The waver of the line: Art, imperfection, and Marissa Falco's "Meta"

When I first heard about Marissa Falco's new zine "Meta," I was immediately intrigued.  Falco writes about her search for more information about the San Francisco artist Margaret Kilgallen, who died in 2001 at the age of 33.  The premise of the zine sounded very Susan Orlean to me in that the reader is invited to join the author as she relentlessly seeks out information about obscure yet intriguing subjects.

My early assessment ended up being more accurate that I could have imagined.  One of the most fascinating things about Orlean's writing, and specifically her book "The Orchid Thief," is the way she takes this little corner of culture that is unknown to most people and uses it as a scope through which to explore a larger, more universal experience.  In "The Orchid Thief," the insular world of orchid collectors gives Orlean a place to ask what it means to be passionate about something. In the zine "Meta," Kilgallen and her folk- and graffiti-inspired creations give Marissa a similar space through which to explore the virtue of the imperfect.

At first glance, the notion that imperfection is something to be embraced seems counter-intuitive, particularly in our culture, which places a high premium on perfection.  Take the obvious example of the fashion magazine.  The pages of these magazines feature beautiful women whose livelihoods depend on meeting a specific ideal, whose faces provide canvasses for the brushes of top make-up artists and whose bodies are sculptures upon which elegant clothing is draped.  Yet the desire for perfection persists so strongly that the products of these collaborations are not enough, and the resulting photos are digitally altered until every last blemish is obliterated.

But then, what is left?  The end result is often spooky and disjointed, bearing only a limited resemblance to the woman whose photograph was taken.  The humanity has been erased and lightened and tinted and filtered out, and what remains has all of the warmth and allure of a video-game character.

Marissa explores this in her own career as an artist, where she struggles to overcome her need for perfection in her work in order for it to feel worth her while:

It didn't occur to me that these errors made my work more interesting; they were what identified the work as mine, separating it from all manner of things mass-produced, and making it real.

This passage called to mind the Arts and Crafts movement of the latter half of the 19th century, where artists and crafters began placing high value on hand-crafted furniture, pottery and textiles.  The Arts and Crafts movement was the artistic counterpart of the Progressive political movement. The adherents looked at the Industrial Revolution and its mass-produced hideousness, both in terms of aesthetics and social conditions, and sought to push back that by promoting art that was handmade and carefully crafted.

The Industrial Revolution won out, and it has been supplanted by the digital revolution, which I'd argue has further standardized our means of expression.  Zine librarian Jenna Freedman writes about this in her essay "Zines are Not Blogs," about the way most bloggers use the templates provided by the platform's developers. Our Facebook pages all look the same; the only differences lie in our curation of media we like and our collection of status updates and photos. 

In this way, art that is made by hand, art that resists the mandate of perfection, art that wears its flaws proudly...this all becomes a way to resist the social pressures that would prefer we spend our time and money trying to be exactly like one another.  To embrace imperfect art in a world that demands nothing less of perfection can be an act of rebellion, one borne of love for the wild complexity of humanity. 

I don't think it's a coincidence that Marissa writes about this - and about Kilgallen - in a zine.  The title of the zine "Meta" is a nod to Kilgallen's tag name, but I also think Marissa is making a comment on zines, how they are by their very nature imperfect.  The imperfection of zines - the typos, the uneven cutouts, the wavering lines - is where you see the zinester.  Without those imperfections, well...the zine might as well have been created by a machine.

And what exactly does "perfection" mean, anyway?  How did we decide that symmetry and smoothness were perfection, and that everything that deviated from that was a flaw?  I consider this a lot in conversations about women and their bodies, how they can point out their thighs or their noses or their hair as being imperfect, and I can't help but wonder why one arbitrary standard became the standard by which we measure all other things.

I think this holds true for everything.  The things that we define as "imperfect" are evidence of our unique stamp on the world, our off-kilter way of plotting a novel, our own way of composing a sentence, our specific method of drawing portraiture.  They make us recognizable as individuals.  They are the things that make us us.

Marissa's zine is available through her etsy shop.  Obviously, I highly recommend it.

Don't call it a comeback: Thoughts on the "resurgence" of zines

I ordered a copy of Girl Crush a few weeks ago, after seeing mentions of it popping up on tumblr and various lit blogs. A few writers I adore, like Jennifer Egan, Emma Straub and Mary HK Choi, were listed as contributors, so I forked over the $10 and waited for it to show up in my mailbox.

When it arrived, almost immediately I noticed that it was about the least zine-y zine I'd ever seen. I showed it to my husband and he said, "That's not a zine!" It's really not. The cover is glossy and full color and it was professionally bound, and really, it looks more like a self-published book than the photocopied, handmade creations I've come to love and adore.

The second realization came as I was reading the actual zine, specifically how insider-y and insular it seemed. I was particularly not all that thrilled to see that a few of the contributions were about other contributors. I was even less excited when I realized that, for $10, I had purchased what could be summed up as a NYC media-scene mash note.

Certainly many of the pieces were quality - Jennifer Egan's story is a standout, which is unsurprising, as I imagine she could make a grocery list compelling and evocative - but overall, the collection was rather uneven and more than a bit disappointing. And you know, that's okay. It was for the most part forgettable, and I had stashed it on one of my zillions of bookshelves, where it would have probably stayed for a few years until the next time I pack up my books in preparation for a move.

Until I read this.

Meredith Melnick, a reporter for Time, evidently found Girl Crush to be compelling evidence that zines were somehow experiencing some kind of resurgence, the kind that hadn't been seen since the 1990s and riot grrrl. Her proof? A lot of New York lady journalist types were now making them:

Girl Crush is part of a resurgence in the zine form, particularly among media professionals. Like their rough-around-the-edges predecessors, these zines are independently published and precise in their editorial vision, but they have more star power and more mainstream editorial influence. Strikingly, often the same men and women who are helping to keep large media outlets afloat by day are also the ones going home and working on indie publishing efforts by night.

Basically, we can lay credit for the resurgence of this form of art and media not at the feet of the hundreds - if not thousands - of zinesters around the world who have been rocking the glue stick and paper cutters for years now, but a handful of New York media professionals who decided they wanted the freedom to express themselves outside of the constraints of their jobs.

You know, I get that. As a media professional who makes zines, I totally understand the allure of DIY media, which gives you the ability to tell your story without having to sand off all the rough edges and shape your pitch so it meets the needs of editors and publishers, who usually only have a limited amount of space to work with.

I mean, sometimes you just want to fucking say something without being told how to say it.

Zines let you do that. They are inherently democratic. They are accessible. They are big fuck-you to mainstream media, which is dominated by huge multinational corporations. They open up spaces in a society that no longer has room for viewpoints that cannot be summed up in a five-word slogan. Zines are an act of resistance against a culture that increasingly demands conformity. They give people a place to nurture their weirdnesses and their idiosyncrasies.

But when I hear about professional writers putting out a glossy zine and celebrating it with a launch party at a SoHo hotel bar that features $15 gimlets, I can't help but feel like the entire point is lost. The fuck-you becomes a knowing wink and a nudge, the act of resistance is reduced to a mere signifier of one's edginess. The allure of possibility that makes zines so appealing evaporates in the face of SoHo hotel parties and $10 cover prices and professionally bound books. Tell me, who is going to look at Girl Crush and think, I can do that?

I was happy to see that Melnick spoke to zine librarian Jenna Freedman, who is a huge advocate of zines and zine culture. (Full disclosure: she just interviewed me as part of her series on zinesters who have recently come out of retirement.) I was happy that she gave a shout-out to Shotgun Seamstress, which is pretty much the anti Girl Crush. I was also happy to see that she talked to Johanna Fateman and Katie Haegele, whose zine The La-La Theory is lovely and well-made and interesting.

(I was less happy to see that she interviewed Joe Biel of Microcosm. Hey, journalists! Microcosm is not the only distro out there!)

But I do have to admit that it's tiresome to see, yet again, a certain class of New Yorkers acting as though they are responsible for bringing back something that was never gone in the first place. The insularity wears on me, and it is particularly frustrating when it absorbs something I am passionate about, then regurgitates it in a defanged form that is a mere shadow of its former self.

My goal isn't to defend zine culture against all interlopers. I'm not crouching over a pile of photocopied papers with my fangs bared and claws out. I would love it if more and more people made zines, if zine culture spread beyond punk rock and made its way into other communities.

But articles like the one in Time don't do that. Instead, they make zines seem like yet another form of media that only the privileged can take part in. They prop up barriers to entry that have no business being there. They say zines are only for moonlighting media professionals.

If there is anything more antithetical to the spirit of zines, I'm not sure what it is.

P.S.

I've still been focusing most of my energy over at Fit and Feminist, which is kind of my online baby these days, but I don't want to let this blog languish like a flower in the August heat. See, I can overwrite with the best of them!

So I've decided I'm bring this bad boy to life and using it to write about zines! And writing! But mostly zines. Because that's just what the world needs - another blog about zines. (Actually, come to think of it, the world actually does need another blog about zines...)

My goal is to have a new post a couple of times a week, so keep checking back.

xoxo,
Caitlin

Zinesters do it for love

Ask any zinester and they'll tell you, being part of zine culture doesn't come cheap. Sure, we charge for our zines, but more often than not, the price of our zines doesn't cover the costs of copying or postage.

This isn't even taking into consideration the investment of time, not just in making the zines, but also in promoting your zine, seeking out other zines, establishing relationships with other zinesters and taking part in zine fests (assuming your city is lucky enough to host one).

And yet, very few of those zinesters would say the expense is not worth it.

I thought about this while reading this excellent essay by Jenna Brager (of Sassyfrass Circus) over at Cannonball. In it, Brager writes:

On a more theoretical level, what the object of the zine, the humble, shittily-photocopied, do-it-yourself pamphlet, represents is the possibility of refusal — not of blogs per se or the ever-forward march of technology but of what scholar Lauren Berlant refers to as “the aesthetic of modernity”— a bourgeois project which “always involves a market, even if the name of the value it gives its objects of exchange is merit.”

For me, this refusal means creating something just for fun, for the sake of it, to have something to share, to give away, to never do anything with. It is a rejection of definition through consumption — refusing to consume or to be consumed. This is an investment for me both as an anti-capitalist and as an artist who struggles with the idea of art as commodity (while simultaneously resenting the expectation or assumption that artists work for free).

How beautiful is that?

It's such a wonderful antidote to the increasingly professionalized attitudes surrounding the deeply personal world of art and writing. Surely I'm not the only one who has noticed this? That more and more blogs about writing are really blogs about getting published? That writers are increasingly thinking of themselves as marketers and business people? That now it's all about developing a platform and using social media to make a name for yourself? That a lot of writers are spending a lot of time getting stories into literary journals that seem to be read primarily by other writers?

What seems to be missing from so many of these conversations is what compelled most of us to start writing in the first place: a love of writing.

I'm not against careerism per se, nor am I against professionalism. I would some day like to be published in more than blogs and zines, and the few times I've seen my name in print in professional media outlets have been very, very thrilling. Plus I'm not exactly researching the possibility of self-publishing for my book manuscript. I would like to see it in actual bookstores one day.

So I understand the desire to get published. But I worry that, in the attempt to pursue a kind of legitimacy in the writing world, the entire point of the whole thing - that spark, that desire to create something beautiful and honest - is in danger of being extinguished under a crush of rejections and workshops and carefully crafted query letters.

Over at HTMLGIANT, someone posed the question, would you continue to write if no one would ever read it? It took me all of two seconds to consider the question before answering "no." I mean, I have written for myself and I probably will do so, but the vast majority of what I write is done so with the end goal of sharing it with another person, and maybe knowing you were able to choose words and give voice to ideas that helped someone else feel a little less alone in the world.

But this is the thing! You don't have to rely on the literary-industrial complex to do that. (Yes, I called it the "literary-industrial complex," because it really feels that way sometimes.) You have the right to tell your own stories, in the way you want to tell them. You don't have to negotiate with gatekeepers or push your way past harried slush-pile readers to get your words into the hands of another person. You can certainly do so if you wish, but it's not necessary.

I thought about this some more while reading Livia Blackburne's controversial post called "Author Blogging: You're Doing It Wrong," in which she questions the now-conventional wisdom that blogs by authors help sell books:

The thing is, we haven't created effective platform. What we've created is a never-ending writing conference. Good for many things -- forming friendships, professional development, and learning your craft. But nobody (I think) would argue that attending SCBWI conferences every weekend will catapult your book onto the New York Times bestseller list. In the same way, blogging for writers will not sell your book to the general reading population.

But...what if you like blogging? Can't a person just like blogging for the sake of blogging, and not because it's a rung in their Professional Writer Ladder?

So much of what we do in the world is framed with the language of capitalism. We face enormous pressure to groom ourselves to be the best little economic production units we can possibly be. Don't get too many tattoos; no one will hire you. Don't study medieval French lyric poetry; you'll never get a job. Spend your weekends learning new job skills so you'll be indispensable to your company.

There are a million and a half reasons why I love zines (and why I'm growing to love blogging) - because it's a part of my life where I am free to be creative and to experiment and make my tiny little mark in the world. Isn't that what this is ultimately all about?

What every man should read, if he doesn't want to be well-read

So Esquire put out a list about the top 75 books every man should read, right? Get this - they only put one book by a lady author on their list! And they only put three books by black men on their list, too! (And books written by black women? Ha! As if!) I know, I know...this is completely shocking given the historic levels of gender and racial parity within the literary world. I know you are just as stunned as I am.

In all seriousness, the list is actually populated by some really great, classic books, so anyone who wants to look for some new reading material could do worse than to look at this. But the thing is, the writers behind this list thought they would be able to persuade their dudely audience to take on difficult works like "As I Lay Dying," but to ask readers to consider stepping outside of a very narrow definition of masculinity (which is one that evidently involves a lot of fucking, fighting and shooting things, how very Hemingway of them) is too much of a challenge.

I like Roxane Gay's take on this, but then I like Roxane Gay's take on just about everything, because she is awesome and on this matter she does not deviate from that standard:

What’s troubling though, is the implication that men should only read literature written by men, that men don’t need to bother with books written by women, and of course, that the only great books are those written by men. What other message can we take from a list where seventy-four books are written by men and only one is written by a woman? Women writers are being done a disservice but the far greater disservice here is to men. This list not only perpetuates the erasure of great writing by women, it cultivates the erroneous and myopic notion that men only want to read a certain kind of book. If I were a man, I’d find this list insulting.

Guys, don't you ever tire of a world that you are not capable of empathy with those who are not like you? That you are so unimaginative that you cannot envision a perspective that does not line up with your own? That you are little more than a walking pair of testicles?

I don't know what it's like to be a man in this society, but I do know what it's like to have vast swathes of society make judgments about my character based solely on the plumbing I carry between my legs, and I find it rather tedious, to be perfectly honest. I can only assume you feel the same way. (Although maybe many of you don't, because after all, the kind of values attached to your plumbing have the added benefit of being seen as highly sought-after and positive, so maybe you like the way this is all arranged for you? I have no idea.)

And I don't ever expect a list to be objective and perfect in their diversity and representation. Lists by definition will not be all inclusive. Many worthy things will be left on the editing room floor, in hopes that you, the list-recipient, will be so inspired by the items that did make the cut that you'll go and seek out what did not.

But I don't think it's any accident that the books that did make the cut are overwhelming written by white men with a perspective that reads as very stereotypically masculine. I suspect that it just didn't occur to the editors of the list that, hey, some of our readers might enjoy some Joan Didion or maybe they'll really enjoy some Mary Gaitskill or I bet Lydia Davis will blow their hair back. I suspect it never even crossed their minds.

Maybe what is saddest of all about this list is that it undermines one of literature's greatest strengths: its unparalleled ability to give one person the ability to inhabit the skin of another. Yes, literature is also powerful for its ability to help you feel a little less alone in the world, but when your perspective is so pervasive that you see it reflected back at you almost everywhere you look, then it might be time to stop with the literary navel-gazing and train your sight lines on someone who isn't exactly like you.

And you know what you might find if you can do this? That most of us, despite our differences in gender, race, sexuality or nationality, are more alike than we think. We might find those distances across gender or race that we cannot seem to cross in our day-to-day lives are not nearly as unfathomable as we once thought. But it's difficult to make those leaps if you cannot be bothered to consider a world that does not look like you.

My latest project

It's been a while since I updated this blog, and I've been thinking about why that is. You know how "blog experts" (because something hasn't arrived until it can claim a whole coterie of experts making a name for themselves on its back) say you should find a specific niche and run with it? Well, this blog has no niche. It's just a mish-mash of things I find interesting, usually related to writing, running or reading.

And then this quote started circulating on tumblr from Latoya Peterson:

Advice for young feminists? Do something else besides feminism. I’m serious. The feminist blogosphere is oversaturated in my opinion. Please, find something else you love and take feminist theory there. It gets lonely over here in tech and video games – I have a great crew of other feminists but we are a little island in a vast sea. We need more feminist minded business bloggers, feminist theory wielding finance bloggers. Labor organizers with a feminist lens blogging. Can you imagine what Deadspin (the sports blog) would look like with a feminist on staff? Restructure writes about science, tech and feminism – join her! Publish a blog doing literary criticism with a feminist lens! Take on the NYT! Talk about class issues and feminism. Whatever it is, apply your feminism in a different space.

This really hit home with me, especially as I have been critical of Professional Feminism in the past. One of the things that really bothers me about it is the implication that your work isn't as important if you aren't doing it within the accepted channels of feminist media, even though one could very well argue that by gravitating to those accepted channels of feminist media, one is merely consigning one's viewpoints to an ideological echo chamber, where one's efforts are directed almost entirely to people who already agree with them.

And then, of course, there is the fact that I am a white, college-educated, middle-class, straight American woman who is thin, healthy in mind and body, cisgendered and presents somewhat in accordance with my gender identity. Basically, my entire existence seethes with privilege, aside from this one specific way. Like anyone really needs to hear from me on All Matters Related to Feminism, not when there are so many others out there doing it much better than I ever could.

So I've decided to take Latoya's advice, and I'm focusing my feminist lasers on something I'm passionate about - the world of sports, health, wellness and fitness. I've been blogging for about a week over at fitandfeminist.wordpress.com and so far I am beyond excited about it. It has energized me in a way I wasn't sure I was capable of feeling when it came to blogging.

So if you are at all interested in a feminist take on questions of athletics, fitness, health and the diet industry, feel free to join me at my new blog, where I'll be updating a few times a week.

As far as this space...I'll still update, but I'm going to focus more specifically on writing and books and literature. I don't think I'll be doing anything groundbreaking here, especially considering that this genre is already home to so many insanely talented, brilliant writers, but it's something I enjoy, and I think that if I focus my attention on this I'll be far more likely to stick with it than neglect it the way I have.

Space shuttles, NASA, Twitter - and me!

Two years ago I had the opportunity to participate in a NASA tweet-up, held at the launch of space shuttle Atlantis. Since then, the tweet-ups have become a big deal, with celebrities like Levar Burton dropping by and journalists and big-name bloggers flocking to take part. But when I did it, I was the only journalist in my group of 100 participants, and the only one reporting for a news organization.

It was - and remains - one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I spent two days immersed in space-exploration culture, all of which led up to the launch of space shuttle Atlantis. I watched the shuttle launch from three miles away - as close as a human being can get without being an astronaut.

One of our reporters did a story on two local residents who are attending the latest launch tweet-up, which inspired me to dig up the two stories I wrote. I'm posting links here because I'm rather proud of them, and I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed reporting on them.

• NASA Tweet-up Day 1: Almost too much to handle
• NASA Tweet-up Day 2: We have liftoff!