New Lit Mag is Home for Offbeat & Alternative Literature
On the plus side, there is a lot of material in the inaugural issue of The Matador Review, an online magazine that bills itself as “an alternative art and literature review.” There are three interviews and several works each of fiction, non-fiction, visual art, flash fiction, and poetry. On the minus side, although most everything would indeed fit just about anyone’s definition of “alternative,” much of the work is of uneven quality, in some cases appearing to disdain not just conventional literary precepts but discipline and craft as well.
Two of the interviews feature individuals for whom writing has at times been a greater or lesser component of their lives, but who are primarily directed towards other pursuits at present. Are their personal histories of interest? Somewhat. Are they of interest to me as a writer? Not so much. While these individuals have certainly been living unusual lives, and while it can be argued that each of us has more than one identity—we all contain multitudes, after all—the focus of these two pieces is more on those unusual identities than on the relevance of those identities to the writing life.
Only in an interview with Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, does the topic of writing really come to the fore. At various points in the interview, Handler proves to be funny, self-deprecating, grateful to those who have helped him along the way, and cognizant of the difficulties facing writers who have not found the level of success he’s had. He speaks wisely about what is and is not censorship, and both there and elsewhere makes pointed, precise distinctions: “[W]hen the young heroes of my books find themselves feeling lost and helpless in a chaotic world they are powerless to understand, the author is not engaging in empathy. He is engaging in identification.” Handler’s intellect, paired with his sort of bemused, humble generosity add up to something both affirming and inspiring.
Most of the fiction and flash fiction seemed overly conceptual, or concept-driven. For example, in one story—told by a house—a rabbit becomes a human. In another, roosters inexplicably start wearing hosiery. In another, a self-professed cult leader seeks new cults to lead. Though such stories may pique one’s curiosity, one then wonders where on earth the story can possibly go. As story after story spins off entropically, one envisions these writers struggling, going deep within, trying to come up with some idea worth developing, finally determining to write whatever next pops into their heads, idea development be damned. The initial odd germ of an idea never gets worked back into a coherent, relatable world, leading to writing which is slack, insufficiently rewritten, solipsistic.
Out of this miasma, however, arose K.V. Peck’s unsettling story, “Spring.” Jimmy Reilly, back from serving in Vietnam, is unmistakably suffering from what we would now call PTSD. His dreams, memories, and waking life dissolve into one another. At his home in the Bronx, his parents are hardly more real than the phantoms in his head. When his mother speaks to him, he “smiled at her and slipped out.” His awareness of his father consists of “a familiar cough through his closed door.” Beneath his clothes, Jimmy still “sensed the fabric of his uniform on his arms, the sensation of jungle boots on his feet, clammy and part of him, a tactile memory.” He says of his experience: “Never goes away. It burns on my brain. A fucking memory tattoo.” Throughout, Peck illuminates Jimmy’s torments, the random blending of the vivid and the unreal, horror merging with the desire for release, until at the end, like Jimmy, the reader doesn’t know which end is up.
While none of the non-fiction entries are particularly unconventional, William Hoffacker’s “Upon Playing Plants vs. Zombies in an Election Year” is the most essayistic, the least dryly reportorial. Hoffacker engagingly ruminates on just what it would take for him to get involved, as the world goes to pieces around him.
And in poems of note, in “Now That I Only Drink Water,” D.G. Geis finds humor in hypocrisy, as when the Dalai Lama "blesses the union of Richard Gere and his third wife,” who "share a common love/of altruism, meditation, and good wine.”
In “Baltimore 1985,” Jane Rosenberg LaForge laments with a critical eye instances of not being on time or in touch, being out of step by a lot or a little with whatever was going on, such as when “we listened to the glam rock/we missed out on ten years earlier…” or when “no one/would teach me how to read the results/printed on the back of the dying newspaper.”
For LaForge, the misses just keep on coming: “I’d found the solution, and/pronounced it a miracle, only to find out/I was again late to the party…”
The website is easy to navigate and its striking blood-red heading and colorful artwork seem apt for a magazine looking for an alternative feel. Its ghostly gray text on black background, however, while also fitting, can be wearying to the eye. There were a couple of relatively minor but still annoying editing miscues, for example, the city of Dharamsala appears as “Dharmasala.” Matador Review has its moments and its mission is admirable. My overriding sense, though, was of writers trying to express inchoate feelings, but not quite being able to. If your tolerance for offbeat writing with sometimes wavering focus is greater than mine, you may appreciate this first stab from The Matador Review more than I did. The potential is there, but for now, that potential has not fully translated to accomplishment.
