





Illustrator Lou Beach has a new book, called 420 Characters. I like Jonathan Lethem's blurb about it: "Holy Shit! These are great!"





After the jump, some sample stories and art from the book (some of the art is not in the book; consider it a bonus).



I OPEN THE CAN, press the oil out of the tuna with the lid. I recall sandwiches you made, just the right amount of mayo, onions, celery, sourdough with lettuce, or, if you were happy, alfalfa sprouts. In my reverie I don't notice that I've sliced my thumb with the lid and blood mingles with the oil and flows down the drain and pipes to a processing plant and to sea, to finally wash up on a beach where we once fished. THEY CUT off Spiney's left leg. 'Cuz of the sugars,' he said. Asked what he carried in his guitar case besides his instrument, he said: 'Picks, a blade, and Clark bars.' The blade was a pearl handled straight razor, the bluesman's Swiss army knife, a train engraved on the shiny metal. He stropped it for years on his left boot, but since the loss of his leg it had gone dull. He was disinclined to strop on the right.

More samples here