John Lien and Peder Holtan, editors and designers

Cheap & Fast [full run]

Milwaukee: Friends of the Written Word, 1973–1974. Four issues. Offset. Saddle-stapled. 10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in and 10 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. 28 pp, 44 pp, 44 pp, and 44 pp. All very good. Item #7832

The complete run of the four issues of Cheap & Fast, an underground literary and graphic arts magazine from Milwaukee produced by Friends of the Written Word, a publishing effort led by John Lien and Peder Holtan.

Cheap & Fast featured poems, short stories, comics, drawings, fake advertisements, and other genres, revolving around an irreverent editorial style. Contributors include entities such as Moby Dick, toøz Annie Mouse, and Don Kemp. The latter is ostensibly the former war vet Don Kemp who tragically shot his wife—not to be confused with the former New York ad executive of the same name, who moved to Wyoming following a taxicab accident, and mysteriously disappeared two years later, leaving behind a series of mystifying phone calls as clues.

These magazines feature works written with the bile of pop and everyday culture. In doing so, they trace a transition from beat and hippie concerns (the road, pills, drugs, sexual desire) to those later associated with punk and no-wave aesthetics.

OCLC locates only two holdings of the first three issues as of April 2025; it traces no copies of the fourth issue, included here.

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