On the Literary Margins

This issue of Fringe is a melting pot of creativity, with poetry, nonfiction, fiction, two interviews, an art feature, a “Vintage Fringe” essay, and two “(de)Classified” pieces that I still can’t figure out. I’ve found experimental writing tiresome as of late, but this issue has a lot to offer—and more importantly, it stays true to Fringe’s mission to “publish styles and genres that other journals eschew” (http://www.fringemagazine.org/manifesto/).

The first piece that moved me was Kelly Sundberg’s “Secrets and Lies,” a nonfiction exploration of traumatic experiences, the clandestine nature of teenagers, and the morality behind telling people things you know they do not want to hear. Sundberg prefaces the tale of her near-abduction by a serial rapist by explaining that “the well of untold stories” is “full of stories that are either too far-fetched or too shameful to repeat. The problem with these stories is that they’re the stories I want to tell the most.” And tell she does. Sundberg’s voice is revealing and honest—ironic, based on the piece’s title—and when she recalls her fear (“If he gets out of the truck, he will be able to grab me there, and no one will know”), my own pulse quickened.

The present tense makes the piece gripping and immediate, especially for women who have experienced this particular breed of terror. The narrative switches back and forth between tales of other lies, and this subtle tactic draws the reader along without abruptness.

“Illustrated Girl,” a short short by Ethel Rohan, is another example of precise, beautiful storytelling. The title character, who has been instructed to cover her tattoos at work, becomes overheated when her boss is out of the office and takes off her sweater, revealing them to her fascinated coworkers. Rohan transports readers to a dream world, where these “normal” office workers cannot help but fawn over the girl, stroke her skin, even run a “wet tongue over the red, flaming rocket” on her hip. The story’s ending was a surprise, too, because I expected her boss to fall into a trance like his underlings. This is one I’ll go back and read again.

Another favorite is “Self-Portrait in Apologies,” a creative nonfiction story by Sarah Einstein. This piece walks us through the author’s regrets and her reasons for her past actions, but the form is unique and intriguing. Her apologies range from lighthearted—“Apology to the Birds We No Longer Feed / After you ate the sweet inside of the nuts and seeds, the rats gathered for the bitter husks”—to the serious: “An old woman I didn’t know—the grandmother of a friend—reached up toward the sound of my cough and muttered who are you and where am I as I witnessed the spectacle of her death. I’m sorry for intruding on a moment I had no right to attend.” The prose throughout is engaging, and I was sorry to see this piece end.

The art selections, too, are beautiful. Blacklight Kabuki’s (http://blacklight-kabuki.tripod.com) submissions are representations of performance art, made with neon paints and blacklights on skin. These pieces stay true to Fringe’s goal of publishing experimental forms, and the images enhance this issue.

The two interviews (called Features), with Susan Rich and Steve Almond, were pretty standard. They read like interviews that could be found in other magazines on writing or music, on poetry or publishing. I came to Fringe expecting unusual subject matter, and while these interviews were both pleasant and informative, they did not stay true to Fringe’s assertion that it takes “particular pleasure in publishing voices that are not often included in the canon.”

In stark contrast were the “(de)Classified” segments and the “Vintage Fringe” piece. The “Vintage” essay, written by “(de)Classified” editor Heather Falconer, is entitled “Ou-Li-What? What American Writers Might Learn from the French” and is an exploration of experimental writing and how it might survive when many American writers today “can’t help but repeatedly churn out variations on the same old derivative, tired themes.”