Open City #25: The Musicians' Issue

Open City Magazine #25

by Daniel Pinchbeck

“Intelligent and accessible . . . A hip, urban aesthetic.” —Poets Writers

A special issue of Open City featuring writing and artwork by an exciting array of alternative rock stars. A literary magazine of fiction, essays, and poetry, Open City has a youthful, adventurous spirit and an uncanny knack for finding vibrant and original voices. Each issue offers something entirely new by an unexpected mix of talents. Open City is the first literary magazine to foster the tradition of presenting writing and artwork by popular musicians. Contributors include indie greats Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), David Berman (Silver Jews), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Stuart David (Belle & Sebastian), Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500 and Luna), and many others.

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2008

About the author

Daniel Pinchbeck is an American author. His books include Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, and Notes from the Edge Times. He is a co-founder of the web magazine Reality Sandwich and of the website Evolver.net, and edited the North Atlantic Books publishing imprint Evolver Editions. He was featured in the 2010 documentary 2012: Time for Change, directed by Joao Amorim and produced by Mangusta Films. He is the founder of the think tank Center for Planetary Culture, which produced the Regenerative Society Wiki.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

My copy doesn't look anything like this one, but whatever.... I really like this mag generally, but felt this one wasn't quite up to the usual standards. There were some dodgy/ obvious choices here that I thought took up too much space-- the Robert Stone novella was okay, but kind of done, even if I liked the purple language. I've read all the Bukowski I care too, and as much as I like Jon Ames' piece, I felt like I've read that before, too. Too many writers I know too well, I guess is my major beef.

Among those I know just a little, I thought Rivka Galchen's story was great here, and look forward to reading her novel. Other high points for me were the sketches with questionnaires and John Groebner's story,

The poetry, true to form, mostly sucked. But that's expected, right?