Monday, September 27, 2004

Zeen Report: BUTTCRACK!

Here are two brothers who'll likely never be in THE NEW YORKER!

If I were writing this report for one of my print zeens, I would design the heading in off-kilter letters to express the deliberately crude in-your-face flavor of this publication.

"BUTT CRACK! is straining lunging headlong toward the hemorrhoid-flaring monstrosity of Ugug fiction," the introduction reads.

Writers Ryan and Desmond Dugan represent a long and glorious tradition of scatalogical underground pamphlets, from the gutter press in France whose editors like Marat and Brissot sparked their Revolution; to America's DAVY CROCKETT ALMANACK of the 1830's with its violent tall tales and more violent drawings; to 1990's zinesters Jim Goad and Mike Diana. BUTTCRACK MAGAZINE, with cover drawing of same, follows this line-- the basest and maybe most authentic kind of zeen.

However, as the inside presentation is fairly clean and aligned (no hand lettering), the writing is also (sometimes) more thoughtful than expected; especially the centerpiece short story, "Evolution," by editor Ryan Dugan, about a violent rape in the swamps of Alabama which represents a clash between evil and innocence, reality and idealism.

A quote by Gustave Courbet on the back cover expresses the Dugan brothers' philosophy: "to create a living art."

($2. Info at www.goyapress.com. No snail address given.)

(This Report is #2 in a series.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I posted above anonymously where I commented on Mr. Wenclas's unabashed support for anything and everything under the sun in the Underground. Here is no finer an example than Mr. Wenclas's cheerleading for a Zine called ButtCrack.

Mr. Wenclas again cites the use of graphic violence and profanity and pornography as why this magazine is good writing. Anything that is shocking is good. But to an intelligent reader this is not shocking but a vain and overdone attempt to be shocking. To be shocking you really have to be a subtle writer. Anyone can use the "f" word.

This comes off as I said before as a bunch of amateur punk rockers trying to hard, and not really having the gray matter to carry it through.

Bill Walton

Anonymous said...

Well said, Bill.

Inept Writer,
Ryan Dugan

chilly charlie said...

Down with Dean Haspiel!

He's a bad person and a bad artist.

Only idiots draw Billy Dogma.