| ANSWER Me! The First Three by Jim Goad 368 pgs. 8″x10.5″ $21.95 ISBN: 0-9764035-3-6 |
About the Book
Our new edition of ANSWER Me! The First Three has 60 never before collected pages of essays that were written by Goad after the death of the magazine.
HELLO, WORLD! It’s been a dozen years since ANSWER Me! shot a hot, creamy load all over your face. And just when you thought you’d wiped it all off—SPLAT!—another thick wad sails straight into your eye.
ANSWER Me! is a big black slab of trouble. The magazine has been blamed for a White House shooting and a triple suicide. It has been banned in several countries and put on trial for obscenity in the USA. One of the co-creators has died (eerily foreshadowed in ANSWER Me! #3), while the other went to prison, only to get out and act like a bigger asshole than ever.
While all this was happening, everyone in the world lost their nerve and got hooked on psych meds and zipped their yaps shut for fear of being called a racist or a misogynist or a terrorist or…worst of all…a HATER. There’s nothin’ people hate more these days than a hater.
BUT IT’S O.K. TO HATE. ONCE YOU ALLOW YOURSELF TO FEEL THE HATRED, YOU WON’T WANNA STOP!
This fat, gorgeous, ridiculously underpriced anthology contains the legendary hatezine’s FIRST THREE ISSUES in their entirety. (Issue #4, the notorious “Rape Issue,” is being sold separately because it will probably upset you—see inside for details.) It also contains SIXTY NEW PAGES of wistful ANSWER Me! memories and tasty new articles written by philanthropist and humanitarian Jim Goad. There’s a strong chance that this is the best book ever published. Only an idiot
would refuse to buy it.
There is only so much time to live, only so much time to hate. The world is upside down. It overflows with things worth hating. Every new dawn brings something to despise. The smiling faces who try to force love and peace and justice down your throat are often the most petty, hateful souls of all. Hate them, will you? Hate them hard. Hate
them long. Hate them with every bleeding fiber of your obnoxiously savage heart. Don’t let them ever take away your hatred.
Formerly published by AK Press (ISBN 1-873176-03-1), long out of print.
Editions
- Paperback
- Limited Edition Deluxe Set
About the Author
Jim Goad was publisher of the single most loved and hated ‘zines from the early 90’s This expanded collection tells it all! The roots of the author responsible for The Redneck Manifesto and Shit Magnet. ANSWER Me! The First Three is a diatribe set to the tune of the apocalypse culture that we see everyday all around us.
View his official website: www.jimgoad.net
Reviews
“The early 90s are, without a doubt, the single ugliest period In the history of human beings. The unisexually poofy hair, the clothes in tight-to-baggy transition, the way everything looks on videotape from then-to find it anything other than depressing would be blindness. This is exactly what makes ANSWER Me! the most indisputable record of its era. The heartfelt sincerity behind Jim and Debbie Goad’s infatuation with hate, self-destruction, political missightedness, aand everything else post-Cold-War America had to offer comes through in every perfectly-worded barb and tirade. The mass murder lists and grainy Budd Dwyer collages may seem like juvenile death-tripping at first glance, but taken in light of the depth and intelligence with which it’s assembled it’s really just as honest an approach to American culture as can be. If you can appreciate the simple, joyous zen of prank-calling Dr. Kevorkian and a suicide helplline with the same questions, or favorable Interviews with Al Sharpton and David Duke back-to-back, you are brainless.
This new comp of the first three Issues (still sadly divorced from the lawsuit-inspiring grand finale of the Rape Issue) comes with a healthy smattering of Jim’s other writing from the past 13 years, which practically serves as a blueprint for how to mellow with age without falling into fat, middle-aged complacency- Whatmore can we say about this gem? Fuckin’ nothing.”
-Thomas Morten,Vice Magazine
“ANSWER Me! came on like a no-popes crusade to blast through the vacuum and kill or convert the czars of political and aesthetic correctitude.”
– Adam Parfrey, Feral House
“ANSWER Me! was so wonderful because it reminded me of when my uncle Joey turned me on to National Lampoon when I was eight years old. After National Lampoon I was always looking for uglier forms of humor, and then comes along ANSWER Me!”
– Shaun Partridge, Partridge Family Temple
“ANSWER Me! is a nasty little book … this book is more than worth its cover price for the jaw dropping serial killer and suicide guides.” -debased.com
“‘Answer Me!’, Jim and Debbie Goad’s early 90′s manifesto of hate, disgust and revulsion lasted a mere four issues. But in those four issues, Answer Me! pushed the boundaries of zine culture more than any independent publication in the past twenty years. Bold statement? Consider its resume, then: Martin Duran quoting “The Murder Issue (AM#2)” before unloading 29 bullets into the White House, three British tourists offing themselves with “The Suicide Issue (AM#3) in close vicinity, and the infamous final “Rape Issue” spawning an obscenity trial against newsstand owners who had the audacity to sell it.
Most zine writers can’t get the attention of the chick that they wrote the poem on page 6 about.
Of course, time has moved on; Debbie Goad has been dead for several years, Jim went on to write ‘The Redneck Manifesto’ and ‘Shit Magnet’, and ‘Answer Me!’ clones in various mediums have sprouted in abundance. What is perhaps so surprising then is that the work still packs so much of its initial gut-punch, still manages to plow through territory where even the most jaded and fucked-up reader would hesitate to tread. You’ll find plenty to disagree with here, but what Goad’s many detractors fail to take into account is the fierce intelligence of his writing, the sincerity of his rejection of hypocrisy in any form, and his rare ability to turn his lens of hate equally on everything: himself, culture, counter-culture, you.
‘Answer Me!’, given the sanctimony against it (stacks of the zine were actually burned) was often hard to get a hold of. The now defunct Loompanics offered a collection; beyond that you might get lucky at a zine specialty shop or independent bookstore. Scapegoat Publishing has taken a huge step in correcting the situation with this collection, which at 368 oversized pages for 22 bucks is a pretty good deal as well. Highly recommended for the unsqueamish.”
-Bri Punk Pinups