Back in 1999 when Exquisite Corpse “went
zine” rather than shut its doors due to the high costs and mounting
frustrations Jeff Boison hopefully will be spared, editor Andrei
Codrescu celebrated The Corpse’s transformation: The old Corpse isn’t
dead, he said at the time (or something pretty close), but rather it’s
been reborn, to enjoy a long “afterlife” in cyberspace.
Alas, now the Cybercorpse is in peril. Codrescu and co. have put out a
call for donations: “We have a half million readers a month and not
one penny. Irony, your name is Cyberspace!” reads an announcement on
the TOC of Cybercorpse 9. “We need $25,000 dollars to keep bringing
you the Corpse. Anything from $20 upwards would be a great help!”
$25,000 seems like an awful lot of money (unless Codrescu wants to
start drawing a paycheck, or perhaps he’s hoping to outfit his
staffers with matching 1.7 GHz Pentium IVs loaded (on the up-and-up,
of course!) with the complete Adobe Web Collection suite. But whatever
the cost, the Corpse is worth saving. Nowhere — neither in print
nor online — is there a mag that so consistently — and
proudly — wags a middle finger at convention and establishment
bombast. Should the Corpse vanish, its bytes evaporating, I suppose,
in some post-afterlife, the world will be a far less better place. To
paraphrase Auden, they will surely pack up the moon and dismantle the
sun. So why not surf on by and use your PayPal to float the Corpse a
few bucks?
About the AuthorTom Hartman has been a regular contributor to Pif since 1999. He lives in Philadelphia.
Books We Love
