Did we help Uno the Beagle win the Westminster dog show? Book Hound doesn't rule it out. 

Forget to get your sweetie a Valentine? Head on over to Steven Weissman's blog for a printable card. Problem solved! 

Our very own Nico Vassilakis (warehouse manager extraordinaire) has written a book, and he's having a party to prove it! Won't you join us?

WHEN: Feb. 23rd, 7:30pm

WHERE: McLeod Residence
2209 2nd Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98121

WHAT: TEXT LOSES TIME
By Nico Vassilakis
Published by ManyPenny Press

John Olson on TEXT LOSES TIME:

Implicit in the title of this collection is a ceremony of disintegration: shattering, fragmentation. A shedding of time. A shaking loose of the bonds of linearity and sequence. An immediacy of contact with the tools of construction so lucid and unsullied by the seductions of the future and the burdens of the past that the writing becomes a continuous doing and undoing, a joyful participation in the creation of a strange new alphabet of illimitable occurrence, a fetus of meaning in a placenta of ink.

The presentation is twofold: writing as writing (sentences, laminations, thought, “an undulant mind on soft display“), and concrete poetry -- letters arranged in eccentric patterns of visual energy. The writing is playful, probing, and provocative; sentences in paratactic leapfrog with their teasing proposals: “what restrains a superpower after guilt has lost its charm”; “as a windowsill is a place for elbows, so should a beach be a horizontal wonderment with the diesel fumes of military aggression”; “an unplugged brain is more dangerous than any taxpayer.” The emphasis with both strategies -- abstract and concrete, linguistic and visual -- is to advance an experience with language that becomes an ongoing textual genesis, Stein’s “continuous present.” It is also highly entertaining. Vassilakis is a funny guy, a postmodern Socrates with a quizzical cue stick.

This tendency toward showcasing the implements and machinery of language -- what Charles Bernstein calls “the desire for writing to be the end of its own activity, its very thatness” -- is most abundantly available in Vassilakis’s sections of concrete poetry. For instance, the configurations of letters displayed in the section titled “Rubber,” such as the entity on page 136 consisting of Os and Hs and Gs and Ss and Ts (which could spell the word ‘ghosts’ any number of times) (the letters are, in fact, rather pale) resembles some sort of wiggly-wobbly creature from the alphabet lagoon; Jean Tinguely’s Cyclops comes to mind, as do the Martians from War of the Worlds.

Wittgenstein wrote that “philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.” In Text Loses Time, language is on a holiday from time: sequence, servility, routine. We enter a hall of mirrors where words refer to one another. Where words bump one another like bumper cars, lean into the dark, return us to trance, the means by which we meander. Most importantly, it provides (I am drawing this quote from the Afterword by Nick Piombino)”, “an exit from the current pervasive cultural tendency to employ meaning and visual space according to needs and desire for personal advantage, corporate profit and social control… refuge in the microscopic details of immediate, unfiltered visual and internal perception…”

Buy TEXT LOSES TIME here.  

The headline is the sound of me drooling...

The Friends of the Nib present a Valentine-themed art show for an evening of canoodling, carousing and commerce at Seattle's Cafe Racer on Valentine's evening (hey, that's today) from 6 to 10 PM. Mr. Woodring provides the enticement and details.

This week's free preview is a downloadable 12-page excerpt (including the gorgeous covers and endpapers) of Hall of Best Knowledge, the innovative new book from Ray Fenwick which is scheduled to arrive in April. These previews are exclusive to registered Fantagraphics.com users, so sign up and/or sign in to view.

(As a reminder, 20/20 Club members receive these previews two weeks before we post them on the website, just one of many great reasons to join up...) 

Irwin Chusid, editor of our Jim Flora books, writes:

Jim Flora Art LLC has produced a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1954 Jim Flora hand-tinted woodcut entitled Manhattan.

The cityscape depicts New York in its 1950s glory, including a number of gotham landmarks such as the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Madison Square Garden, the Statue of Liberty, famous theaters and legendary musical bistros, Washington Square arch, subways, taxis, horse-drawn carriages and tourists.

Only twenty-five (25) prints of Manhattan were produced for this edition. We are offering five (5) prints (#21/25 through #25/25) now on eBay. After these five prints are sold at the asking price, prices will increase for the rest of the edition.

In the time it's taken me to write this, 4 of the 5 have sold. Yipes! 

For those of more modest means, Jim Flora notecard sets (and other snazzy goods from artists like Meomi, Matthew Porter, Mark Burrier and many others) can be purchased from copacetique.com (note: big fat conflict of interest/nepotism alert).

Jordan Crane built a new, enormous screenprinting table and now the artist has made this just for you and 43 uptight friends.

You owe him eighty bucks.

Kurt Wolfgang talked to Gary Groth and survived in November 2005; we printed it in Mome Vol. 3; and now you can read the interview in its entirety here on the Fantagraphics website as part of our ongoing series of Mome interview web reprints. Previously: Paul Hornschemeier and Gabrielle Bell. Next up: Jonathan Bennett.