For real. Details at Curbside Splendor and below. So do check it out, it just might change your life.
We are seeking novella submissions between 20,000 and 40,000 words
that exemplify the best of Curbside's style—work that is gritty,
experimental, speculative, weird, humorous, or any compelling
combination of the above. And as always, we're looking for diverse,
extraordinary voices.
We will be accepting submissions from June
15th - July 18th, the winner will be announced in late August, and the
entry fee is $10.
The winning entry will be selected by noted
Chicago author Joe Meno and published in May 2016 to coincide with Indie
Bookstore Day as a limited and numbered print run sold exclusively
through our web store, as well as an e-book that will be distributed
through Curbside's normal channels.
The winner will receive $200 and 10 copies of the publication.
We are also much appreciative for thePete Lit's ongoing support and most geeked to be among such fine company, including, but not limited to, the Tom Williams, Joe Meno, and Michael Czyzniejewski, all writers we quite love and admire.
Travel. Read. Read more. Read Joe Meno. A lot of Meno. When we heard about the release of Office Girl and what Meno had to say about it, we got excited to read Meno which we hadn't done in awhile. In fact, The Boy Detective Fails had been sitting on the book shelf for some time. Now why it was sitting on the shelf had been somewhat of a mystery to us. But as we have thought about it, we think it has something to do with our moving to Chicago and wanting to write. Not knowing how to start. Then even when we started not knowing how it was going to work. And Joe Meno, who wasn't quite the Joe Meno he is now yet, all pre-Hairstyles of the Damned as he was, was everywhere. Writing for Punk Planet and THE2NDHAND. Doing readings. Interviews. Approachable at parties. And all of it, the writing, how he talked about writing, it was all so interesting, and we really wanted to absorb some of this energy in some fashion, any of it. At some point we drifted though, still following him and still inspired by his output and curiosity, but less sycophantic and less desperate, we hope, and ultimately, maybe, needing to reject him in some fashion to move forward ourselves. Reading about Office Girl spoke to us though, which got us to pluck the Boy Detective from the shelf, and now both books were sitting there, and there was travel, and read, and here we are, so happy to have revisited Meno and his myriad gifts as a writer. The thing with Meno, is that there is always a layer of sadness that permeates his work, and loss, always loss, especially in these books, siblings, parents, relationships, and dreams. Dreams in particular have a way of being blown apart in his books, along with that of hope and possibility. You also encounter a longing to make sense of why all this is, how it happened, and where you might go next, even as all of this hangs on you and threatens to drag you down. There are also themes, or tropes, is that the right word, that repeat in both of these books anyway, the color pink, snow falling, people working on telephone sales, bicycles, and pharmaceuticals, and what these mean may not be entirely clear, but they certainly remind us that we are in Meno's world and that not unlike Wes Anderson you always know when you're in his world, the voice and storytelling are that unique. The books are different though as well. Office Girl is a sketch, a fleshed-out sketch mind you, but purposely small, and in terms of time, brief, almost fleeting, an effort to capture relationship as it happens when you are young, on the cusp of something, and crazy to be in something that is sure to implode. All endlessly confusing as these relationships are, full of madness and lust and hunger, this thing we have stumbled into is also full of possibility, because it all so new, and this could be something, something grand, life-changing, and maybe even world-changing, if we can just figure it all out.
The Boy Detective Fails is something else, however. How life will let you down because it has to, because it is filled with pain, and loss, and the idea that most of what we want can't possibly happen, even when there is genius, and promise, not when so much disappointment and grief gets in the way. It is about more than that as well though, it is also about mental illness, or the idea of it, how debilitating it is, leaving those struggling with it on the outside of things, challenging them to try and makes things as normal as they can, but knowing it just might not happen. In this way we were reminded of Anderson's recent joint Moonrise Kingdom and the children at the center of that fable, they are full of all kinds promise, but seemingly on the verge of much greater struggles. And in this way, the sadness that permeates The Boy Detective Fails is heavier to deal with, and more overwhelming than that of Office Girl. None of which is to say that Meno, like Anderson, doesn't know how to balance all of this with humor and quirk, weirdness and beauty, knowing pop culture references and spot-on dialogue. Because all of this is rampant in all of his work. Something we were happy to be reminded of as we drifted back into Meno's world. And something we hope you will do as well, as it is certain to change your life too, if only briefly.
Struck we are that solace is a tricky thing to articulate as we seek to define it, illuminate it and ultimately try to capture it in the written word with the idea that someone will read it knowing to some extent what our intent is. Are we asking the writer to focus on how we find solace or why we need it? Is the mere act of absorbing oneself in stories and poems fraught with pain, the discovery of it, trying to make sense of it, managing it and ultimately making peace with it a kind of solace in and of itself? We're not sure we have any answers to these questions, but it would be impossible not to lose oneself in these questions and all the permutations contained therein as one reads SOLACE in So Many Words edited by Ellen Wade Beals, which is often times moving, and very often sad, sad to us anyway, and something which is tricky in its own way as well. As readers and consumers of art, and not just writing, though it is always first and foremost about writing regardless, we are drawn to joy and ebullience, but it is pain and sadness that we are most likely to lose ourselves in, hence even with a collection such as this which uniformly achieves its goals, no minor accomplishment that, and is filled with fine writing, it is the stories that are most painful to us that linger, A Strange Episode of Aqua Voyage by Joe Meno, because we are fans certainly, but also because he writes about confusion and isolation as well as anyone, Details by Joan Corwin, whose piece on aging hit close to home in ways we would not have anticipated, Stops and Starts by Kathleene Donahoo, which frankly left us briefly paralyzed at points, Alleys by Michael Constantine McConell, a slice of childhood that just hums with life and Heartbeat by J. Scott Smith which is at times crippling and other times triumphant. Which in its own way we suppose is as good a description of this collection as any we could have hoped to come up with otherwise.
Are we jumping on the decade-ending bandwagon? Way. Still, when your goal is to change lives, its not always clear how you're going to accomplish this. So, as we began prepare our year-end Top Ten lists we started thinking about the last decade as well and like everybody else we thought we would weigh-in on what we liked and/or influenced us and/or brought us joy. Over this week we are going to hit books, movies, television and music. And then next week, or shortly thereafter, we will begin rolling-out our year-end lists. Cool? Great.
(1) Cruddy by Lynda Barry (2000). There is maybe no book other than The Basketball Diaries that we aspire to writing more.
(2) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (2000). Fathers, sons, pain. And killer graphics.
(3) American Skin by Don De Grazia (2000). Quite simply, we read this and we believed we could write the book that would become Lucky Man.
(4) Radiant Days by Michael A. Fitzgerald (2007). A debut novel like few others. All hail the Fitzgerald.
(5) Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Nico Henrichon (2006). War is hell. And then some.
(6) Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno (2004). Compulsively readable and we don't care what Jason Pettus thinks about that.
(7) Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman (2004). Pop culture as an endlessly humorous intellectual exercise.
(8)Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (2006). Uhhhm, wow.
(9) When The Messenger is Hot by Elizabeth Crane (2004). Short stories, slamming and true, not to mention the inspiration for the delightful Ms. Crane becoming the long-time muse for this blog.
(10) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000). Too good. We never understood why people hate on the Eggers and we still don't.
The next twelve (in no particular order): Vacation by Jeremy Shipp (2007), Breaking it Down by Rusty Barnes (2007), Black Flies by Shannon Burke (2008), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000), Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball (2008), Half Empty by Tim Hall (2004), Stories by Scott McClanahan (2008), The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli by Ginetta Correli (2008), Three Fallen Women by Amy Guth (2006), Bughouse by Steve Lafler (2001), The Love Book by Ken Wohlrob (2007), Talk: A Novel in Dialogue by Corey Mesler (2002).
And finally, as we worked on this list we were struck by how many of these books came out around 2000 and that there was even some other work we hoped we would be able to include such as Naked by David Sedaris (1998) and Meditations from a Movable Chair by Andre Dubus (1999) that as turns out came out just prior to the new Millenium. But then it hit us, we started writing around 1999 and during those first few years as we tried to find some traction many of these authors pointed the way and gave us hope, not because we thought we could be as good as them, but because what they wrote about spoke to us and spoke to what we hoped to write ourselves.
The Torn Pages Show is coming, The Torn Pages Show is coming. No, we don't know exactly when, but we are excited to be participating. For this show the inestimable Josh Lucas is teaming with 11 Chicago writers, including many TBWCYL, Inc. favorites, including Jill Summers, Joe Meno, Tim Hall, Jamie Calder, Amy Guth, Zach Dodson and our very own spokesperson Ben Tanzer, and 11 Chicago artists, including among others the quite rocking Allison Dunne Burque and Dominique Holmes, to write and illustrate original children's stories that will be presented by the OhNo! Doom Collective in a gallery show. We think it will be quite cool, but If all that wasn't cool enough though for you, Josh is also hoping to collect the work in a perfect-bound, full color book and this is where you may or may not come in. Josh is using KICKSTARTER to raise the funds needed to produce the book and if you think you may want to support this effort please do take a look. Maybe you can take a look regardless, and maybe, just maybe, it will change your life, if only briefly.
We were really pleased to see that the good people at Orange Alert have a new interview up with Chicago's own Joe Meno. Reading it, we realized just how little we have referenced Joe Meno in this blog over the years and what a tremendous oversight that is. He's not just a great writer, and a killer representative of what it means to be called a Chicago writer, but when we were first getting started we used to run into him here and there at readings and other such events and rarely have we met a more supportive and gracious writer who is simultaneously cranking out such high quality work. He's a cool dude, a great model, and its quite fun watching all the good things that continue to happen to him and for him.
We're back, mostly, physically for sure, and easing back into the grind here at TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters. We missed you of course, a lot, which makes us glad to be back. We are also really glad though to see that Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine has made the honorable Nick Ostdick's year-end list of love, which is quite cool, yet quite humbling as we are sharing this list with among others the Joe Meno, The Hold Steady and the Blago. Nice, right? Way. Many thanks Nick, drinks on us for sure when next we cross paths.
