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Soft Skull Announce Message
Date: August 22nd 2008
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Welcome, welcome internet readers! Here today for your grazing pleasure is the Second Edition of the all-electronic Soft Skull Press Monthly Newsletter, featuring a full re-cap of this months most delicious deep-fried news tid-bits, smothered in a rich, savory informational gravy. So, dear internet readers, gorge yourself on this news-feast without shame, and whatever your plate may be - laptop, blackberry, your grubby awful jealousy-inducing iphone - be sure to lick it clean!
It begins!
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FIRST OFF - a light salad of selected scrumptious reviews:
David Ohle's "The Pisstown Chaos" has received recent praise from a number of leading leafy publications. Time Out New York calls it "tragically hilarious" and recognizes Ohle as "a beacon to younger, loosely experimental fiction writers;" The Village Voice praises the book's "cool logic of the insane;" and the ever-satisfying and hearty Huffington Post calls Ohle's approach to political satire "potent and compelling." Not one to be left out of the praise-jamboree, the Brooklyn rail had the following to say: "Ultimately... The Pisstown Chaos reveals itself to be a sly and rambunctious satire, devilishly well-imagined and playfully rough with the reader."
Ah, so crisp! Do make sure to keep you ear to the wind, for blowing in from this nation's far Left Coast in the frighteningly-near future will be an wee article on Mr. Ohle Himself, courtesy of those language-wizards over at San Francisco's The Believer!
SECOND - Even when enjoying the fruits of a fine harvest, one mustn't forget to pay attention to their global current-events. For this, we direct your attention to the War Nerd's most recent revelations. And while you chew over that particular morsel, take care to wash it down with a few words from Mother Jones and the Washington City Paper.
THIRD - Review Soup! What is more satisfying than soup? Nothing! Everyone loves it! We drink it up! Enjoy this hodge-podge stew of recent reviews from our most-visually stimulating of offerings, E. Robert Arellano's "Dead in Desemboque" and Ilan Stavans' "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington."
New Mexico’s Read Five magazine's cavernous cauldron-style feature about about "Dead in Desemboque" yields the following lip-smacking nugget: “The combination of great art and the story of a heroic rake chasing loose mujeres and being dogged by posse of unsavory hombres makes Dead in Desemboque an historieta worth experiencing over and over again, no matter which side of the border you’re on.”
Bookslut’s John Zuarino recently conducted an interview with Arellano, discussing “powerful recollection of a genre that has somehow been primarily unexplored in anglophone literature".
Never one's to skimp on portion, Bookslut also featured an interview with Ilan Stavans, discussing Stavans’ ideas of “progressive revolution to an old-fashioned system that sometimes seems like it will never change.”
More love for Stavans came in from The Amhearst Bulletin, My San Antonio Entertainment, and Tu Boston, along with blog-luvvin' from Tex[t]-Mex, LaBloga , and Tejaztlan Notebook (which are, by the by, the three greatest blog names in the short, epic history of blog name). Allow their combined mellifluousness to dance about your senses, be they confused and prone to synesthesia as my quickly unraveling extended news=food metaphor! (P.s. Check out a teeny excerpt of Mr. Spic here.)
AND NOW THE MAIN EVENT! Adjust your waistbands and spectacles, my dears, for we give you now the entertainment portion of the evening! Put down your forks, remove your pudgy fist from the french-fry dish, and plug in your RealPlayer - it's time for some Audio/Visual stimulation!
Perhaps you remember way back when, during summers on Cape Cod, you would gather 'round the children, plop them down on the sofa, and fire-up the boob tube for the once-a-year showing of the only movie that has ever really mattered: the Wizard of Oz. Oh, the joy in their eyes!
Well, those days are gone! The Age of Film is dead and buried, replaced by a blinding fusion of all media (or so some would have you think.) Either way, a NEW version of L. Frank Baum's classic story is being forged as we speak, a remarkable cyborg of text and illustration by none other than Graham Rawle. Behold, in a fabulous YouTube preview, the WIZARD of OZ.
And while you are there, on that most distracting of sites, check out this little youtube clip about the acclaimed "All About Lulu." Speaking of Lulu, we must mention a recent rights acquisition by a certain Brazilian publisher: Arx has bought the rights to Mr. Evison's novel, and will soon be spreading Lulu love all over their fine country. In other rights and acquisitions news, "War Nerd" is going international! It will soon be published in Spanish by Enrique Murillo's new publishing venture Los Libros del Lince. Next time you find yourself enjoying tapas under a heavy Catalonian sun, consider picking up a copy. AND our beloved Black Flies will soon see release, courtesy of Random House, in those most United of Kingdoms, THE United Kingdom.
Perhaps you live under a rock. Perhaps your genetic capacity to laugh was removed at birth. Perhaps you have embraced irony to a point so deep that the only "funny" things in the world are extinction and apocalypse. Whatever the reason, your too-cool-for-school days-without-laughing streak is over. BEHOLD.....the animated, the unbelievable, the red-white-and-blue FIRST EPISODE of GET YOUR WAR ON!
The hilarity spilling out of Get Your War On's animated edition has been recognized by quite a few little internet soap-boxes. Ladies and gentleman, a run down:
From BoingBoing, who call it their "absolutely my favorite political comic" -
From Comedy Central, and it's Indecision 2008 blog -
From Wired, the overlords and chroniclers of all thing techno-trendy.
From a French politics blog -
From Raw Story -
From The Guardian:
and finally, from the Times!
But now, back to the cinema! sort of! Alex Cox's fascinating "X-Films" has been drawing the attention of some note-worthy outlets over there on the distant, expensive shores of the United Kingdom. The Independent calls the book "a very revealing look at the day-to-day difficulties of being an independent filmmaker" and suggest that "every student at film school should be obliged to read it." Continuing the academic hints, Film in Focus writes that "the book...reflects Cox's own generous, passionate, instinctively polemical nature: he makes a great teacher both of film production and film history." Somebody hire this man! Let him instruct your visionary children! X-Films will be out this fall from Soft Skull.
Ah, so this edition of the Soft Skull Newsletter draws to a close. The bones have been picked dry, the casks of ale nearly exhausted, and the mighty towers of dessert Jello - once so wiggly and gravity-defiant - have been consumed down to their giggly, jazzy basements. Let the dish wait till morning. All there is left to do is slip into our robes, retire to our leather-trimmed studies, and contemplate the ungodly media ingestion that has just taken place, until sleep - that dusky, ancient phantom - falls over our brows like so much devils food cake at a sloppy birthday party food-fight.
I leave you with this, and perhaps this, to help you along the way.
Alas,
Jonathan Lazzara
Newsletter Editor
Soft Skull Press
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