CRITICAL MASS: Guest Post: A Farewell to ‘Zines
NBCC member Tim W. Brown offers this wrapup of ‘zine culture, which by the early twenty-first century has given way to the blogosphere.
The immediate predecessors to zines were punk rock fanzines that first appeared in the 1970s. During the zine heyday, roughly 1982 to 1996, thousands of zine titles were published, disseminating information to a host of subcultures. I staked out my little corner of the zine world as publisher of a poetry zine.
Several nonfiction books eventually were published about the scene, notably “’Zine” by Pagan Kennedy and “The Book of Zines” by Chip Rowe. I was aware of exactly one novel containing a major character who published a zine, “Flying Saucers Over Hennepin” by Peter Gelman, but I knew of none that made zines the central topic of a novel, as entwined in a character’s existence as zines were in real-life zinesters’ lives.
To fill this hole I wrote “Walking Man,” a biography of a fictional character, Brian Walker, who rises from humble origins to become the most famous zine publisher in America. This format allowed me to combine novelistic elements with those of nonfiction, particularly quotes from Brian’s zine “Walking Man,” excerpts from reviewers’ works, and statements from ancillary characters who went on the record for his “biographer.” Cont….
Zines: not dead, just retro
by Rory Litwin
Tim Brown has a post in Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle, about the “death of zines,” claiming, as though no one had heard the idea before, that zine culture is dead and has been replaced by the internet. There’s something a little bit too obvious and common sense about the idea, and like much that is common sense and obvious, easily disproven by a closer look at reality.
A zine scene exists, just as a punk scene exists.
Likewise, a jazz scene exists where young musicians play in the bebop style first created in the late 40s and early 50s. It isn’t new, but many people like it, and not only people from that generation. (I love that kind of music.) I don’t think Tim Brown would say that bebop is dead. cont….
