The Revolution Will Be Cataloged: Introducing OccupyWiki

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the day adding pages to the new wiki site, OccupyWiki. This site, created by Sarah Keefe, has an enormous potential. Specifically, its current structure asks for one page to be added for every city and town whose citizens have joined in the Occupy movement for solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. If these pages are added and then filled in with accurate information provided by citizen journalists, librarians, and/or participating demonstrators, it will become an invaluable information service and document of witness.

I stand in support of the Occupy Together movement. I believe that it is, at its core, not primarily a movement of the angry or the radical, but rather of many, many fed up citizens standing up to be counted. Citizens are being cut out of the civic conversation, civic and human values are being cut out of the national conversation, narrow interests have hijacked the phrases and vocabulary of the national rhetoric, and citizens are finally, at long last, stepping out of their houses to participate in a conversation in the street. To me, this is participatory democracy at its simplest. First, we step out of our isolation. Next, we stand together and have a conversation. And see where it goes.

I'd like to draw a distinction here about the internet's role in this movement. The Occupy movement is not something that is happening on Facebook, on the web, on petitions, or on Youtube. It is something that is happening in people's hearts and in the streets and in encampments. But the internet can sometimes help get the word out widely and quickly, and other times be an important witness, and still other times set the record straight against misinformation or under-reporting. I mean to stress that it is not enough to sign a petition, or follow the New York news stories, or enjoy the Flickr pages. I believe that the citizens everywhere need now to stand in the streets and be counted in person if they wish to make a show of strength against corporate rule. But I believe that OccupyWiki can help by bearing witness (in one place) and offering an accurate and easy-to-read document of how many people are marching, how many people are camping out, and how very many cities are "Occupying."

This past Saturday evening, when I was searching for news of which U.S. cities had held "Occupy" rallies and marches on October 15th (in a worldwide show of support for Occupy Wall Street), I was surprised. I was surprised at how little coverage there was of the U.S. protests, how hard it was to find clear and authoritative information, and how inaccurate, downplayed, and/or erratic was the information coming out of my own city's news sources (Pittsburgh). I'm happy to say we had about 2,000 marchers here, but the estimates given to the press were anywhere from "500" (one frequently-cited police estimate) to "3,000" (an organizer estimate) to "4,000" (a different police estimate). (It may be true that up to 3,000 participated throughout the day but that only about 2,000 were ever gathered at once.)

When I started working on OccupyWiki on Sunday, I was adding skeleton pages for American cities that have started Occupy movements. The first thing I would seek was an official webpage made by City X's organizers. Many cities' Occupiers have websites full of interesting information, event calendars, calls for donations for overnight demonstrators, and pages for photos and videos. On the one hand there are some impressive websites that have gone up very quickly. But on the other hand, the most time-consuming part of my wiki process was finding specific information on each website. Sometimes I couldn't tell from an elaborate website where the encampment was located, and sometimes I couldn't tell if the encampment was still intact. Many times the hardest thing to find on the site was direct contact information. This is another vote for a site like OccupyWiki. I find the format of a wiki a democratizing way of looking at information. Imagine if in one place you could see a list of all cities "Occupying," and then on each city's page, you knew you could find reliable categories of up-to-date information. How many people are spending the night to show their support. How much flack they've gotten from the police. Have they had local media problems like consistent under-reporting, low numbers reported, media blackouts (San Francisco), or hacked websites or Facebook pages (Philadelphia)? Or have they, like Cleveland or Los Angeles, had vocal support from the city itself? One librarian I corresponded with wants to know which occupations have libraries.

Meanwhile, users of Flickr and Youtube are contributing important visual documents of how many people are out on the streets, how creative their protests are, how energized are their marches. I'd love to see a Flickr pool for each city and a link to that pool on each OccupyWiki page. And Twitter continues to be recommended as the best way to get up-to-the-minute information from numerous citizens who are on the ground in each locale (more reliable as a whole than just following one Twitter account). I've been researching the hashtags for each city, which are sometimes just the obvious like #OccupySyracuse or #OccupyMadison, but other times a regional abbreviation like #OccupyNOLA, #OccupyPGH, or #OccupyCincy.

I was heartened, of course, to hear how many cities worldwide protested on October 15th, and the massive numbers in certain cities like Brussels and Madrid. But I'll admit I'm particularly heartened by the American protests, because Americans don't generally protest. And I'm afraid that the numerous American protests are being under-reported and mis-reported by the national media, and often enough by local news.

Which brings me to another thing I find democratic and necessary about the wiki format. If traditional journalism (a crucial branch of any healthy democracy) is failing us via both budget cuts (resulting in under reporting) and corporate ownership of news outlets (resulting in inaccurate reporting, slanted reporting, or media blackouts), then citizen journalism must save the day. I am not trying here to malign or dismiss journalists on the whole, but to stress that this Occupy movement will be perceived through not only editorials, blogs, and daily news reports, but through information itself. The citizens both inside and outside the movement deserve to see a clear and accurate picture of the Occupy protests, camps, numbers, and activities.

Sarah Keefe, who identifies with Occupy Boston, started the OccupyWiki (see OccupyWiki.info) with free, open-source software from MediaWiki on October 5, 2011 because she didn't find any other site like it on the web at the time. Inspired by a fellow Boston protester's crowdsourced document online, she originally created the wiki thinking it would be used by protesters who could amass and share "relevant reading, useful videos, news coverage, protesting and camping tips, and local information about their own protests." Now Keefe says she sees Occupywiki.org has cropped up since she last looked. In a web 2.0 world, it's hard to say if both will flourish, or if one will stress a different aspect than the other. But I am heartened by the Occupy movement itself and want to help show its true and accurate side through clearly-presented facts to citizens seeking to inform themselves.

Guest Review: LIFE AFTER SLEEP Reviewed by Joel Thomas

Mark R. Brand. Life After Sleep. Chicago: CCLaP Publishing, 2011. Fiction (novella). Available as an e-book or in handbound edition. http://www.cclapcenter.com/lifeaftersleep/

Mark R. Brand’s sci-fi novella centers around the premise that through the wonders of science, humans can get by on significantly less sleep. A device referred to as a “Bed” allows for full rest in only two hours. Will we use the extra hours in our day for education, cultural enrichment, and making the world a better place? Will we finally get around to donating blood and going to the gym regularly? Or will we simply possess a few more hours each night to help us keep up with our favorite reality shows? Surely we can find more “Real Housewives” adventures to follow, and their own reduced need for sleep will provide even more snippy banter and social catastrophes.

Fortunately, Brand takes readers down a more interesting road. His own background in science and medicine informs the novella throughout, allowing him to provide detailed exposition and explanations of the technology itself and its effects on each protagonist. As we all know, the literary world of tomorrow’s technology often turns out to be a curse more than a blessing, and this novel displays the personal dystopia that is Life After Sleep. Capitalism always wins, of course, and readers soon learn that corporations expect humans to work many more hours, often for less pay. The most glaring example: a war veteran with PTSD working an inhumane number of hours at a futuristic version of Walmart. His Sleep (Brand refers to the shortened version of sleep with a capital letter: “Sleep”) struggles prove nearly devastating, as do the hallucinations of a rest-deprived surgeon who blacks out during operations.

Even with an overarching social theme, the narrative stays focused on individual lives rather than sweeping political statements. This move keeps the novella lean and intimate. Readers meet characters who stay vulnerable and believable, beset by problems and conflict but never forced into saving the world. One major narrative branch, for example, portrays the difficulties of a couple trying to adapt back to more traditional sleep patterns after having a baby. As it turns out, Beds aren’t safe to operate near infants. The young father/husband works too many hours without the benefits of a Bed and its technology-enhanced Sleep, and the young parents both struggle to adapt to their physical needs for rest. In another vein, a successful band promoter pushes the legal and physical limits of Sleep while dabbling in other intriguing technologies (which this reviewer will leave unspoiled so the reader can take pleasure in discovery). Her own desperate lifestyle brings a hedonism and danger-driven appeal to the book.

With Life After Sleep, Brand doesn’t push extremes, keeping a sense of relative believability. Some readers may prefer fantasies so unbelievable that the enjoyment comes from reveling in the seemingly impossible, but this novella’s appeal comes in its chilling likelihood.

Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, science fiction, medical fiction, and Chicago authors.

Available from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, or from Amazon.

Reviewed by Joel Thomas
Midwestern adjunct writing instructor
http://thecasserolex.wordpress.com/

Important Week for an Important Bookstore

Image from Marty After Dark

By now, you've probably heard about the Cooper Square Committee petition to save St. Mark's Bookshop by asking Cooper Union (the bookstore's landlord) for lower rent. The petition response has been amazing, with over 23,000 signatures gathered in less than a week; every time I look at the petition, there are 1,000 more signatures. Many of those signing have left enthusiastic comments about the bookstore and what it means to them, or strong words addressing the irony of an academic landlord who might boot such an intellectual institution out of the neighborhood:

"Please don't let this bookstore close! It would be a disaster. It's one of my favorite bookstores in the world."

"St. Marks is NECESSARY!!! Cooper Union shouldn't be behaving like a commercial landlord -- there's an intellectual heritage at stake."

"Find the pride to claim the St. Mark's Bookstore, a cultural and historical icon, as part of the Cooper Union community."

"Please help this great literary institution to survive. There is no other bookstore with their taste and selection. In a time when we are almost out of places in NYC to find books of the calibre St. Mark's Bookshop selects, it is an essential cultural and historical part of our city."

"one of the most important independent bookstores left in the country."

"Please, the city is slowly losing its soul.... "

If a fraction of those who signed the petition spent $25 at the bookstore this week, it would make an enormous difference to an uniquely wonderful bookstore. It is my humble observation that St. Mark's Bookshop, having been a player in the center of a thriving multi-disciplinary art scene for three decades, has fostered the creation and growth of many small presses and literary journals, and facilitated conversations and connections between many influential artists, writers, and intellectuals. Meanwhile, e-books (and their intersection with Amazon and iPad) seem to be reaching a savvy demographic of readers (many of whom have loathed the chain stores), dealing heavy blows to longtime brick and mortars just as Barnes & Noble's deep-discounts did to local indie bookstores in the 1990s.

But e-books can't be the whole demise of great bookstores, since St. Mark's is one of the many stores that sells Google e-books. Perhaps more to blame is the skyrocketing Manhattan rent that threatens to strangle all but the chain stores. When I lived in New York in the Giuliani years, rumor had it that many of the chain stores (which Mayor Rudy had courted with tax breaks), including Barnes and Noble and Nike, didn't actually make a profit on their New York stores. But they paid exorbitant prices just to maintain a high-profile, big-city "flagship" store. So if no one can actually afford their New York rent, what does that mean for the continuing culture of a great city? To paraphrase a Jim Jarmusch quote from the 2010 documentary "Blank City," New York was always a trading post, but now the main trade is real estate itself.

I do think that this week in particular is an important time for indie bookstore lovers to give more than just their signature. The Village Voice reported on Monday, September 12th, that St Mark's owners are due to meet this week (Wednesday, September 14) with Cooper Union's Vice President of Finance, Adminstration, and Treasury, in order to negotiate a rent reduction--but that "the new administration has not been 'particularly sympathetic.' "

Won't you please show your support in the form of buying a book from St. Mark's Bookshop THIS WEEK? You can browse their selection online via title, author, new arrivals, store bestsellers, autographed copies, remainders, or Google e-books:
http://www.stmarksbookshop.com/
212-260-7853

*****

Update: Since I posted this late yesterday afternoon, the petition signatures are up to 24,500.

New comments on the petition:

[Dr. ____ from Berlin] "St. Mark's is the only top quality bookstore in NYC. The staggering selection, extensive and discriminatingly selected, is unparalleled - none of the big chains and none of the smaller ones (with their necessarily narrower focus) come close to this unique institution. I send all my students, colleagues, friends heading for NY to St. Mark's. Don't liquidate New York's most respectable Bookstore!"

"How is New York City going to continue to be a literary and cultural center if we lose all of our independent bookstores?"

*****

Note: It is true that I am not only a disinterested bookstore blogger in this case; I am not unbiased. I am a former employee of St. Mark's Bookshop, with years of memories and friendships there. I am also currently writing a book about my years at the store. I should add, however, that I am not writing about my time there just to write a fun memoir about my own life; the bookstore itself was largely the inspiration. St. Mark's Bookshop is such an unique gathering place in the heart of the city of art, the city of publishing, I want to help give it its legend in print; it is certainly long overdue.

August 10th Book Party: Chicago Center for Literature and Photography Celebrates Four Years

Jason Pettus is a writer, photographer, and founder of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. CCLaP has been an unique kind of cyber-center for the small press since 2007, offering a number of amenities to the literary community of Chicago and beyond. CCLaP is a publisher of e-books by emerging authors; a blogger of book reviews, movie reviews, and essays; a creator of podcasts with authors a few times each month; and a host of Chicago reading events. They have published four e-books thus far: Life After Sleep by Mark Brand, Salt Creek Anthology by Jason Fisk, 99 Problems by Ben Tanzer, and Too Young to Fall Asleep by Sally Weigel. In honor of the upcoming fourth anniversary book party (August 10th at Chicago's Beauty Bar), the books are now available as hand-bound editions as well, something Jason calls "Hypermodern Editions."

As the Center's anniversary approached, Jason answered some questions for me on building a readership, the state of the book review, and the Chicago lit scene.

What led you to start CCLaP?

I was a working author myself for about ten years in Chicago, then back in Missouri was a working photographer for around five years previous to that; and coming from the punk/zine community of the 1980s when I was a teen, I've been doing fun little DIY creative projects for a long before either of those. So when I first entered middle age in the mid-2000s, and started becoming more and more dissatisfied with trying to continue pursuing a career as a creative writer, something like CCLaP was just naturally one of the first things that popped into my mind as something to do next with my life. Although truthfully, I came very close to opening an internet startup company instead (that's what a lot of my day jobs in Chicago have involved), in which case CCLaP wouldn't actually exist right now.

How has the reception been for the e-books you’ve published so far? I’m not trying to single out your authors, but more to ask how you reached out and found an audience, and what you learned about how to find your readers in between Book #1 and Book #4.

When I talk to my friends who run more traditional basement presses about this subject, it looks pretty certain that in general terms, CCLaP is generating the same amount of paying customers from the ebooks as they are from their paper books, which as most people know is nothing to sneeze at but no great shakes either. The nice thing, though, is that since the ebooks are released under a "pay what you want" scheme, it means that our paying customers only make up around 25 percent of the book's total readership; and so if you're talking just about how many eyeballs the center's books are getting in front of, you can think of it in general terms of about three to four times the amount of a typical basement press. The biggest lesson I've learned so far about gathering an audience is that this stuff really does fall along traditional age lines to a great extent; so that is, whenever I publish a middle-aged author with a middle-aged audience, downloads of the electronic version are always smaller than a title by a twentysomething with a college-aged audience, even when that book will often generate the same amount of press and interest away from the internet. The adoption of ebooks is truly a generational issue, I'm slowly learning.

What do you look for in a writer you’re deciding to publish?

Oh, it's a whole complicated host of factors, actually. Obviously the first and main issue is simply the quality of the actual manuscript; but then whether or not they're in Chicago comes into play as well, since that's so much more a convenient option for things like getting them to sign books, etc. And since part of CCLaP's mission as a more general overall arts organization is to help nurture artists over the course of their careers, part of what I look at when examining submissions is where that author is in their career, and how much a CCLaP book would be able to help with the long-term picture; so if someone like Ben Tanzer comes to me, for example, who now has a number of successful commercial novels under his belt, but is sitting on something more experimental or personal that will make his audience think of him in a new way if someone were to publish it, that counts for extra in my mind when making decisions about what to put out.

I think it’s great that you’re making handmade books out of CCLaP e-book releases. Will you continue to do this, or do you think it’s more of a special event for the 4-year anniversary?

The paper versions of CCLaP's books have actually always been a part of the plan, since starting up the publishing program in 2008; it's just that it's only now that I've actually been able to afford it. In general I'm trying to take my cues off how many musicians now do things, which is to entirely skip the middle step of distribution altogether; so in my case, the plan has always been to release an electronic version that people can download for free if they want, and a handmade, hardback paper version that costs a little more than a paper version normally would, and that can be directly purchased at the website much like how an Etsy store works, and then just skip the trade paperback version and the bookstores and Amazon and the traditional distributors altogether. It's my opinion that this is where most small presses are bleeding the most money these days, so my hope is to keep costs under control by simply eliminating this option entirely.

I’m so glad you’re running frequent book reviews on your blog. In a time when newspapers are downsizing their book review sections and laying off reviewers, can you speak to the importance of book reviews in our culture?

Well, I'm just amazed that more people don't do the same thing! I think that blogs got saddled at the beginning of their existence with this bad reputation, as if they were some form of literary genre unto themselves and with their own artistic pluses and minuses; but really, a blog is actually just more a type of technology, a specific kind of medium for delivering whatever you want, good or bad, just like it would be ridiculous to say that a piece of content is somehow artistically better when read on a piece of ivory-colored paper versus cream-colored paper. In this sense, then, a blog is nothing more than a giant unending sheet of paper that's given to you completely for free, and so makes it the best medium in human history for long-form, thoughtful essays. I think once we get to the next generation of online users, the ones who don't automatically equate blogs with unthinking idiocy, we're going to see a flowering again of long-form critical thought that could scarcely be imagined by previous generations.

Do book reviews become even more important in a moment of so many publishers, underground publishers, self-publishers, and varied formats? Do book reviewers help hold The Book together as hyperlinks and e-readers try to morph it?

That's a good question, and I confess one I've never really contemplated before. Certainly you paint a vivid mental picture of "artistic thought" being some kind of runny goo, and that different conventions like "novels" and "feature films" are differently shaped boxes that we put around this goo to try to contain and shape it, so that we can then put two of them side-by-side and compare them. Does our society need this in order to even understand the arts, and for it to be of any practical help in our day-to-day lives? And is it important for critics to continue holding up the "novel-shaped" box, when things like narrative videogames and hyperlinked stories create little holes in the corners for that goo to ooze out? I think those are more philosophical questions than practical ones, and probably better debated at dinner parties after a few drinks than a declarative answer given here.

If the big newspapers were considered reliable sources who often had the last or loudest word on book reviews, what should a reader look for in seeking trustworthy reviews in the blogosphere? Is the dismantling of the newspaper reviews a good thing or a bad thing for the small press?

Deciding which critics to trust has always boiled down to some simple criteria in my opinion, and I'm always surprised that so many people have a hard time with this, which is merely trust plus time. Too many people, I think, have this attitude towards critical thought that's similar to God speaking to His minions, that it's this booming random opinion coming in out of nowhere that we should blindly trust merely because someone in a position of authority is telling us to; but finding a good critic is actually much more similar to paying attention to the opinions to a good friend, in that the entire reason we even trust what they're saying is because they've proven over and over again that they CAN be trusted, precisely because they have very similar opinions to our own. That's always the best way to get good recommendations, I've found, is simply to find people whose tastes closely match your own, then pay attention anytime they rave about something you've never heard about, or argue for a project that you may have not cared for at first.

I think a big part of the problem occurred during the big Hollywood boom of the 1980s, when newspapers suddenly found themselves with an opportunity to sell many more pages of movie ads if they simply had an excuse to actually print those pages; that forced every newspaper in the country to hire their own staff of reviewers, who were basically no more than an excuse to even have a pullout movie section every Friday and sell a thousand percent more ads than they were before. That's when you really saw the first big proliferation of this "From God's Mouth" attitude about criticism, where critics became an endless series of faceless anonymous shills, and the only reason you would put stock in any of their opinions is because this big expensive newspaper was telling you to; and then when this became a successful paradigm, it of course bled over into things like book reviews as well. So in that sense, the dismantling of the newspaper review system is the best thing that could've happened to both readers and small presses; because what's rising in its wake is both the much more reliable crowd-sourcing process at places like Amazon (which, let's face it, is a HIGHLY trustworthy way of learning simply about any particular book's general strengths and weaknesses), combined with long-form critics like myself who take our cues off the old masters like Pauline Kael, who people trust in the same way they trust their friends, and who can recommend unknown things in a way that Amazon crowd-sourcing never could, no matter how sophisticated their algorithms get.

What have you learned about small press publishing since setting up shop in 2007?

Oh, dear, we could be here all day if I started to answer this, so perhaps I'll just skip this question altogether. The short answer is that I've learned hundreds of things, and that the very best advice I can give a person who's interested in the subject is to simply go out and start a small press themselves, to learn all the hard lessons they never will simply by reading about other people's experiences.

Chicago has a thriving small press scene: From afar, I know about Quimby’s, the Orange Alert Reading Series, the Chicago Underground Library, Another Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Zine Fest, the “Quickies” Reading Series, MAKE, Featherproof Books. Have you paired up with any of these folks in your events or in other ways?

I have yet to formally partner with any of these groups, but you could absolutely say that an informal network of support exists here in Chicago within this community: we all tend to go to each other's events, buy each other's books, provide publicity for each other's big things, recommend artists to each other, send submitting authors each other's ways, etc. In fact, back when I quit writing myself in 2004 and was first coming up with the idea for CCLaP, this is one of the main reasons I decided to follow through with the particular plan I did, was knowing what a strong and longstanding literary community there actually is here in Chicago, which now that I've traveled a bit I can confidently state as one of the largest and most tight-knit ones in the world.

What’s on the horizon for CCLaP?

Well, more books for a start -- another three before this year is through, then another five in 2012. And more live events, more podcast episodes, and the same 150 book reviews at the blog next year as I publish every year. Plus it's looking likely that we'll finally be offering our first classes and workshops next year as well; because I have to say, the requests never stop coming in from people wanting to learn how to make the kind of handmade books I do for CCLaP, so I'm thinking strongly of just charging a fee and teaching the people who really do want to sit down and learn. Then of course the center has a long-term vision as well, for those who don't know; everything being done right now, for example, is in service of hopefully one day finally opening a permanent physical space somewhere here in the city, at which point CCLaP will morph more into the traditional community center that I've always envisioned it as.

*****

Find the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography online here.

Under the Volcano Books Opens October 15th, Mexico City

Grant Cogswell hanging shelves at Under the Volcano Books, July 2011.

The last time I saw Grant Cogswell, he was making me laugh hysterically in Austin, Texas. Seventeen years and a few cities later, this filmwriter/ activist/ longtime Seattle resident is gearing up to open an expat English-language bookstore and gathering place in the Roma District of Mexico City (D.F.). The store will be named Under the Volcano Books after the Mexico-set novel by expat writer Malcolm Lowry. The grand opening is set for Saturday October 15th, 2011.

Yesterday Grant was kind enough to answer some interview questions in between constructing a bookstore interior at Cerrada Chiapas 40-C, Colonia Roma Norte.

What led you to want to open a bookstore? Was this a life-long dream, or did it have more to do with timing and opportunity?

Not a lifelong dream. I'd worked in bookstores stateside, and it never really occurred to me until I came to D.F. and saw there wasn't really anything for readers of English - and began to imagine what was also missing, which was the kind of semi-public community that might grow around such an institution. After I decided to move here in 2006, my imagination of what kind of life I wanted here just kind of grew the store within itself, like a pearl, becoming the center of the impulse. By the time I was here full-time in late 2009 it was what I was doing.

I understand that you have a particular vision for this English-language bookstore in a world-class city, in a neighborhood with a long history of artists and expats. Knowing you, it will be much more than just a store. Tell us what you hope for the bookstore to be, and what steps you will take to see that vision through?

Well, I think it will be a place of a very particular kind. I'm very insistent that there won't be wi-fi available, even when we have coffee and tables and who knows maybe even some kind of food. There's a kind of psychic silence that to me is very much associated with reading - I think a lot of people go camping to find it, or hell, I don't know, have sex with strangers-- so that's the first thing: analog. I'll often be playing Coltrane, or The Band, or KEXP (ironically) online - there's also an amazing station here at 105.7 that has its finger on the pulse of whateveryouwanttocallit Indie rock from the US just as firmly as anything on the internet. Our location is at the end of an alley in a hundred-year-old working neighborhood, but we have this lovely little tiled back garden. I'd like it to be a place that a large assemblage of travellers and residents and even people in the English-speaking world who'll never go to Mexico recognize as an outpost of, I don't know, the examined life? That sounds so hard. The life of books, thought, self-education, art. Once my Spanish is good enough to read at a decent enough speed for literature (I can get through the newspaper fairly quick, but am constantly resorting to a dictionary) I just have to make sure I don't end up spending my off hours hanging out at El Pendulo or Conejo Blanco. I love those places. We could do a lot worse than just be an English version of them. There will at some point be a literary journal based in the store called Mexico Review focusing on translations from contemporary Mexican writers and Americans writing about Mexico, in the very most expansive sense. We'll be open every day, because a 24-hour-layover on a NY-Buenos Aires flight happens at its own convenience, and I am counting on those people coming to the store.

What kind of books will you feature?

Used contemporary and classic fiction and poetry, translations from the Spanish, politics, history, philosophy, urban planning and architecture, lit crit, interesting nonfiction, art books, punk culture, comics, travel books, language aids, 'expat lit'.

Matthew Stadler of Publication Studio recently read in the space that will be Under the Volcano Books. Do you plan to hold readings frequently? What types of writers will you court? From how far away?

I'll have visiting writers, obviously drawing for reasons of airfare and my personal connections far heavier from the West Coast of the US than the East. But a lot of people come through here. Not too often - I want to maintain the sense of them as an event, and the bar will be high, nobody without a published book at the very least. I can't see flying anyone over from Australia, but otherwise the sky's the limit.

What has been the most challenging aspect of opening the bookstore so far? What has been the most unexpected challenge?

Finding a space; finding a space. By custom here you need to have a property-owner guarantee your lease when you rent, and that goes for residential as well as commercial property. Arriving here as an immigrant without particularly deep local roots this was looking almost impossible - years off. Then my good friend and roommate bought a house in Roma Norte for his recording business and it was kind of the Hand of God.

You’re opening a brick and mortar bookstore in 2011. You’ve been blogging about the store, keeping far-flung friends updated on Facebook, and you’ve created a catalog of your store’s inventory on LibraryThing. How do you see the relationship between your bookstore and the digital world? Are you interested in selling books online, or just getting people into your space?

I'm going to do what I enjoy: I think going outside of that would be to the detriment of my pleasure in the store and thereby bring it down. There are people who want to see this become an emporium for the materials they use in their English classes here: that's not going to happen, nor am I going to become an online dealer. My skills are choosing the inventory very carefully based on a knowledge of the literature of the English language and contemporary culture, and curating a place for people to come to in a splendidly comfortable and affordable neighborhood. I will also make coffee.

One plan you had was to sell books on the street while waiting to find the right space for the store. Have you done much of that? How have sales been? Have you liked the feeling of selling literature on the streets of Mexico City?

I haven't sold anything on the streets. I soon found out those street markets are a web of old relationships and there's a reason you don't see foreigners working in them. I was about to get a permit from the Delegacion to sell in Coyoacan when Sylvain bought the house where the store will go and it just wasn't worth doing at that point.

I’ve been noticing a new business model among bookstores being opened by working artists and writers: The kind of bookstore that is not required to sustain itself. The owners’ income/s from art and writing jobs help to supplement the bookstore, which they choose to open because they passionately want a bookstore in their city. Will Under the Volcano Books be required to sustain itself?

Yes, but there are lots of ways we can make that happen if things get tight. I see the store over time becoming a magnet for people who want to practice their English. If there's a store full of people four nights a week at 50 pesos a head chatting away because that's what's needed to keep us afloat, that's perfectly fine with me. I think our overhead is a fraction of what it would be in the US. You see a lot of places here you wonder, how the hell does that store stay open? Things are just a lot cheaper in general here is how, and I am counting on them staying that way. I can't imagine the brass it would take to do this in the States, and don't want to.

On a Youtube video that seems to have vanished since I saw it, you made a very provocative statement that you hoped the bookstore would introduce both Mexicans and Americans the better sides of themselves to each other. That [currently] Mexicans know too much American scorn and Americans hear too much about Mexican crime. Tell us more about your hope and how literature sheds light on our better angels.

Well, most Americans simply have hardly the faintest idea about this country: what it contains, what its 'normal setting' is, the daily life of the majority of people. Now that the drug killings have reached around 50,000, people throw around the statistic that the narco wars have killed as many people as Americans died in Vietnam, so people think there is a war going on here. (There is in some places near the US border, specifically Ciudad Juarez, and in some of rural Tamaulipas where it could be classified at that level.) Well, that's true. But two million Vietnamese died in that war. Nothing like the same scale. Don't get me wrong, the situation is an enormous and terrible tragedy and I think most people here believe we have further to go with it than we have come yet, and who knows what it will lead to. But this is a nation of 100 million people most of whom have no connection with or direct experience of any of that world. And their lives go on, day to day. Americans sense not the least texture of that reality for the most part, or the nature of life here in DF, which is now one of the safest places in the country and a magnet again for that reason. Nor the particular and complex past and the nature of the national identity it produced, which I think may be a healthier approach to being of the New World than I have seen come to fruition in the U.S.

On the other side, American mass-culture floods the airwaves and the video stalls here, and it is usually the movies and music with the most money behind them, which are not always the worst, but very often. I've run into smart, worldly people here who were totally unaware the US has a culture of art cinema, for example. Mexicans in general are not big readers - which is okay for me, because Mexicans in general are not my target audience. But I'd like to at least get the very privileged cultural class here to be aware of Whitman, of Keats, or Cormac McCarthy and Virginia Woolf. I think there's room to create that awareness, and a hunger for it, because contact with American culture is seen from the very least on an economic plane as sophistication, as self-development. And I'm sitting here with the literary aspect being almost entirely absent from that conversation wanting to lean over and say "There's something pretty wide here you missed..."

Visit the Under the Volcano Books website here.

Meet the Author at the Bus Station: Or, How to Book an Affordable Zine Tour in Tight Times

Zines on wheels: The Fly Away Zine Mobile toured through Pittsburgh in July 2011.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the rise of author signings in airport bookstores ("Meet the Author at the Airport"). I loved this image of an author touring without even leaving the transportation hubs, and having a roster of signings dedicated to travelers.

But airport bookstores are unlikely to cater to small press readings any time soon. Likewise, many small and micro press writers would be financially deterred from touring by airplane. For writers from our side of the tracks we have discount buslines, those new web-booked, low-overhead, curbside, wifi-equipped, post-Chinatown bus lines like Megabus and Bolt Bus that cost riders as little as $1 per trip. A few weeks ago, I interviewed zinester Ocean about her August 2011 zine tour via Megabus, the "High on Unemployment Tour."

The tour name refers to both her current unemployment checks (her government job shuts down in the summer) and her current zine series, "High on Burning Photographs." Ocean's storytelling is intense, compelling, and intensely personal, as she offers hilarious, poignant, inspiring, or heart-wrenching dispatches from one young woman's "aging riot grrrl" life. Ocean's life as written has been full of adventure, full of tight friendships with vibrant and fearless friends, and full of astute reflections and complex observations from quieter seasons. Her scope is deep and wide, reporting stories from her kitchen table at 3:00am, from her local laundromat, from penpal conversations with prisoners, or from the landscape of young, queer America. Lucky for her readers, she's been recording her stories in xeroxed zines since 1996, when she was a young teenager.

Ocean originally hails from New York, but now lives and writes in Pittsburgh. Conveniently for her, Pittsburgh was recently made a Megabus hub connecting numerous points on the East Coast and the Midwest. On tour, she'll be concentrating on the cities of the Midwest, and she's excited to get to know that part of the country, with which she's not very familiar. Not all dates are set in stone yet, but she has plans to read in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago (another Megabus hub), Madison, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. Columbus is a maybe and she'll do a last reading back in New York.

Ocean is already a seasoned veteran of bus trips. "In most ways, I don't miss Greyhound, but with Greyhound, you know you'll always have a story," she mused as we talked in Pittsburgh's Lili Coffee Shop. Instead of heading to college, when she graduated from high school, she bought a three-month Discovery Pass on Greyhound. "There were the fights, the drunk people (who somehow manage to get past the strict no-drinking rules of Greyhound), and then there was the guy who asked me to marry him. We were just talking, and he said, 'Let's get married and go to LA.' We weren't even riding in the direction of LA." In those days, Ocean had a "Greyhound outfit" consisting of a silver tank top and a '50s style skirt patterned with pigs and clover. The idea was to dress "the kind of outlandish so that good people would approach me and bad people would stay away."

Ocean's also done her share of rides on the Chinatown bus: "They drive so fast, I always think I'm going to die." Similarly, a recent overnight bus ride between Warsaw and Lithuania was frightening for its high speeds. "I took a sleeping pill but I was too anxious to ever fall asleep." In contrast, Ocean calls Megabus "the sane bus." She loves riding in the top level for its views, even knowing about "the accident."

I was curious which method Ocean had used for finding reading venues in unfamiliar cities. "Sometimes I relied on word of mouth from friends, and other times I just typed the city's name and the word ZINE into Google to see what came up. It worked!" Though Google has been a helpful pointer, she still prefers to pick up the phone to book a venue. The process has been mostly gratifying: "Sometimes when I get in touch with people about an event, I find out they're already readers of my zine."

TOUR STOPS

In Cleveland, Ocean will read (August 6th) at the longstanding literary bookstore, Mac's Backs, which has been open in Ohio since 1978, and in its current Cleveland Heights location since 1982. In Chicago, where she'll join up with a few zinester friends, Ocean plans to read at the quintessential DIY bookstore, Quimby's. Her Minneapolis venue is zine-friendly Boneshaker Books, and in Detroit she's excited to read at the anarchy space, the Trumbullplex, in conjunction with their new zine library. In Milwaukee she's hooking up with QZAP (Queer Zine Archive Project), in Madison she hopes to hit the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, and she'll wrap up with a reading at Bluestockings Bookstore in downtown Manhattan around late August or early September. For this last reading Ocean will pair up with the For the Birds feminist collective.

As for accommodations on a budget, Ocean's hoping to crash with her fellow readers in most cities, but when that doesn't work, she'll rely on her membership at Couchsurfing.org or look up local hostels.

The young writer seemed excited about getting on the road to meet and greet the zine community. She talked about missing this aspect of the zine experience from her early days. "When I first got into zines, most people who read my zines would write me a letter back. That was normal--I guess before the internet we [zine writers] were all stranded in random places, desperate to find people we could relate to. Now I think I hear from about 10% of my readers. Even the zine ordering process is not as personal as it once was. Now we have these great distros, but back in the day, every zine had a zine review section. They gave the address and said 'send $1.'" These days Ocean usually skips the distros and sticks with mailing and handing out her zines to friends or longtime followers.

To get the latest issue of "High on Burning Photographs," send $1 or two stamps to:

Ocean
PO Box 40144
Pittsburgh, PA 15201

Stay tuned for a full list of tour dates and venues for Ocean's High on Unemployment Tour.

More Bookstore Briefs: Good News, Plus an Elegy

NYC's Word Up pop up bookstore has extended its run through the end of September! (via Word Up website)

DC's Busboys and Poets expanded to a fourth location (in Hyattsville, Md.) this week (via WSET)

Rebel Bookseller panel happens this Friday at Brooklyn's Greenlight Bookstore (The book's subtitle: Why Indie Businesses Represent Everything You Want to Fight For, From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities)
(see the Facebook event page)

Pittsburgh's Big Idea bookstore will move to the avenue and gain a cafe and event space (via Big Idea website)

Book rep Ann Kingman asks whether bookmobiles can be the new food trucks? (via Twitter)

And book critic Scott McLemee has published a thoughtful essay, "The Bookstore at the End of the World": "The algorithms at Amazon are no match for an intelligent person behind the cash register." (via Inside Higher Education)