Plenty of treats inside this week’s paper, folks. In the Feedback column is an interview with Wes Swing about his new record, Through a Fogged Glass; on the Screens page, a review of the acclaimed new Colin Firth vehicle The King’s Speech; and in this week’s Open Studio an interview with Hypocrite Press founder Matthew Farrell.
The self-publishing fad, made available by low-cost options through the Internet, has mostly been confined to hobbyists, scrapbookers looking to go a step further, or rich writers willing to pick up the tab for a book no publisher is willing to put out. But Farrell’s 19-year-old old Hypocrite Press predates fads, and skirts convention with a brave new book, street to forest: a scattered guide for the charlottesville unresidenced, that caters to a contingent largely unable to buy books: the homeless.
In a town where, like many other towns, communication between the haves and the have-nots is often limited to solicitations by the latter, street to forest is a great local-specific resource. The section "Lawmakers and the Law," includes word-for-word reprints of city laws for panhandling, public urination and defecation and solicitation, among other laws that affect those between (or without) homes. The second section, "Getting By," covers DIY gynecology, local fishing holes and "plants for smoking." For those with homes, a handy guidebook goes a long way to clarify why a homeless person is doing something that seems quite strange. (For example, stockings are a great insulator.)
Matthew Farrell says in this week’s Open Studio, "I do things that are like art because it amuses me and because I think it torments people, who are actually artists, into doing better work."
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Farrell writes of the book’s arrangement, "I have tried to make it discontinuous and chaotic, to match the lives of its readers, and their time," and suggests that readers not go from cover to cover but to "flip through it in an idle diversionary moment." The book’s rough edges are readily apparent on its list of contributors, which includes concerned citizen Stratton Salidis, sometime music critic and B.C. member Stephen Barling, as well as Eric Lott and Lydia Moyer (both UVA professors) and the filmmaker Johnny St. Ours.
If you’re between homes, need to leave yours, or simply into urban adventure, find a copy of this book. Read more about Charlottesville’s homeless here. Check out Hypocrite Press here.
street to forest is the latest from Matthew Farrell’s Hypocrite Press.
