HOWARD — The majority of Howard residents are unaware of an artfully alternative magazine being published in their town by Christoph Meyer, who lives with his family in the renovated 1873 mill in downtown Howard.
Actually, it’s not a magazine. Or maybe it’s a non-traditional magazine. The fact is, it can’t be neatly explained or categorized, and so, as with other publications of its kind, it has its own name: It is a zine.
Zines, also called fanzines, are self-published, handmade, non-commercial, come in various unmagazine-like sizes and, perhaps most important, are works of art.
Meyer’s zine is called “28 Pages Lovingly Bound with Twine,” also known as 28PLBwT. He has printed it on various paper stock and in various sizes since the first edition in 2002. He creates the art, types the text, letters headlines and titles by hand, sticks on stickers, hand-colors and stamps certain pages and collates every page. He uses a paper drill that sits in the basement of the old mill to make holes, and then he ... well, lovingly binds the pages with twine.
The zine doesn’t contain much in the way of fiction.
“I write what would be memoir,” he explained, “real life. This [zine] started as amusement and it barreled out of control.”
Issue No. 13, the latest, has freewheeling stories called “A Drink: An Overheard Conversation,” “One of Them New-Fangled Hi-Breads” about the Meyers’ Toyota Prius and “The Most Romantic Wedding in Human History” about their wedding.
With that issue, Meyer has tied 29,566 knots, although not all with his favorite triple-ply jute twine. Issue No. 9, his Dental Issue, was bound with dental floss, and Issue No. 11 was bound with black-dyed hemp twine.
He prints 2,458 copies of each issue and notes with pen on each one the number of that copy. Recently, his zine won the General Excellence Award in “Utne” magazine’s 18th annual Independent Press Awards competition and received a write-up in the January-February issue of “Utne.”
Meyer also creates and binds what he calls minicomics, some with his son, 5-year-old Herbie. One, “Molly the Popsicle,” is the darkly charming tale of an unfortunate orange popsicle in what, Meyer wrote on the first page, is “An existential tale about the absurdity of modern life.” Herbie made up the story and Meyer turned it into a minicomic, complete with a popsicle stick glued to the orange cover.
A tiny publication, “The Scrap Paper Review, a.k.a. 28 Wee Pages Heartlessly Bound With Staples,” details the stories his dentist wife, Lisa Moster, D.D.S., tells him about her day when she comes home from work.
Another publication, “The Heart Star,” bound in pink cardstock (and staples), is a strange, macabre, yet somehow touching tale of a restless ghost in the ancient land of Gohio. It was inspired when Meyer received a heart-shaped hole punch and, indeed, many pages bear heart-shaped holes. “The Heart Star” has been more popular than he expected.
“I’ve gotten mail from all over the world about it,” he said, seeming a bit puzzled.
Meyer said being a publisher and writer for other zines helped hone his writing skills.
“It teaches you how to write,” he said. “I started to pay more and more attention to it, and then I started getting accepted in other zines.”
He’s sure that no one locally reads his 28PLBwT, and so he goes to shows in Portland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and other, larger venues where zines are more popular and where his publication is being noticed and read.
“Within the small zine world, I would be known,” he said modestly.
Also a self-taught artist and poet, Meyer creates silk screen prints and linoleum prints that make their way into 28PLBwT and other publications.
His current work in progress is, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” which will be about just that.
Meyer arises early — “Early to bed, early to rise,” he quoted — to do his best work in the morning hours.
“I like starting off the day, 3 to 7 a.m. I can sit and write, sit and make things. People think this work is monotonous, but it’s not.”
He isn’t a fan of high technology and the family has no television, although he doesn’t qualify as a Luddite ... he does have a computer, used for word processing only. He doesn’t have e-mail or Internet access, although he does have a Web site at www.twineman.com that he can’t be contacted through. His sister-in-law maintains the Web site.
“I don’t have any connection to it,” he said. “That way, I get the best of both worlds.”
In Issue No. 13 of 28PLBwT, Meyer invited his readers: “Write me a letter. Real mail only. E-mail is just a passing fad so I don’t waste my time with it.”
“I’m a bit of an outsider,” he said. “When we first moved here, people would ask me what I did at Kenyon. I didn’t even know what Kenyon was. We’re different. But I like the county that way.”
Moster is a Cleveland-area native, Meyer is from Houston and they lived for a time in Columbus.
“But I’m done with that now. I like visiting those hip, trendy places, but I like living in the country,” he said.
