The Minus Times Collected: Twenty Years / Thirty
Issues (1992–2012)
Edited by Hunter Kennedy
Introduction by Patrick deWitt
ISBN: 978-0-9831863-2-8
Reading The Minus Times book is a rather staggering feat.
Zines are made to be read in short, sweet installments, rather than all at once the way they are grouped in this tome. If you can make it through, however, it’s well worth it.
Thirty issues – twenty years – of The Minus Times, all bound up nicely and ready for your bookshelf.
The book reads in reverse order, from issues no. 30-21, which are longer issues with a star-studded list of writers and interviewees, including Tom McGuane, Dave Eggers, Harmony Korine and Stephen Colbert.
These issues have everything from poetry to surreal fiction to hard-hitting non-fiction, as well as art, playlists compiled by well-known musicians such as Will Oldham and Britt Daniel, and even some recipes.
The rest of the book contains issues 19-1, which are one or two-paged leaflets written single-handedly by creator Hunter Kennedy.
The look of each issue will make you nostalgic for the ‘90s, before we all got so slick with our word-processing software – even the longer, later issues were, for the most part, typed on a typewriter, and the illustrations and layouts are classic cut-and-paste.
The whole thing will also make you feel like you’re holding a little slice of the American Dream. Hunter Kennedy did the original issues of The Minus Times as a labor of love, all by himself, and then Drag City came along and helped him get more contributors and a wider distribution.
So…I’ve been doing zines for eighteen years, now. Any record labels or benefactors out there wanna help me make my zine famous? Hmmm?
