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It’s a good weekend to be in Toronto, as two of our best local bookshops have great stuff in store. In the always eclectic and unusual front window of The Monkey’s Paw on Dundas West, three original issues of General Idea’s FILE Megazine are prominently displayed. All three are from the art periodical’s early 1980s incarnation, which saw the masthead’s redesign after Time-Life sued the artists for copyright infringement in their parody of the iconic red rectangle. In its place is the layout you see here, which accurately represents the surprisingly beautiful design of the interior. The issue pictured above is priced at $100, which a cursory internet search reveals to be a third less than most other available issues out there.
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See a capsule history of FILE Megazine (including the original masthead) in this Facebook album compiled by General Idea
Read more about the groundbreaking artists magazine in this article by Diedrich Diederichsen for Artforum
Another informative article written on the occasion of JRP|Ringier’s reprinting of all 26 issues of FILE by Maria Fusco for Frieze
If you’re not in Toronto, never fear — visit The Monkey’s Paw online via their blog (aka Remote Window Display), in which they periodically feature a selection of unusual finds
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In other news, Of Swallows, the second floor second-hand bookshop and cultural studio at College and Spadina, has announced their imminent move west to College and Dovercourt along with a series of fabulous book sales to facilitate said move. Starting today and continuing throughout the weekend is the first storewide sale, during which hundreds of “books worth-having” will be priced at five dollars, and selected out-of-print material will be 30% off.
More information on Of Swallows’ Facebook page, here
Also, see links to their moving announcement and other events on their website
Not in Toronto? Of Swallows has books available through ABE (although probably not for five dollars), here
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image: cover of March 1981 issue of FILE Megazine available at The Monkey’s Paw. Also available are the Summer (Global Downtown) and Fall (Foreign Agents) issues from 1980.