; Texas, Berkeley, New York, Florida, Phoenix, San Francisco—rarely living anywhere more than a few months.  Even her name seemed to change from year to year:  Val, Valeria, Valerie; Solanis, Solonas, Solanas; Gloria Solaris, Onz Loh.  

Her manifesto has never found a comfortable place either.  Sometimes it’s a feminist classic, sometimes a marginal tract, a cult classic, a rant, man-hating, anti-feminist, surrealist, anarcho-socialist, utopian, apocalyptic.  The manifesto on first reading seems to be uncomplicatedly anti-man and pro-woman, but it won’t go down that easily.  It turns out that men are really incomplete females, that in fact men are females—that is, passive and weak.  It is women who are male—that is, strong, intelligent, and active.  Men resist their femaleness; they want to be male, but can’t.  A few men have given up resistance and become faggots and transvestites, but still remain men, that is, female.  Men have done a good job convincing women that women are female, and some women almost seem willing to take the role; these are the Daddy’s Girls and the Mamas.  The female females, that is, the true males, are SCUM.  They’re out to build a new world, but first they’ve got to “overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.”   It may seem that SCUM’s conflict is with men, but in fact, it’s with Daddy’s Girl, the “toadie,” who like Mama is the “mindless administrator to physical needs, soother of the weary, apey brow, booster of the puny ego, appreciator of the contemptible, a hot water bottle with tits.”  In the end, though, SCUM will prevail.  The “conceited, kookie, funkie females grooving on each other, cracking each other up, while cracking open the universe” will thrive, while any Daddy’s Girls that might remain will live in cow pastures, breeding with whatever men survive.    

Solanas published these utopian writings herself and sold them mail-order, advertising in the Village Voice.  She got a few Greenwich Village bookstores to carry them, but most of all she hawked them on the street—$1 for women, $2 for men.  In the 70s, she claimed to be writing another book titled Valerie Solanas that would expand on her previous writings, talk a little about events in her life, and “get extensively into the subject of bullshit, a very important subject.”  In the 80s, her hotel room was reportedly full of typewritten pages.  In 1988, she was found dead in San Francisco.  

And the reason you’ve probably heard of her:  She tried to kill Andy Warhol in 1968.  (The movie version was called I Shot Andy Warhol, starring Lili Taylor.)  But Solanas was not proud of that episode in her life.  According to her common-law husband, “the fact that she wasn’t able to pull it off and murder Andy Warhol showed that—it made her feel ineffectual and was a blemish on her reputation.”  She told an interviewer in 1977, “I should have done target practice.”  (As her mother said, “She had a terrific sense of humor.”)   

 

Solanas’s self-published works:

 

Up Your Ass (New York?, 1965?)

Up Your Ass, or, From the Cradle to the Boat, or, The Big Suck, or, Up from the Slime; and A Young Girl’s Primer on How to Attain to the Leisure Class  (New York?, Scum Book, 1967)

SCUM Manifesto (New York?, 1967)

SCUM Manifesto (New York, 1977; “the correct Valerie Solanas edition”)

 

sources & recommended reading:

 

Judy Michaelson “Valerie:  The Trouble Was Men”  New York Post, Jun. 5, 1968:  57

Valerie Solanas (letter to editors)  Majority Report, Jun. 11, 1977:  9

Howard Smith & Brian Van der Horst  “Valerie Solanas Interview”  Village Voice, Jul. 25, 1977:  32

Howard Smith & Brian Van der Horst  “Valerie Solanas Replies”  Village Voice, Aug. 1, 1977:  28

Ultra Violet  Famous for 15 Minutes:  My Years with Andy Warhol  (San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988)

Rowan Gaither “Andy Warhol’s Feminist Nightmare”  New York, Jan. 14, 1991:  35

Mary Harron & Daniel Minahan  I Shot Andy Warhol  (New York, Grove, 1996) 

Liz Jobey “Solanas and Son”  The Guardian, Aug. 24, 1996:  T10+

Bruce Boone “‘Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!’ or, Valerie Solanas in Silver Lamé” Dwan 22  (Oct. 1997)

Judith Coburn “Valerie’s Gang”  [East Bay] Express, Nov. 19, 1999:  1, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16

Donny Smith “Proving You’re Not Crazy”  (interview with Louis Zwiren and friends)  Solanas Supplement to Dwan 3 (Jan. 2003):  23-31

 

The History of Zines:

ZINESTERS IN A FLOWERY DELL

 

By Peter Brock

581 Avenue Rd, Apt 1001

Toronto, ON  M4V 2K4 Canada

 

Flowery dell = a prison cell in the traditional rhyming slang of English thieves. Therefore British conscientious objectors (COs) imprisoned in London’s Wormwood Scrubs Prison in the Second World War gave their underground paper the title The Flowery. Sixteen, or possibly seventeen, issues appeared between August 1942 and March 1944, and the paper had a succession of six different editors. The Flowery had been the brain child primarily of Herbert F. Moore, who edited its first five issues in the course of eight months spent at the Scrubs. Moore was not only an accomplished journalist but a charismatic character. A fellow CO, Bob Hockley, who occupied the cell next door to Moore’s, relates in his “Prison Memoirs” that Moore’s presence there “transformed” his life in prison. When one editor was released from jail at the expiry of his sentence, he handed the editorship over to his successor. By the spring of 1944, however, few COs remained at Wormwood Scrubs; so the paper folded up.

Fenner Brockway, a veteran of CO prison samizdat in World War One, wrote the preface to the pamphlet containing extracts from the paper (The Flowery 1942-4: The Scrubs “Conchie” Review, London, 1945) and told readers how much he regretted that the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors (CBCO), of which he was chairman, had been unable “to reproduce The Flowery in full in its original form.” The paper, he goes on, “was written in hand on sheets of ruled prison paper bound together with the stout waxed thread supplied to the prisoners for their task of making mailbags for the General Post Office. Careful folding of the sheets, a few stitches with the stout needle, and the process of binding, such a problem for most publishers during wartime, was complete.”  At Wormwood Scrubs and other British jails of that time prisoners were permitted use of pen, ink, and paper only for the purpose of writing the monthly letter out.  Otherwise, a smallish slate, together with chalk and a rag for erasing what had been written, was all that was available.

A striking feature of each issue of the Flowery was its cover. The Scrubs community of COs contained some extremely talented artists whose fingers were probably better adapted to this task than to sewing mailbags for the GPO. One cover, for instance, depicted a heavily barred cell window, another the prison’s neo-Gothic turrets and grim cellblocks. “Sometimes the artist showed a neat sense of humour as, for instance, in the first issue of 1943 ... when the New Year was illustrated by the figure of a little child bearing a bag marked ’43 and knocking at a locked prison door marked ‘Reception.’ Beneath was the caption ‘Starting a stretch.’” One cover artist devised a tasteful color design in shaded pink and pale blue as the result of somehow—somewhere—purloining a bottle of red ink. Readers were so pleased with the outcome of the artist’s “theft” that the editor used the scheme for three successive issues.

Only one copy of each issue was produced. Let me quote Brockway again on the process of production and methods of distribution; he obviously obtained his information direct from those who had participated in one capacity or another in the enterprise: “Every issue,” he writes, “of course involved risks to all associated with it—not only the editor and contributors, but the readers. The writers and artists would usually prepare their contributions seated in the one quarter of their cells outside the view of the inquisitive eye at the spy-hole in the door. The binder would fold and sew the sheets in a similar way or inside the protection of the mailbag on which he was working. The reader would hide the precious journal inside his shirt or sock until he was ready to pass it in a flash to another prisoner as they met in corridor or queue. Discovery meant almost certainly a day or two on bread and water and solitary confinement.”

Considering the high risk of discovery it is surprising that only one issue, that of February 1943, was uncovered by a prison officer—through no fault of the man who was carrying it, since he had taken “all reasonable precautions” to preserve secrecy.  The officer, however, did not report the delinquent as he was supposed to do according to the prison rules. He just destroyed the paper on the spot. Brockway supposed he did this out of kindness, adding wryly: “though perhaps without due appreciation of literary and artistic merit.”

Besides illustrations, each issue of the Flowery contained a variety of contributions in both verse and prose: serious articles alongside humorous pieces. There may not have been any masterpieces but the Flowery’s literary standard was remarkably high considering the circumstances in which it was produced. The Food Relief campaigner Roy Walker, for instance, who spent virtually the whole of two sentences at Wormwood Scrubs in solitary confinement because he had consistently refused all prison labor, still managed to contribute several clever poems to the Flowery.

Herbert Moore, introducing the paper—anonymously, of course—in its first issue of August 1942, had set the tone. “The editor,” he wrote, “wishes to apologise right away for everything except for one thing. He apologises for the writing, the spelling and the syntax. He apologises for the paper, the nib and the ink ... He apologises for all the contributors who have ‘started the ball rolling’ but he thanks them most gratefully for risking it. What he does not apologise for is the spirit in which it was conceived, and which was one of co-operation with all those ‘inside’ with him, ... who are standing against war.  This effort has helped him. May it also help his readers.” Moore then gave readers some advice. They should be prepared “to accept full responsibility” if a prison officer should discover he had the paper. “It is to be retained one night or dinner-time only, and passed on to a known C.O. It is only to be read in the cell, with the door shut, and should not be taken if there is a possibility of a special release”: a necessary precaution since at this time the authorities were releasing COs without prior notice if their application to an Appellate Tribunal had been successful. Readers were also asked not to fold the paper: it was a fragile artifact that could easily disintegrate when treated roughly. “If,” Moore concluded, “a certain P.O. [Principal Officer] with a reputation for seeing even the ridge of a cigarette paper under a convict’s jacket, should be about, we can only say that Flowery should be hastily swallowed in two large gulps. Nor should that prove difficult to those who have actually eaten, shall we say, a fish dinner. After all, it may be bad, but it doesn’t smell!” And the stockfish, served as a frequent main course for midday dinner at the wartime Scrubs, was truly malodorous.

Humor seems to have predominated over serious content. As a versifier declared in the issue of December 1942: “If this booklet brings to birth / Naught of value save its mirth, / We could no apter subject find, / Knowing well how sorrow might consume the mind; / For of joy one smile surmounts a span, / For to laugh is proper to the man.” Indeed the serious contributions seem to have been rather slight. An exception was the article Sidney Greaves wrote for the Flowery during the evening prior to his discharge from the Scrubs. It described the work at the Hungerford Club to which he was returning (cited in Denis Hayes, Challenge of Conscience: The Story of the Conscientious Objectors of 1939-1949, London, 1949, pp. 226-8). The Club, situated under an arch of Hungerford Bridge in central London, cared for down-and-outs whose verminous and filthy condition made them unwelcome in the capital’s air-raid shelters. It was run by the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship and staffed by a dedicated group of COs and their friends, who earned praise even from the wartime coalition government’s Ministry of Health.

The Flowery’s humor often poked fun at the “screws” (as the prison officers were known in jail slang) and, above them, the Principal Officers, “encased in ribboned uniform for show.” One of the most successful contributions (authored by H.R. Moir) consisted of a series of “Nature Notes: Birds in Scrubland,” accompanied by illustrations depicting the various birds: the Lesser Wryneck or Wormwoodia Scrubicus, whose “mournful tones pervade the scrubs at all hours”; the Scrubby Bullfinch (Stevii Prisonicus), whose “gentle call ... is known to all—‘Git-abucket, Git-abucket’;” and two “pretty (Jail) birds ... [nicknamed] on account of their head plumage ... ‘Goldilocks’.” The latter, the Notes report, appear to be in full song throughout Scrubland at about 8.30 in the morning. Their appealing cry, ‘Kumm-on-Lad, Anser-y’ naym’, pierces the densest November fog ... The two species ... share song peculiarity and beak structures. The plumage, too, is uniform.” But not only the prison staff, including the Anglican chaplain (“Ecclesiasticus Carolae Tudorii ... the only bird of ‘pray’ ever to figure in heraldry”), and “rarer ornithological visitors to these climes,” like the visiting Justices of the Peace with “their cry, ‘Any gumplaints?,’” became figures of fun for our proto-zinesters, the naive CO was also game for them.  An example of this is the “Conversation Piece” composed for the Flowery’s first number presenting a dialogue between an “old lag” and the innocent CO in the neighboring cell, who is extremely bewildered by his neighbor’s slang.

I have based my article almost exclusively on the 1945 pamphlet referred to above. True, except for the confiscated issue, it would seem that all remaining issues of the Flowery were successfully smuggled out of the Scrubs, despite the fact that only one copy of each issue existed inside prison. At the end of the war, the lawyer Denis Hayes, who worked for the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors during the war years, possessed copies of almost all the original issues, while the penultimate Flowery editor, Howard Whitten, was in possession of two issues that Hayes did not have. These originals provided the source for the 1945 pamphlet. But, alas, they appear to be no longer extant, though of course some—or all—may eventually surface again. (See letter, dated August 28, 2003, from Tabitha Driver, Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London, where the CBCO archives are located.)

In World War One almost every British prison had its CO underground press. (See my “Prison Samizdat of British Conscientious Objectors in the First World War,” Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, vol. 12 (2003), pp. 8-21.)  But, in the next global conflict so far as I am aware, among British prisons only Wormwood Scrubs produced a CO samizdat—a result perhaps of the smaller proportion of COs who then spent time in jail.  It is sad, therefore, that the original issues of this unique zine may have vanished for ever.

 

The History of Zines:

MUCKRAKER: In fact and the life of George Seldes

 

By Cali Ruchala

Diacritica Press

100 E Walton #31H, Chicago, IL 60611

www.diacritica.com

cali@diacritica.com

 

As any hack knows, hypocrisy is one of the most effective tools of manipulation. It’s a sign of the times that the hack himself is usually the first to get suckered by it.

Here’s something that explains what I mean. A few years ago, I read an article railing against the gross commercialization of journalism in the wake of the massive mergers of the late 1990s. Everywhere, it seemed, fluff was being written about new sitcoms debuting on a newspaper’s “sister station,” plastic pop divas on a record company owned by the same parent company - you get the idea.

Not long after, I came face to face with the writer of the article in question, though I can’t remember his name now. He was proud of the commentary spawned by his piece, though I thought he had stopped short of drawing blood. When I observed that his article had appeared in one of print’s seminal cemeteries of objectivity, which owned a stake in everything from internet services to television networks, you could almost hear the creaking strain of forced smiles in the room.

“It’s better than nothing,” he said, before adding hastily, “That’s how criticism is. Jesus, I’m not George Seldes.”

I didn’t know the name George Seldes back then, but it’s appropriate that he did. Seldes was something like a Catholic saint of the trade: passionate, uncompromising, and, to those who make a career in print, utterly unattainable. Having lived the glamorous life of a foreign correspondent, covering the great events of his era, Seldes gave it all up because he couldn’t make himself believe in the hypocrisy of exposing the truth for men that worked to bury it. Moreover, when he spoke out about corruption, Seldes realized the hazard to public safety of identifying criminals by assumed names.

No sniper from the ivory tower, Seldes followed his criticisms through to the end. Turning his back on the newspaper business, for more than ten years he published what might be considered the most popular zine in history - a slim but fascinating “newsletter” that reached nearly 200,000 people with every issue, sold almost entirely through the mail, and produced from start to finish by his wife and the man himself.

 

*****

 

The breadth of George Seldes’ career is astounding; he was one of the few writers that could title a memoir Witness to a Century and get away with it.

A correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in the dying days of World War I, Seldes along with three other intrepid journalists bundled himself into Germany for an interview with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, best remembered today as Hitler’s predecessor. But war hysteria portrayed Hindenburg as nothing less than a Teutonic Saddam Hussein. The American army was outraged by their stunt. Seldes and the other reporters were court-martialed, and their interview with the German strongman never saw the light of day.

The Hindenburg fiasco cast the die for Seldes’ career. In Moscow in the 1920s, he scored an interview with the dying Vladimir Lenin but soon fell afoul of the censorship authorities. The Soviets discovered his ruse of sending out critical stories disguised as letters to friends, and expelled him from the country.

In 1925, Seldes was dispatched to what was considered the best job for a reporter in Europe: Rome. After a fixed election, Italian duce Benito Mussolini’s opposition in parliament had been greatly reduced, and reduced by one more after Giacomo Matteotti, a Socialist, rose in parliament and declared that the election had been a sham.

Fascist blackshirts tried to abduct Matteotti to teach him a lesson, but, in an understandable oversight, stabbed him repeatedly until he died. Police reports outlining each murderer’s connection with Mussolini circulated for a year before Seldes stepped foot in Roma fascista but, to his astonishment, not a single foreign reporter had written about it. His story on the Matteotti Affair wound up on the front page of the Chicago Tribune. Soon enough, Seldes could claim the distinction of having been expelled by two of the most repressive regimes in the world.

Seldes went on to report for the Tribune from Mexico as the two countries approached a state of war (Mexico was threatening to nationalize the assets of several American mining companies). Seldes wrote two sets of stories on the issue: one from the quintessential American perspective, and the other from what he thought was the Mexican point of view. Appalled that the Tribune printed his pro-American dispatches and rubbished the rest, Seldes finally had enough, and resigned.

After reporting on the Spanish Civil War and writing a few books on the manipulation of the press by advertisers, industrialists and government flunkies, in 1940 Seldes was approached by another journalist with the idea for In fact, a newsletter that would publish everything verboten in the American press. His collaborator was a member of the Communist Party, and the two quarreled over the entire contents of the first issue. They soon parted ways, and the writing, printing and distribution of In fact was taken over entirely by Seldes and his wife.

For ten years beginning in 1940, In fact published a motley collection of stories about press freedom, union rights, “American fascism” and other “antidotes for falsehood in the daily press.” Writers would often tip Seldes off to stories killed by their editors, giving In fact a reach far beyond the couples’ living room.

Reading a few preserved issues of In fact, one can see that a demanding publishing schedule led Seldes to indulge in filler, and many “follow-ups” to his investigative pieces were little more than an attempt to keep an issue current while filling column inches. But there was undoubtedly more worth reading in each slim issue of In fact than in a year’s worth of Life magazine, or anything else being published at the time. Probably the greatest legacy of In fact was that it was the only publication to repeatedly point out the cancer risks of cigarettes, at a time when newspaper stories on the issue were buried by shovelfuls of advertising dollars from the tobacco companies.

At its height, In fact boasted a circulation of 176,000 copies, nearly all sent to subscribers. It was, undoubtedly, a publication from the Left, and in the late 1940s, the targets of Seldes’ wrath in the newspaper business had an effective means of fighting back. Red Panic and McCarthyism had the government looking under beds for hidden Communists, and In fact had, after all, been co-founded by a member of the Communist Party. Ordering what the Hearst syndicate called “the unofficial organ of the Communist Party in the USA” was too great a risk for many readers; the FBI had already begun compiling lists of In fact’s subscribers. As the rolls of his “five dollar liberals” dwindled, Seldes considered handing off the torch to someone else, but ultimately decided to shutter this astonishing publication after some ten years in print.

Even if he hadn’t been blacklisted, Seldes had lambasted enough Hearsts, McCormacks and Gannets to make any resuscitation of a newspaper career impossible. In spite of the hardships, the thought of appeasing the “lords of the press” was as alien a notion as ever. As Seldes told journalist Randolph T. Holhut, “I never had it easy, but I never missed a meal and I’ve never been broke.”

 

Facing a very different sort of disgrace, the Torquemada of the Red Panic, Richard Nixon, once begged former president Herbert Hoover for the secret of his redemption in the eyes of the public. Hoover gave him simple advice: “Outlive your enemies.” Seldes outlived most of his. He took his last breath on July 2, 1995, at the ripe old age of 104. Nevertheless, most of his books remain out of print. A few volunteers began (but seem to have abandoned) an initiative to place the texts online; an incomplete archive is located at http://www.brasscheck.com/seldes/gsa.html

 

 

IT MEANS IT’S WANK

By Jeff Somers

P.O. Box 3024, Hoboken NJ 07030

mreditor@innerswine.com

www.innerswine.com

 

THE LONG DARK TEA TIME OF THE SOUL

 

"So what does that mean?

It means it's wank.”

Vic Flange, www.fleshmouth.co.uk [now defunct], describing my zine.

 

 ...in which Jeff Somers considers the horror of a paucity of reviews. And indulges in some postmodern-lite footnotes, like David Foster Wallace, natch.

 

      THE only thing worse than a bad review, really, is no review at all. I remember the first issue of my little zine: I printed up about 50 issues, mailed them out to whoever I could think of (mainly friends, family, and my seventh-grade teacher who once advised me that I was ruining my life by quitting the crossing guards[1]—somehow I don’t think the zine thing convinced her otherwise). There followed a Great Silence, wherein you could detect, if you listened very closely, the faint sound of crickets.

      We’ve all been there. After a while, and about ten more issues, I started to figure out that there was an entire zine community[2] out there, complete with review zines and such, and I started getting some reviews, some notice, and the occasional two bucks in the mail, quickly spent on liquor and forgotten. For a while my zine seemed to get reviews, good and otherwise, every few weeks. I became obsessed with it, for here was proof, finally, that I did actually exist, that I wasn’t a spirit fooled into believing he was real. It also confirmed that I had actually produced a zine and mailed it out to people, that it hadn’t all been a DTs hallucination, like that time I conquered the world with an army of winged monkeys—damn, I had some explaining to do after that bender, when I kept wearing the crown and commanding that people be executed on the spot.

      I searched for reviews of my zine constantly, and began reproducing them in my zine for a bizarrely egocentric mirror-into-mirror effect that I’m still quite fond of[3].

      And then, around issue 25 or so, I stopped getting reviews—not entirely, but it definitely throttled down a little.

      The simplest explanation makes sense: Everyone had already reviewed the damn thing, and saw no reason to keep reviewing it. In my fevered brain, however, it quickly became an existential crisis: I’d been relying on a steady stream of reviews to prove to myself that I was actually doing these things. The sudden lack of reviews made me doubt my own existence. Anyone who’s put out a zine and gotten no response back knows the terrible, black feeling that a lack of interest inspired within you—this is, in some sense, you that you’re putting out there. Even if it’s not a perzine, even if it’s a zine dedicated to the study of tiny furniture craved out of soap[4], it still represents a part of you. To have it coldly ignored is horrible.

      Of course, there’s not much you can do about it aside from getting the emergency bottle of cheap whiskey from the toilet tank and doing some hard drinking...um, thinking[5]. Begging for reviews is undignified, and likely to get you nowhere fast, since reviews are provided not as free advertising for you, or as a stroke to your ego, but as a service to the readers out there with two dollars to spare and in need of good advice on how to spend it. The one spark of hope, of course, is that eventually it will all come back around to you, because there’re always new reviewers out there, and sometimes veterans will re-examine your zine from time to time. The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul will end, eventually[6].

      This is why it’s always a mistake to underestimate the power and value of reviews in zinedom. Not only are reviews a great way of getting info about new zines, and a great way to get some promotion for your zine, but they also serve as a barometer of the attention you’re getting for your efforts—and let’s face it, if you didn’t want attention, you whore, you wouldn’t be putting out a zine. or at least you’d be doing something like putting out six issues to close intimate friends and burning the masters afterwards. A lack of reviews can be an invaluable indication of your penetration into the psyche of the reader, good or bad. Personally, I’d much rather get a ton of really bad reviews than no reviews at all. Polite, dutiful reviews which boil down to mere acknowledgments that the author received your zine in the mail are almost as depressing as no reviews at all...but not quite. The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul is a much blacker force in the Universe; if we could somehow harness the Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul and convert it into electrical energy, we could probably solve the world’s energy problems.

      Some zines, I suppose, move past the need for reviews, in a sense. I’ve heard that Cometbus is pretty good, for example, and I doubt people need one more review to convince them that it’s a quality publication. Of course, people new to zines might not have the benefit of the previous twenty years of reviews moldering away in past issues of review zines, so new reviews always serve a purpose, and I want everyone to remember that next time you see Yet Another Review of My Zine and want to tear the page out and burn it, it makes you so mad[7]. I guess the basic rule you can take away from this column is: Reviews, good. No reviews, Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul.

 

[1] True story: I was a crossing guard, which meant I wore a bright orange belt and helped the crossing guard manage all the younger kids. I thought it would be fun and they really dressed it up as an honor, but it was boring and I had better things to do, like drink blackberry brandy on street corners, so I quit. Looking back, I guess it was kind of the beginning of a downward spiral of sorts.

 

[2] No shit—I had no idea I was putting out a zine. I had no idea so many other people had used sophisticated time-travel devices to steal my idea for ‘zines’ and begin producing them decades before I was even born. I didn’t find out about zines until long after that first issue, and was, of course, delighted. And litigous, but so far no lawyer will take the case.

 

[3] I briefly considered putting a review of my zine that appeared in Xerograghy Debt, and was subsequently reprinted in my zine, in this footnote, but that suddenly seemed too self-indulgent, if such a thing exists.

 

[4] Such a zine, to my knowledge, does not exist. But what a magical world this would be if it did!

 

[5] This kind of lame play on words is normally beneath me.

 

[6] The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul is, of course, a title of a book by Douglas Adams, stolen quite brazenly.

 

[7] Although I certainly won’t. Remember it, that is.

 

 

The Reviews

Dan Taylor

PO Box 5531, Lutherville, MD 21094

www.dantenet.com

dante@dantenet.com

 

His head hurts, his teeth itch, his feet stink and he don’t love Jesus. But that doesn’t make him a bad person, it just makes him The Hungover Gourmet. Check out the journal of food, drink, travel and fun at hungovergourmet.com or send a SASE to PO Box 5531, Lutherville, MD 21094-5531 for more info.

 

GO METRIC #16 Winter 2002/2003 (15A South Bedford Road, Pound Round, NY 10576; after 7/1/03 verify address at gogometric@yahoo.com; $2 per issue; 64 pages, half-legal)

      Computers and desktop publishing software are the best and worst things that ever happened to the world of self-publishing. In the late 1980s, zines took a giant leap forward in terms of readability, but lost some of their personality in the process. GO METRIC solves that problem by combining desktop typesetting with a rough, hands-on, cut and paste kind of layout. That said, a zine still needs to deliver some compelling content and GM has that in spades - there’s an interview with 8-TRACK MIND editor Russ Forster about his documentary on tribute bands, why Queen “ruled,” Godzilla flicks, The Boys vs. The Dead Boys, and the obligatory pages of record and CD reviews. Best of all, who knew The Figgs had a new CD?! Good package filled with heaping helpings of smart-assitude, though I could’ve done without Rev. Norb’s thoughts on the SPIDER-MAN movie. The headache-inducing layout made it impossible to get through the first page!

 

CLAMOR #19 March/April 2003 (PO Box 1225, Bowling Green, OH  43402; $4 per issue; 68 pages, full-size)

      Despite protestations to the contrary, sports and an alternative lifestyle are not mutually exclusive. But I can probably count on two hands the number of zines that have any kind of regular sports content or admit to liking something so corporate and mainstream. The “Everyday Pros” issue of CLAMOR tries to rectify that by presenting how real do people do all sorts of sports - everything from candlepin bowling and kickball to triathlons and something dangerous looking and sounding called “volcano boarding.” Since the mag has an admittedly alternative and activist slant, some of the contributions do come off a bit whiny, which makes it hard to appreciate the singular drive that’s required of any athletic endeavor. That said, pieces like the chat with boxer Ernie Terrell (who fought Muhammad Ali in 1967) and a look at the “sport” of cockfighting in America are excellent examples of writing in any venue.

 

CABOOSE #3: The Modular Karaoke Issue (PO Box 476802, Chicago, IL  60647; $2 per issue; 44 pages, digest)

      My trips into the world of karaoke have been liquored-fueled performances of tunes by the Go-Go’s (which almost resulted in me getting my ass kicked), Fleetwood Mac (a heartfelt rendition of “Landslide” that thrilled the crowds), and a medley of songs from ‘Grease’ (the less said the better). CABOOSE editor Liz gathers her karaoke circle of friends for an issue-length conversation about the intricacies of the karaoke experience. I particularly enjoyed the discussions of Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died,” Canadian rockers and the frank declaration that “Ya always look like an ass when you get up and do karaoke.” Brother what a night it really was...

 

REGLAR WIGLAR #18 (PO 1658 N Milwaukee #545, Chicago, IL 60647; $2 per issue; 48 pages, full-size)

      Yet another punk zine full of band interviews and CD reviews. Best part is a couple pages of reviews for the likes of a Rock & Roll McDonald’s (what a great concept!) and Hooters, a chain I’ve never set foot in. Based on the writer’s description of the crummy food and uncomfortable seating I don’t think I’ll be heading there any time soon.

 

CHUMPIRE (PO Box 27, Annville, PA  17003-0027; 1 stamp or trade per issue; a few pages, various sizes)

      One of the problems with many review zines is that the material is often wildly outdated by the time it lands in your mailbox. CHUMPIRE solves that by reviewing anything and everything in a no- frills format that takes on everything from news about the local school system, zine reviews, new and old CDs, movies... even the state of Florida. Think an on-line blog in paper format. A fast, breezy read well worth your time and effort!

 

LUCID FRENZY: A Belated Best of 2002 (8 Brewer Street, Brighton, East Sussex BN2 3HH, England; $2 per issue; 20 pages, digest)

      Collects editor Gavin Burrows’ thoughts on the ten best gigs and flicks of last year.

 

Daina Mold

PO BOX 6681, Portsmouth, NH 03802

kittyzine@yahoo.com

 

Last issue, my reviews seemed to pour lovingly out of my brain like some sorta waterfall of delight. This time, the only thing pouring out of my head is a much less charming cascade of snot. I’ll do my best to wheeze, sniffle, and sputter through...Oh, the plugs: You can still get KITTY! #1, the zine by, for, & about cats, for $1. KITTY! #2 is currently in production & so is HOME #1. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to promote zines that aren’t out yet, but whatever. Movies have previews, don’t they?

 

ZINE NATION #1 Your Guide to Media Retaliation

 I find the idea of a Zine Nation quite lovely. Imagine armies of sweetly shy curmudgeons recruiting reviewers and editors instead of stern, crew-cutted fighting machines. Food stamps replaced by passes for free

photocopies! Unemployment and health care benefits provided to those willing to create zines about their joblessness and/or illnesses. Oh, the possibilities! ZINE NATION is created by inspired zine kids hoping to stoke the D.I.Y. fire in its readers. Articles about self-publishing, releasing your own records, film making, and planning your own tours cover the basics for those just starting out. (I have to laugh at the unironic suggestion that bands should stay away from alcohol and sex while touring. Um, isn’t that half the fun of touring?!) I really enjoyed the piece about Projet MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE, a traveling bus filled with zines, independent art, and handmade books. I really need to find out if this amazing project still exists! An interview with comic artist Chester Brown, tons of zine reviews, comics, political collages, recipes, and even more Do It Yourself essays round out this meaty first issue. Lots of info for beginners, but enough variety to keep the seasoned vets entertained.

No price, but send at least $2 or $3. (All proceeds donated to the Cullen Carter Benefit Trust.); 17 Paton Rd, Unit #8, Toronto, ON, Canada M6H IR7

PASSIONS #32 May 2003

PASSIONS is described as a Cooperative Press Association. The members of this CPA contribute writing to the publication and share ownership as well as costs. Kind of like how XD operates, except for Davida pays for everything and does all the work while we ignore deadlines and return zines months later. (Well, by “we” I mean “me.”) Members explore their individual passions, which include Simpsons comic books, becoming a drag queen, political views, and college basketball. Joan Evans’ tribute to her childhood, “If It’s Sunday, We’re Having Pot Roast” stands out with its loving, detailed descriptions of food and family. The theme of “passions” seems to be quite loose, as many contributors just ramble about whatever comes to mind. (Well, I guess rambling is a passion in itself. If it weren’t, zines wouldn’t exist!) An ambitious, if not cohesive, collection.

$3.50; Ken Bausert, 2140 Erma Drive, East Meadow, NY 11554-1120

 

INTERSTITIAL #1

This is exactly the kind of very punk rock zine I used to read in high school. Hell, I used to make zines like this! Personal essays about mix tapes and movies, political rants peppered with phrases like “George Walker Texas Ranger Bush” and “unelected pipeline-pimping Son-Of-A-Bush”, interviews with bands I’ve never heard of, show reviews of bands I’ve never heard of, information about UPC codes and sodomy laws, a Warren Zevon article, and a little poetry. While certainly no new ground is covered here, I think the editor and contributors have a lot of potential and genuine enthusiasm. Hopefully they’ll stick with zines long enough to hone their styles. NO ADDRESS!!!!! NO PRICE! I did some searching & all I could find was: email: editor@neufutur.com & price: $1. I can’t even believe that people make/send zines out without mailing information. This only makes sense if you’re making a very anonymous zine & don’t want people to order it. UGH!!! (Ed. - I thought I would be nice and go to Netfutur.com and try and find a postal address. Granted, my patience ain’t what it used to be, but I gave up. If you are looking for connections it is good to let people know how to reach you.)

 

SCROLLWORKS #32

Well, here’s something I’ve never seen before: a zine about role-playing games (or RPG, for those of you not in the know)! But then again, I’ve never tried to seek it out. Since I don’t know anything about this subject, I can’t tell you if the information is helpful or entertaining. I guess it’s kind of like trying to review a zine that’s written in a foreign language. RPG-related topics include an interview with James West of Random Order, a very in-depth look at Freeman’s Keep, & related commentary. Fortunately, SCROLLWORKS also includes information about making zines, some very comprehensive zine reviews (I really like Christian’s explanation of his reviewing policy; I totally agree!), and a book review.  I think it’s cool that the editor is trying to educate his readers about all kinds of zines, especially since they’re probably only reading this one because of its subject matter.

$3.50; Christian Walker, PO BOX 983, San Jacinto, CA 92581

 

SLUG & LETTUCE #76

I can’t believe SLUG & LETTUCE even needs to be reviewed anymore! Is this the longest-running zine in history? No, really— is it? Well, there’s MAXIMUM ROCK & ROLL, but I don’t know if that counts anymore. Anyway, Christine deserves an award for consistently publishing this expertly executed collection of columns, zine & music reviews, and classifieds. While I’ve known of its existence for nearly a decade, I’ve only seen a few issues. Mostly because they’re churned out on such a regular basis that I can barely keep up. But receiving S&L in my review packet reminded me that I really need to order it more often. My only complaint is that the print is so teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy that I seriously have to struggle to read it. I realize that upping the font size just two points would probably double the printing costs, but I think it would be worth it. This issue’s most notable feature is Christine’s personal column, which touches on the sometimes fleeting nature of friendship, the power of memories, and feeling stagnant because life is actually stable.

60 cents each, send a couple bucks for a few issues or as a donation; PO BOX 26632, Richmond, VA 23261-6632

 

CHATTY PIG #4

As the maker of a cat zine, I’m trying to make it my mission to include at least one cat-related zine in each of my XD reviews. CHATTY PIG is not all about cats, but it does feature one very enjoyable cat story. (You’ll have to read it yourself to find out just what the hell is so thrilling about the kitchen cabinet!) CHATTY PIG follows Abby, a fresh young college graduate, as she discovers life outside academia. She takes a job as a paralegal, even though she has no training in the field, and ends up working for a very nutty couple of lawyers. Office-type drama ensues, and Abby is forced to make a choice between Mom & Pop crazies or corporate whores. A pleasurable jaunt into someone else’s life that left me wanting more.

$2; Abby Koch, 4739 N. Paulina St. #1, Chicago, IL 60640

 

Donny Smith

PO Box 411, Swarthmore, PA 19081

www.geocities.com/dwanzine

dwanzine@hotmail.com

 

All you people who don’t read poetry can stop avoiding my zine now. Every issue seems to have less poetry than the one before. Don’t know if it’s because people aren’t sending me poems worth reading anymore or if I’m just sick of reading a lot of crap. Anyway, once again, if you’re not reviewed here, it doesn’t mean I didn’t love your zine—I’m just trying to review more people who haven’t been reviewed here before.

 

Amber Previewed (2002)

available from Yul Tolbert, PO Box 02222, Detroit MI 48202-9998 USA for free with an age statement (but send a stamp or two);

http://timeliketoons.tripod.com/lpd/

on the cover: a crazily foreshortened view of a woman’s foot; she has long toenails and is crushing tiny people and cars

inside: cartoons of a black woman with bare, inflated breasts towering over skyscrapers; she displays the soles of her feet, dirty with crushed people; she displays a long fingernail, on which are impaled three people; she uses her long thumbnail and long fingernail as tongs to eat a tiny person; and so on

overall: Long toenails are not my thing at all; neither are long fingernails, women’s breasts, or giantesses. So there isn’t much here for me beyond the style and the idea of the comic itself. The drawing is crisp and spare and distinctive. Some frames are so minimal they’re abstract. As for the idea behind the comic, I can’t take my eyes away from it, even though it’s so unerotic.

 

Chairmen of the Bored #5150 (2003?)

available from Colin Scholl P-84196, B2-B4-23, or C. Knowles K-91158, B2-B4-27, or Kenneth Shaw K-58396, B2-B4-29, Folsom State Prison, Box 715071, Represa, CA 95671 USA; no price listed (trade?)

inside: a mix of comics, thoughts, and skits; or as they describe it, “punkrock, cartoons, socialism… free think say what you want no more t.v… eeekk! ook!! arnold!. bbeek!! main-stream anything is bad for everyone.”

quote: (How can you threaten me in prison with being taken to another part of the prison that you yourself vilify? Dont they know that I dont care?) In here, the filth and “creepy crawlies” no longer bother me. Its gotten to the point where I talk to the little ‘mouse’ every night who visits me. Making differences in everything are the things of which we speak. Ha!

 

Detrimental Information #4 (2003?)

available from John & Luke, PO Box 252, Bemidji, MN 56619 USA; for $1 or trade; anustooth@yahoo.com

subtitle: what goes down must come up

on the cover: a bisected elephant peeing

inside: simple, thoughty, hand-lettered stories of everyday life, illustrated non sequiturally with blobby, grimacey naked men, pooping, peeing, puking, playing with dismembered people, and putting their feet and heads into butts; also, pigs, elephants, dinosaurs, birds, dogs, and so on

quote: My little craft project was on the floor and I felt like an asshole. No, an asshole has a place and a function. I was some sort of disease. An ill feeling. A speck of vomit. Sickness. Yes, something was wrong with me on a personal level.

overall: hilarious! brilliant!

 

Guests (1993)

available from the Hemingway Western Studies Center

(http://www.boisestate.edu/hemingway/series.htm or 1-800-992-8398) for $19.95 + shipping

what it is: a facsimile of the guest book for the show “Some Zines” held at the University of Idaho—complete with attached penholder, ballpoint pen, an anonymous flyer condemning the show, and a box to store it all in

inside: signatures and comments of the guests—some funny, some stupid, most misspelled

quote: What one witnesses is not pleasant, but strong propaganda for things bizarre, disjointed, violent, queer and slapping down the human dignity. … This should result in Mr. Trusky [the curator] being vocally abused, stabbed to death, and turned into a queer, for this is what he likes … . —anonymous

another quote: Is this the way that Idaho’s money is spent? Know wonder Amermica’s youth is such an egg-femi-nazist nation!!! —anonymous

another quote: Cool! It’s neat to see so many people take publishing into their own hands. One of the sickest ‘zines is Presto Press/Just Family. Haven’t those people ever heard of the population explosion, limited resources & environmental degradation due to too many people?? There sure are a lotta different ways to look at life aren’t there? —Kathe Whitacre

overall: There sure are, Kathe.

 

Poemas del adivino by Marcelo Saraceno (2003)

available from Marcelo Saraceno, Arenales 2268, (1870) Avellaneda, Buenos Aires ARGENTINA; inquire for details: marcelosaraceno@yahoo.com.ar

on the cover: a cat-person with a six-pointed star on its hand; a crescent moon above clouds

inside: short wistful poems in Spanish

quote: la primera nieve / cubre la rivera / y la copa de los árboles // el río / deja huellas / de incensio / a su paso / y el solitario muelle / aún resiste … (“Fin de otoño”) [the first snow / covers the brook / and the crowns of the trees // the river leaves footprints / of incense / in its path / and the comfortable recluse / still withstands … (“End of autumn”)]

 

Resident Alien #2 (2003)

available from AJC, 1810 Sealy,   Galveston, TX 77550; USA for $2; minkeyking@aol.com

subtitle: loving the alien

on the cover: an alien with “un nopal pintado en la cara” [a prickly pear cactus painted on its face]

inside: an “antimanifesto” defending the last issue of his zine; the stories of a genealogical roadtrip through Texas and of being hit on by a “Spanish groupie” in a gay bar; a “barrio diccionario”; some cartoons

overall: A lot of potential, but this guy’s been in school too long. A piece of solid descriptive writing will be followed by mushy poetical flights or theory-inspired musings. (I can recognize it, ‘cause I’m so often guilty of it.)

quote 1: This is the hill country, the part of Texas that I love. This is tiny towns whose main streets are peppered with little bungalows and glass fronted “downtowns.” Long, winding roads flanked by oak and pecan trees covered in kudzu make for some amazing vistas. … We find the church designed by his great-great-uncle, the architect. We pull off and go see this man’s name on a historical marker.

      Next to the church is a graveyard. Tall and coltish he kicks through the ankle-high grass. He’s searching the headstones looking for familiar names. His T-shirt sleeves are rolled up against the heat of the day. It’s not even noon so the sun has yet to reach its impossibly high perch in the sky, and it will be many long hours until it comes down from there.

quote 2: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Our histories are moving away from us at the speed of life. The roads we travel are two ways: coming and going. Are the objects of our lives, the memories of our respective pasts really closer than they appear?

 

Thought Bombs #20 (May 2003)

available from Anthony Rayson c/o South Chicago ABC Zine Distro, PO Box 721, Homewood, IL 60430 USA; for $2; free to prisoners

on the cover: a TV screen says Obey Your Master

inside: rants against the Iraq invasion, religion, prisons, and the deadness of U.S. culture; an article on being arrested at a peace rally; anti-war lyrics; text of a speech given at a local rally; cartoons

quote: The blood of the murdered is splattered on you too because you didn’t do a damned thing to stop it! May your hoped-for afterlife consist of the screaming-in-your-ear sound of tortured murder victims, done so wrong by those you’ve supported by your gutless acquiescence and abject poverty of an existence!

overall: An ideologue of despair. Not that I blame him. It’s all true. The U.S. is monstrous. But so much of what passes for anarchism is just lashing out. Violent tantrums. Reading a zine like this is almost as disheartening as listening to a George Bush speech. (When I could be doing something constructive.)

 

Thoughtworm Number 10 (June 2003)

available from Sean Stewart, 1703 Southwest Pkwy, Wichita Falls, TX 76302 USA; for $2 cash;

http://www.thoughtworm.com/

on the cover: a winsome silkscreened armadillo

inside: mostly Sean’s journals from this spring; also, reflections on the Texas town where he now lives and some book and zine reviews

quote: Nobody was going to convince me that there was anything beautiful about this area. As we drove home, and the sun was setting, she tried again. “Look, see how the sun is hitting those grasses right now?” At the time, it seemed kind of pathetic to me.

overall: For some reason I found this issue depressing. Not for the content’s sake, though. I think it’s because of the parallels between Sean’s life and mine (recent library school graduates) and our very different responses. Sean is determined to have a positive attitude about his less-than-ideal situation. He’s started working out in a gym. In the face of hostility, he’s publicly protested the Iraq war. He’s meeting people and trying to like the place where he is. I guess I’m trying too (although you won’t catch me in a gym). I love my new job as a reference librarian, but it’s maddening that my net income as a “professional” is now lower than it was as a “paraprofessional”—and I have less free time. But enough about me. Thoughtworm is a very good zine.

 

Total Annihilation #2 (June 2003)

available from Evan, PO Box 298, Sheffield S10 5XT ENGLAND; for free (but send some IRCs or a good trade); http://www.anarchopunk.free-online. co.uk/bitter.html

on the cover: Evan talks about the bands he’s in and the music he’s heard.

inside: Four pages of music reviews, three pages of zine reviews (in small type, so there’s lots). He reviews stuff from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland, in addition to the UK and US things you’d expect. He gives good descriptions, so you know what you’d be getting, but he doesn’t hold back on the opinion either.

quote: so if you’re the type of punk rocker who likes to read and think about stuff rather than throw pints of lager at bands who talk about politics inbetween songs… then this could well be up your street!

another quote: More punk rock than you can shake a snotty stick at!!

overall: enthusiastic!

 

Zine Nation #1. (July 2003)

available from Justin Chatwin, 17 Paton Rd Unit 8, Toronto, ON M6H 1R7 Canada;  for $2 (US or Canadian); zinenation@yahoo.com

subtitle: your guide to media retaliation

inside: an interview with cartoonist Chester Brown (Yummy Fur, Underwater, etc.), ziney reprints, posters, and lotsa reviews!

overall: a great new addition to the constellation of review zines (84 pages!)

 

Mark Hain

PO Box 411, Swarthmore, PA 19081

Giant_turu@hotmail.com

 

      I’ve been depressed. Part of it is the ever-increasing realization that my life-long financial hardships are probably never going to go away. But as some consolation, many of the zines I’ve reviewed for this issue make living with less, and finding creative ways around everyday expenses, sound like both an adventure and a way of stickin’ it to The Man. That sounds nice.

      As I type this, our landlord is outside the window fiddle-farting around with a weed whacker, which he has been doing for frickin’ hours. I’m playing a CD louder than I would like to try to drown it all out. Let me fall into that little paradise, chilly autumn nights with nothing to do but lie on the couch, read ghost stories, and listen to sweet music (my top five of the moment: “Não Identificado” by Gal Costa; “Tell Me More and More and Then Some” by Billie Holiday; “I’m Lost” by Carmen McRae; “I Could Have Told You” by Frank Sinatra, and “Bleeding Heart” by Curve).

 

The Urban Pantheist, Spring 2003

$3, 28 pages

140 A Harvard Ave., #308, Allston, MA 02134; biceratops@hotmail.com

An attractive, informative, very likeable zine. Easily-riled Christians and others of that ilk need not fear; in spite of the title, you’ll find nothing about goddess-worship, magick afoot, or dancing naked under the summer solstice moon. Instead, The Urban Pantheist presents thoughtful, intelligent, even reverential essays on the wonders of nature. This issue features articles on lichen, fungi (including instructions on how to make a mushroom spore print, like the striking cover image), and an explanation of how various animal species became domesticated. Also featured is a fine article, “Wild Austin,” written and beautifully illustrated by Jason Eckhardt, describing local wildlife. The inner cover features a handsome color photo of wood ducks; on the back, a pretty color collage of fungi and lichen. About the only thing I didn’t care for was an attempt at humor, a fake ad for “dog treats in flavors dogs really love!” such as human feces and cadaver; it seemed out of place and jarring in comparison to the respectful tone of the rest of the zine. Editor Jef Taylor writes “as someone who has defined himself a pantheist, I thrill in the non-human, the natural.” It shows in the obvious care he puts into this recommended publication.

 

Bummers and Gummers, Vol. 4, Issue 11, Spring 2003

24 pages, $2.95 cash or check; free to prisoners; will consider trades

Box 66, Yoncalla, OR 97499

“Specifically crafted for those who just gotta do things their way,” publisher Lokiko Hall’s small newspaper-format publication is “back in print after 6 1/2 years.” The title refers to new-born livestock rejected by their parents requiring human care (“bummers”) and elderly animals also needing TLC (“gummers”), and is indicative of the overall friendly, homey, conversational tone, with Lokiko and her contributors discussing various ways of living simply and doing things for yourself. One article instructs on cheese making, another on how to bribe public officials, and there’s advice on how to get a reliable used car for the least amount of money. Two articles, one on building a brick bread oven, the other about using horses to pull trees into a river to create a habitat for trout, may be just slightly too long for general interest, but are intriguing nonetheless. Lisa Smith contributes an article on an open-air wake and cremation ceremony held by British “travelers” and squatters. The publisher interviews two high school students protesting U.S. policy in Iraq, and how they dealt with the inevitable backlash. Most fascinating was a letter by Kate Forrester Kibuga about her experiences with kinship in Tanzania— as the title says, “The Perils of Polygamy: Wicked Stepmothers Abound in the Hyper-Extended Family.” I have really come to value self-published material that, as the editor says, “breaks away from the pack” and can’t be consumed in 15 minutes or less. Reading this publication gave me a sweet ache that there may be something missing in my life, but that something may not be so hard to find: highly recommended.

 

Dwelling Portably May 2003

24 pages, $1

P.O. Box 190-L, Philomath, OR 97370-0190

I reviewed this publication a few issues ago, and it’s good to see that it’s now more readable - larger font sizes, standard page layout, plus lots of submissions from many different contributors. There’s tons of low- or no-cost practical information for those “dwelling portably,” whether by choice or circumstance: how to make a stove out of a coffee can; best choices for toilet paper alternatives; DIY dental treatments; foraging vs. gardening, etc. I hope I never need to know this stuff, but it does my heart good to know it’s here. Also several angering stories of self-sufficient homeless persons or people living off the land getting harassed by cops and bureaucracy. Overall, fascinating and strangely uplifting.

 

Tanglefoot: Absurdist

Documents from the 21st Century, Issue 1

$3, 33 pages

315 NE Buffalo, Portland, OR 97211

superfrida@earthlink.net

A zine of “comix, photographs, poetry, fiction, art, and other smutty nonsense,” this one fares a bit better than the average contributor-driven endeavor. Sure it’s a wild variation of good, bad, and filler, and most of it’s a little too snarky and jaded to really feel like there’s much heart or anger or passion at stake, but it’s frequently sharp and witty, with some interesting visuals. “Why I Love Ashton Kutcher” by Miss Lady Lay makes an easy target of the flavor of the month (whom I saw referred to somewhere as “The Great American Retard”- presumably more for his TV character than for dating emaciated harpy Demi Moore). Several poetry selections by Amy Squier, dealing with sex, childhood abuse, and adult survivorship, incorporate welcome humor into the heaviness. “Encounter: a fragment” by Craig Perry and photos by Nicole evoke a moody urban decay. The back cover art, a naïve-style drawing by Amelia Santiago of an elderly man posing with an ax behind a seated woman with a liquor bottle, is charmingly strange. “Leslie from Los Angeles” by Charlie Vazquez, about a gay guy badgered into phone sex by a belligerent woman with an incest fantasy, is funny while it lasts, but ultimately doesn’t amount to much. I was most struck by the two well-drawn, surrealistically disturbing, but too short comics by editor Superfrida, “An Odd Dream” and particularly “Greyhound to Diaperville.” A worthy output for a first issue; contributions are welcome for subsequent issues.

 

Commies, Fags and Hippies, # Two

$3, 24 pages

Mel and Teri Kelly

C/O Poste Restante, Wellington, New Zealand; violentfemmes@hotmail.com

The provocative title and cover image (an over-used publicity still from the film Baise Moi of a woman in a slinky little dress aiming a gun at the head of a man on all fours) promise more than this slight project delivers. Ostensibly lesbian empowerment by two “charismatic iconoclasts your mother warned you about,” it’s all a bit same old, same old: short anti-bourgeois, anti-work, “being yr own person” essays, some lesbian sex poetry, etc. On the plus side: “Manhater,” a short, sharp reminiscence by Velvet about her days as a dominatrix. On the minus side: a randomly inserted photo of a little person prostitute (why? mere shock value? are they pro or con?), and a two-page story/ad in which the editors write “give us a piece of clothing and we’ll punk it, as it should be.” Any irony here in that this completely undermines the punk ethos of DIY? And why would writers seemingly striving towards radical feminism still feel inclined to put Sid Vicious’ idiotic mug in their pages-this is iconoclasm? Worst of all is the smug, self-congratulatory tone of superiority adopted by the editors: if you’re going to position yourself as so righteously radical, at least publish a zine that’s not the same as a hundred others!

 

Fred Argoff

1800 Ocean Pkwy. #B-12

Brooklyn, NY 11223

wajasay@optonline.net

     

Hey, look at this, would ya? Another manila envelope full of zines to review. So let’s not waste any more valuable time or space, but get right down to cases...

I had a suspicion I’d like this new zine when I saw “Outhouse Publications” as the return address on the envelope. It’s issue #1 of Bob—the editor’s name is Bob, you see, making for a fairly appropriate title.

And what makes another new addition to zinedom special? Check this out: Bob came out of college, stayed on the straight & narrow, landed a wage-slave job, and moved on up through Corporate America. The American Dream, you think, right? Well, Bob begs to differ, and has started up this zine to demonstrate how much of a fantasy that is. (Some of us have already discovered that, but it’s still wonderful to see new names on the club roster!) Anyway, the premiere issue delves into such areas as the cult of e-Bay, the fairytale of college education, and Britney as Pepsi whore.

Don’t even try to tell me that you aren’t already drooling at the prospect of reading this zine for yourself. So rush $1.50 to Bob Sheairs, 30 Locust Ave., Westmont, NJ 08108 (trades: perhaps - he’s still thinking about this) and get on the bandwagon.

 

Irony is Dead, shouts the cover of this new comix zine. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but this cryptic comic could well make you sit back and think about things—which is a good thing, by the way. I myself, being only able to manage pathetic stick figures, have always been insanely jealous of anyone who can actually draw. So between the mysterious comics and my jealousy of anyone who can produce art, I recommend the $2/trade deal, and you should contact Chelsea Beck right away. P.O. Box 139, Tivoli, NY 12583. She does warn that this address is subject to change, so you can also contact her at ironyisdead@hotmail.com.

 

 Don’t look now, but here’s the good stuff. If you’ve never seen or heard of Sugar Needle, then you’re in for a treat. A nice, sticky sweet treat! This is a zine devoted to candy—and where is the human being who could resist something like this, I demand to know. Issue #23 includes Freekee Soda (one of those fizzy things you drop in water) from Iceland, licorice from Italy, caramels from Australia, a variety of different sugar packets...and more!

Where does it all end? Who cares, ‘cause once you’ve been injected with the sugar needle, all you want is more, more, more, and the dentist be damned! This issue came from co-editor Corina Fastwolf, P.O. Box 300152, Minneapolis, MN 55403. $1 plus first-class stamp, but you can also trade good zines or interesting candies.

 

Twenty-Eight Pages Loving-ly Bound with Twine has been getting around since the first issue came out. When someone goes to the length of literally binding each individual issue with string, well, you can’t just ignore whatever awaits between the covers. Issue #7 features Christoph’s journal kept during a weekend Buddhist retreat. Personally, what I found most fascinating was the letter he wrote to the folks at Deer Park concerning their “Half Pint” bottles of water; he wondered why they couldn’t just be labeled “One Cup,” since a cup is half of a pint. (What he got in reply was a typical corporate non-answer, thanking him for his interest in the product, but not explaining anything.) You can subscribe for a dozen issues ($18), six issues ($10) or three for $5. A single issue goes for $2/trade from Christoph Meyer, P.O. Box 106, Danville, OH 43014.

 

The Whirligig is a litzine. So when you’re finished reading all the ranting and raving everywhere else, you can settle down with this and relax for a while. The contents are divided into two sections: fiction and poetry. Of course, when you’re feeling inspired, submissions are always welcome. But in the meanwhile, three dollars American gets you the latest issue of this semi-annual zine (#7 has an electric pink cover that’s just the sort of thing I look for when I’m putting my own projects together!) from Frank Marcopolos, 4809 Avenue N (#117), Brooklyn, NY 11234.

 

The title of Psychedelic Dressing Room was all it took for me to sit up and take notice. You don’t run across the word “psychedelic” much anymore. The zine is actually a forum for unknown musicians to print their work, certainly an interesting idea and fairly unique even in the world of zines. So, you’re a bit of a musician and you could stand the recognition? Send $2 for an issue, and of course submissions are always welcome, to Clara Brasseur, P.O. Box 1043, State College, PA 16804.

 

Finally out of me this time, there’s Recluse Zine. It’s not that I put it off for last, it’s just that I kept trying to think of what to write about the darn thing. It’s mainly a music zine, with some political opinionating thrown in here and there. Music zines are always a problem for me, since I’m a complete alien to the current scene; as far as I’m concerned, the music scene ended when the Beatles broke up in the spring of 1970. But I won’t put down a music-oriented zine for that reason. Incidentally, the back cover of issue #9 lists classified ads—several of these guys ought to check out Psychedelic Dressing Room. Anyway, see for yourself. A single issue goes for $1.25 from the people at Recluse Zine, P.O. Box 307663, Columbus, OH 43230.

 

Brooke Young

c/o SLC Zine Library, 210 E 400 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84111