Throw together an indie record exec (Richard Jensen, of Sub Pop and Up Records) and a smarter-than-smart, unfashionably literate novelist (Matthew Stadler, author of The Sex Offender and Allan Stein), and what emerges? With luck, something like Clear Cut Press, Jensen and Stadler’s Oregon-based publishing house. “We realized there was excellent writing out there and lots of intelligent readers, but somewhere between the two the economy was failing to make the connection,” says Stadler. Their solution takes its cues from both the DIY punk scene and the tiny, upmarket presses that first published Joyce and Beckett. Clear Cut books sell by subscription, and market by word of mouth and a road show of readings and music “in an integrated psychedelic learning space.” The Clear Cut tour stops in L.A. this week, with authors Matt Briggs and Stacey Levine and Northwest bands We Two and the Universe and Mount Eerie.?At Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., L.A., Sat., June 24, 7:30 p.m. (310) 822-3006. And at The Smell, 247 S. Main St., L.A., Sun., June 25, 7 p.m.

—Ben Ehrenreich

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