al Niedzviecki is co-editor and founder of Broken Pencil magazine, the guide to independent culture in Canada. He is also co-organizer of Canzine, the annual festival of alternative publications in Canada. He is editor of Concrete Forest, an anthology of urban Canadian Fiction (McClelland & Stewart, Spring 1998), and the author of Smell It . He is a correspondent for Brave New Waves (CBC Radio 2) and a columnist for Exclaim!, Canada's monthly national indie music newspaper. He is at work on a novel called Ditch and his polemic on alternative culture entitled We Want Some Too will appear in Spring 2000 with Penguin Books. He lives in Toronto.
cancon
alternative culture is something that everyone defines differently. how do you define alternative culture in canada?
Hal Niedzviecki
it's funny because i get variations of this question quite a bit. like how do you define zines, or underground writing etc. basically i don't really think there is such a thing as alternative culture. i think there is independent culture, there is, to some extent, parallell cultural
imperatives, but alternative is something the media perpetuates to
stereotype and marginalize. i think there's something you could call zine culture that embodies some ideas around alternative/underground/d.i.y. and has an aesthetic that is, to some extent, personally driven, anti-homogenous and fragmented. long live zine culture.
cancon
how long have you been doing broken pencil?
Hal Niedzviecki
since 1995.
cancon
do you find that zine content quality has changed much in the past few
years?
Hal Niedzviecki
i think zines in canada are getting more artful, more ornate, plus content is improving as there are more examples of great zines out there and people are taking zine creation as a serious form of expression.
cancon
has the internet been good or bad to print-based zines?
Hal Niedzviecki
good because you can network and get the word out and put up an online
edition. the internet really compliments the print zine.
cancon
why did you start broken pencil?
Hal Niedzviecki
i guess i started it because as a fiction writer i wanted there to be a
forum for people who were writing and creating outside of the established publishing channels to meet and talk and find each other's work. i was frustrated by how hard it was to find quality indie publications that challenge mainstream writing paradigms. now it's much easier to find this kind of stuff, in part because of bp.
cancon
you also work for cbc's music program brave new waves. what's some of your all time favourite experimental music?
Hal Niedzviecki
hmmmm. i like some skronk punk jazz like my good friends in the TO band
Braino and i also like what the Rust Brother's do, but generally i'm more into moody deconstructed music, stuff like pecola, john spencer blues explosion, cat power...i like country too and have been listening lately to the neko case album and the lucinda williams album. more depression please!
cancon
is the avant-garde dead, or just cannibalizing off old shit?
Hal Niedzviecki
i think you can do original things now, just so long as you don't go out there and say i'm doing something no one's ever done before and i'm gonna change the world - cause it ain't gonna happen. whatever that means. i'm hungover and in my pajamas and i stink of beer and farts and i'm gonna go make me an egg and bean breakfast.
cancon
any tips for those budding zinesters out there- for instance, how does one get started?
Hal Niedzviecki
well just do what you want to do. don't do anything because you think you should or you think it will be fun. writing and publishing is work and you do it out of compulsion and need. you don't get started. you let it build up inside you like bad gas that ends up in a bout of anal leakage. if you know what i mean....
cancon
what's the most disturbing zine you've ever read? what was it about?
Hal Niedzviecki
i read stuff that disturbs me almost every time i open up a zine. i read this thing about this guy was in jail as a sex offendor (though he says he didn't do it and i believed him) and it was pretty harrowing. i don't know if that was the most disturbing zine i've ever read or anything. i'm not very good with what's the most questions, because i'm always encountering something else i'm shocked and provoked by. there's a guy by the name of lacroix in vancouver who does these shocking little zine books of deformed people couple by schizophrenic rambling accounts of transexual prostitutes and that is also incredible disturbing i'd have to say.
cancon
is there anything you wouldn't review- something that just crosses that
line?
Hal Niedzviecki
well we've only gotten 1 or 2 things we haven't reviewed so far, white power zines, total crap. canada' s zine community isn't as infiltrated with right wing extremists and hate mongers as america's is. so the question doesn't come up as much as you would think....
cancon
are there any other projects you're currently involved in?
Hal Niedzviecki
well other than bp and canzine i'm also working on a nonfiction book about culture and trying to finish another novel and a book of short stories. also i'm
writing essays and feature articles and book reviews for whoever will buy my stuff. plus i'm helping my friend Alex get his record label kosher rock records
cancon
scenario: you've just been given the helm of SHIFT magazine- what would you do to change it (besides destroying it)?
Hal Niedzviecki
well i haven't really looked at it for quite a while, but i think that i would stop pandering to the idea of the psuedo hip and actually put down some serious cutting edge culture. that sounds pretty stupid upon reflection. i'd put super model rock stars on the cover and then when people opened it up it would be full of non-conformist fiction and zine culture. that would work once or twice and it would be so worth it.
cancon
what is your idea of fun?
Hal Niedzviecki
a breakaway. getting flown to cool places to do readings (hasn't really happened yet). arguing with academics about the semantic space of resistance symbolized by popular culture. going to cookie-cutter bookstores and demanding that they produce a copy of bp and telling them that i'm a regular customer etc. etc.
cancon
is there anything you always wished someone would ask you?
Hal Niedzviecki
the difference between an email interview and a face to face or phone interview is that in this format i can completely control my persona and in those other formats the interviewer can read between the lines and leap on accidental musings that might reveal something about me i don't want to reveal. who am i really?
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