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The Minus Times Collected: Twenty Years / Thirty Issues
For twenty years, The Minus Times has been the most elusive literary magazine in America—and definitely the only one to be composed on a Royal standard typewriter. Begun as an open letter to strangers and fellow misfits, it grew to become the breeding ground for the next generation of American fiction. Contributors include Sam Lipsyte, David Berman, Patrick DeWitt, & Wells Tower, with illustrations by David Eggers and Brad Neely as well as interviews with Dan Clowes, Barry Hannah, and a yet-to-be-famous Stephen Colbert. With sly humor and striking illustrations, The Minus Times has earned a fervent following as much for its lack of literary pretension as its sporadic appearances on the newsstand. All thirty of the-nearly-impossible-to-find issues of this improvised literary almanac are now assembled for the first time, typos and all. Drag City is teaming up with featherproof to publish this over-sized coffee-table-crackin' collection.
Paperback
First published September 10, 2012
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About the author
Hunter Kennedy
6 books3 followersHunter Kennedy graduated from the University of Virginia in 1992, the same year he began publishing The Minus Times. Over the past 20 years, he has worked in cabinetry shops, magazines, architecture firms and a foundry to pay for typing ribbons. His writing has appeared in Open City, The Baffler, Vice, T Magazine, Garden & Gun, and J&L Illustrated #1. Kennedy lives on the fringes of a popular lifestyle community in South Carolina.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 5, 2012
The Minus Times started as a wicked insane broadsheet in 1992 and moved to become a full-on magazine packed with stories, interviews, collage and ephemera. Across the years, it featured early and otherwise-uncollected work of literary lights like Wells Tower, Patrick DeWitt, and Sam Lipsyte, rarities from Drag City musicians like David Berman and Will Oldham, and interviews with random personage from Stephen Colbert to Barry Hannah.
Twenty years' worth of issues create a collection thick enough to be a phone book for a mid-sized town. Early single-page issues are the kind of thing that, if you found one on the street, you'd look right and left and then pick the page up, fold it, and stick it in your back pocket so you could enjoy the insanity in your home. The first issue includes a personals section ("Lonely. I will compete against anyone for anything."), a poem, BLUE ACHE BLUES ("I looked out over Norway / There is no century, / There is no century"), and a pasted-in classified ad evoking Hemingway ("WHEELCHAIR: GOOD condition, $50, Wedding gown, never worn, size 6, $225") with Kennedy's handwritten commentary underneath: "a novel via classifieds."
And then there's the fiction – brutal and funny, usually just a page or two. Sam Lipsyte's "I Tried To Be A Beacon" follows a substitute teacher who gives the rich kids he works with a daily lesson in comparative misfortune. "THE FORT SMITH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE PRESENTS: Hundred Wolfman March," a rare piece of fiction from cartoonist Brad Neely, features five DIY warewolves including one young man who retained the clippings of his former ponytail and affixes it in pieces across his torso.
Irreverent illustrations break up the text, including a healthy dose from Neely in his natural habitat. A political cartoon from David Berman features a lake or cloud reading "Social Security" with a crudely drawn penis dripping into the chimney of a house reading "U.S. Treasury." The caption, which may have offered some clue as to the above, has been scratched out. It harkens back to "Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts," a mimeographed 1960s institution including work from William S. Burroughs, Diane DiPrima, Allen Ginsberg, and Andy Warhol, plus about eight hundred tiny cartoon penises. "The best way to approach it is the same way to approach the New Yorker," Dodson says. "Read all the comics first. And then if you want to keep going, you can keep going." And it's true; if the above sparks a curiosity, you may very well enjoy the rest of it.
[See the rest of my review/article coming next month in Poets & Writers]
Twenty years' worth of issues create a collection thick enough to be a phone book for a mid-sized town. Early single-page issues are the kind of thing that, if you found one on the street, you'd look right and left and then pick the page up, fold it, and stick it in your back pocket so you could enjoy the insanity in your home. The first issue includes a personals section ("Lonely. I will compete against anyone for anything."), a poem, BLUE ACHE BLUES ("I looked out over Norway / There is no century, / There is no century"), and a pasted-in classified ad evoking Hemingway ("WHEELCHAIR: GOOD condition, $50, Wedding gown, never worn, size 6, $225") with Kennedy's handwritten commentary underneath: "a novel via classifieds."
And then there's the fiction – brutal and funny, usually just a page or two. Sam Lipsyte's "I Tried To Be A Beacon" follows a substitute teacher who gives the rich kids he works with a daily lesson in comparative misfortune. "THE FORT SMITH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE PRESENTS: Hundred Wolfman March," a rare piece of fiction from cartoonist Brad Neely, features five DIY warewolves including one young man who retained the clippings of his former ponytail and affixes it in pieces across his torso.
Irreverent illustrations break up the text, including a healthy dose from Neely in his natural habitat. A political cartoon from David Berman features a lake or cloud reading "Social Security" with a crudely drawn penis dripping into the chimney of a house reading "U.S. Treasury." The caption, which may have offered some clue as to the above, has been scratched out. It harkens back to "Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts," a mimeographed 1960s institution including work from William S. Burroughs, Diane DiPrima, Allen Ginsberg, and Andy Warhol, plus about eight hundred tiny cartoon penises. "The best way to approach it is the same way to approach the New Yorker," Dodson says. "Read all the comics first. And then if you want to keep going, you can keep going." And it's true; if the above sparks a curiosity, you may very well enjoy the rest of it.
[See the rest of my review/article coming next month in Poets & Writers]
April 7, 2016
1998 Zach is freaking out right now.
December 29, 2012
I'm so glad I picked this up. The Minus Times has published a slew of great writers, and this collected edition of all thirty issues to date. The format of the book is interesting--it is printed on 8.5 X 11 paper and features very pristine copies of Kennedy's original issues composed on a manual typewriter. It feels as if you're reading the real thing. All of the slight offsets of the text and typos are left in tact. The Minus Times is a portal to the past and present of the underground literary world and provides its readers humorous insights on topics of sex, angst, philosophy, beer, etc.. I love what Editor Hunter Kennedy does with the clippings from newspapers and how they weave together to form a fairly unique, aesthetically-pleasing and culturally relevant literary mag.
January 27, 2013
Awesome article on this title by Amelia Gray in The Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Can't wait to track a copy of this book down and read it this winter, while hibernating!
So very glad I picked up this wicked awesome collection! All 30 issues in one big book with excellent typesetting, writing, and illustrations. This is now my favorite coffee table book that I will recommend to everyone who asks me about it! It totally brought me back to the 90's but in a very good and humorous way. The only thing I wish was that this publication was still going.
So very glad I picked up this wicked awesome collection! All 30 issues in one big book with excellent typesetting, writing, and illustrations. This is now my favorite coffee table book that I will recommend to everyone who asks me about it! It totally brought me back to the 90's but in a very good and humorous way. The only thing I wish was that this publication was still going.
February 27, 2012
Who was in charge of this thing?
Read
December 30, 2012I loved this publication so much back in the '90s. I'm so glad they reprinted the issues whole, with ads and all. Not sure how this collection will play to someone who has never read any of the issues, but this stuff is more evocative of the mid to late '90s than any music or movies I can think of, or at least my headspace at the time. Going through this book is like being caught in a weird, not always pleasing time-warp. I found out about so many books through Bill Verner's column, and I still have no idea who that guy is. (Of course as soon as I wrote that I Googled him. Now I'm following him on Twitter.) But that was the thrill of MT, coming across amazing writing by unknown-to-me authors next to the David Berman and Barry Hannah pieces that made me pick up the thing in the first place.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews