Lit | San Francisco Bay Guardian

house hunter by michelle tea

Brow beaters

'THERE'S A LOT of stuff that falls between the cracks," muses Bucky Sinister, publisher's assistant/project manager/editor at Last Gasp of San Francisco. (Full disclosure: Last Gasp published my most recent book, Rent Girl.) Long a contributor to San Francisco's literary scene, Sinister has done some of his most noble work at the lowbrow arts publisher and counterculture distributor. Searching for an overlooked piece of literature for the press to turn out, he became stuck on a short story by local enigma JT Leroy. Originally published in McSweeney's, Harold's End is traditional Leroy fare: Oliver, a young hustler, is picked from his gang of lost boys by a trick named Larry. Oliver is spirited back to Larry's Castro mansion and lulled with the familial luxury of food and television, gifted with a pet snail (Harold), and eventually put to mundanely gruesome work.

"That McSweeney's got snapped up by collectors right away," Sinister recalls. "No one saw that issue. I knew a lot of JT fans didn't get to see it." Correctly assuming the author had the rights to the piece, Sinister suggested Last Gasp publish it as an illustrated gift book.

"Gift books are usually really bad," Sinister gripes. "They're not usually literature. It's like, the bachelorette-party books, these really dumb gag books. We just wanted to make a nice edition."

In fact, the Last Gasp edition is beautiful. Bound in a severe cloth cover and filled with watercolor illustrations by Australian painter Cherry Hood – her portraits of Leroy's characters melt, bruise-colored, across the page, their faces centered on enormous eyes and chapped lips – it even includes a bright green bookmarking ribbon. The volume's decadent design compensates for the text's brevity. It's also very much the vision of the author.

"JT was really into the ribbon," Sinister recounts. "He was really into Cherry Hood, he really wanted to meet her. He said, 'It has to be Cherry Hood, she's perfect for me.' " Sinister views Last Gasp's ability to creatively collaborate with authors as a bonus of being an independent press. "This is where we can do something that the larger publishers can't or won't do," he says. "We're more about adding to the overall aesthetic of the book." And the chances they can take are not simply visual. "I think a lot of fiction from the bigger publishers is easily categorized," he continues. "Anything that doesn't fit into their boxes, they won't touch. That's where small presses can swoop in and publish some really good books."

Aside from this foray into literary gift books – a line Sinister would like to grow – Last Gasp makes its dollars publishing lowbrow art books. I haven't just lobbed an insult at the press; for lack of a better term, "lowbrow" is the default category artists like Mark Ryden, Winston Smith, Isabel Samaras, and anyone featured in Juxtapose magazine wind up in. The hallucinatory work of Todd Schorr and billboard pirate Ron English, the cute monsters of Gama-Go, the sad and colorful paintings of the Clayton Brothers, Joe Coleman's detailed apocalypses – these are what make up the Last Gasp lowbrow canon. The common themes are shock and decay, and the publisher is constantly pushing the boundaries of what, and who, gets shocked.

"Our most mainstream – and offensive to our normal customers – book was Thomas Kincaide's," says Colin Turner, foreign rights-credit manager-sales-editing-and-acquisitions man for Last Gasp.

Sinister bursts into laughter. "People were like, 'Is this a prank?" Thomas Kincaide is the insanely successful "Painter of Light." The subliminally Christian worlds Kincaide creates are saturated with beams of God-light from the heavens, light that shines down on tender lambs and abundant, blossoming shrubbery, and homey, lit-from-within cottages that appear to be where the children who populate the Precious Moments pantheon sleep at night.

"He sort of fit in with the lowbrow art, in an odd way," Turner muses. "The highbrow art world looks down on him." With a catalog featuring compendiums of carnival sideshow art, guides to Elvis shrines, and cookbooks featuring the lurid cuisine of the 1950s, Kincaide and his romantic fantasy world fit in nicely – an ironic yin to the yang of such books as 100 Artists See Satan, in which Beelzebub is interpreted by a real who's-who of lowbrow art.

Last Gasp is celebrating the success of its recent publications Pop Surrealism, a sort of lowbrow Bible, and The Gangsta Rap Coloring Book, a swear-to-God coloring book featuring illustrations by Eazy E, the Geto Boys, and other playas, plus an afterword by genius music critic Sacha Jenkins. They're gearing up to publish a gargantuan new hardcover Robert Williams collection, as well as first books from pirate queen Camille Rose Garcia and teddy bear taxidermist Elizabeth McGrath. They're keeping an eye out for overlooked literary gems, and they'll continue to give the people what they want.

"There's an aesthetic that's hard to find," Sinister says, "but we know it when we see it. You keep making books for the same group of people. For a small press it's really important that you know who your audience is, 'cause you can't afford to put out any stinkers."

house hunter by michelle tea Brow beaters 'THERE'S A LOT of stuff that falls between the cracks," muses Bucky Sinister, publisher's assistant/project manager/editor at Last Gasp of San Francisco. (Full disclosure: Last Gasp published my most recent book, Rent Girl.) Long a contributor to San Francisco's literary scene, Sinister has done some of his most noble work at the lowbrow arts publisher and counterculture distributor. Searching for an overlooked piece of literature for the press to turn out, he became stuck on a short story by local enigma JT Leroy. Originally published in McSweeney's, Harold's End is traditional Leroy fare: Oliver, a young hustler, is picked from his gang of lost boys by a trick named Larry. Oliver is spirited back to Larry's Castro mansion and lulled with the familial luxury of food and television, gifted with a pet snail (Harold), and eventually put to mundanely gruesome work. "That McSweeney's got snapped up by collectors right away," Sinister recalls. "No one saw that issue. I knew a lot of JT fans didn't get to see it." Correctly assuming the author had the rights to the piece, Sinister suggested Last Gasp publish it as an illustrated gift book. "Gift books are usually really bad," Sinister gripes. "They're not usually literature. It's like, the bachelorette-party books, these really dumb gag books. We just wanted to make a nice edition." In fact, the Last Gasp edition is beautiful. Bound in a severe cloth cover and filled with watercolor illustrations by Australian painter Cherry Hood – her portraits of Leroy's characters melt, bruise-colored, across the page, their faces centered on enormous eyes and chapped lips – it even includes a bright green bookmarking ribbon. The volume's decadent design compensates for the text's brevity. It's also very much the vision of the author. "JT was really into the ribbon," Sinister recounts. "He was really into Cherry Hood, he really wanted to meet her. He said, 'It has to be Cherry Hood, she's perfect for me.' " Sinister views Last Gasp's ability to creatively collaborate with authors as a bonus of being an independent press. "This is where we can do something that the larger publishers can't or won't do," he says. "We're more about adding to the overall aesthetic of the book." And the chances they can take are not simply visual. "I think a lot of fiction from the bigger publishers is easily categorized," he continues. "Anything that doesn't fit into their boxes, they won't touch. That's where small presses can swoop in and publish some really good books." Aside from this foray into literary gift books – a line Sinister would like to grow – Last Gasp makes its dollars publishing lowbrow art books. I haven't just lobbed an insult at the press; for lack of a better term, "lowbrow" is the default category artists like Mark Ryden, Winston Smith, Isabel Samaras, and anyone featured in Juxtapose magazine wind up in. The hallucinatory work of Todd Schorr and billboard pirate Ron English, the cute monsters of Gama-Go, the sad and colorful paintings of the Clayton Brothers, Joe Coleman's detailed apocalypses – these are what make up the Last Gasp lowbrow canon. The common themes are shock and decay, and the publisher is constantly pushing the boundaries of what, and who, gets shocked. "Our most mainstream – and offensive to our normal customers – book was Thomas Kincaide's," says Colin Turner, foreign rights-credit manager-sales-editing-and-acquisitions man for Last Gasp. Sinister bursts into laughter. "People were like, 'Is this a prank?" Thomas Kincaide is the insanely successful "Painter of Light." The subliminally Christian worlds Kincaide creates are saturated with beams of God-light from the heavens, light that shines down on tender lambs and abundant, blossoming shrubbery, and homey, lit-from-within cottages that appear to be where the children who populate the Precious Moments pantheon sleep at night. "He sort of fit in with the lowbrow art, in an odd way," Turner muses. "The highbrow art world looks down on him." With a catalog featuring compendiums of carnival sideshow art, guides to Elvis shrines, and cookbooks featuring the lurid cuisine of the 1950s, Kincaide and his romantic fantasy world fit in nicely – an ironic yin to the yang of such books as 100 Artists See Satan, in which Beelzebub is interpreted by a real who's-who of lowbrow art. Last Gasp is celebrating the success of its recent publications Pop Surrealism, a sort of lowbrow Bible, and The Gangsta Rap Coloring Book, a swear-to-God coloring book featuring illustrations by Eazy E, the Geto Boys, and other playas, plus an afterword by genius music critic Sacha Jenkins. They're gearing up to publish a gargantuan new hardcover Robert Williams collection, as well as first books from pirate queen Camille Rose Garcia and teddy bear taxidermist Elizabeth McGrath. They're keeping an eye out for overlooked literary gems, and they'll continue to give the people what they want. "There's an aesthetic that's hard to find," Sinister says, "but we know it when we see it. You keep making books for the same group of people. For a small press it's really important that you know who your audience is, 'cause you can't afford to put out any stinkers."