Bird in the News

Spreading the word, making some friends, shaking a tail feather. Fall is an avian season. Things are getting downright frisky.

In October, we got our first press in Megan Voeller's lovely Creative Loafing article. And by chance, it was seen by a visitor who brought the news back to Vouched in Indianapolis, IN, a very cool project that promotes small press literature via guerrilla book stores, reading series, and online publishing. So pleased to make their acquaintance! And indeed the feeling was mutual, as founder Christopher Newgent quickly revealed his desire to start up a similar Vouched Bus project. Perfect timing. Let's fly seeds across the land.

What's next? Tomorrow evening, a rendezvous with Stephanie Hayes of the St. Petersburg Times. And the Kickstarter campaign, ever-so-slightly delayed (it takes time to make a good video and such) is expected to go live the week of Nov. 14.

That will be just in time for our first stop on the kick-off tour, at Sherry's Yesterdaze Parking Lot Sale, Saturday, Nov. 19 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Watch for more exciting programs that same evening, when the Ubernothing Big Machine Event takes over at Franklin Street's Cafe Hey.

Oh, we've come a quite a long way. Remember when the bus was yellow? And six hours of scraping turned arms into useless jelly?  Those were good times.

Annotations (no. 2)

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

Jean Louise (Scout) Finch

(To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960)

Required Reading: Philly Fanatic Edition

Our findings these days continue to take a decidedly naughty slant, as subversive, dark or complicated tales dominate the shelves. 

It makes sense in many ways. The founding of a new venture always requires a side-step into uncharted territory – explored here with a rather lengthy reading list from Philadelphia (after the image), where a recent business trip was bookended by visits to the best in thrift, book and comic book stores. 

We scored so much that FedEx had to assist in the transport home. On the way out of town, this exhibit at Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, about Philly's Prohibition-era radical press The Centaur Book Shop, closed another memorable chapter. 

"Up on my back, and I will take you thither."

The Breast

Philip Roth

(1973, Jonathan Cape, London)

Tweaking Kafka’s foibles, Roth pens this odd and funny yarn of a man who suddenly turns into a giant female breast. “Sightless in his hospital hammock, Kepesh ponders on possible causes for his monstrous metamorphosis.” 

Cavedweller

Dorothy Allison

(1998, Plume)

Extraordinary. Incantory. Fragile. Tangled. Indomitable. Heartbreaking. Brilliant. Allison.

Sexing the Cherry

Jeanette Winterson

(1989, Vintage International)

“The marvelous and the horrific,” according to The New York Times, “… fuses history, fairy tale and metafiction into a fruit of a memorably startling flavor.” 

Notice a theme appearing here? 

The Acid House

Irvine Welsh

(1994, W.W. Norton & Company)

An anthology of shorts from the Trainspotting author, this caustic volume specializes particularly in “cosmic reversals … [with] a corrosive wit.”

Last Exit to Brooklyn (1957, Grove Press)

The Demon (1976, 1998, Marion Boyars)

Both by Hubert Selby, Jr.

It’s hard to find the right words. We’ve been searching for Selby, and found a bounty. So far Last Exit to Brooklyn feels like the precipice of a roller coaster: excitement and anxiety at gravity’s edge. We’re ready for more, and it can’t be taken in gentle doses. The Demon is almost fear-inducing,  a “devastating, dark, perfect novel” (Chicago Sun-Times).

Cock & Bull

Will Self

(1992, Vintage Books)

A gender-bending pair of novelettes by Brit darling Will Self, described by New York Magazine as “deliciously funny comic fantasy [that] offers pointed comments on the bewildering and sometimes terrifying forms of contemporary sexual expression.”

Clumsy

Jeffrey Brown

(2002, sixth edition, Top Shelf Productions)  

This diminutive graphic novel out of Marietta, Georgia, is filled with darling, painful comic vignettes “for everyone who has ever loved and lost.”  Check.

Hot Water Music

Charles Bukowski

(1984, Black Sparrow Press)

Thanks again, Black Sparrow, for a torrent of gritty poetic prose, brief glimpses of L.A.’s underbelly provided by one of our favorite dirty old men.

We also bought Bukowski’s novel ‘Factotum’ (1975, rep. 1980, Black Sparrow), a classic edition with a simple geometric cover design fringed by a microscopic spattering of wax drops – accidental candle deposits from the previous owner. How charming are the touches that remind us of other hands and other eyes.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Gertrude Stein

(1933, 1990, Vintage Books)

This irreverent, conjoined-twin kind-of biography about the infamous pot-brownie-baking lesbian is an unexpected trip.

Kaleidoscope: A Variety of Short Stories

Ed., Ralph E. West, Jr., William Penn Charter School

(1970, Independent School Press)

Took a chance on this one, in part for sentimental reasons. It was edited by a professor from our kindergarten school in Philadelphia – albeit 13 or so years before we attended. This looks like a good teaching text, with short stories both classic and new by the likes of Poe, Twain, Jack London and E.M. Forster.

Dreamtigers

Jorge Luis Borges

(1964, 1970 E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.)

The most personal of books by a masterful figure in contemporary literature, crammed with poems, stories and sketches best described by John Updike of The New Yorker: “He represents the skeptical mind that is fascinated by an unending compulsion to isolate and define moments of experience in which the presumed identity of self, of here and now, can be fathomed and recognized as a tragic illusion.”

We expected nothing less.

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing

Issue 115: The F Word

(Spring 2011 issue, ed., John Freeman and others)

Sometimes we find great new books. And this, with its beautifully tactile cover, entices us to explore new feminist writings by Gillian Allnutt, Laura Bell, Clarisse d’Arcimoles, Maja Hrgovic, Caroline Moorehead, Eudora Welty, Jeanette Winterson and many others.

Special Thanks (no. 2)

October always marks a season of change. This time around proves no exception, and we welcome it openly: the new, the unusual, the unexpected.

We recently contacted artist Josh Pearson about showcasing his book, Alphabhetto, a beautifully-illustrated tome featuring a colorful alphabet of creatures and objects. In the process, we discovered Josh's manifold talents extend into design, fabrication and installation as Creative Director of Creative Arts Unlimited Inc.

A book-maker who also builds traveling exhibits? The synchronicity was almost too perfect.

One look at the bus, and Josh was bursting with great ideas for fixtures and displays. He took us in a surprising direction, recommending autopoles for the interior -- a sort of vertical tension rod system that supports a variety of presentation pieces.

A few weeks later, Josh and brother Mike Pearson (Creative Arts' Installation Captain) laid in the first set of Bluebird shelves.

How did we become so lucky in our friends? These two join a long list of supporters who have donated time, effort and expertise to the Bluebird Books project. Their thorough attention to detail made for a stable and attractive installation. Our gratitude is nigh-inexpressible.

Get your first peek at the shelves (and what's stocked on them) when we go on the road in mid-November to support our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. Follow us on Twitter for breaking news on where Bluebird will soon be perched.

Stay tuned for further news, as the wheels keep turning.

Annotations (no. 1)

"Camus wrote like a man who had just finished a large dinner of steak and french fries, salad, and had topped it with a bottle of good French wine. Humanity may have been suffering but not him. A wise man, perhaps, but Henry preferred somebody who screamed when they burned."

(Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music, 1983 Black Sparrow Press)

Hot Stacks

It was a fruitful evening at my secret new book-hunting spot. There wasn't much time to shop, but something drew me in for a quickie, an irresistible magnetic pull toward a 15-minute grab-and-go with the headphones on. Not surprisingly, most of the fruit landing in my heavy-handed basket turned out to be of a plump and juicy variety. Tonight's reading list follows the photograph.

Treasures laid carefully in a crate, I flew off to meet a lady. In dim light we pulled off these waxy, paper leaves. They fluttered to the floor like careless-shed clothes. Tape peeled up slowly to reveal a smooth blue skin beneath. She asked if she could touch it.

Yes, of course.

Faithless
Joyce Carol Oates (2001, The Ecco Press)
The prolific author-poet spins tales of transgression with her usual chilling understatement and precision.


Couplings and Groupings
Megan Terry (1972, Pantheon Books)
These interviews conducted in the early 1970s delve into the changing nature of modern relationships, monogamy and sex roles.



Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes
John Pierson (1995, Hyperion)
A revealing look at a decade of independent cinema (mid-1980s to '90s) penned by a risk-taking insider.



C'est comme ca
Jean-Paul Valette and Rebecca M. Valette (1978, D.C. Heath and Company)
It's a French textbook with pop illustrations. French is the hottest of the romance languages. Hands down.


The Book of Aphrodesiacs
Dr. Raymond Stark (1980, Stein and Day)
Potency, enhancement, contraception, fertility ... Dr. Stark explores sex from the herbalist perspective in this concise encyclopedic-style index. Incidentally, the good doctor also penned The Psychedelic's Handbook.


perv, a love story
Jerry Stahl (1999, William Morrow and Company)
The Permanent Midnight author follows his gritty memoir with this nakedly wicked young outsider story, getting props on the dust jacket from Mark Mothersbaugh, Lydia Lunch, and Hubert Selby, Jr. If a book makes Selby laugh, you know it's twisted.

Required Reading (no. 4)

Good things are happening. Weird things are happening. 

Things are happening.

Last Friday, we attended Book As Art: Beyond The Limits, an exhibition at MOSI advancing the book as a contemporary art form, sponsored by the inspirational USF-SOLIS (Student Organization of Library Information Science) under guidance of Cleo Moore. 

Attendance felt mandatory after reading this compelling sentence on their press release: 

"If you are inspired in any way by the physical presence of the book, as a vehicle for transmitting information, as a personal object or as a multiplicity of ideas, you will no doubt be moved by the visual power of word and image presented."

Vehicle, you say?

The show presented book illustrations, text collage, poetry and various paper works, fabric arts and deconstructed / reconstructed books. Plus a book sale (extreme restraint was exercised), banned book readings (cool) and adorable craft table. After careful observation, we can report that alphabet stamps do consistently appear to cause smiles.

In the gallery area, we were instantly lured in by Claudia Ryan's haunting, circular litany "I am a secret," a prose poem printed on simple white wall panels. But Sabrina Hughes' "Stories in Black and White" revealed a surprise with multifaceted charm. 

Each cross-stitched square, meticulously executed and pinned to the wall, was wrought into a QR code -- those blotchy, smart-phone-scan-able barcodes you see cropping up everywhere. Scan these tiny wall tapestries, and your digital device registers a simple line of text: the first line from a famous book. The resulting clever blend of media -- tediously handmade object providing instant delivery of information -- seemed an appropriate statement in the conversation about the future of words in a digital world.

We look forward to talking with the SOLIS folks again soon.
And also cannot stop looking at this art, captured on a quiet night in Ybor City.
The owls are not what they seem: