The Copacetic Comics Company Online Gift Catalogue

Online Gift Catalogue

Title	Author	Publisher	Price
Building a Better Robot: 10 Years of the Mr. Roboto Project	Andy Mulkerin, Mike Q. Roth, Dan Bidwa, Arthur Daniel Allen and more ...	Universioty of Roboto Press	$20.00 ($20.00 list)
Read more and comment...	You want local? We got local. Building a Better Robot is a made in Pittsburgh book (and DVD!) that chronicles a made in Pittsburgh project that has become a fixture on the Pittsburgh scene: Mr. Roboto. This 8" square format book runs for 192 pages and contains at least that number of black and white photos by a host of scene documentarians – notably Shawn Brackbill – as well as a full-length DVD containing, according to its creators, "37 songs by Pittsburgh bands that either helped define the Mr. Roboto Project or were themselves highly defined by Roboto. In addition, the DVD contains video of some of these bands performing at the first Roboto space. It also has a digital and searchable version of the Roboto show list, and extra images, including show fliers."
Teenie Harris, Photographer: Image, Memory, History	Teenie Harris, Joe W. Trotter, Laurence Glasco, Cheryl Finley and more ...	University of Pittsburgh Press	$24.99 ($24.99 list)
Read more and comment...	Teenie Harris's star keeps burning brighter and brighter, and is now shining high in a massive show of his work currently on display at The Carnegie Museum of Art here in Pittsburgh through April 7, 2012. Teenie Harris, Photographer: Image, Memory, History is the catalogue to that show and it goes a long way to revealing the amazing social, cultural and spiritual riches of Pittsburgh's African-American community. Anyone wondering what makes Pittsburgh special can find a large part of their answer of display right here. Anyone who can, should attend this show – there's still plenty of time to make it. Those who can't should consider picking up a copy of the catalogue, as it does a great job of presenting it, with 100 full-page plates and another hundred supporting images along with a trio of excellent in-depth essays that situate and contextualize Harris's life and work. The printing and presentation is uniformly excellent and the book is a joy. At the very least, everyone should spend some time at the Carnegie's Teenie Harris Archives; it's a wonderful resource.
The Ecstasy of Influence	Jonathan Lethem	Doubleday	$25.00 ($27.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Twenty years on, Lethem is unique among contemporary novelists in continuing to bring the full force of both his critical acumen and his phosphorescent prose stylings to bear on a wide breadth of subjects that other writers often ignore – despite his having achieved the Empyrean heights of world class critical renown signified by a MacArthur prize. Lethem remains ever true to his roots, and is the champion of the importance and lasting value of an intelligent American popular culture rooted in arts and literatures of all stripes, including comics and science fiction (foremost among which might be his devotion to Philip K. Dick; see immediately above), movies and music, novels and paintings, and more. The Ecstasy of Influence is the collection of these writings that we've all been waiting for. Seventy-nine engaging pieces of sterling prose – consisting of a mix of long form essays and short form reviews, as well as pieces that fall somewhere between – celebrating culture and the individual's identity-forming interactions with it that will leave every one of its readers wiser and more self-aware.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick	Philip K. Dick, Pamela Jackson, Jonathan Lethem	Houghton Mifflin	$35.00 ($40.00 list)
Read more and comment...	Philip Dick had a very certain kind of mind. You either relate to him or you don't. It was a mind that turned ever increasingly in on itself during a lengthy career that began in 1954 with turning out science fiction stories and novels at a frantic pace and ending with a sort of quasi-relgious mysticism attempting to ground itself in hard science. To say Dick lived life on the edge is putting it mildly, and in February and March of 1974 he experienced a multi-episode revelation that changed the course of his life for its remaining eight years, and The Exegesis is, more or less, his attempt to understand it. The Exegesis is an investigation of the process of thought itself and so involves being self-aware and self-watching as the investigation proceeds knowing that the investigation ultimately transpires in the mind and so must itself be investigated at the same time that it proceeds. Dick believed that it is precisely this delicate oroborosian, mobius strip highwire balancing act of consciousness watching itself which germinates the seed of discovery. It is fascinating and frustrating in equal measure as Dick spent years pouring his thoughts out onto thousands upon thousands of pages (the introduction states that the unedited total length of The Exegesis is an estimated two million words). Thus what we have in this published volume is only a sampling of the whole, but it is a sampling that is the result of (thirty!) years of work by the people best suited for the job – including Paul Williams, Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem – and so brings you, the reader, the best possible version that could be presented in under 1000 pages. Hardy souls, prepare to venture forth!
1Q84	Haruki Murakami	Alfred Knopf	$25.00 ($30.50 list)
Read more and comment...	Yes, the "big book" of the year is here... and everywhere else, we know. But we're not going to let that stop us from putting it out on the new arrivals table here at Copacetic. The reviews are pouring in at such a torrential pace that we suspect that before all is said and done their combined word count will surpass even that of the novel itself, which is Murakami's most substantial yet, with the US edition clocking in at whoppin' 925 pages. If you're looking for a book to get you through the long cold winter ahead, this may very well be your ticket.
McSweeney's 36		McSweeney's	$23.75 ($26.00 list)
Read more and comment...	What tha!? Yes, it's the big square head issue of McSweeney's. A literal (commodified) concretization of various figures of speech, such as, "what's on your mind?" "what are you thinking?" and "you are what you read," as well as a possible retort to "you've got nothing but sawdust between your ears!" The highlight of this issue is something we thought would never see the light of day: an annotated excerpt of Michael Chabon's failed second novel, the experience of writing which formed a theme of what became his successfully completed second novel, Wonder Boys. Also on hand are a two-act play about a modern Muslim Pakistani American family by Wajahat Ali, the oral history of Ma Su Mon, a student protester in Burma, a 1961 abridgment of the 1914 adventure tale, Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree by Jack Pendarvis, new stories and letters by John Brandon, Colm Toibin, Jesse Eisenberg, an excerpt of Adam Levine's massive 1000+ pages The Instructions, giving you the chance to sample it without any commitment, and plenty more besides, all packed inside a cube-head. What more do you want?
The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga	Helen McCarthy, Osamu Tezuka, Katsuhiro Otomo	Abrams ComicArts	$35.00 ($40.00 list)
Read more and comment...	We managed to somehow to fail to get around to listing this Harvey Award winning book on these pages... until now, prodded by Dash Shaw's post on ComicsComics, wherein he waxes rhapsodic about the importance of the DVD it comes packaged with, which contains the 1985 NHK TV documentary on Tezuka, Secrets of Creation, which Shaw calls, "one of the best cartoonist documentaries I’ve ever seen." The Art of Tezuka is a farily swell affair, and is – as you would expect with any book in which it's subject is referred to as a "God" – a bit of a hagiography, but if anyone deserves this treatment it's Tezuka who is roughly the Japanese equivalent of Jack Kirby and Walt Disney combined, in both influence and renown, and so was no stranger to being an object of worship.
Just Kids	Patti Smith	Ecco	$14.44 ($16.00 list)
Read more and comment...	OK, true believers, THIS IS IT! Just Kids is the most poetic evocation of the spirit of rock 'n' roll rebellion that we are likely ever to have. The story told here, of Patti and Robert, is a modern American version of the classic tragedy of the doomed lovers (think Troilus and Cressida, Pelléas and Mélisande, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde – you get the idea). The intensity and historical importance (well, at least to the history of rock 'n' roll and the nexus at which it connects to art, at any rate) of the events related in the story are at times overwhelming. Whereas throughout Western history, the tragic paradigm has been for the tragedy to occur within the realm of history and to be later redeemed within the realm of art, here in Just Kids, Patti Smith spins the tale of how her and Robert Mapplethorpe have redeemed their own personal tragedies in the present through their own work, thus breaking on through to the other side by being both actors on history's stage and creating artists themselves. It's the American way. While, surely, they aren't the only couple to have done so, Just Kids is the purest and strongest literary embodiment by an actual living participant in such a story that we have come across. Do someone a favor and give them this. Patti Smith has a poet's eye, a poet's ear, a poet's tongue and a poet's pen, all animated by a rock 'n' roll soul.
Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years	Hunter Thompson		$37.50 ($125.00 list)
Read more and comment...	official hype: "Easy to use and searchable digital archive with every issue, every page (even the ads!) of Rolling Stone from the last 40 years on 4 DVD-ROMs: Over 1,000 complete printable issues, cover to cover – that’s over 98,000 scanned pages, completely indexed and searchable. This edition includes the powerful Bondi Reader and search engine (Mac or PC). Find and read any award winning cover story, interview, photo or review in seconds. The browse-by-cover feature lets you visually locate any issue by its cover – simply click the cover and the issue opens to read. Custom reading lists let you organize the collection any way you want. PLUS, a photo-filled, 208–page page companion coffee table book providing a vivid behind-the-scenes look at the magazines history, from birth to today. All packed in an attractive slipcase." we say: This is a serious document of an era and its aftermath that spans at least two generations. The search function allows all readers the ability to focus on what they want to when they want to, but it's also possible just to read the issues as they appeared. While it is certainly true that Rolling Stone grew progessively commercial as it aged, it started out strong, and while it surely printed a lot of fluff it also showcased quite a bit of worthwhile writing by the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and many others. And now we have this massive archive for sale at an amazing 70% off it's original price. Think of it, over 1,000 issues of Rolling Stone for less than you'd pay for 10 issues on the newstand; in other words, 100 issues for less than the price of 1!!! SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED
A Comics Studies Reader	Jeet Heer, Kent Worcester	Mississippi University Press	$22.22 ($24.95 list)
Read more and comment...	We knew it was only a matter of time until a book like this showed up on our shelves. To anyone interested in getting started in digging deeper into the amazing riches buried beneath the surface of the comics page, Heer and Worcester's A Comics Studies Reader is one of the best shovels money can buy. Sure to become the default primary source text for many a Comics Studies 101 class -- as well as becoming the go to text for the comics unit in pop culture classes -- CSR is provides a number of different critical approaches to the subject, in the process providing its readers with some valuable interpretive tools. Following the editors' introduction and Thierry Groensteen's overview essay, "Why Are Comics Still in Search of Cultural Legitimization?", the book is divided into four sections, each of which receives its own editorial intro: Historical Considerations; Craft, Art, Form; Culture, Narrative, Identity; Scrutiny and Evaluation. While everyone will doubtless have their own ideas about what should constitute a volume such as this, and there are certainly writers whose work we were disappointed not to see included, second guessing is easy. This is a fine survey of the burgeoning field of critical approaches to comics that serves its primary purpose quite well: to stimulate the intellects of students and scholars of all stripes and hep the rest of the world to what we've known all along: comics contain a motherlode of cultural treasures that will amply reward any and all who dedicate themselves to its study.
Starting Point: 1979 - 1996	Hayao Miyazaki	Viz	$27.77 ($29.95 list)
Read more and comment...	This 460 page hardcover is a dream come true for anyone wanting to learn more about the life and mind of Miyazaki, the man behind what are probably the greatest animated films of our time. This volume collects essays, interviews, and memoirs written and conducted during the first two decades of his career. Readers will discover his theories of animation as well as how he came to formulate them, stories of his childhood, the founding of Studio Ghibli, as well as how all these came together. Food for thought, indeed.
Zeitoun	Dave Eggers	McSweeney's	$20.00 ($24.00 list)
Read more and comment...	"Zeitoun is an instant American classic carved from fierce eloquence and a haunting moral sensibility. By wrestling with the demons of xenophobia and racial profiling that converged in the swirling vortex of Hurricane Katrina and post-9/11 America, Eggers lets loose the angels of wisdom and courage that hover over the lives of the beleaguered, but miraculously unbroken, Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun. This is a major work full of fire and wit by one of our most important writers." – Michael Eric Dyson
Chronic City	Jonathan Lethem	Doubleday	$8.88
Read more and comment...	Those of you who enjoyed Lethem's contribution to The Book of Other People – as we most certainly did here at Copacetic – will be pleased to discover that it was an excerpt from this novel, about which David Shields has to say: "I'm reminded of the well-rubbed Kafka line: A book must be the axe to break the frozen sea within us. Lethem's book, with incredible fury, aspires to do little less. It's almost certainly his best novel. It's genuinely great." How about them apples! IMPORT SPECIAL
Read Hard	Paul La Farge, Ben Ehrenreich, William T. Vollmann, Jonathan Lethem and more ...	McSweeney's	$9.95 ($18.00 list) OUT OF STOCK!
Read more and comment...	We're offering a special price on some McSweeney's publications this month, so if you've been thinking about checking in with them, sow's your chance. Here's the publisher's official word: "This volume collects the finest essays and articles from the four-time National Magazine Award–nominated Believer magazine. The book combines all the erudition and wit readers have come to expect from its pages: Jonathan Lethem on Nathanael West, William T. Vollmann on W. G. Sebald, Ben Ehrenreich on Brian Evenson, Paul La Farge on Dungeons & Dragons, and much, much more. It’s an essential anthology, collecting the best in creative nonfiction, the best in literary journalism, and the best writing in English from the beginning of the twenty-first century, from one of the smartest, weirdest, and funniest magazines in the country. SPECIAL WEB ONLY SALE!!!
Who Needs Donuts?	Mark Alan Stamaty		$15.25 ($16.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Stamaty’s cult masterpiece is now back in print after a thirty year hiatus, in a beautifully produced hardcover edition. Once you start looking at this book, it's really hard to stop. You just get sucked in. The appeal of this book lies in the neural connections between the eyes and the brain and the hand that draws, it’s pretty hard to explain... but those who are already familiar with Stamaty’s work from his many-year run on Washingtoons in the Village Voice, and, more recently, his endpage strip in the New York Times Book Review, Boox, will know what we’re talking about. This is technically a kids’ book -- and kids will dig it, especially those hyper-brainy types (this is the perfect book to save them from a life of video-game addiction before it’s too late), and was more than likely an inspiration to Martin Handford, the creator of the Where’s Waldo series as well as the team responsilbe for the I Spy book series -- but it will, perhaps, be most appreciated by obsessive-compulsive adults -- you can be sure that Ben Katchor has this book in his personal library. The level of detail in the drawings that fill this book has to be seen to be believed. Furthermore, it is not just detail, but detail with an agenda, and that agenda can perhaps best be summed up in the phrase, "reality is what you make it." Reality as Stamaty makes it, is, more than likely, not reality as seen by you or I, but Who Needs Donuts makes us realize that it doesn't have to be that way, that the possibilities are only limited by our imaginations. We really recommend this one!
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever	James Tiptree Jr.	Tachyon Publications	$13.55 ($15.95 list)
Read more and comment...	This is a moment we've been waiting for for quite awhile. In our opinion, the least appreciated and most misunderstood science fiction writer of modern times, James Tiptree, Jr. (the nom de plume of Alice Sheldon) is a writer of breathtaking originality who is still ahead of her time, nearly twenty years after her death. That all of her work -- with the exception of a single "loose ends" collection that was published three years ago -- has been out of print for years is, in our opinion, a negligence that borders on the criminal. Thankfully ("Thank you, Tachyon Publications, thank you."), this situation has now come to an end with the release of this 508 page volume, a paperback re-issue of the posthumous Arkham House collection which has to stand as the best single-volume edition of her work ever released, putting together eighteen of her most penetrating and insightful stories, all of which were originally published between 1969 and 1981. Click on the image to discover the contents of this volume and learn more in our full-length review of this essential classic. Recommended!
The Way of Chuang Tzu	Thomas Merton, Chuang Tzu	Shambhala	$11.75 ($16.95 list)
Read more and comment...	The writings of Chuang Tzu are the most rigorous classic articulations of Taoist thought, which had its beginnings with the Tao Te Ching, attributed to Lao Tzu. Taoism is, perhaps, the system of thought second only to Confucianism in defining the history and culture of Chinese civilization. In Merton's "readings" (which are his interpretations based on an assemblage of the then [1965] best available Western translations by China scholars), these brief but powerful texts become quite accessible to Western thought. Thomas Merton -- whose name at least should be familiar to Pittsburgh area residents through the work of the much lauded Thomas Merton Center -- was a Trappist monk and an important author in his own right, as his eloquent introduction to this volume makes abundantly clear. Merton's translation manages to successfully pull Chaung Tzu's thought through the difficult east/west mind-barrier and present contemporary American readers with 2500 year old writing that often seems uncannily appropriate to the tenor of our times. His introduction draws our attention to surprising parallels between these writings and those of the New Testament that, if more widely appreciated, could go a long way towards deepening the dialogue between east and west that, because of the spectacular growth of the Chinese economy and its integration into the global economy, becomes of more importance with each passing day. The Way of Chuang Tzu is a tastfully designed compact sturdy clothbound hardcover edition from the Shambala Library that is printed and bound in Germany, and comes with its own sewn in bookmark. A book that's suitable for a lifetime's worth of consultation that's built to last. We recently discovered a cache of these that we can offer at a great low price. Give the gift of eternal wisdom. We give his volume our highest recommendation.
The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu	Kenji Kawakami		$11.65 ($12.95 list)
Read more and comment...	OK, we're not going to mince words here. This is it. You need this book. It is a must for every home. It is the entertainer's best friend. You will wonder how you ever lived without it. This book presents a tradition that is... not a parody, not a satire, but something else: an oblique refraction of the essential essence of one of the most important relationships of the twentieth century: that between the definitively American impulse to come up with an idea that will improve the quality of life through an incremental advance and the post-WWII Japanese tendency to adopt American cultural trends and make them their own, exploiting their own superb technical abilities and ingenious design sensibililties in the process: In a word, chindogu. But chindogu is more, it's a reflection on mankind's relationship with the material world, it's meta-materialism; it's a true child of the twentieth century that stands a chance of evolving to become one of the distinctive arts of the twenty-first; and -- it's fun. Author Kawakami in the founder of the 10,000-member International Chindogu Society, so he should know. Want another opinion? Here's the NY Times review. To learn more visit www.chindogu.com (make sure to learn the ten tenents of chindogu). But be forewarned: once you've crossed over, there's no going back.
Jazz A B Z	Paul Rogers, Wynton Marsalis, Phil Schaap	Candlewick Press	$9.95 ($24.95 list)
Read more and comment...	OK, this is not just the perfect gift book for the jazz fan on your list, it is also makes for an ideal gift to give to anyone -- of any age -- who has a love of words and pictures. This sumptuous hardcover volume has the potential to turn the squarest square into the heppest cat. Everyone is a jazz fan in the making: this is just the ticket to inspire them to take a closer look. Jazz ABZ is a pæn to jazz in art and poetry that simply has to be seen to be believed. The essence of jazz -- collaboration, composition, and improvisation -- is embodied in this singular tribute to the form. The overall package is designed to resemble the traditional albums of 78rpm records from back in the day when jazz was king. Rogers has totally nailed the jazz aesthetic in these 26 poster-like portraits, each devoted to a giant of jazz. Every one of these is accompanied by a truly wonderful jazz-poem portrait by the one and only Wynton Marsalis that really captures these historic figures in surprisingly sophisticated pieces (surprising in that who knew Mr. Marsalis was an accomplished poet? Not us, that's for sure!) that manage to simultaneously demonstrate a great empathy for the humanity of these jazz champions in the description of their characters and capture the essence of their unique musicality in the equally unique form each of the poems takes. And we're selling it for 60% off it's original list price!

Mon - Thu	11 - 5
Fri & Sat	11 - 7
Sun	12 - 4