Gen X and the DIY aesthetic

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Relics of my youthful literary enthusiasm: The Brown Bottle, a literary zine I published from 1999-2001.

grazianoI was rummaging through the storage box that houses the relics of my so-called literary life, which is tucked away in the unfinished part of the basement beside a broken treadmill, shelves of cardboard boxes containing Christmas decorations, old laptops and suitcases with airline tags still strapped to the handles.

In the storage box, there were the magazines and journals where I published my early poems and stories, the yellowed newspapers with curdled corners where I contributed articles – and once thought I’d use for tear-sheets, Manila folders full of rough drafts that never saw the light of day, and old letters from writer friends still in the envelopes with ancient mailing addresses scrawled on them.

And inside the storage box were copies of The Brown Bottle, a literary zine I published from 1999-2001.

Maybe you’re scratching your head and asking, “What the hell is a zine[1]?”

If you’re asking the question, I’m going to guess you’re not part of Generation X, a vast population of formerly-flannel-clad folks sandwiched between the Boomers and Millennials.

You may not have noticed us; we’re somewhat unassuming as we make our ironic snarks about both generations.

But aside from our cynicism and bombproof sense of irony, we also launched an indie movement in the arts stemming from a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) aesthetic that eschewed corporate bottom-lines in favor of the grungy, gritty works that we really wanted to consume.

While the major record labels and publishing houses shut out the voices that weren’t commercially saleable, we put them out on our own through independent publishers and record labels, and communed with like-minded artists to support one another.[2]

I published The Brown Bottle out of a small second-floor apartment in Concord where I lived after moving back to the East Coast from Las Vegas[3]. The zine was a labor of love. I took submissions from writers all over the world and published what I subjectively considered the best work I received in a bi-annual saddle-stitched journal that I laid out on a desktop publishing program and had it printed by a small shop down the road from my apartment.

In the late ’90s there was a small renaissance of literary of literary zines with names like Unwound, Nerve Cowboy[4], Bathtub Gin, Blindman’s Rainbow, Staplegun and Angelflesh.

It was raw and real and uncensored. The voices were those of working-class writers, operating outside of academia and the glossy-covered journals funded by colleges and universities.

And it was a point of pride that we did it ourselves. As a writing community, we kept in touch through letters we typed and mailed to each other, or we made cassette tapes of ourselves talking to each other—perhaps the predecessor to the podcast—and mailed those as well.

Then, as the internet expanded and social media took hold, the printed zine began to disappear—not overnight, but gradually, like a wounded animal crawling into a cave. The medium was replaced by online zines that were cheaper to produce and reached audiences far greater than the 50 subscribers and contributors.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.[5]

After reading through the issues[6], I placed those old copies of The Brown Bottle back in the storage trunk. There are a lot of things I’ve done wrong in my life, but publishing art for art’s sake is not one of them.

Then I poured myself a drink and sat down to write a poem.

_______

[1] Merriam Webster: A noncommercial, often homemade publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject matter.

[2] Before there was Tik-Tok and Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, we actually kept in touch, not through airing every ham sandwich we consumed on a social media post, but through sending our missives through the USPS.

[3] The first issue of The Brown Bottle was published in Las Vegas with my co-editor and good friend Brad Edom, a fellow English teacher in Las Vegas. When I moved, I inherited the zine as well as the inundation of submissions that arrived in my mailbox daily.

[4] Nerve Cowboy is still trucking, and one of the most readable poetry journals you’ll encounter.

[5] The ultimate goal of any artist is to reach a vast audience, and social media provides it. But, for this old Gen. X’er, I’m going to surrender practicality to nostalgia here.

[6] At 46 years old, I questioned some of the 25-year-old Nate Graziano’s editorial decisions, thinking this might be wisdom. Then I dismissed it.

About this Author

Nathan Graziano

Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester with his wife and kids. He's the author of nine collections of fiction and poetry. His most recent book, Born on Good Friday was published by Roadside Press in 2023. He's a high school teacher and freelance writer, and in his free time, he writes bios about himself in the third person. For more information, visit his website: http://www.nathangraziano.com