Sexy, Provocative, Important: A Lit Mag With a History of Avant-Garde

The history of Evergreen Review is an important part of the experience of reading the journal, but could be easily missed if you happened upon the website without knowing anything about it. Click on the ‘History’ link at the top of any page, and what is revealed is impressive and significant, to say the least. It was founded by the legendary Barney Rosset in 1957, and the first issue contained work by Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. The second issue was the first collection of work by the Beat writers, such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder. Rosset had also bought Grove Press in 1951 when he was twenty-eight, and went on to publish the work of numerous writers such as Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Duras and Borges, as well as William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, for which he fought, and won, legal challenges against obscenity.

Those battles continued with the journal. Number thirty-two of Evergreen Review was confiscated by the Nassau County District Attorney because of nude photographs, and Gerald Ford denounced the magazine for lampooning Richard Nixon. Issue number 51 was dedicated to Che Guevara, which irritated a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles enough to make them throw a rocket into the building in 1968.

In 1964 Evergreen Review changed from a paperback to a full-sized glossy magazine with color photographs. In 1973, the last print issue was produced but the journal was revived in 1998 in the online edition by Rosset and his wife Astrid Myers.

Both the press and the journal have been revolutionary in publishing countercultural and avant-garde writings. Barney Rosset and his publishing work changed the literary landscape in America. Having the Supreme Court rule that Grove Press had the right to publish and distribute Tropic of Cancer in the United States was a significant moment for free speech, and for publishing and literature. I was aware of Grove Press, but knew no details. Learning all this in my travels through the history of Evergreen Review and its founder was illuminating.

The website of Evergreen Review is easy to navigate, easy to read, contains graphics, and has archives dating back to 1998 as well as a store from which readers can purchase older issues in e-editions. The issue which I am specifically reviewing is number 127.

It contains a Feature piece about Bangkok noir, six short stories, four non-fiction pieces, eight poems, and five reviews. Most of the content is confidently written and interesting; the short fiction is often sexy, and everything is intelligent, sometimes humorous, occasionally pretentious. All of the contributors have work in other literary journals, and many have books published; only one is currently a Master’s student, but he has an extensive publishing record as well.

‘Navigating the Bangkok Noir’ is a book of paintings and text by Chris Cole, here reviewed in a feature by Christopher G Moore. The author describes Chris Cole as ‘occupying Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s shoes in Bangkok’. The paintings reproduced on the website are made up of lurid colors, fluorescent and primary, with fluid outlines of bodies and faces, teeth and lips and eyes, bold and cartoon-like. Moore writes:

Coles guides us through his images and accompanying short vignettes, to witness a strange ballet of men and women whose emotions are filtered and shaped by cultural misunderstanding, language incompatibility, and moral and ethical mismatches until all that remain are residue of mental projections—one person’s vision and wishes as to what the other person is and wants.

This reviewer praises the artist’s depiction of his subjects, noting his compassion and sympathy, and his ability to ‘reveal bar girls and customers mental processes. The ones they carefully hide behind a smile.’

The most impressive piece in the whole issue, for me, is ‘Calavera’ by Bret Bass, the longest of the short stories. It tells a haunting, strange tale of the living seeking the dead. The author builds suspense skilfully and evenly, making the reader wonder about the main character and his intentions. It is a disturbing, bizarre story, but also emotionally gutting.

‘The Jewess’ by Tom Bonfiglio has a bravura and Updike- or Roth-like quality to it, with confidence spilling over. The sex is well done, the characters alive. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, with its crudity and abjectness, but the last paragraph will make the reader catch a breath.

‘All the Rest Divine’ by Bonny Finberg is an excerpt and so powerful and punchy is it, with a sense of loss, that it makes one impatient for more. The other stories were not so successful, feeling unfinished or too contrived.

The non-fiction pieces are a mixture. There is the straightforwardly told essay ‘The Private Life of a Chinese MIG Pilot’ by Bob Bergin, about Han Decai and his wife Zhu Rongfen. Han Decai was a legendary air force fighter pilot who shot down Hal Fischer, the American Korean war-era ace. Zhu Rongfen is a doctor and air force colonel. They both now are artists, he a painter, she a calligrapher. ‘Stuyvesant Bee’ by Mike Topp, in complete contrast, is a whimsical, satirical set of puzzles, very funny and surprising. ‘Letter One’ by Bettina Jonic is written as if it were poetry, and contains interesting material. She writes of her life ‘with and without Sam Beckett’, contrasting her singing training with the Algerian uprising and right wing terrorism in Paris, then the rampant drug culture in London in the time of R D Laing. Her opinions are strong and I want to read more.

‘Honey Noise and Crackhead Manifesto’ by Sean Kilpatrick is the most challenging work in this issue, written in a style fuelled by angry energy (as all manifestoes should be), and there are specks of gold within, like ‘Tzara pulls words out of a hat and names the modern technique of editing. Joyce bends that process to something hoity, radio phrases from the big museum in his brain.’ The sentences are almost stand-alone, like signposts—‘We are the speech of sutures. We have missiles in our hug’—but there is a theme, of disaffection with society, of anger against apathy. It feels, to me, like a parody of a manifesto by FilippoTommaso Marinetti, the fascist poet who founded the Futurists, who is featured in the piece.

The poetry contains the four-lined ‘My Hair’ by G David Schwartz, which is funny but slight, and Clif Mason’s long poem ‘The Sea Anemone Must Wed Lightning’, beautiful with vivid imagery. Valery Oisteanu writes intense poems on Louise Bourgeois and Peter Orlovsky, while Matt Cook’s poetry is arresting, strange, and disorienting. Arthur Vogelsang’s poems show humor and a keen ability to play with language.

The review section is strong, with two sharp and short reviews followed by three longer considerations by Jim Feast on two books of poetry, a futurist/science fiction publication, and a book on art. His reviews are detailed and thoughtful, full of careful consideration and helpful directness.

My overall impression of Evergreen Review is that it doesn’t stand still, it isn’t afraid to offend, and it isn’t patronizing. Generally this is a journal for the broad-minded, the literary reader with a bent towards experiment. The poetry is free verse and symbolic, full of metaphor, and not representational. It is for those with a sense of adventure in language and intellect, who seek stories outside of the mainstream.


Other journals with an impressive history include Threepenny Review, Fiction, and Greensboro Review.