January 18th Newsletter

    No products in the cart.

Torn Light Records
1855 N Milwaukee
Chicago, IL 60647
312.955.0614
Open Everyday
10AM-7PM

FILTERS

SEARCH

record-label

Filter by

Filter by

Filter by

  • Hard Travelin’: The Life And Legacy Of Woody Guthrie
    Hard Travelin’: The Life And Legacy Of Woody Guthrie
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    For the first ever American Music Masters event sponsored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, musicians and folkies came together to salute the life and legacy […]

    GENRE: Folk / Country, Non-Fiction
  • Stereophonica: Sound And Space In Science, Technology And The Arts
    Stereophonica: Sound And Space In Science, Technology And The Arts
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    Episodes in the transformation of our understanding of sound and space, from binaural listening in the nineteenth century to contemporary sound art. The relationship between sound and space has [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Marcel Schwob – The Children’s Crusade
    Marcel Schwob – The Children’s Crusade
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “I’ve just read Marcel Schwob’s The Children’s Crusade twice over, with deep admiration and reverence. I am profoundly moved: what a work! And to think I’d never heard the name […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Robert Barry – The Music Of The Future
    Robert Barry – The Music Of The Future
    $9.00 | , , Add to cart

    The Music of the Future is not a book of predictions or speculations about how to save the music business or the bleeding edge of technologies. Rather, it’s a history […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Derek Jarman – Jubilee: Six Film Scripts
    Derek Jarman – Jubilee: Six Film Scripts
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    From the early seventies until his death in 1994, Derek Jarman made scores of films. Assembled here are six of his unforgettable film scripts: Akenaten, Jubilee, Bob-Up-A-Down, B Movie: Little [...]

    GENRE:
  • Marjorie Perloff – The Futurist Moment
    Marjorie Perloff – The Futurist Moment
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    Marjorie Perloff’s stunning book was one of the first to offer a serious and far-reaching examination of the momentous flourishing of Futurist aesthetics in the European art and literature of [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Laura Mulvey – Fetishism And Curiosity (Silver Edition)
    Laura Mulvey – Fetishism And Curiosity (Silver Edition)
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    Writer and film-maker Laura Mulvey is widely regarded as one of the most challenging and incisive contemporary cultural theorists, credited for incorporating film theory, psychoanalysis and [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Surrealism At Play
    Surrealism At Play
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    In Surrealism at Play Susan Laxton writes a new history of surrealism in which she traces the centrality of play to the movement and its ongoing legacy. For surrealist artists, […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Semiotext(e): The German Issue
    Semiotext(e): The German Issue
    $25.00 | , , Add to cart

    A first-hand account of the Western world on the threshold of a major global mutation, bridging art and intellect, culture and politics, Europe and America.The German Issue (1982) was originally [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • From A Nation Torn: Decolonizing Art And Representation In France
    From A Nation Torn: Decolonizing Art And Representation In France
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    From a Nation Torn provides a powerful critique of art history’s understanding of French modernism and the historical circumstances that shaped its production and reception. Within art [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • The Fierce Urgency Of Now: Improvisation, Rights And The Ethics Of Cocreation
    The Fierce Urgency Of Now: Improvisation, Rights And The Ethics Of Cocreation
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    The Fierce Urgency of Now links musical improvisation to struggles for social change, focusing on the connections between the improvisation associated with jazz and the dynamics of human rights [...]

    GENRE: Jazz / Fusion / Free Jazz, Non-Fiction
  • Seeing The Unspeakable: The Art Of Kara Walker
    Seeing The Unspeakable: The Art Of Kara Walker
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    One of the youngest recipients of a MacArthur “genius” grant, Kara Walker, an African American artist, is best known for her iconic, often life-size, black-and-white silhouetted figures, arranged [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Parallel Public: Experimental Art In Late East Germany
    Parallel Public: Experimental Art In Late East Germany
    $16.00 | , , Add to cart

    How East German artists made their country’s experimental art scene a form of (counter) public life. Experimental artists in the final years of the German Democratic Republic did not practice [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise Of The New Art Practice In Yugoslavia
    A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise Of The New Art Practice In Yugoslavia
    $18.00 | , , Add to cart

    The first comprehensive study of the former Yugoslavia’s diverse and groundbreaking alternative art scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s. This first comprehensive study of the former [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Out Of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene Of The Sixities
    Out Of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene Of The Sixities
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    A social and cultural history of Los Angeles and its emerging art scene in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s The history of modern art typically begins in Paris and ends […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • On & By: Andy Warhol
    On & By: Andy Warhol
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    Writings about Andy Warhol by critics, artists, cultural theorists, and Factory associates together with archival material, interviews, and texts by Warhol himself. The impact of Andy Warhol on [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • October Files: John Cage
    October Files: John Cage
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    An extended trajectory of Cage literature, from early critical reaction to writing by contemporaries to current scholarship.John Cage (1912–1992) defined a radical practice of composition that [...]

    GENRE: Modern Composition / Musique Concrete / Electronic, Non-Fiction
  • R. Buckminster Fuller – Intuition
    R. Buckminster Fuller – Intuition
    $20.00 | , , Add to cart

    Accomplished polymath R.Buckminster Fuller impacted and influenced everyone from John Cage to early hippie movements. Intuition is his 12th book. “In this series of poem-essays, Fuller [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Concrete Poetry: A 21st-Century Anthology
    Concrete Poetry: A 21st-Century Anthology
    $22.00 | , Add to cart

    Now in paperback, a significant new collection of concrete poetry that redefines what this unique literary movement means today. Concrete Poetry: A 21st-Century Anthology is the first overview of [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Iceberg Slim – Night Train to Sugar Hill
    Iceberg Slim – Night Train to Sugar Hill
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    1980s Los Angeles. The crack epidemic has hit hard. Innocent and damned alike fall victim to the artificial allure of the drug — a teenager accidentally overdoses, junkies smoke crack […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms
    Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    A major contribution for American readers and students of Russian literature and an exciting discovery for fans of contemporary writers as eclectic as George Saunders, John Ashbery, and Martin [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Cannibal Error (Revised)
    Cannibal Error (Revised)
    $32.00 | , Add to cart

    A social history of the ‘video nasty’. In the early 1980s, video technology forever changed the face of home entertainment. The videocassette – a handy-sized cartridge of [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Sergio De La Pava – A Naked Singularity
    Sergio De La Pava – A Naked Singularity
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    The critically acclaimed novel that is now a major motion picture starring John Boyega and Olivia Cooke, coming to theaters August 6, streaming August 13! A Naked Singularity tells the […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Antonin Artaud – Journey To Mexico
    Antonin Artaud – Journey To Mexico
    $34.00 | , Add to cart

    On 10 January 1936, the poet, actor, and dramatic theorist, Antonin Artaud departed Europe on a journey to Mexico that would take him from the streets, cafés, and lecture halls […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Troy James Weaver – Visions
    Troy James Weaver – Visions
    $16.00 | , Add to cart

    “Troy James Weaver’s novel unravels the typical coming-of-age story. It erases the distinction between finding and losing your voice, becoming enlightened by a vision and swallowed by [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Pierre Senges – Ahabs (Sequels)
    Pierre Senges – Ahabs (Sequels)
    $30.00 | , Add to cart

    The reader will find here the true aftermath of the adventures of Ahab, self-described captain, survivor of his last fight against a giant fish. We will see how this retiree […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Louis-Auguste Blanqui – Eternity by the Stars: An Astronomical Hypothesis
    Louis-Auguste Blanqui – Eternity by the Stars: An Astronomical Hypothesis
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    In a century replete with radical politics, final liberations, historical codas, and dreams of eternity, the shadowy figure of Louis-Auguste Blanqui, the constant revolutionary, wrote Eternity by [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Gabriele Tinti – Bleedings – Incipit Tragoedia
    Gabriele Tinti – Bleedings – Incipit Tragoedia
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    Bleedings – Incipit Tragoedia is a series of poems Tinti composed in the spring of 2020. The epigraphic collections of the National Roman Museum, the Capitoline Museums, and the National [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Jan Wolkers – Turkish Delight
    Jan Wolkers – Turkish Delight
    $16.00 | , Add to cart

    Upon its original publication in 1969, Turkish Delight was a sensation and a scandal. Its graphic language and explicit sex scenes had an explosive effect, but just as revolutionary was […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Mathias Enard – Zone
    Mathias Enard – Zone
    $17.00 | , Add to cart

    “The novel of the decade, if not of the century.”–Christophe Claro Francis Servain Mirkovic, a French-born Croat who has been working for the French Intelligence Services for [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Alice Notley – Telling the Truth as It Comes Up: Selected Talks & Essays 1991-2018
    Alice Notley – Telling the Truth as It Comes Up: Selected Talks & Essays 1991-2018
    $25.00 | , Add to cart

    “Once again, we encounter Notley as one the great interlocutors of the world, a dedicated advocate for what is between and beyond definition.” –Tess Michaelson, Full Stop Alice [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Claire Donato – Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts
    Claire Donato – Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    The first major book from a longtime legend in underground literature; known by citation and word of mouth, but only now emerging with a work that will earn a broad […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the Fbi, the Kkk, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control
    Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the Fbi, the Kkk, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control
    $22.00 | , Add to cart

    New evidence in ‘Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond their Control’ uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Richard John Parfitt – Stray Dogs
    Richard John Parfitt – Stray Dogs
    $17.00 | , Add to cart

    Turner is a high school dropout newly arrived in Toronto. After taking a job selling dictionaries for a local grifter named Romeo Silva, the day goes wrong and Turner gets […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place
    Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place
    $25.00 | , Add to cart

    Is Lemuria a real place or the fever dream of crackpots, mystics, conspiracy theorists, and Bigfoot hunters? Below the waters where the Pacific and Indian Oceans lies a lost continent. […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music
    The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music
    $25.00 | , Add to cart

    Since it was founded in 1982, The Wire magazine has covered a vast range of alternative, experimental, underground and non-mainstream music. Now some of that knowledge has been distilled into [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
    A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
    $30.00 | , Add to cart

    The first major biography of the French filmmaker hailed by Martin Scorsese as “one of the Gods of cinema.” Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Kathy Acker & Paul Buck: Spread Wide
    Kathy Acker & Paul Buck: Spread Wide
    $30.00 | , Add to cart

    In this collaborative volume, the writer and artist Paul Buck works with the late Kathy Acker. Using as source the raw materials of their correspondence from the early 80s, a […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Giallo Fantastique
    Giallo Fantastique
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    An anthology of original strange stories at the intersection of crime, terror, and supernatural fiction. Inspired by and drawing from the highly stylized cinematic thrillers of Argento, Bava, and [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Blake Butler – Aannex
    Blake Butler – Aannex
    $19.00 | , Add to cart

    Incorporating hundreds of characters and cultural entities, spanning innumerable locations and billions of years, Aannex is a future-hacker’s maze-map meant to have already been [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Adam Pendleton – Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths: Revisiting the Black Dada Reader
    Adam Pendleton – Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths: Revisiting the Black Dada Reader
    $45.00 | , Add to cart

    The sequel to Pendleton’s acclaimed Black Dada Reader, compiling an anti-canon of radical experimentation and thought In 2011, artist Adam Pendleton (born 1984) assembled Black Dada Reader, [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death Of Danny Casolaro
    The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death Of Danny Casolaro
    $150.00 | , , Add to cart

    Probably the single greatest work of conspiracy literature. Needs to be read to be believed. Feral House, 2004 paperback edition. Some light corner & edgewear to the wraps. Writing on […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Terence McKenna – True Hallucinations
    Terence McKenna – True Hallucinations
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This mesmerizing, surreal account of the bizarre adventures of Terence McKenna, his brother Dennis, and a small band of their friends, is a wild ride of exotic experience and scientific [...]

    GENRE: Memoir, Non-Fiction
  • Clarence Cooper Jr – Black: Three Short Novels
    Clarence Cooper Jr – Black: Three Short Novels
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Black! brings together three short novels by Clarence Cooper, Jr., a rediscovered genius of African-American writing. “The Dark Messenger” is a short, sizzling novel in which a [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Get Even: The Complete Book Of Dirty Tricks
    Get Even: The Complete Book Of Dirty Tricks
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “A hilarious overview of the methods people use to get even with big business, government and enemies. These dirty tricks range from the simple to the elaborate, including more [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • John Cage – Notations
    John Cage – Notations
    $200.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Notations is a book that was edited and compiled by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992) with Alison Knowles and first published in 1969 by Something Else Press. The book [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Modern Composition / Musique Concrete / Electronic
  • Charles Willeford – Cockfighter
    Charles Willeford – Cockfighter
    $20.00 | , , Add to cart

    Charles Willeford’s violently masculine southern noir, loosely modeled on The Odyssey. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1991 paperback edition. Creasing to front cover, along with some [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • William H. Gass – The Tunnel
    William H. Gass – The Tunnel
    $50.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Thirty years in the making, William Gass’s second novel first appeared on the literary scene in 1995, at which time it was promptly hailed as an indisputable masterpiece. The story [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • A Record Could Be Your Whole World: Vinyl Records as the Total Artwork Of The Late 20th Century
    A Record Could Be Your Whole World: Vinyl Records as the Total Artwork Of The Late 20th Century
    $50.00 | , Add to cart

    This is a book about records considered ‘in themselves’. It is not about musicians, or music, or design, or music history — though all those things are considered at various […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Greer Lankton: Sketchbook, September 1977
    Greer Lankton: Sketchbook, September 1977
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    Sketchbook, September 1977 is an early journal by Greer Lankton written during her time as an art student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It offers key […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Martin Wong: Footprints, Poems, and Leaves
    Martin Wong: Footprints, Poems, and Leaves
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    A rich and engaging facsimile of the artist’s first visual poetry book, self-published in 1968 The paintings of Chinese American artist Martin Wong (1946-99) are celebrated for their [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Marcel Schwob – Spicilege
    Marcel Schwob – Spicilege
    $17.00 | , Add to cart

    Exquisitely crafted essays on medieval criminal slang, ancient Greek prostitution, laughter, anarchy and more from the endlessly influential Marcel Schwob “All over the world,” wrote [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction, Weird Fiction/Sci-Fi/Unexplained Phenomena
  • Marguerite Young – Miss Macintosh, My Darling
    Marguerite Young – Miss Macintosh, My Darling
    $28.00 | , Add to cart

    This novel is one of the most ambitious and remarkable literary achievements of our time. It is a picaresque, psychological novel—a novel of the road, a journey or voyage of […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Hamlet in Purgatory: Expanded Edition
    Hamlet in Purgatory: Expanded Edition
    $21.00 | , Add to cart

    In Hamlet in Purgatory, renowned literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt delves into his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Propaganda and the Holy Writ of the Process Church of the Final Judgment: Process Sex Issue-Fear Issue-Death Issue
    Propaganda and the Holy Writ of the Process Church of the Final Judgment: Process Sex Issue-Fear Issue-Death Issue
    $32.00 | , Add to cart

    The rare and collectible Process Church magazines are back in print. Do you dare find out who rules you? The Process Church of the Final Judgement inspired fear and devotion […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Kate Zambreno – To Write As If Already Dead
    Kate Zambreno – To Write As If Already Dead
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    To Write As If Already Dead circles around Kate Zambreno’s failed attempts to write a study of Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. In this […]

    GENRE: Memoir, Non-Fiction
  • Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism
    Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism
    $23.00 | , Add to cart

    The now-classic exploration of the role of women and the feminine in Buddhist Tantra The crowning cultural achievement of medieval India, Tantric Buddhism is known in the West primarily for […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
    Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
    $34.00 | , Add to cart

    Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Erik Davis – Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
    Erik Davis – Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
    $23.00 | , Add to cart

    In these wide-ranging essays, Erik Davis explores the codes — spiritual, cultural, and embodied — that people use to escape the limitations of their lives and enrich their experience of […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Jonas Mekas: Scrapbook of the Sixties: Writings 1954-2010
    Jonas Mekas: Scrapbook of the Sixties: Writings 1954-2010
    $32.00 | , Add to cart

    Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, John Lennon & Yoko Ono ― Jonas Mekas was well acquainted with a great many New York artists. Born in Lithuania, he came to Brooklyn via […]

    GENRE: Memoir, Non-Fiction