Looking Forward to 2008: The Drop Edge of Yonder

In Time Out New York's year-end wrap-up of the "Best (and Worst) of 2007" Michael Miller rates the year's best books.

Miller gives props to the greatly under-appreciated Gary Lutz, for his chapbook, Partial List of People to Bleach (Future Tense Books), and Adrian Tomine for his graphic novel, Shortcomings (Drawn & Quarterly), among other deserving titles for the year. [It is also worth noting, that I was introduced to both the Lutz and Tomine books at the Wordstock Book Festival in Portland this year.]

Of particular interest to us, is the fact that Miller mentions The Drop Edge of Yonder, novel by Rudolph Wurlitzer (forthcoming, April 2008), as an "early sign of promise" that publishers will take more chances on challenging titles in 2008.

Beneath the Pines, novel by Janet Beard

Beneath the Pines, the debut novel from Janet Beard (forthcoming, Fall 2008), has a new viral home.

At the book's website, you can read excerpts from the novel, get some great Southern recipes, and hear about the stories that inspired the story itself.

Julie Mars raves that Beneath the Pines is "a rich tale of family ties lost and rediscovered, hearts broken and mended, and secrets with the power to imprison."

Whet your appetite for this book, coming your way September 2008.

NYC baby, NYC

We just made it back from our first successful sales conference with Consortium. While in town we were fortunate enough to hang out with some really super-cool folks.


Picture: Francis Levy (and former Grove employee before he was, ahem, terminated), the man/myth Barney Rosset, and Eric.

There are more pictures for the curious in the 'Events' page at twodollarradio.com.

New Tee Shirts Now Available!

We're pleased to announce that we have added 4 - count them, 4 - new tee shirts to our catalog.

Two for the males. Two for the females.

You can view each of them at our website, here.

Each of the shirts is screen-printed by hand by the Two Dollar Radio all-star team, and sure to impress even the skeptics in the bleacher section.

Virtual Catalog Live!

The first-ever virtual catalog in the history of Two Dollar Radio is now live on our website. Be sure to check it out, here.

The tangible catalogs are pretty sweet too. They're all handmade with love and spirit from the Two Dollar Radio sweatshop and are included with any order from the Two Dollar Radio shop.

We'll also be handing them out at Portland's Wordstock Book Festival from November 10-11, at Portland's Convention Center.

Drop Edge in Murdaland #2

Issue #2 of literary magazine Murdaland was just released and it comes complete with an excerpt from The Drop Edge of Yonder entitled, Zebulon. It actually features - roughly - the first three chapters of the novel (forthcoming April 2008).

Also appearing with Rudolph Wurlitzer in Issue #2 are stories by Jayne Anne Phillips, Scott Phillips, and other non-Phillipses such as Don Carpenter and Vicki Hendricks.

Check out Murdaland's website for information on where you can pick up a copy: murdalandmagazine.com.

For more information on The Drop Edge of Yonder visit the revamped page on the Two Dollar Radio website, here: twodollarradio.com.

Time Out New York: Notes From Underground

In the latest issue of Time Out New York, Michael Miller has written a piece on "underground" book publishing in New York. He mentions Two Dollar Radio (the opening paragraph doesn't, but it's a good intro).


"These days, small publishers don’t draw enough attention to spark book-banning fervors à la Ulysses or Naked Lunch. They do not, like roving illegal loft parties, get raided by the police. But there’s still a rogue jolt of underground sensibility running through a handful of New York City’s independent purveyors of contemporary lit. What distinguishes them is the very thing that keeps them out of the spotlight: Run by people with uncompromising tastes, they put authorial freedom before profit and leave controversies to mainstream attention-mongers like Judith Regan."

"...at this point in time, the word underground is becoming an increasingly elastic category, one that’s expanding to include former big-house authors. Take relative newcomer Two Dollar Radio, the Brooklyn-based “movement” started by Eric Obenauf in 2005. So far, it has done small runs—around 1,000 copies—of books like high-rise window washer Ivor Hanson’s memoir Life on the Ledge. But in early 2008, TDR will print 5,000 copies of The Drop Edge of Yonder, the new novel by old-school counterculture chronicler Rudolph Wurlitzer, who was once published by Knopf. As mainstream presses become more gentrified, yesterday’s Random House scribes could become today’s underground staples. And that’s a good thing. We should be happy that authors like Wurlitzer, Lutz and Lemus—all of whom were at one point with major publishers—have found homes for their challenging work."

Francis Levy is an Animal!

Francis Levy, author of the forthcoming novel Erotomania: A Romance (due out from Two Dollar Radio in Summer '08), graces the pages of the Wall Street Journal online health section today, talking about his fitness regimen.


Francis is a self-professed "compulsive fitness addict," who is also a third degree black belt. "Every morning, Mr. Levy rolls out of bed, stands on his head for 30 seconds, does 20 push-ups, about 50 sit-ups and ends with a somersault down his hallway."

Read more about Erotomania - a modern take on a crazy little thing called love - in the "books" section at twodollarradio.com.

Times Literary Supplement

Michael Greenberg, in his column in the Times Literary Supplement (of London) today, calls Rudy Wurlitzer's The Drop Edge of Yonder "mesmerzing. A Western as Celine might have written one, the characters stripped down to the zero degree of their existence. A purgatory of frontier emptiness and mayhem."

Greenberg also gives considerable ink to Two Dollar Radio, calls our list of authors "impressive" and "marvel(s) at [our] idealism."

For the complete article, you have to pick up a copy of the Times Literary Supplement as it is unavailable online. (...Or sign up for a free two issue trial of their ePaper.)

Two Dollar Radio @ Wordstock!

We're super-excited to be partaking in this year's Wordstock Book Festival, in Portland on November 9 - 11, at the Oregon Convention Center.

At Wordstock, we will be debuting our two Spring 08 titles - The Drop Edge of Yonder (a novel by Rudolph Wurlitzer) and 1940 (a novel by Jay Neugeboren). Both are amazing reads, which is why we're so eager to unleash them.

More information on both of these titles can be found in our "books" section at twodollarradio.com.

You'll also be able to pick up any of our previous releases, our handmade catalogues, and tee shirts whose sale benefits literacy awareness and causes.

See you in Portland.

A New Distributor for Two Dollar Radio

We are pleased to announce that we will be changing distributors beginning January 1, 2008, to Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. This is good for us. We're happy. They presently distribute many of those publishers that we tried to emulate when initially starting out (like Serpents Tail and Akashic).

Despite the delay in our publishing schedule, there is still plenty of work for us to stay busy with. We're bidding our time - twiddling our thumbs, conceiving an imprint, getting tan, possibly purchasing our own offset printing press, catching up on some reading - till the contract kicks in.

We had a great experience in the past with out previous distributor, Biblio, a sister company of the National Book Network, and I would recommend them to anyone starting out with a small press. (bibliodistribution.com)

Drop Edge Release Date.

Contrary to our previous posting, the release date for THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER by Rudolph Wurlitzer, will not be until April 2008. We will be debuting the book at this November's Portland book festival, Wordstock (alongside our other new spring release, 1940)!

This is for a couple of reasons, which we hope to fill everyone in on very soon. Thanks for your patience.

In the meantime, if you write for a newspaper/magazine and would be interested in receiving an advance galley of the most buzz-worthy book in the history of time, write to Brian (brian@twodollarradio.com).

The Drop Edge of Yonder Release Date.

We're super-excited to announce that THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER, the new novel from Rudolph Wurlitzer that the world has been eagerly awaiting, is slated for release on October 1!

To whet your appetite and to find out what two-headed dragon we'll be unleashing, head on over to the site we set up for the book: www.zebulonlives.com.

The buzz is building:
"Rudy Wurlitzer takes no prisoners. It's like Sam Beckett meets 'The Searchers'. An uncompromising, wild and wooly tale." -Sam Shepard.

"The Drop Edge of Yonder is a book you watch as you read, cast the film as you reread, and create a sequel as you sleep. A hypnotic yarn of poetry and mystical love." -Patti Smith

"Shoenberg playing on a whorehouse piano, a roulette wheel spinning on a melting ice floe, Sam Beckett with a six-gun and a sack of rattlesnakes. Rudy Wurlitzer wrings your heart like a chicken's neck while he shows you the cannibal in your bathroom mirror: our true American myth of origin." -Gary Indiana