NewPages Blog

In his essay, “Waylaid by Weirdness: On Q&As, Pop-Tarts, and Asian Porn Stars,” Ed Lin takes a hindsight humorous look at the “Weirdies” that seem to crop up regularly at public readings. “The only downside to readings is when the Weirdies show up. Weirdies love mouthing along during the reading; asking many, many questions during the Q&A; and following the author for blocks afterward.” For specific examples, visit Lin’s piece on The Stranger.

Lisa’s Story
The Other Shoe
by Tom Batiuk
Published by The Kent State University Press

Tom Batiuk spent several years as a middle school art teacher before creating the comic strip Funky Winkerbean in 1972. Originally a “gag-a-day” comic strip that portrayed life in high school, Funky has evolved into a mature series of real-life stories examining such social issues as teen dating abuse, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, violence in schools, the war in the Middle East, alcoholism, divorce, and cancer.

In 1999, Lisa Moore, one of Funky’s friends and a main character, discovered she had breast cancer. Batiuk, unsure about dealing with such a serious subject on the funny pages, decided to go ahead with the story line. He approached the topic with the idea that mixing humor with serious and real themes heightens the reader’s interest. Lisa and husband Les faced the same physical, psychological, and social issues as anyone else dealing with the disease.

After a mastectomy and chemotherapy, Lisa was cancer free. She finished her law degree, opened a practice, and had a baby daughter, Summer. Then, in the spring of 2006, the cancer returned and metastasized. Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe is a collection of both the 1999 comic strips on Lisa’s initial battle with cancer and the current series examining her struggle with the disease and its outcome. Additionally, it contains resource material on breast cancer, including early detection, information sources, support systems, and health care.

Tom Batiuk is a graduate of Kent State University. His Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft comic strips are carried in over 700 newspapers throughout the U.S. In 2006, he was honored by the American Cancer Society and presented its Cancer Care Hall of Fame Award for his sympathetic work in highlighting the experiences of those with cancer.

Portions from the sale of this book will go towards cancer research and education. Visit Lisa’s Legacy Fund to learn more or to make a direct donation.

My Mother Wears Combat Boots
A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
AK Press
November 2007

“Jessica Mills is a touring musician, artist, activist, writer, teacher, and mother of two. Disappointed by run-of-the-mill parenting books that didn’t speak to her experience, she set out to write a book tackling the issues faced by a new generation of moms and dads. The result is a parenting guide like no other. Written with humor, extensive research, and much trial and error, My Mother Wears Combat Boots delivers sound advice for parents of all stripes. Amid stories of bringing kids (and grandparents) to women’s rights demonstrations, taking baby on tour with her band, and organizing cooperative childcare, Jessica gives detailed nuts-and-bolts information about weaning, cloth vs. disposable diapers, the psychological effects of co-sleeping, and even how to get free infant gear. This book provides a clever, hip, and entertaining mix of advice, anecdotes, political analysis, and factual sidebars that will help parents as they navigate the first years of their child’s life.”

NewPages has been experiencing some technical difficulties with the site this weekend. (And though that looks like the computer is hungover, it’s not, and neither are we, really – it’s a TECH problem…) If you’ve have any trouble accessing the site, it should now be taken care of. Please post to the blog if you experience any difficulties accessing the site so we can take care of it pronto. Thank you!

“Namarupa, Categories of Indian Thought, is a new journal that conveys the vast scope of sacred philosophical thought that has emanated from the land and people of India over many millennia.” Issue Number 7 (November 2007) of Namarupa features The Beatles on the cover and the article “The Beatles in India” by Paul Saltzman.

As if the idea of owning and operating an independent bookstore hadn’t been de-romanticized enough, enter Paul Constant’s “Flying Off the Shelves: The Pleasures and Perils of Chasing Book Thieves” published in Seattle’s The Stranger. Yet, for all the possible laments, Constant expresses pleasure in his literary taunting of literate unlikelies who come in with the “top five” fencable books to check his inventory. And given the comment on the masturbating chain-store security guard, staying independent and investing in a good pair of running shoes seems the better alternative. Maybe independent isn’t so unromantic after all.

“A group of international movie-goers announced today that they are backing filmmaker Jessica Mae Stover’s fundraising project around her original motion picture, Artemis Eternal, and are inviting other film fans to do the same. On the official site for the project, visitors can explore an interactive map of the movie’s development, track progress and impact production by contributing funds directly. By relying on contributors to promote the website, reach out to local press and even create press releases [such as this one], Stover has cut out the middleman, and allied with the audience to break ground on a new formula for film finance, production and exhibition.”

Check out the interactive press release, which includes a YouTube video interview. Stover makes some great comments on the need for independent ventures and the essential nature of marketing, as well as offers a detailed discussion of filmmaking.

Feminist Studies
Volume 33 Number 2

From the preface:

“Is there such a thing as feminism in the mass media? What does it look like? These are some of the questions explored in this volume. Covering texts as diverse as Hollywood movies, Taiwanese women’s magazines, the HBO series The Sopranos, and science fiction, the writers represented here all argue that in some complex way mainstream films and bestselling publications are developing their own feminist language, whose alphabet we still need to learn. Does the gendered violence in The Sopranos simply reproduce misogynist prejudice, or does it challenge it? Does the emphasis on beauty and fashion in the coverage of feminism in women’s magazines in Taiwan challenge Western Second Wave ideals of what feminism should be? Is the Borg Queen in the Star Trek movie First Contact really a feminist role model? Are the beauty parlors in films like Desperately Seeking Susan and Legally Blonde represented as oppressive or liberating for women? Twenty-first century mass media offer possibilities for the creation of feminist spaces and the discovery of feminist voices that often constrain as much as they liberate.”

A note from Andrei Codrescu, Editor of Exquisite Corpse:

Did you miss us? We missed you. It’s only been a brief eon but the idiots have taken over the world, and the internet is seducing us all into trading in our brains for beads. Welcome back to the Post-Katrina Resurrection Corpse, back from a dank hiatus of one year in a formaledehyde-poisoned FEMA trailer. We festered, we raged, we contemplated suicide, and in the end, voted for life because we are a Corpse already and we hate to keep on dying, just like the ideals of the Republic.

Our guest-editor for this issue is the formidable poet, publisher, New Orleanian, and homme-du-monde-et-de-lettres, Bill Lavender. Bill has ploughed through the accumulated debris in our trailer, turning over towers of submissions and lovingly removing mold and giving new lustre to tarnished but potent weapons of poesy, crit, and story-time. We will continue to exalt, irritate, surprise, be loving, merciless, and obscene, just like you.

Our Bulgarian genius, Plamen Arnaudov, has updated our technology so that the Corpse may flow continually, with updates posted as quickly as the zeitgeist requires.

We also welcome Vincent Cellucci, poet and chef to Our Gang, so that we might eat well while we tryst and plunder.

Readers, please come back, visit, and, most importantly, re-register to join our raiding parties, and ride with the Resurrected Corpse. You don’t need to bring your own horse to the raiding parties because we are planning (secretly) to offer ship cruises to our subscribers (it costs nothing to subscribe).

The Corpse is back.