Images from forthcoming book, THE UNCANNY VALLEY: WAXWORKS PHOTOGRAPHS by ELEFTHERIA LIALIOS

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Happy Halloween from Wicker Park Press Ltd: -- proudly announcing the 2010 publication of THE UNCANNY VALLEY: WAXWORKS PHOTOGRAPHS OF ELEFTHERIA LIALIOS
By Eleftheria Lialios
Introduction by Dan Georgakas
Text and Captions by Hatto Fischer
Bibliographic information to come ...


Biography of the author/artist can be found here: http://fnewsmagazine.com/2005-dec/faculty.html

Revisiting WATER TANKS OF CHICAGO by Larry W Green

This book continues to sell and generate wide interest. People get really emotional about this book. Here is an online review I uncovered from the online version of FOREWORD MAGAZINE in November 2007:

Photography. WATER TANKS OF CHICAGO: A VANISHING URBAN LEGACY by Larry W. Green (Wicker Park Press, 37 b/w photographs, 50 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-0-9789676-0-4): digital photographs and paintings depicting the art of historic tanks, iconic symbols of the city; preservationists and architectural enthusiasts are concerned about saving their distinct grand beauty and stark expediency.

Key titles forthcoming in Fall 2009

Nibble & Kuhn: A Novel, David Schmahmann Academy Chicago, Nov 09
ISBN 978-0-89733-592-8, $24.95, Cloth, Fiction
A legal thriller set in Boston; Robert B Parker calls it a “great book!”

Never Trust a Thin Cook, Eric Dregni, Univ. of Minnesota, Sept 09
ISBN 978-0-8166-6745-1, $22.95, Cloth, Travel/Memoir/Cuisine
The author of In Cod We Trust goes to Italy & learns culinary lessons

Triple Time: Stories, Anne Sanow, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Aug 09
ISBN 978-08229-4380-8, $24.95, Cloth, Fiction/Short Stories
2009 Drue Heinz Award -- fascinating tales set in Saudi Arabia

The Last of His Mind, John Thorndike, Swallow Press, Dec 09
ISBN 978-08040-1122-8, $24.95, Cloth, Memoir/Health
Bittersweet account of a son’s final year with his father; a candid portrait
of Alzheimer’s Disease

Kevin Kling’s Holiday Inn, Kevin Kling, Borealis Books, Nov 09
ISBN 978-0-87351-766-9, $22.95, Cloth, Essays/Humor
A playful romp through a year of holidays from the bestselling author of
The Dog Says How

Deadly Voyage: The SS Daniel J Merell Tragedy, Andrew Kantar,
Michigan State Univ. Sept 09, ISBN 978-0-87013-863-8, $16.95, Paper, History
The harrowing story of one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history

What Comes Down to US: 25 Contemporary Kentucky Poets, Jeff Worley,
Univ. Press of KY, Nov 09, ISBN 978-0-8031-2557-2, Cloth, Poetry
An accomplished collection of KY poets including Wendell Berry, Nikki Finney & James Baker Hall

Glass Ceilings and 100-Hour Couples, Karine Moe, Univ of Georgia, Oct
ISBN 978-0-8203-3404-2, $19.95, Paper, Women Studies/Current Events
A comprehensive and provocative account of the opt-out revolution

Inside Fallujah, Ahmed Mansour, Interlink, Sept 09
ISBN 978-1-56656-778-7, $20.00, Paper, Politics/Middle East/Current Events
A courageous work of journalism by one of the few reporters on the gorund during the US siege of Fallujah in 2004

Hold Onto Your Dreams: Arthur Russell Tim Lawrence, Duke Univ. Nov 09
ISBN 978-0-8223-4485-8, $23.95, Paper, Music/Biography
The first biography of musician and composer Russell, one of the most important but least-known contributors to the NY C downtown scene in the 1970s and 80s

Wrong Place, Wrong Time is a timely analysis of young Black men's lives

John A Rich is a medical doctor from Boston's inner city. He managed to escape bad odds and create an impressive life for himself. And he's also written a great book here - Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men (Johns Hopkins UP, Dec 09, 978-0-8018-9363-6). It's all in the first-person, which makes the writing style accessible, and you can see the author's point-of-view throughout the book. Rich relates the stories of Black men such as Roy, a sensitive young man from the streets of Jamaica Plain in Boston, who Rich met in what's called pre-release, a kind of halfway house between jail and freedom. Rich talks to Roy and engages him in a fundamental way so he can be inspired to turn his life around. The stories related here are fascinating, and they teach us compassion and the ability to look deeper to the real people who are struggling with trauma and perpetual violence in their communities. He lets them speak for themselves, and their voices are eloquent. This is a needed book and hopefully will reach a wide audience.

University of Texas Press issues English-language translation of a modern Mexican classic

And Let the Earth Tremble at Its Centers, by Gonzalo Celorio
Translated from Spanish by Dick Gerdes, Foreword by Rubén Gallo

The world comes crashing down at the very center of the Mexican universe as the hero of this contemporary novel by scholar Celorio feels his life ebb away from excessive drinking and an inexplicable gunshot wound. He lies naked and vulnerable at the base of the flagpole that supports the huge red, white and green ensign, in the very midst of Mexico City’s own version of Tiananmen Square called the Zocalo.

The hero and the reader can see the irony of his situation in the predawn hours in the abandoned main square: -- dying utterly alone in the most populous city in the world. Statues in the Main Cathedral start to come loose from their perches where they have stood since the Spanish tore down the immense Aztec Pyramid and used the stones to build the vast Zocalo. Our hero is getting swept away much like the native culture of Mexico was by the colonists. In many ways it’s his own damn fault, but you get the sense reading this incredibly urbane and profane novel that essential history is being forgotten with the passing of our hapless hero. And especially Mexico City itself, the downtown area (El Centro) of which is also a main character in the book; Mexico City is found to be hurling itself forward into an unknown oblivion, its past crushed and relegated to mere garbage.

And let the earth tremble at its centers is a line from the Mexican national anthem. You have the idea of rebirth and redemption when you walk along the dark and seedy confines of the Zona Historico in Mexico City with our well-read and knowledgeable hero. It’s all so uncertain, but Celorio is a master storyteller and the reader is riveted by our hero’s fateful walk through history, and then onto the next world.

Dick Gerdes and University of Texas Press have done English readers an immense favor by bringing this stark and original novel to print.

Northern Illinois University Press to debut new fiction series

NIU Press is taking a departure into fiction with the establishment of a new series called Switchgrass Books - http://www.switchgrass.niu.edu/switchgrass/ - and they are billing it as “authentic voices of the Midwest.” One of the first books in the intriguing new series is by Chicagoan Joseph G. Peterson, called Beautiful Piece. What follows is a brief review of this book:

Plinking at the dump

Joe Peterson hits a bull’s-eye with his new novel, Beautiful Piece. The narrator of this stark tale, set during a brutal heat wave in Chicago, acquires a Glock 10 mm automatic almost by accident and through sheer happenstance. “Odd, a gun,” he says. “I wouldn’t own a gun even if I could.” But that’s not all he comes to own, as he takes up a torrid affair with Lucy, a girl he meets at the gas station in the middle of a blistering hot day. Problem is that Lucy is engaged to another man, a certain Matthew Gliss, who the narrator, named Robert, knows and likes. This realization of love is new to Robert, who finds himself at thirty-five years old living alone in a one bedroom dump, as he calls his apartment, and desperately lonely.

The unrelenting heat of the Chicago summer goes a little bit to Robert’s head and he starts fantasizing about dying alone in his one bedroom dump. His upstairs neighbor, simply called the Vet, also lives alone. The Vet is severely damaged from his tours of Vietnam during that war. These two unlikely types form an alliance, and they agree to call each other every morning just to make sure each one is still alive. Robert has a rough time getting along with the Vet, who is so much older and worldly wise, but comes to respect and admire him with all his eccentricities. Robert has another friend named Epstein. Epstein is a mystic who can turn into a stone while they go fishing on the Des Plaines River. Epstein is well-adjusted and has a wife and kids, and lives in a different world from Robert. Robert has Epstein call him up every third morning just in case he was to expire from the heat and no one would know. This is his contingency plan to stay connected with the outside world.

Robert goes to the dump on the outskirts of town with the Vet to go plinking with the Glock. There is a certain poetic meaning to the way the gun goes off and rearranges everything. The Vet loves the mechanicals, and Robert starts to rethink his relationship with the world. His instincts tell him to try and be more like the mystical Epstein and try to be one with the natural world, but his love for Lucy upends everything for him.

There is a wry humor and interesting sentence construction that make up this raw tale of urban lost souls. There is a compulsive repeating of information and unorthodox narrative construction that reminded me of Joseph Heller’s Something Happened. It’s more than just a stylistic exercise in fiction writing; Peterson has something fundamental to say about human nature here, and the tale is funny and heartbreakingly wise.

Printed catalogs are vital to the publishing process

American Association of University Presses (AAUP) President Alex Holzman recently sent an email message to his colleagues concerning seasonal catalogs where he states he is “utterly befuddled” by why his fellow university presses bother to print them. The color ink used in the catalogs is pretty, Holzman says, but is a complete waste of money, and he castigates the university presses for being behind the times by still issuing catalogs on paper. “Do folks genuinely find that more beautiful catalogues lead to better sales? To better acquisitions? To better university relations? Can you quantify that somehow?” The economic rationale of Holzman’s argument seems to hinge on the fact that university administrations would applaud the cost savings of eliminating catalogs, therefore slashing marketing budgets, and there would be very little collateral damage because independent bookstores are going the way of the Dodo, and the reps who call on these bookstores are just as behind the times as the marketing departments at the university presses whom they represent for continuing the use of paper catalogs as essential sales tools.

I am one of the sales reps for Temple University Press where Holzman is currently the director. I have no recollection of howling in protest over his suggestion, as he stated was the case with his reps, but I have to say that with all due respect that paper catalogs reflect the essential character of a university press, and I have yet to see a better alternative for selling books than the use of a catalog, color or not. Furthermore, the catalog transcends the mundane process of selling books to retailers, librarians, wholesalers, and teachers: it serves multiple purposes such as list development, publicity, and public relations. A catalog enhances the personal expression of the authors whose books are listed there. A catalog expresses the worldview and outlook of the publisher, be it programmatic or a special series of books that the publisher is developing. It’s there for the world to see in a cohesive, integrated format that has stood the test of time.

A publisher can lose creative control over the development process when you take catalogs out of the mix. One could argue that the dissemination of information is now relegated to the Internet, ceded to Google, to Microsoft, to Intel, to Amazon.com, and to the electric utilities powering computers, polluting the air with coal-burning power plants. There is a political element to this that should not be ignored. How are various books represented in culture? Who controls the process of how books are distributed, digested, and reviewed in the greater quotidian? The cost to the publisher should not be measured here in money saved or set-aside, but in something greater, something more important, and something akin to saving their souls.

My guess is that the bound book itself will be next on the digital hit list, and university presses will be harshly criticized down the road for not saving money by going exclusively digital with their offerings. With Pandora’s box thrown open, ultimately we need to ask: what is the role of a university press in the world today?