HERE & NOUN LAUNCH PARTY
Featuring Field and Stream, Belgium, and readings. The Hydeaway (10209-100 Ave). Dec 20. Magazine available at Listen Records, Greenwoods, Nokomis, Blackbyrd Myoozik, Red Ribbon Gifts.

Whenever anybody sees my copy of the new issue of Here & Noun, they immediately want to touch it. Buffy Goodman, one of the local literary journal’s three editors, describes it as a “reverse hardcover”: a slightly-larger-than-pocket-sized paperback with stiff bookboard glued to the front and back — sort of a tough, screenprinted literary exoskeleton that begs to be handled. Fondled. Fetishized, even.

“We saw a book in a store in San Francisco that had been bound like this and we thought it was really pretty,” Goodman says. “Michael Wichuk, our designer, is very visionary — he’ll see something and then he’ll figure out how to do it. Last year, when we did the first issue, we decided that we wanted what’s called a ‘perfect-bound’ book, but we had no money so it looked like it was going to be impossible. But Mike said, ‘I can figure it out. We’ll just do it. We’ll make it happen.’ We wound up in the basement with all the pages arranged in front of us, binding it ourselves. It took hours to put together each magazine, which we then sold for seven dollars.

“We had the new issue done at a professional printing press, but we glued on all the covers ourselves. We’re still not done. We’re still gluing away at our kitchen table.”

Goodman — who runs a photography studio as her day job — admits that Here & Noun may not have the shrewdest business model, but the publication wasn’t really designed to make money anyway. As someone with a full run of McSweeney’s taking up several shelves in her bookcase, Goodman is a big believer in the idea that a magazine can also be a beautiful object in its own right. And just as McSweeney’s took pride in publishing young authors without enough of a name to get into The New Yorker, Here & Noun is a welcome outlet for young Alberta writers with a sensibility at odds with stodgy literary publications like The Malahat Review.

“I kind of looked around at all the talented people I knew,” Goodman says, “and saw that they didn’t have a cool outlet. The idea of a literary journal seems like such a pretentious institution, and we didn’t think it should be. I also don’t think it should be affiliated with an educational institution or a certain creative writing program — there’s nothing saying someone who hasn’t gone to university be able to write something as good as or better than someone who has a creative writing degree. So we decided to take things into our own hands and make something awesome.”

The content of Here & Noun comes surprisingly close to living up to Goodman’s hype. There are personal essays here as well as short stories, although since most of them are written in the first person and share the same semi-confessional tone, it can be hard to tell one group from the other. They tend to have a strong indie-rock/art show/urban slacker point of view, but they’re written with a wit, a candor, and an eye for telling detail that keeps the tone from slipping into insidery self-congratulation.

And each issue also throws enough curveballs to keep any reader on their toes: Here & Noun #2, for instance, includes a lovely comic called “The Barber” by Aaron Florian, a CD with 13 songs on it by indie Alberta bands, and “Tuesdays With Denzel,” an outrageous fantasia in which H&N co-editor Dave Hollingshead describes his drug-addled, gun-fuelled rampage through the streets of Edmonton accompanied by Denzel Washington, Lil’ Kim, Todd Babiak, and Todd Babiak’s adopted Korean infant. (“I can’t keep risking my life in awesome bar-fights like this,” Babiak says at one point. “I have a child now,” to which Lil’ Kim replies, “I hear The Book of Stanley is fantastic!”)

“Dave calls it his ‘fucked-up love letter to Edmonton,’” Goodman says. “I did have some trepidation about printing it, but then I remembered reading it and just killing myself laughing. It had to go in. I hope Todd Babiak doesn’t get mad at us, but if he does, we’d love to run his rebuttal in issue #3.”

She’s not kidding: Goodman and her fellow editors are actively soliciting submissions for their next issue. The only thing that would make them happier than a manuscript, in fact, is printing equipment. “We really want to buy our own means of printing,” she says. “We’re accepting donations of a used letterpress. Put that down. Put it in bold!”

Done!