News & Reviews

Librairie Alternative, Canada’s only anarchist bookstore, desperately needs repairs on its Montreal quarters. The state of things were so bad that they were forced to evacuate the premises several weeks and have now begun a North America-wide fund raising campaign. They are able to have some of the needed $45,000 financed, but need an additional $10,000 from movement sources. They are trying to encourage 100 groups to contribute $100 each, but welcome individual donations of lesser amounts. The shop is self-managed and anti-profit. Send donations to Librarie Alternative, 2033 Boul. St. Laurent, Montreal PQ H2X 2T3, Canada.

We have received a letter from the Affinity newsletter in Victoria, Australia, which we mentioned (and criticized in passing for being soft on the technology question) in our last issue. They write: “...particularly appreciated the vicious—excuse me whilst I wipe the blood from my kneecaps—review our wonderful little mag received. Now we too have been through the ear of self-criticism (we have the birch marks to prove it) but couldn’t you have taken pity on our amateur status (and poor spelling) and humoured us a little whilst we got our act together? Issue No. 2 is a lot cuter...Correspondence as a result of your review has already been heartening—we received a letter from a young comrade in Wichita who asked that we never send her a copy of Affinity, for example....”

They ask that we print their new address “so further abuse can be sent directly to us.” They can now be sent such abuse at: The Collective Effort Anarchist Bookshop, 224 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy 3065 Victoria, Australia, or at P.O. Box 109, North Fitzroy 3068, Australia.

This letter and another which we received responding to a review of a publication in a recent “News & Reviews” (see “Visual Prejudice” on page 3 of our letters section of this issue), call for a disclaimer and clarification from us. The column is not meant as a “definitive” FE judgment on any given publication we receive, but rather the (somewhat arbitrary and totally personal) reaction of the person who is writing the column for that issue. We always print the address because we find the material interesting and want to see it made available—including when we disagree strongly with a publication( a courtesy which, we might add, is frequently not reciprocated by other publications who find themselves in disagreement with us). We also, by the way, encourage readers to send mini-reviews of publications to us (along with a sample of the publication reviewed) and book reviews as well.

Shortage of space makes it impossible to mention the enormous amount of material which has come our way. Next issue we will give extra space to this column to mention everybody.

P.S. and A.C.