“…the overmanaged, time-sucking, and keystroke-counting world of work.”

“[…] Cubed [ by Niki Saval] takes us on the happy journey from cozy countinghouse rooms at the turn of the last century to open-plan offices in the wide-open ’60s and ’70s to the heinous hell-boxes born out of the mass layoffs of the ’80s. In the wake of this latter shakeout, Saval writes, 'corporations responded by giving a privileged elite the few remaining offices while cramming everyone else into partitioned spaces.'

     This was the era famously captured by Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, in which he birthed the phrase 'veal-fattening pen' as a painfully accurate description of the office cubicle. These holding facilities, Coupland memorably observed, were 'small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered disassemblable wall portions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named after the small pre-slaughter cubicles used in the cattle industry.' A grim stop, in other words, where the life-hating, managerially disrespected masses can kill time until they’re led to their own metaphorical killing floor to be laid off.
     All this talk of design and repression brings to mind the resemblance Black Panthers first pointed out between slave-ship design and the layouts of supermax prisons. Saval gives us statistics on the dimensions of a standard worker-bee workstation circa 2006, 'when the average cubicle was seventy-five square feet.' According to the latest information, the average Solitary Housing Unit at Pelican Bay supermax averages about eleven and a half by seven and a half feet. So in this case, if in few others, convicts serving time in solitary come out ahead of salaried cubicle dwellers.”
— Jerry Stahl, BookForum
Read more…

Buy this book here...

Scott Chantler... see him at the Festival on May 25

"'I love to tell stories,'" says Scott Chantler. 'That's what drives me. So when the chance came along to work on a graphic novel, I seized it.'

     Days Like This, illustrated by Chantler and written by J. Torres, is the fictionalized account of a teenage girl group's rise to stardom during the early 1960s. 'This was a fascinating project for me,' explains Chantler. 'It's exactly the type of work I'd been looking for in comics, because I can't think of another book like it. It's personal and character-driven, and makes meaningful use of the time period. It's not just some nostalgia trip. It gave me an opportunity to do a lot of juicy research and challenged me to represent the era properly, but without ramming it down people's throats. There is something iconic to the story that I wanted to reflect in the art.'
     The book hits store shelves March 26 and makes its official debut at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival on March 29. If it is not available at your favourite bookseller, it can be ordered.
     At [the University of] Waterloo, Chantler refined his talents as a visual story teller while he studied Fine Arts and Film. His popular comic strip, 'Manly Man', ran in Imprint 1991-92. More importantly, it was at Waterloo [University] that he met his wife Shari.
     After graduation, he landed a position with Creative Options in Waterloo. He illustrated employee communications campaigns on safety, loss prevention, and customer service for major American retailers such as JCPenney, Pep Boys and Hallmark.
     'But there are only so many ways to creatively illustrate how to lift a box safely and I yearned for work that was more challenging and entertainment-driven,' explains Chantler. Shortly after setting up shop as a freelance illustrator, he started an online comic strip, which caught the attention of comic book writer J. Torres (Sidekicks, X-Men: Ronin). Their online correspondence eventually led to Torres offering him the art chores on Days Like This.”
— James Howe, University of Waterloo
Read more...

Go to Scott Chantler’s website here…

Buy all his books here…

Spread the word...

“It’s what we are being ‘trained’ to do.”

From: Reel Movie Nation 

“[…] Specific advice differs from one person to another, but most agree that good Literary Citizenship entails buying from local bookstores, attending readings, subscribing to literary magazines, interviewing writers, reviewing books, reading a friend’s manuscript, blurbing books, and so on.

     I agree with the value in all of these activities. Yes, by all means, if you want to build a literary career, you’ve got to form professional networks in your field. You’ve also got to support the small presses, bookstores, literary magazines and libraries in which you hope to see your own work showcased. This is so obvious that it’s surprising it has to be mentioned at all. But it does have to be mentioned, and those who write the blogs and manifestoes of advice are good to do so.
     What I think is missing from this narrative about Literary Citizenship, however, is an origin story. Why do writers need to do these things? In what context are these activities so necessary?
     To understand the rise of the Literary Citizen, perhaps first we need to look at the meltdown of our economy.
     […] ‘In times of recession, marketing budgets are…the first to be cut.’ [Jenny Darroch, Huffington Post]. Who, then, must make up for this shortfall? Certainly it’s not the owners and CEO’s of publishing companies who lend a hand to writers in times of duress (in spite of the fact that their profits are derived precisely from those writers). No, it’s writers who are expected to look after themselves and one another.
     Wildfire Marketing lays it out quite clearly. Company founder Rob Eagar informs publishers that there is a way to ‘maximize budgets in tough times.’ Namely, ‘You can train your authors to handle more of the marketing efforts. Writers who become skilled at promoting books can produce thousands of dollars in extra profits for the publisher.’”
— Becky Tuch, Salon
Read more…

snob lit

Read about this book here...

“’Genre fiction’ is a nasty phrase – when did genre turn into an adjective? But I object to the term for a different reason. It's weasel wording, in that it conflates lit fic with literature. It was clever marketing by publishers to set certain contemporary fiction apart and declare it Literature – and therefore Important, Art and somehow better than other writing.
     The term sneaks back into the past in a strangely anachronistic way, so that, for example, Jane Austen's works are described as literary fiction. This is nonsense. Can anyone think for a moment that were she writing today she'd be published as lit fic? No, and not because she'd end up under romance or chick lit, but because she writes comedy, and lit fic, with a few rare exceptions, does not include comedy within its remit.
     Austen never for a moment imagined she was writing Literature. Posterity decided that – not her, not John Murray, not even her contemporary readership. She wrote fiction, to entertain and to make money.”

— Elizabeth Edmondson [She is the author of 30 novels], The Guardian
Read more…

Buy all of Elizabeth Edmondson's books here...

The Finish: Glossy? Or Matte?

From: Beautiful Book Covers

“I’ve basically hated the endings of the last few novels I’ve read, and I am cranky about it. Like being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic cranky. Like not having eaten in five hours cranky. Like being stuck in traffic WHILE also being hungry cranky. I don’t know what your maximum capacity for crankerdom is, but I’m just about hitting the ceiling on mine.

     Let me clarify my stance on endings. I don’t need them to be happy. I’m actually not the number one fan of happy endings, because with the kinds of complicated stories I tend to gravitate towards, a truly happy ending, more often than not, feels oversimplified and tacked on. I don’t want all the strings hanging loose at the end, but I equally don’t want all those strings tied up into neat and pretty birthday package bows. […]
     For me, a satisfying ending is when a dramatic question has been thoroughly explored throughout the course of a story (Can Anna Karenina find happiness with Count Vronsky? Can Peter Pan convince the Darling children to stay with him in Neverland? Can Hamlet avenge his father’s death?) and an answer that makes sense has been reached. Often the answer to the dramatic question in question is NO, because it was always SUPPOSED to be NO. It’s not the ending that feels GOOD, but it is the ending that feels RIGHT.
     If Anna ran off with Vronsky with no consequences, if the Darling children stayed in Neverland forever, if Hamlet was just like 'Fuck this Elsinore noise, I’m getting out of this crazy castle and maybe also Denmark,' yes, those characters might be happier but we the readers wouldn’t.”
— Kit Steinkeller, BOOKRIOT
Read more…

novel nosh

“Dinah Fried began Fictitious Dishes as a series of five photographs when she was a student at Rhode Island School of Design. Now it’s a book that serves up a delectable assortment of photographic interpretations of culinary moments from contemporary and classic literature.
     Showcasing famous meals including the madcap tea party from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the watery gruel from Oliver Twist, the lavish chicken breakfast from To Kill a Mockingbird, the stomach-turning avocado-and-crabmeat salad from The Bell Jar, and the seductive cupcakes from The Corrections, this unique volume pairs each place setting with the text from the book that inspired its creation.
     Interesting food facts and entertaining anecdotes about the authors, their work, and their culinary predilections complete this charming book, which is sure to whet the appetites of lovers of great literature and delicious dishes.”
— Fictitiousdishes
Read more…