Synopses & Reviews
One night while rooting through the recycling bin for magazines, I found all the confidential Ph.D. applicant files for the biology department at an Ivy League university from the years 1965-1975. Stapled to many of the yellowed documents were photographs of the prospective students. They were treasures! I tore through the folders and rescued every portrait I could find. I had to have them. Only later did I realize I had to publish them”. So begins the preface to Jesse Reklaws Applicant. A priceless time-bomb of pop culture, Reklaw serves a compelling and secret look into an impossibly lost era. The book collects photos from the 1970s paired with accompanying comments from employers and professors. The results are absurdist, confusing, often hilarious and disturbing. Applicant provides unique insight into outdated 1970s social attitudes and ephemera (under one girls photo: Weakness: she is a female, and an attractive, modest one, so is bound to marry”). Much of the books appeal however is found in what the book fails to say: the blank and despondent stares of its subjects, the outdated fashions and hairstyles and its understated text. Equal parts Ann Taintor and Found Magazine, Applicant is one of those books you read once and then want to show everyone. In fulfilling Jesse's dream, we've republished this as a tiny paperback book!
Review
"In the spirit of making something new out of something old, Reklaw has refigured photos and a portion of the accompanying commentary into a fresh piece of art."
-Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
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"A wonderful piece of 'found art' featuring photos and extracts from a bundle of rejected CVs and interview summaries that Jesse stumbled across." —Spider Fan
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"One of the best one-off ‘zines Ive run across." —Mental_Floss
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"You will read this book and laugh, and think, and marvel that such a simple concept can affect such bipolar feelings." —Verbicide
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"A very interesting, if all too brief time capsule of a decade long gone." —Reglar Wiglar
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"This is such a simply constructed book, and yet it really makes you think. . . . This is a book about shallowness, theirs and ours, and in that, this book finds something very deep." —Adam Coozer, ReadJunk
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"A great prank itself. . . . Its a fun, funny, and revealing little book." —Roy Christopher
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"An interesting curio." —Johnny Bacardi Show Blog
Synopsis
Collecting photos from the 1970s and paired with accompanying comments from employers and professors, the results are absurdist, confusing, often hilarious and disturbing. Applicant provides unique insight into outdated 1970s social attitudes and ephemera. Much of the book's appeal however is found in what the book fails to say: the blank and despondent stares of its subjects, the outdated fashions and hairstyles and its understated text. Equal parts Ann Taintor and Found Magazine, Applicant is one of those books you read once and then want to show everyone.
Synopsis
Book has already sold over 4,000 copies in fanzine format.
Microcosm Publishing has sent out 5,000
postcards for the book to bookstores and individuals.
Synopsis
A priceless time bomb of pop culture, this serves as a compelling and secret look into an impossibly lost era. The author found discarded, confidential, PhD applicant files for the biology department at an Ivy League university from 1965 to 1975 as he was rooting through the recycling bin for magazines. Photographs of the prospective students were stapled to many of the documents and this book collects these photos and pairs them with accompanying comments from employers and professors. The results are absurdist, confusing, often hilarious, and disturbing. They provide unique insight into outdated, 1970s social attitudes and ephemera yet much of the books appeal is found in what the book fails to say: the blank and despondent stares of its subjects, the outdated fashions and hairstyles, and its understated text.
About the Author
Jesse Reklaw is the author of the syndicated strip, "Slow Wave" and the comic journal Ten Thousand Things to Do. He is an instructor at the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) Comics Program. He lives in Portland, Oregon.