The Unbearables
The Unbearables Manual of Style
New York: Unbearables, 1995

In the world of mass-market literary production and commodification, the Unbearables, a loosely organized collective of downtown writers and artists, see themselves as "poetic terrorists," attacking the increasing commercialization of the literary and artistic scene. Using a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style -- a text with which most of them were intimately acquainted from their work as proofreaders, data entry specialists, and office temps on the margins of the marketplace -- each artist or writer took a section of the Manual and exploded the conventions (read: restrictions) it places on "style." The product is a voluptuous, sometimes Dada, sometimes post-Punk icon that deconstructs and subverts approved language. The Unbearables who contributed to the Manual are: Hakim Bey, Judy Nylon, Tsaurah Litzky, Jill Rapaport, Sparrow, Jim Feast, Michael Carter, Rollo Whitehead, J. Padua, Alfred Vitale, Claude Taylor, Bob Witz, Lorraine Schein, Ron Kolm, Patrick Stevenson, Mike Topp, Michael Golden, Dan Freeman, Elizabeth Morse, Tom Savage, Bonny Finberg, Larry McCaffery, Larry Deyab, David Sandlin, Dave Mandl, Shalom, Robb Hardin, Lawrence Fishberg, Daniel Kolm, Gregory Kolm, Reyna Ramirez, David Huberman, bart plantenga, Michael Randall, Joe Maynard, Sharon Mesmer, Carol Wierzbicki, Bill Anthony, Max Blagg, Carl Watson, and Michael Kasper.