Ask Todd Dills, writer and editor of the literary journal THE2NDHAND, what he publishes and, more likely than not, you’ll get a short treatise on what he does not publish.
“We do not publish stories about English professors on vacation on a coast in Europe and their affairs with local women. Or men,” says Dills, 28.
In other words, no John Updike imitations. No John Cheever clones. Experimentation and innovation are encouraged, but otherwise, no writer’s guidelines exist.
THE2NDHAND, published on a place mat-size sheet folded in half, isn’t so much a free literary magazine as it is a lovingly produced sampler.
“It’s akin to an indie record label that puts out compilations,” says Dills, who cel-ebrates THE2NDHAND’s fifth anniversary this year.
Author Joe Meno (“Hairstyles of the Damned,” $13.95, Punk Planet Books) first discovered THE2NDHAND when he was a part-time professor at Columbia College Chicago where Dills was enrolled in the master of fine arts fiction-writing program.
“To see it go from this one-page thing to this great network of people. . . . It’s just really amazing,” says Meno, who has since become a regular contributor to the quarterly.
“In a lot of ways, it’s a galvanizing force for the great underground writing scene we have here,” Meno says. “It’s at the direct center of the underground writing scene in Chicago.”
Following the indie label model, Dills put out his first literary “album” last year, “All Hands On: A THE 2NDHAND Reader” ($12, Elephant Rock Books). And this year, THE2NDHAND started devoting each issue to a single featured writer, sort of an Extended Play format for an artist’s work.
Author Elizabeth Crane (“All This Heavenly Glory: Stories,” $22.95, Little, Brown) describes Dills this way: “Well, Todd definitely makes a visual impression. You don’t meet a lot of writers who wear leather pants, but he definitely has more of a rock-star thing going on.”
But this morning, eating a macaroni and cheese breakfast at the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery on State Street, Dills doesn’t radiate “rock star.” Eyelids at half-mast, carefully mussed hair flopping over his eyes, he’s dressed in jeans and a wrinkled long-sleeve shirt. A decade in Chicago has all but erased his South Carolina accent.
No leather pants though.
“He doesn’t wear them anymore!” says Meno. “I have not seen that dude in leather pants in years, which I think shows an important transition in development. He’s more complicated than his pants.”
Dills says his early years playing guitar in Chicago-based hard-core groups Salvo Rain and Quote Unquote in the mid-1990s influenced his decision to publish THE2NDHAND.
He and friends were having trouble getting their work published in literary magazines — a scene, Dills says, that “was sort of a worthless thing to be breaking into because it has no audience outside of the academy itself. People who aren’t teachers or aren’t in graduate writing programs don’t read those magazines.”
THE2NDHAND was born in defiance and opposition. The name, Dills says, is open to interpretation, but the moniker serves as “kind of an acknowledgment of its underdog status.”
He adds: “But, at the same time, it sounds like it could be a paramilitary group.”
Dills’ editorial tastes bend toward the esoteric and experimental fiction, though he says, “I also like good, solid short stories.”
His own work ranges from social satire memoirs (“20 MARCH 2003”) to short (very short) half-act plays (“CAND/DIRE,” “CAND/HEAD”). THE2NDHAND has fostered a steady stable of like-minded writers, from Chicago and beyond, including Brian Costello, Jeb Gleason-Allured and Susannah Felts, now Dills’ fiance.
Over the years, Dills has cultivated this network of writers and friends to distribute THE2NDHAND’s 2,000- to 2,500-copy print runs in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Portland, Charlotte, Toronto, Montreal and other places across North America. All issues are free, given out at coffee shops, bookstores, community theaters, etc.
The magazine’s single-sheet printing design is partly pragmatism, partly “tweaking and making fun of the literary magazine format,” says Dills. Anyone can submit work, either via mail, or the magazine’s Web site, www.the2ndhand.com.
“I have to say, I admire Todd because he really makes room for people who are not super-famous, but who are great writers,” says Crane.
Meno says part of THE2NDHAND’s appeal is its compact size, coupled with a sense of immediacy.
“It’s not like picking up `Moby Dick.’ The pieces are short, and it’s accessible; it’s not an intellectual exercise,” Meno says. “It’s like punk music in a lot of ways. It’s not condescending, it’s of the moment, it draws you in. It’s grounded in the lives we know.”
Dills says he doesn’t have any grand plans for the future of his broadsheet. There are no blueprints for THE2NDHAND publishing empire.
“I don’t want to get into something with this where it becomes an issue of making your money back,” Dills says
He also has stopped playing guitar in local bands.
“That outlet is totally fulfilled for me,” Dills says. “I don’t need to rock out anymore. I much prefer readings. It’s the same idea.”
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Excerpts from THE2NDHAND stories
TIJUANA WOMEN
by Joe Meno
1 Tijuana women make it hard on a man all week long. I learned this lesson from a man my mother used to date named Tony Montenegro. In the 50s, Tony Montenegro was a Mexican movie star and he had his own white stucco ranch down in Tijuana. He would drive us down there from Palm Springs, where my mother and I lived, in his big silver Olds 88, and the entire time, the man did not stop smoking. The sand-dusted highway was one continuous cigarette to him and I imagined the stubs trailing behind us back to where my real father was lying in a hospital bed, much like small lanterns marking our path maybe. The soft cloth top would be down on Tony’s car and my mother would have her head wrapped in a silvery scarf and it would be pressed against Tony’s shoulder very tightly and the stars would be flashing over-head like quick stab wounds of light and the whole time I would be thinking, it is wrong to leave him at home, no matter how far we drive.
2 “In Tijuana, Monday is called ‘Lunes’ which means day of the moon, to begin our Spanish lesson,” Tony says. This makes me think. The sound of Monday is the exact opposite of the sound of “I’ll be with you soon.” It is the beginning of a length of time no one I have ever known desires. It is salt on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich your mother’s boyfriend does not know how to make. It summons the worst qualities of having to wait. Monday is an unlucky day in any language, I think. I will spend the first part of my summer vacation on Tony’s ranch, because my own father will not be released from the VA for another two weeks, which means at least another few days of watching colts being broken from the window in the kitchen and being told to go in the other room and listen to the radio. This is until I walk in on Tony unsnapping my mother’s garters with his own feet and he gives me an old six-chambered pistol and tells me to go play out back.
VERSIONS 1-4 OF HOW WE MET, NONE OF WHICH ARE TRUE
by Kevin O’Cuinn
I was one of a dozen kids shivering outside the driving school in January snow. I was the one without the jacket. I know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then along she came. That sounds so matter-of-fact. Like, like a walk-on part in a black-and-white movie, or something. All I could see was her eyes. They were so dark I thought she was an alien. She wore this big old coat that, I later learned, a Turkish designer friend had made especially. Just for her.
“Here,” she said, “I’ll keep you warm,” and unbuttoned the garment. I stepped inside. And for once I’d been right, she was an alien, and the coat was her own personal time-traveling device.
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Todd Dills, Joe Meno and others will read their work at the Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, at 9 p.m. Saturday, for the Sleepwalk Magazine release party. For more information, visit: www.hideoutchicago.com.
relder@tribune.com
