Up Is Up, But So Is Down New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992

"This is a kind of three-decade book celebrating the possibilities of a self-sufficient writing community right under the nose of the decaying, increasingly irrelevant, empire of New York publishing." (American Book Review) " Up Is Up itself has a scrapbook feel. It gathers poems, excerpts and short stories as well as handmade magazine covers, pamphlets and posters that capture the collaborative, on-the-fly spirit of the period. . . . What is most arresting about UP IS UP is not its discovery of any individual genius but its invocation of an electrifying social energy that helped blast out an intellectual space for then-& transgressive female and gay writers." (New York Times Book Review) "Up Is Up is a remarkable monument to the vibrancy of the Downtown scene. There are moments of romantic myth-making, dysfunctional beauty and hilarious profundity. It documents a now-gone era when lower Manhattan was an affordable oasis for artists, writers and musicians, when poetry and prose rubbed up against punk and visual art before drunkenly stumbling into an endless pansexual orgy." (New York Press) "Exhilarating. . . . Up Is Up reproduces flyers and pages from lit mags to convey downtown's heady DIY ethos. The writing itself displays sensibilities that are at once fiery and cool. Cookie Mueller, Dennis Cooper, Wojnarowicz and many others merge crackling prose and a matter-of-fact tone to burrow into disturbing corners of sexual desire. AIDS takes a serious toll in the '80s, and becomes the haunting focus in amazing selections by novelist Gary Indiana and poet Tim Dlugos. Even as the scene begins to wind down, the book nails the deep thrills of talk and collaboration, especially in novelist Lynne Tillman's complex rendering of two friends' bar-set conversation. That gift for gab lives on in the epilogue, a spirited conversation between Eileen Myles and Cooper, who resist mythologizing but invoke the scene's glory nonetheless." (Time Out New York) "Some of us like our angels with dirty faces; witness the lovingly reproduced artifacts of Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, a comprehensive compendium of below-14th Street literary productions by everyone from Laurie Anderson to Nick Zedd, focusing on the output of small magazines of the era like Koff, Bomb, and Between C and D...[the] stories meld dry satire with heart-churningly desperate transmissions of damaged humanity." (Village Voice)