Sarah Ciston and Chris Pedler still like a lot of things, including books. Real books: the tactile, paper-based, lend-able kind that work without batteries. The kind that come in only a few copies which get passed around, picking up coffee rings, dog-ears, marginalia and pastry crumbs, and that function less like a shout into the general ethers and more like putting one’s ear to the ground. It was out of this desire to make something physical, sincere, and communal out of the act of reading that We Still Like Books was formed. We Still Like is not really “a zine, and not really a journal,” Ciston says, because “our attitude is to be inclusive rather than exclusive, but at the same time we’re not man-on-the-street photocopying zines in the back office. We’re not highbrow and not lowbrow.” “We’re better than Burger King,” Pedler clarifies, “but not as good as Magnolia.” “Yes,” Ciston agrees, “We’re the California Cuisine of fast food.”

One of the singular and satisfying things that We Still Like Books does differently than most literary zines is that when it comes to its call for submissions, it hunts more like an Anglerfish than a barnacle. That is, the majority of literary journals tend to hang out on a stable rock (sometimes attached to a university) and filter-feed, waiting for the succulent and plump bits of literary excellence to precipitate from the airmail or ping into the server. When We Still Like goes fishing for work, it plunges face-first, deep into the collective creative psyche and dangles a glittering bait in front of its waiting maw. In other words, rather than suggesting that writerly hopefuls read back issues and study the magazine in order to figure out what to send, We Still Like crafts a persuasive, rabble-rousing, page-long letter to its potential contributors: and not just the few, but the every. This call for submissions letter is a full-on gauntlet-throwing, cape-waving, chin-thumbing, I dare ya, and outlines the theme of that issue. For the first, it was “Manifesto Destiny.” An excerpt from the original call for writing, reads:

“We want YOU to embark with us on this literary odyssey, this Oregon Trail of Oratory. Let’s circle the wagons, people! Let’s march onward, stake new terrain and call it whatever we want! The theme of our inaugural issue? Manifesto Destiny.

Let’s think long and hard and deep [1] about the world we always thought we should be living in. Don’t wait for law students and hipsters [2] to define the zeitgeist of the Obama era. Write that manifesto you always assumed would write itself. Manifest, finally, the ideas, the dreams, the visions that drove us to write in the first place. Answer (if not once and for all, at least once and for now) why we do this to ourselves and what we want to say through all of our blood, sweat, and occupational stress injuries.

Why are we here and what do we want to do about it? What did you imagine for yourself when you were 17, before you realized you were too cool to air-quotes “believe” in things? Surely it didn’t include sitting in cubicles and stuffing cash into the couch cushions of what would turn out to be an imaginary 401(k). What, in your wildest moments, do you believe is possible? Let us do all that is possible to remember all that is possible!”

We Still Like’s Manifesto Destiny issue came out in October, 2009 and was greeted with enthusiastic attendees for a group reading at Space Gallery in San Francisco. Issue 2: Gravity, calls to potential contributors with an equally compelling, brainstorm-igniting letter, and should be available in print this summer.

If it isn’t clear from the fist-pumping, jollily rebellious tone of the excerpt above, Ciston and Pedler started We Still Like after nearly being killed by an overdose of atmospheric irony. “We wanted to see an honest expression of sentiment and a writing that reflects the life we and our friends were actually living, and the desire to say true things about that.” Pedler is in a creative writing MFA program where he feels that people often get caught up in the showmanship rather than the content of writing: “'Look at this fancy postmodern trick I can do with language, or look at how obscure I can make my work.' We wanted to cut through that. We even named our movement the New Sincerity until we googled it and found about nine different articles about nine totally different things.”

“I think it just means we were onto something,” Ciston adds.

Judging by the response and contributions to the first two issues, Ciston is right. A growing wave of writers is tired of contrived quippery, lazy cynicism, easy sarcasm and riskless impenetrability. Irony As Attitude feels, at this point, about as comfortable as a thong— and about as functional. If the overuse of irony grew out a kind of natural defense against the SUV and panic room decades, then sincerity is the acknowledgment that you can’t keep everything at arm’s length forever, and you can’t avoid failure by refusing to participate. As their mission statement suggests, We Still Like’s birth was reactionary: “a collaboration-in-print operating on the simple-but-radical premise that we won’t wait for permission from cultural gatekeepers to put what we create into the world, that writing should not be used as an empty signifier to establish elitist cred and that art can engage real people and real ideas about our real lives (Really!). Even in the cynicism of headlines and hipsterdom, we still like sincerity. Even in the digital deluge, we still like books.”

“And we want to keep making them,” Ciston and Pedler affirm, embodying the manifestation of the communal-object-as-book by creating limited-edition, hand-bound and numbered runs of its issues. “We want to maintain the book as physical object/ piece of art that’s beautiful to look at, beautiful to hold.” Hand-in-hand with that goes the other goal, “to keep producing new work, and continue to be inspired by each other’s writing.”

Issue 1: Manifesto Destiny is now featured in stores in the Bay Area (Needles and Pens and Dog-Eared Books in SF, and Issues in Oakland), or you can get a copy directly from We Still Like’s blog, where there is also information on Issue 2: Gravity, and how to submit to future issues.

posted by LJ Moore editor.moore(at)gmail(dot)com

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