ALLHANDSON Reviews

FROM: Seminary CO-OP Bookshop:
For the last four years, The2ndHand has been publishing refreshingly difficult-to-classify fiction. Published as a broadside and distributed for free throughout Chicago and other cities where the magazine has allies, The2ndHand has amassed an impressive collection of authors and writings. While many of the stories are quite funny and have an absurdist element to them, one will find much more than simple parody or one-liners. Take Joe Meno’s story, The Astronaut of the Year, in which an ex-Astronaut’s inappropriate behavior produces genuine laughs and a surprisingly insightful and even touching portrait of a man past his prime. The story’s narrator, who chronicles the astronaut’s loutish behavior, also emerges as a more complex figure. In other stories, common literary genres or tropes are turned on their head, including the fairy tale, the celebrity interview, the dysfunctional family, and science fiction. Thus, in Brian Costello’s coming-out tale, “The Night I Told My Parents the Truth,” the narrator produces not an admission of homosexuality, but the fact that he is an “annoying asshole.” His parents throw him out the house. Many stories also investigate and subvert the idea of routinized lives and the language of contemporary culture-speak. In the frequently-hilarious section “Itinerary,” the contributors detail their lives in ways that are achingly-familiar and reflect the absurd ways in which we fill our days. There is a good deal of experimentation in this collection, but the contributors also do not lose sight of one of fiction’s finer points – the ability to tell a captivating story. All Hands On offers an array of original voices and styles from the pages of The2ndHand and offers a welcome alternative to mainstream fiction.

Contributors include Stacy Bierlein, Amina Cain, Elizabeth Crane, Susannah Joy Felts, Hunter Kennedy, Richard Kostelanetz, Joe Meno, and Greg Purcell.

FROM Rockpile, Independent Music and Culture
Stacked marquee-like, surnames only, the list reads like some excitable armada you should already be aware of. Meno, Gleason- Allured, Bradley, Cain and so on. Best believe unconcern is the wrong tack. Edited by founder Todd Dills, All Hands On: A The2ndHand Reader assembles some of the best writing published over four years in The2ndHand, Chicago’s literary online and broadsheet magazine. Deviceful headings separate experimental fillip, daily accountings and varied take-offs. Some are very good, a few are less accessible. There is a distinct fraternity here, the likes of those who came up together, arriving from various stations, and creating something mighty. Highlight’s include Joe Meno’s “Tijuana Women,” Adam Voith’s “Richie’s Brother Shot Him” and Paul Toth’s “Think Like a Mountain.” All Hands On: A The2ndHand Reader is what happens when the rigors of format and voice are suspended in favor of bumping it up and living the new. —Jennifer Przybylski

FROM Popmatters.com
Unexpected Best Books of 2004
by Jonathan Messinger
All Hands On: THE2NDHAND Reader
Todd Dills (Ed) (Elephant Rock)
The spine of this book is its Itineraries, the playful staple of this Chicago literary zine that challenges writers to find ways of plucking meaning from tiny, humdrum moments of the everyday. For several years THE2NDHAND has been the most exciting literary vessel in Chicago, opening a comfortably padded room for the anecdotal fiction writers and the experimental tale-spinners to play together where no one will get hurt. Read through this collection of four years worth of stories, and you'll see the line between the two isn't as clear as all that. And in the way the strongest species survive, it would seem the cross-pollination that happened over the years has strengthened both sides.