Detritus: Fragments and Scraps, issue 19.0 of A.j. Michel's Syndicate Product series is a sweet ¼ size zine comprised of A.j's unpublished, unfinished and other hanging works. She's been organizing and clearing out her stuff lately (including donating a bunch of her zine and minicomic collection to Barnard), and publishing her this-and-that in one volume seems to be a great way to file the pieces under "done."
Thanks to funny, smart, sad, and happy essays, photographs, comics, a crossword puzzle, a collage, a flow chart and a bibliography from 20 librarians and archivists, I've got a new zine...
You know you're a book geek/librarian/dork when you're constantly distracted from a text with the thought, "Did anyone proofread this thing?" You get the feeling that the editors at Harper & Row threw up their hands at some point and didn't give a fuck about getting the name Alfred E. Neuman right or fixing a mistaken "know" for "now," and didn't have the fortitude for copy editing either, since the narrative frequently bounces off the rail (billiards reference). Aside from my criticism of how the book was produced (seriously, I wouldn't have released a book in that condition if I were a publisher, but I guess since Roseanne was big money in 1989 they didn't care), I did enjoy reading it.
I think men like to pretend that they are not wholly dependent on women. Women like to pretend that they are dependent on men. And there you have it, folks, the Rosie Barr view of the BATTLE OF THE SEXES.
I always insisted on being the teacher when we played school, the mother when we played house, and the star of every neighborhood play. I didn't feel then (or now) that hogging the glory is a disservice. I can do it better than anyone and, being a perfectionist, I always make sure to do everything myself.
What we need is a Woman, a mother for President, and I'm going to run someday, and my campaign motto will be "Let's vote for Rosie, and put some new blood in the White House--every twenty-eight days."
We admitted that we were powerless over being female and that our lives had become unmanageable. We came to believe that a power deep within ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Our heroine is an alcoholic lesbian virgin who moves to San Francisco to be with her Philosophy of Nonviolence professor and the professor's two lovers, also Nonviolence alumni. 19-year-old Francesca is a cutter, who also has crushes on her sponsor, another waitress, and a soap opera character. All the relationships are incestuous and manipulative--just so you know what you're getting into with this novel.
"Guess what," I told Andy, "I just quit my job."
"Did you make a real big scene when you quit?" he asked wide-eyed.
"I wish."
I think a serious, "How am I living up to my anarchist potential?" assessment is necessary when I quit a job in the future."
Books in the Hollows series are always compelling. In this latest entry, though, I felt like someone had told the author that she needed to work on the romance angle, so there's a half-hearted, poorly executed push-pull between our heroine, the witch demon and the elf who has been her nemesis since the first book, if I remember correctly. I do like that Rachel's love interests are always flawed, in a way that can't be brushed aside.
Hello literary lesbian romance! Well, one of the lovers is bi, so it's not strictly lesbian. While the whole novel focuses on the relationship between Indian-Irish flight attend Síle Sunita Siophán O'Shaughnessy and butch Canadian archivist Jude Turner (spoiler: the butch is the one who sleeps with men sometimes) the book as genre fiction. Dog knows I have nothing against genre fiction, but author Donoghue had different aspirations for Landing.
Before that the Turners had been broke, but Jude hadn't cared; what did she need pocket money for, when all the things she liked to do were free and she knew so many of the locals, it was like living in a book?
Writing to you reminds me that you're far away, but it also throws a kind of bridge across the abyss. It's a sad fact, couples who spend blissful lives together don't leave much trace in the archives. Whereas a love letter will outlive us both, if printed on acid-free paper and kept in a dry place.
The last Library Journal zine review column, Fat Activism and Body Positivity: Zines for Transforming the Status Quo, written by Sarah Lawrence librarians Kate Angell & Charlotte Price has been posted.
The first issue (of many, I hope) of Rhonda's first zine in over a dozen years tells the story of her 42-hour labor and delivery. I am a childless lady who loves birthing stories, not to mention zines by librarians, so even if Rhonda wasn't someone I adore, I would have been all over Bloom.
I have a soft spot for librarian fiction, but a distaste for Gale Cengage Learning, which in addition to the crime of being a library conglomerate responsible for some overpriced electronic resources with crappy interfaces, has published at least one other librarian penned title in its Five Star genre fiction imprint.