The Great Perhaps

Literature & Fiction

Joe Meno

Contemporary

Picador USA

Meet the Caspers . . . Jonathan is a palaeontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric squid. His wife, Madeline, an animal behaviourist, cannot explain why the pigeons she is studying are becoming increasingly aggressive. Their older daughter Amelia is a fervent anti-capitalist and disappointed teenage revolutionary, while their younger, Thisbe, has become a devout Christian. Meanwhile, the girls' grandfather, Henry, is slowly absenting himself from life. Before he can absent himself altogether, however, Jonathan and Madeline decide to separate - and, suddenly, each family member has to confront their fears about the world in which they live. 'The wisest, most humane and transcendental novel on the contemporary family since The Corrections' Irvine Welsh 'The flat, uninfected language, interspersed with sudden absurdist flights of fancy, is reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut; the comic-book influence contains traces of Jonathan Lethem; while the forensic examination of familial dysfunction should satisfy Franzen fans' Guardian 'A big, generous-hearted American family novel . . . Meno's characters bristle with humanity, and I think this book will find a huge audience for its wisdom and life-affirming, but unsentimental, qualities' Daily Telegraph

Great Perhaps

FMagazine Story, the Stranger Within

FMagazine

All Hands On: The2ndHand After 10 marks the The2ndHand literary broadsheet and online magazine's 10th anniversary, collecting the best of its first 10 years of publishing writing from both unknowns and more established sorts among writers on the American lit train. Call them the budding insurgents of the literary landscape, from whom fantastic work emerges. True to The2ndHand form, the book begins with a section of new, as-yet unpublished work by a cross section of writers, some of whom will be familiar to readers. Others are entirely new to the magazine, with at least one previously unpublished anywhere. The2ndHand began its life as a broadsheet, an 11-by-17-inch page showcasing short prose, launched in 2000 in Chicago as perhaps the last periodical on earth without a prefabbed website to bolster its print matter. Later that year, The2ndHand.com expanded the literary and experimental short fiction publisher's venues, running flash and serial fiction weekly. The blocks of black text peppered variously with photo-illustrations, comics, line drawings and other art that made up the broadsheet were distributed in storefronts first in Chicago, then in an ever-growing list of cities around the U.S. as the little magazine's notoriety grew with the success of its literary events in home bases of operation in Chicago throughout, and later also in New York City, Birmingham, Ala., and Nashville, Tenn., to varying degrees. New writing, simply, has been its focus since editor and publisher Todd Dills founded it, a small format its physicality, a loud mouth and a big heart its most important parts. The 300-plus-page All Hands On collects previously unpublished short fiction by authors ranging from broadsheet mainstays Patrick Somerville (The Cradle), Nadria Tucker, Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps, Hairstyles of the Damned), Susannah Felts and Doug Milam (Still the Confusion, here with a mini-epic poem entitled, simply, 'Chicago') to faces new to its pages if not the American lit world like Michael Zapata, Jamie Iredell (The Book of Freaks), Amanda Yskamp, Matt Cahan and others. Fiction writers featured in special sections include Marc Baez, longtime The2ndHand coeditor C.T. Ballentine (including the entirety of his "Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date" novella), Philip Brunetti, Al Burian (the Burn Collector zine and associated books), music writer Tobias Carroll, Spencer Dew (Songs of Insurgency), Kate Duva, David Gianatasio (Mind Games), Mickey Hess (Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory), Joe Meno, Jonathan Messinger (Hiding Out), Doug Milam, Anne Elizabeth Moore (Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity) with comic adaptation by Josh Bayer, Greggory Moore, Kevin O'Cuinn, Heather Palmer (Complements: Of Us), Michael Peck, the Pitchfork Battalion (a collaborative crew with roving membership, including many of those already listed, plus, featured in the book, Sean Carswell, Jim Murphy, Emerson Dameron and Dominique Holmes), Lauren Pretnar, Patrick Somerville, Jill Summers, Paul A. Toth (Finale, Airplane: A Novel), and Nadria Tucker. The book is a follow-up to the 2004 collection All Hands On: A The2ndHand Reader.

All Hands On: The2ndHand After 10, 2000-2011, a Reader

And Others

Anne Elizabeth Moore

David Gianatasio

Al Burian

Jamie Iredell

Todd Dills

Patrick Somerville

Doug Milam

Susannah Felts

Nadria Tucker

Kate Duva

The2ndHand

Office Girl

"Meno's tender, hip, funny, and imaginative portrayal of two Chicago misfits...dramatizes that anguished and awkward passage between legal age and actual adulthood." --Booklist, "Core Collection: New Adult Fiction" Named "Best New Novel by a Chicagoan" and "Best Book for the Disillusioned Artist in All of Us" by the Chicago Reader Selected by The Believer's readers as a favorite fiction work of 2012 One of DailyCandy's Best Books of 2012 "An off-kilter romance doubles as an art movement in Joe Meno's novel. The novel reads as a parody of art-school types...and as a tribute to their devil-may-care spirit. Meno impressively captures post-adolescent female angst and insecurity. Fresh and funny, the images also encapsulate the mortification, confusion and excitement that define so many 20-something existences." --The New York Times Book Review "Wonderful storytelling panache...Odile is a brash, moody, likable young woman navigating the obstacles of caddish boyfriends and lousy jobs, embarking on the sort of sentimental journey that literary heroines have been making since Fanny Burney's Evelina in the 1770s. Tenderhearted Jack is the awkward, quiet sort that the women in Jane Austen's novels overlook until book's end. He is obsessed with tape-recording Chicago's ambient noises so that he can simulate the city in the safety of his bedroom, 'a single town he has invented made of nothing but sound.' Mr. Meno excels at capturing the way that budding love can make two people feel brave and freshly alive to their surroundings...the story of the relationship has a sweet simplicity." --The Wall Street Journal "In Joe Meno's new novel, set in the last year of the 20th century, art school dropout Odile Neff and amateur sound artist Jack Blevins work deadening office jobs; gush about indie rock, French film, and obscure comic book artists; and gradually start a relationship that doubles as an art movement. They are, in other words, the 20-something doyens of pop culture and their tale of promiscuous roommates, on-again/off-again exes, and awkward sex is punctuated on the page by cute little doodles, black and white photographs (of, say, a topless woman in a Stormtrooper mask), and monologues that could easily pass for Belle &amp; Sebastian lyrics ("It doesn’t pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone")." --Publishers Weekly (Pick of the Week) "Meno has constructed a snowflake-delicate inquiry into alienation and longing. Illustrated with drawings and photographs and shaped by tender empathy, buoyant imagination, and bittersweet wit, this wistful, provocative, off-kilter love story affirms the bonds forged by art and story." --Booklist (starred review) No one dies in Office Girl. Nobody talks about the international political situation. There is no mention of any economic collapse. Nothing takes place during a World War. Instead, this novel is about young people doing interesting things in the final moments of the last century. Odile is a lovely twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a twenty-five-year-old shirker who's most happy capturing the endless noises of the city on his out-of-date tape recorder. Together they decide to start their own art movement in defiance of a contemporary culture made dull by both the tedious and the obvious. Set in February 1999just before the end of one world and the beginning of anotherOffice Girl is the story of two people caught between the uncertainty of their futures and the all-too-brief moments of modern life. Joe Meno's latest novel also features black-and-white illustrations by renowned artist Cody Hudson and photographs by visionary photographer Todd Baxter.

Arts & Photography

Akashic Books Ltd

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Books by Joe Meno