(downtown) omaha lit fest

THE SORDID ARTS OF THE CHEAP PAPERBACK

September 17-19, 2009

As a salute to this new age of frugality, tawdriness, and life-or-death thrift, the theme for the 2009 (downtown) omaha lit fest is “the sordid arts of the cheap paperback.” Contemporary writers will gather Sept. 17-19 to discuss the influence of classic pulp fiction (romance, westerns, noir, horror, etc.) on their work specifically and the literary culture in general. To be held at KANEKO, the Joslyn Art Museum, the W. Dale Clark Library, Nomad Lounge, Film Streams’ Ruth Sokolof Theater, and other venues, the event includes a pulp-novel-inspired art exhibit, a tribute to iconic pulp writer Jim Thompson, panel discussions on genre fiction, and other wild and wanton behavior all presented with the uppity veneer of sophistication.

To be added to our mailing list, or for more information, email: timothy at cox dot net. Or join our group on Facebook.

The down-on-their-luck ladies and gents that slunk across the lids of Jim Thompson’s classic pulp novels beckoned readers inside with the promise of all sorts of debauchery, making the bone-dry, gritty life of dereliction look as refreshing as a whiskey popsicle. This year’s Lit Fest exhibit—Twisted Lives, Tormented Loves: savage art inspired by Jim Thompson—irons out the kinks in Thompson’s dirty mind, putting his insidious plots on full display. Artists have taken the leeringly comic-bookish images of Thompson’s twenty-five-cent paperbacks and refashioned them in their own contemporary styles, resulting in femme fatales and lethal lotharios for a new depression. The exhibit features reinterpretations of such classic novels as The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me, The Getaway, and After Dark, My Sweet, among many others. Curated by Wanda Ewing and Timothy Schaffert.