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Every Saturday we will bring you links to articles from around the web featuring members of Portland’s lit community. Please feel free to pass along any you come across as well, by emailing us at portland@readinglocal.com, and we will include them in next week’s edition of Short Stories.
Floating World Comics owner Jason Leivian interviews Benjamin Marra over on The Comics Journal:
LEIVIAN: Traditional Comics is printed on sexy newsprint, and it’s also available to read on the iPad. My motto: Electricity & Torches. The important thing is to get the comics out there for people to see. How goes the distribution of Traditional Comics?
MARRA: The guys over at Panelfly have been extremely supportive and their app is incredible. I’m very much a fan of new platforms for comics and the iPad looks like it will be the first step to a new reading experience for all printed matter.
I completely agree with your motto. Ultimately for me, it’s about the story and getting it to people who want to read my books. I’m not such a purist to the point where I’d swear off technological advances or opportunities like Panelfly and the iPad. But if the comic is going to be printed, it’s got to be on newsprint. That’s the type of paper I feel is integral to the comic-book reading experience and physically holding a comic book.
The distribution for Traditional Comics is very DIY. Dylan Williams has helped me distribute my books through Sparkplug since day one. Other than that I’ve pretty much done my own distribution through my website or delivering books to stores in New York in person.
Frank Meeink’s Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead (Hawthorne Books) is reviewed over on The Rumpus:
Frank Meeink is the most famous ex-skinhead in America, his life the basis for the character of Derek Vinyard, the neo-Nazi portrayed by Edward Norton in American History X. But Frank is not quite Derek; as he states in Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, “American History X isn’t my story. It’s every skinhead’s story to some extent… it was every other kid who ever got sucked up into the white supremacy movement.”
Floating World Comics and Powell’s Technical Books are featured on the Geek Dad’s “Ten Geeky Place to Visit in Portland”:
Not necessarily a place you can’t take your kids (they do have a section of kids’ books and activities near the front of the store) but definitely on the geeky end of the various Powell’s bookstores. If you’ve never heard of Powell’s, it’s a fantastic independent bookseller in Portland. Their flagship store, the City of Books, takes up an entire city block and comes with a map—it’s a book lover’s nirvana. A couple blocks away, there’s the smaller store that focuses on technical books: the table display as you walk in is filled with books on science and math and game design, and Fifty Dangerous Things was prominently displayed, too.
Willy Vlautin’s Lean on Pete, which will be released in the US on April 13th, is reviewed in the Independent:
Over the course of three novels, and many albums with his band, Richmond Fontaine, Willy Vlautin has mapped out his own territory. It’s a version of the American West in which the principal cities are the gambling town of Reno, Nevada and the steel town of Portland, Oregon. Vlautin’s version is about as far from the tourist brochures as you can get. He unearths a world Steinbeck would have recognised: a place of flophouse motels and fading racetracks, where the American underclass still resides.
Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Point and Other Stories is featured on The Bullfinch Farm’s “Damn Good Books” series:
I won’t say this about very many short story collections, but it’s entirely possible to overindulge in D’Ambrosio’s particular brand of wicked poison. He possesses a biting wit and a dark vision, one populated by young men floundering and failing, trying desperately to achieve the trappings of adulthood but falling far short of the goal. In fact, D’Ambrosio seems to question whether those goals are worth pursuing at all.
Image credit Book People.
