MetaChat - Help me brainstorm!

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09 December 2005

Help me brainstorm! I need a name for a new literary journal. →[More:]The final project for my publishing class is a proposal for our own literary journal. Mine is a quarterly journal focusing on contemporary literary fiction. Would contain mostly short stories, as well as flash fiction and some poetry, and published in the Chicago area. Help me stop wasting my time looking for names online so I can get back to writing the damn thing.

post by: kyleg at: 04:40 | 21 comments

"Big Shoulders" alludes to Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago".

posted by orthogonality 09 December | 04:50

Or more from Sandburg:

"Voices of Broken Hearts" from Sandburg's "Clark Street Bridge";

"Laughter into Toil" from "Subway";

"Tired of wishes / Empty of dreams" from Halsted Street Car;

"Death and the Rain and To-morrow" from "A Fence"

Non-Sandburg allusions to Chicago: "Police Riot" (characterization, by the federal Walker Report, of Chicago police suppression of protests at 1968 Democratic Convention);

"Red pencil, green pencil, blue pencil" from Studs Terkel's Chicago, an anecdote about a standardized form of police bribery, in which a person could get out of a ticket during a traffic stop, by purchasing from the cop a colored pencil; a blue pencil for $10, or green for $15, or red for $25. (Cost and colors probably misremembered.)

posted by orthogonality 09 December | 05:09

I vote for "Big Shoulders." Awesome idea.

posted by mullacc 09 December | 05:11

(And of course, "blue pencil" is an inside joke alluding to the editors of the journal.)

posted by orthogonality 09 December | 05:18

Lonesome Monsters?

From "Nelson Algren's Own Book of Lonesome Monsters," an anthology of short stories from various authors, including Thomas Pynchon, Saul Bellow, and Joseph Heller. (1962)

posted by taz 09 December | 06:09

i wanna say wacker
wacker
or something about wind and fire
as words can be incendiary

posted by ethylene 09 December | 07:04

definitely something from Terkel, or maybe from Dreiser or Mencken? --I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.

posted by amberglow 09 December | 09:01

Thanks guys, keep them coming. It doesn't necessarily need to relate to Chicago; I just need something more literary than Death on a Stick. Due in three hours.

posted by kyleg 09 December | 09:23

Stuffed Dogs.

Hemingway said, "The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs." I think it was in the Sun Also Rises.

It's a name and a marketing slogan all in one.

posted by jrossi4r 09 December | 09:42

amberglow, you're a Mencken fan too?

posted by orthogonality 09 December | 09:59

"From Snout To Tail" would be a pretty good name, actually.

posted by briank 09 December | 10:10

yup--ortho (i like all those commonsense but witty and astute guys)

posted by amberglow 09 December | 10:12

Spell Check would be a nice one.

Once Upon a Line.

Two Fingers Typing.

The White Out Express though maybe that's better suited to a journal about trains in the north?

That's all I've got for now.

posted by fenriq 09 December | 11:05

Empty Vessels.

posted by seanyboy 09 December | 11:16

I always wanted to start a magazine called "Preston Vein"

posted by seanyboy 09 December | 11:28

The empty vessels thing, although potentially insulting is a real suggestion. It's self effacing, semi-literate (shakespeare - no less), and alludes to making lots of noise.

posted by seanyboy 09 December | 11:31

"ten sentences"
"acts of optimism"
"black marks on wood pulp"
"arrows and traps"

posted by seanyboy 09 December | 11:41

BRAND-O-TRON SAYS:

Smoking Dope and Watching Matlock

IS THE PERFECT NAME FOR A 21ST C LITERARY JOURNAL

posted by eatitlive 09 December | 11:43

El-Train Misc.

posted by sam 09 December | 12:45

i third snout to tail
and a fondness for paris and buttermilk
because it's contemporary, right?
so maybe by now they have been through those froggy spoiled milk phases. then you got your paris review and i bet buttermilk has some allusions...

posted by ethylene 09 December | 12:54

Manitou. It is the Algonquian word for spiritual power.

posted by LarryC 09 December | 21:01

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