New mag, pristine poster, at Empty Bottle Tuesday

Can’t say much about the new zine from the folks at Two With Water, other than it looks like Nick Sarno from the Green Lantern Press might well have something to do with it, as I haven’t seen a copy, but the poster for their Chicago launch party is simple but stellar, methinks.

Party’s next week, Tuesday, at Empty Bottle with an eclectic mix of bands and readers. Should be a good show, at least. Visit the mag’s website for more: twowithwater.com.

Nervier than thou? The Broad Set Writing Collective

Anybody heard of these folks? I think they might well be among the more nervy of the young-ish writerly set in action today, perhaps even with nerves of steel or, if not, aluminum, at least. I’ve corresponded with several members in recent history via THE2NDHAND submissions and zine trades and, if I can’t say much else, I’d advise to keep an eye out for their work, mostly originating in N.J. (oh a-and in the credits to their 4th edition of the Lo-Fidelity zine, they put a shout-out to “role model” Dr. Mickey Hess, THE2NDHAND’s FAQ editor, longtime compatroit and lately a prof at Rider University in Lawrenceville). Among them are onetime (and soon-to-be-two-time) THE2NDHAND contributor Peter Richter and, likewise, Glen Binger. Their Lo-Fidelity zine brings together the work of many, with a single writer featured more widely in each edition. Prose writer and poet Lauren Cerand made up the bulk of the No. 4, out this year. Here’s a taste from Cerand’s work:

NOTES FROM THE FIELD (3/20/2008)
(Alternate title: God I fucking hate this war.) My father called me last night to say he hadn’t heard from me in a while and to remind me of the staggering expectations that pass for small talk in my family. Afterward, as I walked the rest of my way home in a blue mood, I wondered if I would be destined to always have difficult relationships with people I care deeply for. And then just now as I was sitting in the backseat of a car on the FDR, en route to an event for work, I saw a helicopter hovering over the East River and thought of my dad flying reconnaissance missions in Vietnam, younger than I am now, trying not to die.

Exquisite brevity, we say,  and I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own more maximal approach to the same date five years previous, as bombs began to fall on Baghdad and on our television screens in vulgar display, to paraphrase one of the last great thrash metal giants of the 1980s. Its beginning is pasted in below. Follow the subsequent link for the full gore:

20 MARCH 2003

When I was a kid in SC I never tired of poking fun at the outrageous piety of the born-again, peppered here and there over the town’s landscape and, by the time myself and my brother were teens, beginning to show up in numbers within our own family in the form of among others an overweight uncle who now led every prayer before every Christmas (etc.) meal at excruciating length, my brother and I struggling to keep down laughs at the whole thing.

Down the town at the plaza, Chicago, this is what I talked about to begin with. “The men believe in the capital-R ‘Rapture,’” I said. “Bush is an Uncle I’d make fun of over dinner, essentially, a buffoon, a tired old fool who hasn’t the mind to really comprehend his own country’s needs, thus acts on a personal feeling he deems the very baby Jesus talking to him, essentially.” I talked among the crowd, among the skyscrapers (the buzz-saw cacophony falling from the helicopter above our heads) today to a man I tend to run into throughout my travels, the last time being outside of the bookstore in my neighborhood, where he works. He has his bike there with him, which I admire briefly.

“The violence of Rapture being undeniable, if you know anything about the book of Revelations, I think that Bush and his cohorts simply have it in mind that they’ll push the thing along. Though it’s also a fact that the pious son of a bitch — Bush, mind you — no doubt has the gall to believe that he’ll be carried upward at the moment of return of the Lord. More likely of course that it’ll just be some old lady in a trailer in the Ozarks, before all, the rest of us left burning down here in our filth.”

My cohort here is not into this conversation, and we move on to lighter subjects, funnier talks: the folly of violence and violence itself as seen through the eyes of four gun-enthusiasts going by the name of Metallica, 1987’s Master of Puppets, insanity.

Then the speeches. Click here for the remainder, in which kids are beaten on bridges, horses are used as barricades, and high-fives are exchanged between narrator and former death row inmates…

 

UPDATE: Richter piece “The Crow’s Nest is live at THE2NDHAND.com as of 11/23/09.

Nerves of steel? — reading Nov. 9 @ Whistler, and more

Given the rumor, innuendo and subsequent confusion that have all accompanied the run-up to the very real reading series from THE2NDHAND that launches next week, Monday, Nov. 9, at Whistler in Chicago’s Logan Square, it’s hard to pin down exactly when and where the question in its title — “So you think you have nerves of steel?” — was first uttered in conversation between myself and the Chicago-based coeditor C.T. Ballentine, but he locates it in a supposed text message I sent him early this summer. I must surely have deleted it from my sent box, though I do vaguely recall a night out back of my apartment in Birmingham engaged in cooking over smoldering charcoal and not-smoldering beer when the subject of steel nerves came up in a texting back-and-forth having to do with an object of Ballentine’s affections, but little else. By the time I left Birmingham, on July 30 this year, there’s evidence that the title was at least close to being fully formed in Ballentine’s mind, as the 10:29 a.m. entry here makes clear.

Suffice it to say that, finally, the reading series So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel? has arrived, and will feature monthly a writer riffing on the question in the story’s title in a sort of extended collaboration toward, perhaps, a greater whole or sense of completeness. This month’s writer so featured is Chicago playwright and prose scribe Chris Bower, one of the best working in the city today, and joining him with new work will be THE2NDHAND contributors Jill Summers, notable for her shorts (stories, for certain) and audio fiction, among other things, and Amanda Marbais.

Backing and interluding all where appropriate are the trio of Nora Barton on cello, Eliza Bangert on clarinet and Allie Deaver on flute. Billie Howard of Paver assists. There may or may not be an arm-wrestling match pitting one lucky volunteer against a venerable Chicago litmag editor, the press material runs, but I know a smidge more — as it was relayed to me, there will be some Over the Top-style antics toward the end, if the mood is right (you know, lots of smoke coming from random places, folks circled around dramatic lighting over a nice old wooden table just the right size for two full-size adult arms). I believe poet/writer/editor Fred Sasaki may be involved.

It stands to be a good night, and to my mind what makes the series at least conceptually beautiful is the collaborative spirit of the monthly endeavor; of the Chicago series currently in action, I don’t think any attempts to involve writers with each other collaboratively in quite the same way — not over time, in any case. What could Nerves of Steel mean six months from now? A year? It’s attempting to build a story all its own; hope you’ll play a part.

And, of course, it’s free. Details here: www.the2ndhand.com/events/events.html.

Or via our Facebook group.

PS: The next broadsheet, our 33rd, was delayed a bit care of some transcontinental apartment hunting woes (not my own) and other circumstances. We regret to report that it will not feature Al Burian, but we’re excited that Al’s not given up on us entirely and should have something with us next year. Also: we’ve got somebody just as good in mind, of course: Kate Duva. Yeah. Stay tuned.

 

Two salvos — 14 years apart

A couple blasts here, one from the recent past and the other more distant. I’ve had a good time in most instances — sometimes too good — but it hasn’t always been so easy. In Birmingham now a little over a week ago our “Extraordinary Rendition” of a reading went quite well, and for the first time I can prove at least a part of that statement with video, shot live at Greencup Books that fine Sept. 11. It’s my “Dreams of a Thriller” story, which you probably heard first in a blog post from weeks back, and the vid’s embedded below.

For the second vid, that blast from oh-so-long-ago past, click here for where former bandmate Greg Ellis posted the short of Facebook — warning: it’s a live rendition itself of a song whose name I can’t quite remember; I think myself or Greg one wrote it. We were a hardcore band called Salvo Rain. That’s him on the drums and screaming, that’s me far right of screen, on guitar, starting to get sweaty. I don’t remember the dates and many of the names, but I have a distinct recollection of how it felt to be 19 on that tiny stage in that tiny backroom of the Indigo Moon headshop in what I might have thought of my own little empathically screwed up corner of Rock Hill, S.C., my hometown. Which is to say, hot, loud, itchy, energizing, wonderful. Here’s that link again. Have I mellowed a bit in 14 years? — yeah, but just a bit, right? Evidence follows?…

Wirthlin on Cellstories Thursday, Milam on Twitter Friday

Couple new things upcoming in the way of mobile fiction experimentation, namely the first CellStories.net contribution from THE2NDHAND, David Wirthlin’s “Nine Items From Your Disappearance,” to be broadcast via the exclusively mobile literary short site Thursday; Doug Milam, in turn, will be engaging his Twitter feed in our second live itinerary this Friday here. Follow him for the goods, though we’ll be publishing the results, er… would posthumously be the right word here? Assuming most microblog posts officially die after a few minutes, of course.

Likewise, those of you still reading words on paper, I recently finished one book and came upon another, and both make frantic literary hay of experimental typography. The first, Edgar Mollere’s Driven or forced onward by or as if by wind or water, is a tale somewhat in the tradition of Faulkner’s rural-South mythologizing, though its brutal end is more in keeping with the our time’s extremes of temperament/action.

It follows — through the shifting, often combined (on the same page, even) points of view of several children of a rural family — an eldest sibling’s evolution to monster. I haven’t read a more chillingly compelling book since Book IV of Roberto Bolano’s 2666. Released by Austin-based Vagabond Press (also the publisher of our compatriot Spencer Dew’s excellent Songs of Insurgency), Driven is a comparatively small book, at only 133 pages, many of them  scantly peppered with text. But in the white spaces rests ample opportunity for readers to imaginatively engage the brilliant, macabre story. I read the gruesome and foreshadowing (however educational) “Butchering” chapter under a small light on a screen porch late one night and, crickets loud at work in the background, out there in the dark, felt the world opening up in every last bit of its unexplored, terrifying glory. Pick it up soon.

The second book is Nashville-based Eric Durchholz’s Heartless. I met Durchholz one slightly hungover day (Susannah had taken me to the Patterson House on Division — that’s Nashville, Chicago folks — for a birthday outing the previous night) last week at the Portland Brew here in East Nashville by chance; turns out he was a little hungover, too, or at least I’d assume so given the pub crawl release he staged for the novel the night before in Five Points. I can’t say much about the book right now, but look for an excerpt at THE2NDHAND.com fairly soon. What I’ve read so far brings to mind Stephen Elliott’s A Life Without Consequences and, well, Mollere, simply for nature of the typographical experimentation going on. There’s a 100-page pdf via heartless.me you can sample, in the meantime.

CellStories launch (& Annalemma redesign)

When my former colleague at the Chicago Reader, venerable “Hot Type” columnist Mike Miner, wrote about  Punk Planet Books editor and publisher Dan Sinker, in turn a friend and colleague in lit-punk stuff, I knew it had to be about something good. Appropriately, I came across Miner’s eventual column about Dan — “A Short Story in the Palm of Your Hand,” about Sinker’s CellStories.net venture –via someone’s (I think Sinker’s himself) Facebook status update, reposted the news myself and hopefully began to chain along the interest in something that’s been well overdue for quite some time in the web fiction arena: a site with stories delivered daily and optimized for mobile phone exclusivity.

Though McSweeney’s does look and function fairly well on the iPhone — as does THE2NDHAND, for that matter — it and other online fiction purveyors have none of CellStories.net’s seamless simplicity for mobile readers nor the expected range of style expected among the content. Sinker expects to pull from not only direct submissions but from already published work, aggregating the “best of the Web” in the manner of Mother Jones or Harper’s readings section. I’ve already recommended several recent stories from THE2NDHAND for CellStories — including among others David Wirthlin’s “Nine Items From Your Disappearance”, part of a novel due from BlazeVox soon, and Margaret Patton Chapman’s alternate history of Chicago’s Kimball Avenue, “The Tragical History of Dr. Kimbell” — and with any luck our writers will reach more readers this way.

Amazingly, the venture was picked up today by Reuters and Publishers’ Weekly. Traffic was high on THE2NDHAND.com today, too. As for CellStories’ functionality, I’ve yet to actually read the debut piece, by former THE2NDHAND contributor and known excellent Chicago quantity Megan Stielstra (I’m sure it’s a good one, nonetheless). It’s not accessible via a standard internet browser on the computer, nor via my chintzy Verizon texting phone’s web browser (admittedly, a lot of things don’t work on my chintzy Verizon texting phone’s web browser).

Apparently it works on the iPhone and iTouch (hey, Susannah’s got one of those)– and on the Google Android phone, among others. In any case, sounds like Sinker and co. are working on accessibility issues; stay tuned for more: http://twitter.com/dansinker or http://twitter.com/cellstories.

In other news, Annalemma, a mag launched by the great Chris Heavener after initial development in a Columbia College workshop I taught in 2006, has an entirely redeveloped and quite cool website experimenting with lit multimedia, here.

UPDATE: As expected Stielstra’s story rocks. Checked it out on Susannah’s iTouch. The feel of the device, complete with background design and good-size text, is excellent, definitely worth staying tuned.

AND: According to past THE2NDHAND contributor Amy Woods Butler, CellStories is working just fine on her cheapo Verizon phone.

The nonchalance of the King

Check out these pictures of Spencer Dew (left, with Opium magazine’s Todd Zuniga on the right in both), taken during and at the end of, respectively, the Literary Death Match at the July 31, 2009, Printers’ Ball. Taken  by Stacee Droege and procured via Jill Summers, they’re part of a larger collection at the Silver Tongue Reading Series’ Facebook page here.

They’re a great way to get a feel for what this year’s event was all about if you weren’t there — nicely, it was at least partly about, well, printing this year. Check out all those letter-press piece from the Columbia College Book & Paper Arts folks.

Remainders and reminders — and Spencer Dew conquers at Literary Death Match

Divide 25 by 8, the number of broadsheets THE2NDHAND’s published since September 11, and you get 3 with a remainder of one, the number of readings we have ever scheduled on that date, before or since. Sept. 11, 2009, join us back in Birmingham for a release event for broadsheet 32, featuring a short story by Patrick Somerville, at Greencup Books; details forthcoming.

Speaking of Greencup — the bookstore, an island of unfiltered music and culture in the deep south — they need your help. They’re trying to raise $3,000, at least, to make needed repairs to get their space to code and stay in business. At the very least, if you’re in or near Birmingham visit the book shop and event space just over the Richard Arrington Blvd. viaduct from downtown and buy some books. Or make a donation — all donations are tax deductible — here: http://www.greencupbooks.org/.

The Chicago Printers’ Ball last Friday saw our rep in the Opium magazine Literary Death Match emerge as the last writer standing — THE2NDHAND’s 30th broadsheet author Spencer Dew (Songs of Insurgency) read this piece, then, when he aadvanced to the final round, managed to identify more pics of dead authors than the competitor. “The other fellow yelled out ‘Ernest Hemingway’ before I did,” Dew says, “but I got Michael Crichton, Saul Bellow, Shel Silverstein and … someone else.  I guess video of the whole thing will be posted soon, at which point I’ll link to it on my site.” It’s not up yet but keep an eye out for it. (Side note: Dew was handed the Chicago crown by former champ, and also a somewhat frequent contributor to THE2NDHAND, Jill Summers.)

Finally, if you haven’t yet managed to pick up Brit Tom McCarthy’s 2007 novel Remainder, consider it. It’s a fantastic tale that, following a fellow Brit’s concurrent treatment of amnesia in the, er, fantastical The Raw Shark Texts: A Novel, is a titillating refreshment that feels more real, true, than the latter. I can’t recommend any novel released in recent years more highly. If only one could reenact McCarthy’s writing of the book. . . it might lead to a finale even more compelling than the original. (Read the book: you’ll see what I mean.) McCarthy is also one of the men behind the lit group the International Necronautical Society; check it out.

Dreams of a thriller

I was thinking about my childhood, I guess, on the long ride home from work two weeks back, all the things that have fallen apart over the years, the notion of one day achieving rock or pop stardom a la early 1980s Michael Jackson, the other silly dreams of being a fireman, a policeman, a truck driver, a fiction writer. It got me a little sad, really, and it was all sparked by the news reports about my home state’s governor’s disappearance. That’s right, South Carolin gov. Mark Sanford was fresh from defeat in battle with the state’s courts and legislature over federal stimulus money. And now he was gone, and nobody could say where he went, though there were rumors he was hiking the defeat off, sweating it out on the Appalachian Trail, they were saying, and so I thought that here was a man in need of a break, or on the verge of a breakdown, say, sick, and I felt pretty sick at life myself so, primed for empathy, when I got home I found in my mailbox a letter from Zach Dodson, one half of Featherproof Books and organizer of the Dollar Store reading series’ tour, ongoing as we speak, which included the item I was to have written from. Zach had mailed it like four weeks before, and it’d finally forwarded to my new address, which probably shows you how out of touch with humanity I’ve been, but nonetheless I was delighted to note that it was a Get Well Soon-type gift CD. “Sick As a Dog,” it was dubbed, or so was dubbed the track on the CD, a little dog singing to the receiving, sick party a ditty to the tune of “Farmer in the Dell” that goes a little like this:

I am your puppy dog.
I was sitting here for you
When I heard someone say
That you were feeling blue.

 They say you’re sick as a dog.
Well I don’t what that means
To you but this is
What it means to me.

And then the chorus:

Yeah I’m feeling blue
So I must have the flu
And I guess I am
Sick as a dog.

But I’m getting ahead of the story here, because I didn’t even open the clear-plastic sort of packaging the doggy CD was contained in — I’m really only guessing at the Farmer in the Dell tune, too; you can sing anything with any rhyme scheme whatsoever to that tune, in any case. The reason I didn’t open it: I didn’t think I would be able to actualy make the Nashville or Atlanta readings on the tour, and, in my misery, I sent the CD where I figured it might do more good — in an envelope direct to the Governor of South Carolina’s office:

 “Governor Sanford,” I wrote in an accompanying letter, “Don’t take this wrong way. I don’t really see myself as your “puppy dog,” but I do think there’s some relevant comparison — here’s hoping you get over the shit that’s clearly piling up over your way. I got a ton of my own, here. I’m probably more a Democrat, by the way, but I grew up upstate in Rock Hill, in case you’re wondering why I might care a little. Here’s hoping they find you.

“Sincerely…”

Yeah Mark was feeling bad
So he must have the crabs.
And I guessed he was
Sick as a dog.

It was that fateful Friday for the governor when I sent the letter off, and by the time I got the reply the full extent of Sanford’s “sickness” was known to the state of South Carolina, all of our great nation and, yes, Argentina. Sanford had joined the that great vanguard of politicians who succumb to an extramarital-affair-type scandal, this one notable not only for its international character but for released e-mail exchanges between Sanford and his Argentinean lover, Maria, in which it was made quite clear he’d fallen head over heels in the manner of maybe a teenage or early-20s boy longing to be a pop icon. In one he even conjured an image of the receiver of the mail with her hands holding “two magnificent parts” of herself, which reminds one and all no doubt of embarrassing mentally rehearsed conversations between oneself and the object of one’s affections from like 10th grade.

The governor’s office’s reply showed up in the mail a week on, the following Thursday, its sentences positively pregnant with the kind of unintended irony that can only be the product of time, events providing the rub, bearing out the comically false nature of what was known about the past, in the past. Or maybe the staffer writing the letter was a joker. In any case,

“Dear Mr. Dills,” it read, “We assure you the governor is in fine health. We have, however, received both magnificent parts of your missive, letter and musical ‘Get Well Soon,’ and will deliver them to Governor Sanford at the appropriate time.

“All best…”

And so I felt like a dud
So I must have had the crud.
And I guess I was
Sick as a dog.

I wanted go out into my tiny little backyard and howl at the moon with delight! I wanted to quit chewing shoes and socks and toys and digging holes in the yard, to sit real still while I get my bath and not make a mess on the floor. All for gloriously promiscuous Republican Governor Sanford, I do say! But I did not do any of that. I am not a dog, it’s true, so I wrote once more to the governor, that “Yes. Yes, ‘magnificent’ indeed, Mr. Sanford’s office, how magnificent so! But can I tell you I regret sending the CD? Really it sounds like Sanford’s doing better than most of the governors out there (which is to say nothing of all the other humans) in terms of life and love and all that. Send my regards, and enjoy the puppy dog, no doubt.

“Sincerely…”

Because, yes, by the time I actually made the time in my hurdy-gurdy-hurry-up-wait increasingly complicated existence — the at least partial source, perhaps, of my own sickness – to write that final letter and maybe to ponder the implications of this slapdash chain of events, time itself had proven me stupid. I knew that I’d picked the wrong recipient for my ‘Get Well Soon’ Dollar Store reading series item.

I should have sent it to Michael Jackson.

 

The Chicago-based Dollar Store reading series summer tour makes stops in Nashville, Austin, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, NYC and a few other cities. Visit www.dollarstoreshow.com for the full details.

Nice finds — new writers and old wristwatches

I found a watch recently — a somewhat nice watch, in fact — on Birmingham’s south side. The timepiece, fairly scuffed-up in several spots along the outer edges and band and no longer ticking, took only a visit to the watchman’s kiosk in a local mall to confirm that it needed no more than a battery to get it going again. It was a nice find, worth perhaps a few hundred bucks and a nice piece of a place to take with me as I planned a move north a couple hundred miles to Nashville, Tenn., with THE2NDHAND’s south co-HQ next month. That’s right, new address to which to send submissions, ephemera, get-well-soon cards, and etc. will be here:

Todd Dills, THE2NDHAND, 1430 Roberts Ave., Nashville, TN 37206.

As for the time, I imagined a zootsuited smooth-jazzman heard one hip-hop song too many and, fed up with underattendance at his Ona’s Lounge shows in this increasingly infantilistically musical society, took his jazzman’s vengeance on the dying watch, tossed out the window of a 1980s vintage Cadillac one lonely night.

Who knows how long it laid on the street before I found it — the dirty film on its polished-stainless-steel band would suggest at least a night in the rain.

In any case, my thoughts about what to do with the watch were less clear, by which I mean should I inquire with the police about watches reported stolen, should I sell it, sit on it, wear it and wait for the day some guy pulls me aside at a party and demands that I return his watch or we’re going out back to play fisticuffs for it?

I visited the police station and, ridiculously, ended up asking whether they had a lost-and-found after a postively belly-shaking laugh from the otherwise curt gentleman manning the south-side district station in response to my question of what to do with the watch. “Does it fit? Does it work? If I were you,” he said, “I’d keep it. Somebody leaves their watch on the sidewalk with a dead battery and all scuffed up? You think that person deserves that watch?”

“I  paid for the new  battery,” I said.

“You have motherfucking claim,” he said.

“Have their been any watches reported stolen?”

“Always watches reported stolen. Nothing like this, really, mostly women’s watches. Easier to get at, to, off.”

“Is there a lost-and-found?” I said and, though laughing through the entire exchange, the officer nearly keeled over with hysterics at this one.

“You really want to give this thing up, don’t you? I tell you what, I like the watch myself. What if I told you it was mine, that it was stolen right off my wrist and that I can identify it positively not by any serial number of engraving but by the scuff-mark here, which was made by my wife when she caught me cheating…”

He went on. I didn’t give it to him, suffice to say, but I wasn’t anything closer to resolution. Ultimately, I guess what I’m saying is: if you’re a Bhammer and are missing your watch, I might well have it.

***I know better the provenance of several writers — gems, jewelry in and of themselves – who have for increasingly lengthy stretches gone unnoticed in my submissions inbox this past year. After my child — now a year old, and walking and soon-to-be talking in sentences recognizable at least to her parents, if no one else — was born May 2008 and my response time to submissions immediately jumped a month or two, I nonetheless have been delighted by several new multi-instance contributors to our online magazine since, even if they’ve been longer in discovering here. (I’m back down to about a month and a half, though, to any contributors reading this.) 

Philadelphia’s Michael Peck, for instance, who’s playing with well-established styles and making them his own, William Gaddis’s in “The Pickpocket” and in the highly original “Last Orchard in America” piece I hear echoes of Barry Hannah and Denis Johnson.

Chicagoan Heather Palmer, meanwhile, will have another stylistically experimental yet ultimately powerful story published at THE2NDHAND.com quite soon and will be joining my colleague Mr. C.T. Ballentine, Paul Lask, Jill Summers and others at the Hungry Brain July 13. Click here for details.