Kicking lit for a quarter of a century

January 2, 2023 2:05 PM

In the 1998 Webby Awards (remember them?), the category of Print+Zine was won by Salon, but one nominee was a plucky little site called Literary Kicks. It is now 2022, and while new posts are sometimes separated by months these days, Mark Eliot Stein's Literary Kicks is still kicking. And they have two podcasts! World Beyond War, and Lost Music, on literary opera.

This is the same Literary Kicks that was originally presented under the pen name Levi Asher.

Other nominees for Print+Zine in 1998 were the dictionary site Merriam-Webster, which survives, and Alt.culture and the Libryinth, which did not. Libryinth isn't even on Wikipedia, I know of no link to it, and I couldn't find it in the Wayback Machine.

Reviewing old Webby Award sites reveals an uncomfortable fact: 80-90% of what were considered to be the best sites from its early years (it started in 1997) do not survive today. The Webbys do not archive the names of old winners, although they are listed on Wikipedia.

posted by JHarris (4 comments total)

At the other end of website reviews was Mirsky’s Worst of the Web; all sorts of early internet craziness ended up there. But a cursory search looks like it too was not archived. But at least Wikipedia remembers.
posted by TedW at 2:21 PM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thanks JHarris. in Literary Kicks youʻve led me to yet another inspiring labyrinthine rabbit hole, down which Iʻll be happily wasting many of the leftover precious moments Iʻve been alloted on this planet.

I say this because I just dropped into the vast LK site at random, and got caught by a wandering review of a book by Richard Hell, of all people. I sang his Voidoids song "Homicide" as part of a late 70ʻs rabbit hole I willingly jumped into, feeling the need to ingest what this here musically annoying punk rock thing was all about. "Homicide" didnʻt change my life much, but that particular rabbit hole did eventually.

And yeh, maybe I should have guessed that Richardʻs artistry stretched way beyond the three brutally distorted chords of a punk rock song.
posted by Droll Lord at 3:36 PM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Remember them? I won one of them!

beZerk.com forever, or something

the five word speech I had planned on giving, on behalf of the Acrophobia-side of the company, was "TTATF: Thanks to all the fans" but apparently it was only 5 words total, not five words per team represented, alas
posted by andreaazure at 12:02 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

You were involved with bezerk? Cool! I've been researching oldweb sites lately, trying to find out what I can discover, possibly in collaboration with another MeFi member, and possibly for either/both a megapost or book (people who remember my High Weirdness By Mail post will probably know I could turn this into either). Do you have any archives, or notable memories? Would you mind talking by MeMail?
posted by JHarris at 9:15 AM on January 3, 2023