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Welcome to featherproof
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Written by featherproof
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Fall 2012:
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The Minus Times Collected:
Twenty Years / Thirty Issues (1992–2012)
Edited by Hunter Kennedy
"Enclosed is $20, please publish something of mine in your magazine, Sincerely, Mark Richard" For twenty years, The Minus Times has been the most elusive literary magazine in America—and definitely the only one to be composed on a Royal standard typewriter. Begun as an open letter to strangers and fellow misfits, it grew to become the breeding ground for the next generation of American fiction. Contributors include Sam Lipsyte, David Berman, Patrick DeWitt, & Wells Tower, with illustrations by David Eggers and Brad Neely as well as interviews with Dan Clowes, Barry Hannah, and a yet-to-be-famous Stephen Colbert. With sly humor and striking illustrations, The Minus Times has earned a fervent following as much for its lack of literary pretension as its sporadic appearances on the newsstand. All thirty of the-nearly-impossible-to-find issues of this improvised literary almanac are now assembled for the first time, typos and all. Drag City is teaming up with featherproof to publish this over-sized coffee-table-crackin' collection. |
Out Now:
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The Karaoke Singer’s Guide
to Self-Defense
By Tim Kinsella
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm Reunited for a funeral and leery of one another, a family compares splintered memories. Will bathes his grandmother. Mel gives her wig a haircut. Norman is not prepared to take over his father’s club. Jesse has never known how old he is. They each cope with limited options and murky desires.
An irreducible collage, as intuitive as it is formal, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense drifts between story lines and perspectives. Long bus rides through a post-industrial Gothic Midwest, Classic Rock, and compulsive brawls hum a requiem for the late night life of Stone Claw Grove. |
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The Universe in Miniature
in Miniature
By Patrick Somerville
Patrick Somerville is the most devastatingly sensitive badass nerd in contemporary lit. I love this book, with its weird art and crazy machines and secret agents and out-of-control love. -J. Robert Lennon, Author of Castle Out Now! In this genre-busting book from award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville characters, stories, and stray thoughts revolve around the “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the story of a Chicago man who is bequeathed a supernatural helmet that allows him to experience the inner worlds of those around him. Through his lonely lens we peer into the mind of an art student grappling with ennui, ethics and empathy as she comes to terms with her own beliefs in a godless world. We telescope out to the story of idiot extraterrestrials struggling to pilot a complicated spaceship. We follow a retired mercenary as he tries to save his marriage and questions his life abroad. Mind-bending and cracklingly new, Somerville’s broadly appealing and uniquely imaginative constructions probe the outer reaches of sympathy, death, and love in a world seen from the inside out. LIMITED FIRST EDITION: the specially designed cover turns into a mobile of Patrick Somerville's miniature universe! |
  FREE Mini-book!
Daddy's
By Lindsay Hunter
“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation Out now! You ever fed yourself something bad? Like a candied rattlesnake, or a couple fingers of antifreeze? Nope? You seen what it done to other people? Like while they’re flopping around on the floor you’re thinking about how they’re fighting to live. Like while they’re dying they never looked so alive? That’s what Daddy’s is like. In this collection of toxic southern gothics, packaged as a bait box of temptation, Lindsay Hunter offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read that’ll push you a little further toward flopping.
| The Awful Possibilities
By Christian TeBordo
 "Nine caustic stories by TeBordo find screeching ironies in rhetorical absurdities and writerly subversiveness. Bizarre and biting, these tales leave a mark." —Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In brilliantly strange set pieces that explode the boundaries of short fiction, Christian TeBordo locates the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined. |
| Scorch Atlas
By Blake Butler
Butler is an original force who is fearless with form... The design is appropriately disarming, an apt part of the overall barrage by this inventive and deeply promising young author.—Time Out New York A novel of 14 interlocking stories set in ruined American locales where birds speak gibberish, the sky rains gravel, and millions starve, disappear or grow coats of mold. In 'The Disappeared,' a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. In 'The Ruined Child,' a boy swells to fill his parents' ransacked attic. Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler's full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William Gass, yet turned with Butler's own eye for the apocalyptic and bizarre. | | AM/PM
By Amelia Gray
At moments screwy, prickly and pleasantly surprising, Gray’s short shorts deliver youthful snapshots about being nuts in love... A delectable debut.—Publishers Weekly If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, Gray's flash-fiction collection, impish humor is on full display. Tour through the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes and volcano love. Follow June, who wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard, who falls in love with a chaise lounge; and Andrew, who talks to his house in times of crisis. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, Gray mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original piece of fiction. |
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Blog
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Written by zach
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By now you know we don’t write one of these things unless we mean it, and by the light of spring, we have some important thing to tell you. This first one we’ve been dying to tell you:
We are pleased to announce that Carousel Productions, the production company founded by Steve Carell, has optioned Patrick Somerville’s “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the closing novella of his 2010 story collection, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature. Not only that, Somerville is currently developing the script for Carousel. So far he’s promised more bad guys and more love. We could not be more excited about this. Visions of a CGI steampunk helmet are dancing in our heads.
Luckily, we’ve got some real work to keep us grounded. And that’s cause we’re working on our heftiest book yet, a collection of our favorite obscure lit mag The Minus Times. As paper fetishists we’ve been trying to get our hands on every issue for years. Turns out the only way was by publishing them. For that, we’re double-dragon with Drag City, exciting in and of itself. Check the stats:
The Minus Times Collected:Twenty Years / Thirty Issues (1992–2012)
Edited by Hunter Kennedy
For twenty years, The Minus Times has been the most elusive literary magazine in America—and definitely the only one to be composed on a Royal standard typewriter. Begun as an open letter to strangers and fellow misfits, it grew to become the breeding ground for the next generation of American fiction. Contributors include Sam Lipsyte, David Berman, Patrick DeWitt, & Wells Tower, with illustrations by David Eggers and Brad Neely as well as interviews with Dan Clowes, Barry Hannah, and a yet-to-be-famous Stephen Colbert. With sly humor and striking illustrations, The Minus Times has earned a fervent following as much for its lack of literary pretension as its sporadic appearances on the newsstand. All thirty of the-nearly-impossible-to-find issues of this improvised literary almanac are now assembled for the first time, typos and all. Drag City is teaming up with featherproof to publish this over-sized coffee-table-crackin' collection.
Wanna see the giddy, astonished looks on our faces? Well, good news. THIS WEEK IS AWP! We’ll be there, wild-eyed and weary as always. This year the committee to select table numbers chose E4 for us, and we decided to split that fine prize with our brothers-in-arms Two Dollar Radio. It’s the first time they’ve braved AWP, so come by and haze ‘em proper.
Parties did you say? We got parties. Starting off tonight with a sweet Kick-off party at The Empty Bottle, 9pm. Lindsay Hunter, Sam Pink, Jeff Parker and many more will read. James Greer will play music. Barry Graham will preside over the AWP Over-the-Top Double Elimination Arm Wrestling Tournament. Our money is on Kyle Beachy. He has hidden power. It’s FREE with rsvp. Email
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
with "AWP Party" in subject line & full name of attendee in body of email. One attendee per email.
Then Thursday, after long readings and bad panels, presses from Chicago and beyond will battle for the AWP 2012 Karaoke Idol throne. Followed by Karaoke-dance party and other activities. Amy Guth, Joe Meno and the Simon Cowell of letters, Patrick Somerville, will judge. Natalie Edwards will battle under the featherproof banner, going up against such heavyweights as PANK, Another Chicago Magazine, Artifice, One Story, Tin House, Red Lightbulbs, Quimby's Books, THE2NDHAND, Untoward, & Curbside Splendor. Little do they know, we’ve got The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense.
Speaking of, is Tim Kinsella reading? Why yes, yes he is. We’ve saved that for the big Friday night show. If you can remember it last year, you’re lucky. An institution rivaling AWP in size: it’s LITERATURE PARTY 2012. We can barely speak about how awesome this will be. Jesse Ball accompanied by the puppeteering of Jill Summers and Susie Kirkwood, Dorothea Lasky, Mary Miller, that dude Tim Kinsella, DJ Matt ROAN, Glitter Guts, puppets, Vouched books, koozies and more! Super-friend sponsors School of the Art Institute of Chicago Writing Program, Bookforum, Drag City Books, Hobart, HTMLGiant, The Lit Pub, Publishing Genius, Red Lemonade, Submittable, Newcity, CHIRP Radio, and Wave Books. Lindsay Hunter and Zach Dodson will just try and keep the circus from spinning out of control. Adam Robinson and Gene Morgan have different ideas. Come watch it all go down, dance-floor-grind-off style. All to benefit the awesome Young Chicago Authors.
Other recommended things include The Propaganda Reading Thursday night at Haymarket with Blake Butler, Amelia Gray, Jac Jemc and more; There will be QUICKIES!, 3-5pm Friday in the SAIC ballroom; and Amelia Gray’s just released new bad baby THREATS. Do it all.
See you in our dreams, now becoming reality.
Love,
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Written by featherproof
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Well, it's been awhile. And wow, things have changed. The economy is flipping out, people are protesting Wall Street, and America's super powers are leaking away. All we can say is: the collapse of the empire is gonna make for some great art and literature!
Appropriately, our next book has all the key ingredients. In The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense, post-industrial consumer capitalism practically prescribes a dream-like state as a default setting. This dream-like experience of the world is strange and erotic, as information itself becomes the currency and grounding of experience the strangeness of physicality becomes fetishized.
We couldn't be more excited to release this book at this moment. Tim Kinsella has been a creative force in music for years. Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Owls, Make Believe and Friend/Enemy are all products of his tireless creativity. His most recent record is the blistering Life Like (Polyvinyl), a stripped-down, road-tested album recorded by Steve Albini. Now he’s turned his hand and relentless energy to another creative endeavor: the novel.
God is optional in The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense. A young man battling an addiction to brawling, bathes his grandmother. A woman locks her home and abandons her family, unsure if they might have already abandoned her. A teenage runaway looks for a new life in a strip club recently passed down to an unprepared heir. With shock or resolve, the citizens of Stone Claw Grove, Michigan cope with an optionless everyday, each struggling to recognize some note of desire in the overwhelming static of cliche.
You can BUY IT NOW, from a mondo corporation, while we're all still allowed to be consumers.
Flavorpill said it's most exciting, and there is some agreement on that front:
"For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read." -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm
"By the time I finished the book, my copy was more dog-eared than just about any other book I own, and when it ended, I felt bittersweetly bereft. I thought The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense was a brilliant read, highly recommended for readers who like a little nostalgia in a smart, dark, funny, and engrossing novel." -LitStack
On theme, various Chicago authors and musicians will be 'karaoking' pieces of the book at our release party, Oct 11th, at The Hideout. Not to be missed:
The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense Book Release Party
October 11th, 6:30 pm. $1.
The Hideout, 1354 West Wabansia
Featuring Tim Kinsella, lecturing on his debut novel,
and karaoke readings from the same by Bobby Burg, Mairead Case, Zach Dodson, Natalie Edwards, Lindsay Hunter, Devin King, Paul Koob, Todd Mattei, Caroline Picard, Dmitry Samarov, and more!
 We've got a FREE Mini-book sample on the site, as per usual.
Our other books KEEP GETTING REVIEWED, and positively. Zach talked to Laura van deer Berg about the whole business and yachts over at Ploughshares.
The apocalypse looms. Other revolutionary parties are forming. The time is now.
So: fight the man, read a book, watch it all burn. We'll be with you till the end.
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