Girl Scouts pushing cookies on the corner. College kid shopping cart races. Some douchebags yelling “fucking hippies” from a speeding SUV. Dear Chicago Winter, I miss you already.
Blog
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Gregory Kiewiet reads from his new book of poetry In the Company of Words.
What people are saying about In the Company of Words:
“Closely watched scenes; ringing shifts, gaps; breathtaking progressions, appear in and make up Gregory Kiewiet’s remarkable collection. This book reverberates. It beautifully provokes, moves, even unsettles.” Lynn Crawford
“To seek the company of words is to cultivate the silence in which language speaks. It is as much a matter of listening as of writing, and a willingness to think with words as they exist. In their wry compassion for “a world that needs no introduction” and their fierce humility in the face of its “barbed wire hang-ups,” these poems compel and reward our attention.” Ted Pearson
“There are brilliant traceries in these structures – the poem as filament, the poem as grid. Within them a keen interplay between the abstract and the pointedly concrete. Much of the work of language here goes on in the synapse, in the gap between losses, distances, political “things” at work, climates and unnamed cultural weather, the sudden detail, tatters of conversation, something overheard . . . these themes or movements carried through in an impressive variety of forms and approaches: at first this variety is disarming, but the altercations between stripped and scattered structures and established devices, between the word-driven lyric and something like the memory narrative (done ever so lightly), between translations and poems conceived by the author in Dutch and rendered then into English, becomes at last, by a kind of wonderful accetion, an intriguing and appealing collection, something to be picked up and carried around.” Edward Haworth Hoeppner
Gregory Kiewiet recieved his B. A. in English and Art History from Oakland University (Rochester, MI) and M. A. in English (Creative Writing) from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) – he is currently pursueing an MFA in Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Previous work has appeared in http://www.markszine.com/ Dispatch Detroit, Graffiti Rag, Woodward Magazine, and Box.
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Quimby’s Top Ten Best Sellers for the Week of Feb 17th, 2008 – Feb 23rd, 2008
1. Concrete Bulletproof Invisible and Fried: My Life As A Revolting Cock by Chris Connelly (SAF Publishing) $19.95
2. Alternadad by Neal Pollack (Anchor) $14.95
3. Stop Smiling #34 $5.95
4. Venus #34 Win 07 $4.50
5. Juxtapoz #86 Mar 08 $4.99
6. Crap Hound #7: Church & State (Show & Tell) $12.00
7. Straight To Hell #66 by Billy Miller $6.00
8. Craft #6 $14.99
9. 33 1/3 Series: Throbbing Gristle – 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Daniel Drew (Continuum) $10.95
10. Mojo Mar 08 $9.50 -
New Stuff 2/23/08
New Ron English monograph and a new long awaited monograph on Os Gemeos among other new books landing this week.
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Oink Oink Comics
I’m not blogging about the late, lamented torrent tracker. I’m blogging about something better – a new issue of Ethan Persoff’s Comics With Problems is loose on teh internets. This time, Persoff dusts off “Easy Does It”, a perverse, anthropomorphic slaughterhouse propaganda piece produced by Swift & Company in the days when Back of the Yards had yards to be in back of. Link to the delicious bacon!
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Neal Pollack vs. Chris Connelly!!!
Wow that would be a strange battle, but seriously we got two great events this week. So get off the couch, brave the cold and check em out! As always all events at Quimby’s are FREE!!!
Chris Connelly reads Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock
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Chip Kidd reads from The Learners
From graphic designer Chip Kidd comes a brilliant new novel about advertising, electro-shock torture, potato chips, murder, powdered milk, suicide, shoes with buckles, crippling despair, and giant dogs. And the Holocaust.
Fresh out of college in the summer of 1961, Happy lands his first job as a graphic designer (okay, art assistant) at a small Connecticut advertising agency populated by a cast of endearing eccentrics. Life for Happy seems to be—well, happy. But when he’s assigned to design a newspaper ad recruiting participants for an experiment in the Yale Psychology Department, Happy can’t resist responding to the ad himself. Little does he know that the experience will devastate him, forcing a reexamination of his past, his soul, and the nature of human cruelty—chiefly, his own.
Chip Kidd is a writer and graphic designer in New York City. His book jacket designs for Alfred A. Knopf (where he has worked since 1986) have helped spawn a revolution in the art of American book packaging. In 1998 he was made a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationalle, and in 2007 he was awarded the National Design Award for Communications.
Mr. Kidd has also written about graphic design and popular culture for McSweeney’s, The New York Times, The New York Observer, Entertainment Weekly, Details, The New York Post, I.D. and Print. He is author and designer of Batman Collected, Batman Animated, Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz and Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross. As an editor of books of comics for Pantheon (a subsidiary of Knopf) Kidd has worked extensively with some of the most brilliant talents practicing today, including: Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Dan Clowes, Kim Deitch, Charles Burns, Mark Beyer, Ben Katchor and Alex Ross.
A comprehensive monograph of Kidd’s work, CHIP KIDD: BOOK ONE was published in October of 2005. The Cheese Monkeys, Kidd’s first novel, was published by Scribner in Fall of 2001 and was a national bestseller, as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His second novel, The Learners, was published in February of 2008.
Chip Kidd will be on hand to read and sign copies of The Learners.
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Geoff Herbach & Sam Osterhout
Join the founding members of The Lit 6 Project, a Minneapolis-based story performance group known for being funny and sad and good as they read and perform. Geoff Herbach will be reading from his novel The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg and Sam Osterhout will perform in support of The Electric Arc Radio Show which is an internet/radio literary tragi-comedy (heard on Minnesota Public Radio and everywhere online).
More about the performers:
Geoff Herbach is the co-founder of the Lit 6 Project, a lit-based story-telling group that performs in bars, art galleries, and bookstores all over the country. He is a writer and performer in the Electric Arc Radio Show, which airs on Minnesota Public Radio. He curates The Walker Art Center’s new flash fiction competition. The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg is his first novel.
Sam Osterhout is the other co-cofounder of the Lit 6 Project. He hosts the Electric Arc Radio Show on Minnesota Public Radio. His short work has appeared in Minneapolis periodicals The Rake, City Pages, and MNArtists and has been heard on Minnesota Public Radio.
More info:
www.electricarcradio.com
www.lit6project.com -
SANTI LIVES OF MODERNS SAINTS Event
On April 18, Chicago-based writer John Sheppard (author of the cult novel Small Town Punk), author/editor Luca Dipierro, and illustrator Rachel Bradley will be in Chicago reading from the anthology of short stories Santi: Lives of Modern Saints at Quimby’s Bookstore (1854 W. North Ave. Chicago, IL 60622). Reading starts at 7 pm.
Santi: Lives of Modern Saints is an anthology of short stories published by Black Arrow Studio & Press, edited by Luca Dipierro and N. Frank Daniels and illustrated by visual artist Rachel Bradley. Santi brings together some of the most original new voices in contemporary fiction from the US and Italy like Dan Chaon, Rob Roberge, David R. Matthews, John Sheppard, Grant Bailie, Roy Kesey, James P. Othmer, Greg Downs, Giona A. Nazzaro, Claudio Morandini and more.
Revisiting the ancient genre of hagiography (from ancient Greek: biography of saints), Santi: Lives of Modern Saints is a playful reinterpretation of religious images and myths. Twenty-six provocative tales of madness, murder, sin and redemption, fear and folly that peer deeply into the human psyche.
Poet and essayist Bracken Sparks wrote about the book: “The saints in Santi: Lives of Modern Saints are not the saints of eternity. They are the saints of the moment, saints of the small and undone. Their feast days are likely to be any Tuesday night eating Sam’s Club macaroni and cheese. They are sociopathic loners, cubicle prophets, natural heretics, and frayed at the edges, as if painted by Francis Bacon or Dana Schutz.”
Links:
www.blackarrowpress.com
www.youtube.com/blackarrowstudio
www.smalltownpunk.blogspot.com
www.lucadipierro.com
www.rachelbradley.net -
Mike Adams reads from Toilet Bowl Soup
MIKE ADAMS’ recently released book Toilet Bowl Soup is a collection of twisted short stories dealing with junky amputees, rabid beasts, satanic Hispanics, sadistic rednecks, big dick retards and more…all mixed with enough booze and violence to keep you firmly planted on your throne! He will be on hand to read a few stories from the book and sign copies as well.
Mike Adams is also featured in the new STEVE BALDERSON (FIRECRACKER starring MIKE PATTON & KAREN BLACK) film “PHONE SEX” along with the fame of RON JEREMY, MARGARET CHO, JANE WEIDLIN, GINGER COYOTE, SUSAN TRAYLOR and many others. You can also find him in the Steve Balderson film WAMEGO STRIKES BACK.
He has contributed some music to the soundtrack of the upcoming cult horror film IT CAME FROM TRAFALGAR starring Rudy Ray Moore (Dolemite), Hank Williams III, Butch Patrick (The Munsters), Linnea Quigley (Return Of the Living Dead), Edwin Neal (Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Gunnar Hansen (Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre), J.P. Richardson (Big Bopper Jr.), Kenny Miller (I was a Teenage Werewolf), Jesco White (The Dancing Outlaw), Conrad Brooks (Plan 9 From Outerspace), Brinke Stevens (Slumber Party Massacre), Bill Hinzman (Original Night Of the Living Dead), Jim O’Rear (Day of the Dead), Joey Image (Misfits), Joe Buck, etc.
Most recently he played the part of a meth addict/dealer in the upcoming Restraining Hollywood film “TRUST ME”. The film is scheduled for a 2008 release.
FOR MORE INFO VISIT: WWW.TOILETBOWLSOUP.COM