Who goes to the gun show looking for literature?
Recently, I was on assignment to write about America’s biggest weapons showcase: The Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot. The last thing I expected to find was interesting reading material.
I was wrong.
But first let’s confirm something you might be wondering: Yes, just about any adult with a functional trigger finger can buy a serious gun, even nerds like me. Had I been so interested, my mostly clean criminal record (See: Loitering conviction, 1998) wouldn’t have stopped me from stuffing an AK-47 into the back of my Honda Civic.
That’s not my type of journalistic research. Since I struggle to tell a Howitzer from a Ronco Rotisserie Cooker it wasn’t a surprise that I was drawn to the more ephemeral wares at the firearms extravaganza, in particular, the book sale.
No, not the thick tomes of military history or firearms manuals. I’m talking chapbooks.
Chapbooks are slim volumes that can often be found for sale at coffeehouse poetry readings or crammed into the bookshelves of nerds like me. They do not fly off shelves. I had previously associated them with the sort of people who might translate Proust. But at Knob Creek I learned that they also have a beachhead among people who might get their kicks blowing up a speedboat with an Uzi. (This really happened at Knob Creek.)
Chapbooks are normal sheets of printer paper folded in half to make a tidy booklet. Some are professionally bound, but really anyone can get into this racket overnight. In recent years, as printing costs have dropped, many have featured glossy covers rivaling anything in hardback.
They’re sort of the Kindle single of the analog age.
Inside a chapbook, you might find some of the most exciting work in publishing. Intimidatingly strong prose, penetrating poetry or — like my personal favorite chapbook, “Wish You Were Me“ by Myriam Gurba — generous helpings of WTF? In the lit world, there is something not-so-safe about chapbooks. The material is not meant for the masses and likely will never be published by a major house. These twee little books are kind of thrilling in that regard.
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Recently, I was on assignment to write about America’s biggest weapons showcase: The Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot. The last thing I expected to find was interesting reading material.
I was wrong.
But first let’s confirm something you might be wondering: Yes, just about any adult with a functional trigger finger can buy a serious gun, even nerds like me. Had I been so interested, my mostly clean criminal record (See: Loitering conviction, 1998) wouldn’t have stopped me from stuffing an AK-47 into the back of my Honda Civic.
That’s not my type of journalistic research. Since I struggle to tell a Howitzer from a Ronco Rotisserie Cooker it wasn’t a surprise that I was drawn to the more ephemeral wares at the firearms extravaganza, in particular, the book sale.
No, not the thick tomes of military history or firearms manuals. I’m talking chapbooks.
Chapbooks are normal sheets of printer paper folded in half to make a tidy booklet. Some are professionally bound, but really anyone can get into this racket overnight. In recent years, as printing costs have dropped, many have featured glossy covers rivaling anything in hardback.
They’re sort of the Kindle single of the analog age.
Inside a chapbook, you might find some of the most exciting work in publishing. Intimidatingly strong prose, penetrating poetry or — like my personal favorite chapbook, “Wish You Were Me“ by Myriam Gurba — generous helpings of WTF? In the lit world, there is something not-so-safe about chapbooks. The material is not meant for the masses and likely will never be published by a major house. These twee little books are kind of thrilling in that regard.
More
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