Our fourth issue is nearly set to debut! Like an anxious dancer it waits in the wings, pulling down its too-short tutu.
Barrring any kind of editorial/personal meltdown, the finest fiction, art, criticism, nonfiction and poetry we could find should arrive on your proverbial doorstep this Monday.

So tighten your suspenders, friends. We can’t wait to hear what you think.

Yours,
The Editors

But after recently checking out Garfield on the web (for no real reason but boredom), I think I may have come up with a reason to appreciate the world of this Monday-hating, lasagna-loving cat and his desperately lonely owner, Jon Arbuckle.

That reason is Garfield.com’s Terms of Service and Conditions of Use page.

Tucked into a corner of the garish mash of color that is Garfield.com’s main page, the link is marked by a cartoon of a smarmy-looking lawyer type, one eyebrow raised. The roll-over text reads “Click for copyright and legal mumbo jumbo.”

But if you do click, what you’ll find seems far from the silly, “square” legalese that such a label seems to suggest. There’s a passage where the user agrees to indemnify Paws, Incorporated. There is a list of vendors unassociated with Paws, Incorporated, including Garfield Visa and Mastercards, Garfield Mobile Content, and something called Typing Tutor. There is a disclaimer that reads “uclick and Paws make no warranty that (i) the Service will meet your requirements; . . . [or that] (iv) the quality of any products, services, information or other material obtained from the Service will meet your expectations.”

Admittedly, this is fairly standard legal language—Garfield.com is surely no more draconian than the average entertainment website when it comes to protecting its brand. But the discrepancy between this sort of thing, as a signifier of a certain status obtained by the Garfield industry, and the humble origins of Jon Davis’s strip about a lazy orange tabby, is striking.

Garfield.com has a “cartoon vault” that contains the first Garfield cartoon. I didn’t remember the character Jon Arbuckle ever being a cartoonist (or Garfield being this grotesque and lumpy), but knowing that this was how the whole thing got started casts a weird light on the complex heights Garfield has reached. My inclination is to believe that Jon Davis started off modestly, was pleasantly surprised by the world’s cheering reception of his strip, and at some point became a kind of prisoner to the success of his creation: “You want to make a third Garfield movie? Well, if you say I’ll make the children cry by saying no, then let’s do it.” In this vision, Davis is the victim of a run-away success, Garfield the comic strip a complicated tangle of personal meanings, emotional resonances, and multiple income streams. Garfield is multivalent, no longer quite under the control of its creator (just as Garfield the cat is not quite under the control of Jon Arbuckle, his owner).

But how likely is this? There have been artists who’ve felt trapped by their creations—see Arthur Conan Doyle, who killed off Sherlock Holmes to work on historical novels, only to bring back the famous sleuth when the public (and publishers) demanded it. I’m thinking too of Ricky Gervais’s second television series, Extras, in which his character, Andy Millman, walks away from a wildly popular, dismally bad (read “hilariously bad”) sitcom he’s no longer proud to be a part of.

But Garfield was never a work of thoughtful art. He’s a lazy cat with a ‘tude. If Davis was happy to sell the licensing rights that inflicted suction cup-pawed Garfield dolls on the world, why suspect he has any regrets about the world of Garfield, Jon, Odie, et al turning into a crass virtual theme park, cross-marketed and multi-branded into unrecognizability?

It’s not a problem the average writer can expect to have, but the notion of one’s creation getting away from an author in this way is weirdly compelling (at least to me). It brings to mind a comic-strip topic on which I could be even more long-winded: in some ways the inverse of Davis and his Garfield Universe is Bill Waterston and his Calvin Pissing on Things Underground. By not licensing Calvin and Hobbes for any sort of merchandise, Waterston unwittingly created those incredibly idiotic decals of Calvin pissing on truck logos, and the use of his and Hobbes’s images on cheap t-shirts for fraternities’ pledge weeks.

Maybe I’m overthinking this but, as silly and bad as I find Garfield to be, looking at his internet headquarters suggests, by way of extreme example, something of the relationship between author and text, and how estranged and distorted such a relationship can become.

In any event, check out the skit on YouTube.

Also, in this moment of pre-Oscar buzz (when the stars are, I’m sure, indulging in applying a last-minute sheen of spray on tan), I predict Daniel Day-Lewis taking the statue for best actor and No Country For Old Men (a line from a Yeats poem, by the way) winning for best picture. Although Michael Clayton is there, lurking, with its fluent, masterful storytelling.

Tina Fey took on the trials and tribulations (and costs and gains) of the writers’ strike in her opening monologue. I wonder if the Oscars will do the same. It seems necessary because pop-culture continues to shift to its new online habitat and away from its old haunts. These are issues that concern us all, as writers, and as watchers of (many) TV shows.

On cultural prejudice against the illegal alien in creative nonfiction: An army of truth tellers has conquered large numbers of the dwindling faithful who still read books. Confession, in print and on TV, is fast becoming the primary public mode in which human interiority speaks and is heard. The self-avowed lies of fiction are no longer in fashion. Subjectivity and imagination, it seems, are slipping the border into the non-fiction columns, where they live as quasi-illegal aliens, poorly housed among the facts, performing thankless but necessary labors.

On the “L”-word: It amazes me that I am old enough now, and perhaps foreign enough, to remember a time and a place when people still used that word without an ironic or apologetic smile….On the art of memory: I learned that to remember is, at least in part, to imagine, and that the act of transposing memory into written words is a creative act that transforms the memory itself. This troubled me at first, because I had only recently obligated myself to a documentarist ethos under the oddly mixed influence of Andre Breton’s diatribes against fiction and my father’s demand, at the beginning of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, that the artist suspend or destroy imagination so as to perceive “the cruel radiance of what is.” But “is” becomes “was” in the blink of an eye, and memories are shadows. To recapture the radiance that had cast those shadows, I had no recourse except to imagine a host of possible and probable details, reluctantly at first and then with increasing confidence and freedom. On liars: Art is generous. The liar steals truth; the artist creates it.

…but overall, Agee can’t quite get past the definitions he seeks to transcend. He just comes off as too… effete? European? American? Too something. The real fun didn’t start for me until Harper’s most recent issue, in which Tom Wolfe, Paul West, Luc Sante, Lee Gutkind, and Lauren Slater all weigh in on the topic.Belle of the ball Tom Wolfe starts things rolling by proclaiming that “A memoir today is like Wikipedia: it is possible that parts of it are actually true.” Of course, this from the man who calls blogs “an advance guard to the rear.” The Yale alum rounds things off by decreeing that “in non-fiction it is essential that the writer never make up a single datum.”Paul West, prolific author of both fiction and memoir, carefully weighs the strengths and less-than-strengths of Agee’s “near-explicit farrago of poetic license.” He concludes that “the balance [between fiction and nonfiction] preserves my sanity, whereas it drives Mr. Agee bonkers.” Bringing another perspective to bear, Luc Sante writes in that he’s fine with blurred genre lines, but decidedly not fine with “non-fiction that has had its rough edges sanded down and been forced into a smoothly rounded mold so that it comes off sounding like a bland magazine story. […] Non-fictional literature, at its best, is porous and irregular and abrasive. It may be a pleasure, but it is not a comfort.”Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative Nonfiction and a professor of creative nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh, responds more directly, saying that “the factual details of memoir are considerably less important than the writer’s intentions in revealing, describing, and re-creating stories.”Gutkind further suggests that it’s the clerks of our careers, the publishers and agents, who are primarily concerned with genre classification–not our reading public. “Are we writing because we want to be considered great literary figures with the ‘L’-word endorsement, or because we want to touch the souls of our readers? Artful, meaningful expression will find its true audience and define itself.” Lauren Slater seems to agree with Gutkind on both counts. She recalls her agent’s discouragement upon hearing her plans for the aptly titled Lying: A metaphorical memoir, and she goes on to explain that “Because, on principal, I never listen to my agent’s advice, I went ahead and inked the book in six months….” However, Slater’s subsequent encounter with critics demanding a quotidian verisimilitude left her vexed: “I wonder if our persistent and perverse discussion about the line between fiction and nonfiction is not itself a kind of lie, a cover-up, a convenient way for us to chit and chat about this and that…. If we find in ten years that we are still having the same tired debate, then maybe it will be time to build a new frame, find a new angle, make our way up, and see from such a space what the world is and who we are in it as a fact, a definite, irrefutable fact, this view, and yet–how odd–based solely on where we are standing.” Upon my fourth or fifth rereading of that sentence, the odd and obvious truth of it struck me. We certainly can’t become the literal (not to say literary) liars who carelessly filch and occlude glory from “the radiance of what is,” but if we can’t take our readers past that lesson and on to more interesting, porous, fertile questions, then perhaps creative nonfiction isn’t where we’re needed.

Prizes are $1,000 for first place, $500 for second and $250 for third. Postmark deadline is December 1.

The best part? No entry fee.

Full details here. Good luck.

It’s not just me. Fellow fiction ed. Ashleigh heroically compiled a long list of literary magazines over the summer, and her listing for Salt Hill was something like “Not sure this still exists.” We just figured it had gone the way of the dodo, so to speak.

Au contraire! Today, via Pitt’s super-useful “dist list,” comes word that Salt Hill not only exists, but is welcoming submissions for its 21st issue. It turns out too that it’s affiliated with Syracuse University.

Here is relevant info from the aforementioned e-mail, followed by an explanation of why I’m not just putting up a link:

“The editors welcome submissions of poetry, prose, translations, reviews, essays, interviews and artwork submitted by April 1. We do not accept electronic submissions.

“. . .

“To submit address your work to the appropriate editor
(poetry, fiction or nonfiction) at:

“Salt Hill
Syracuse University
English Department
Syracuse, NY 13244″

And now here is the web address they provided: SaltHillJournal.com. Click on it. Type it in yourself and see where it goes.

This is the most utterly mysterious literary magazine I have ever heard of.

-Adam

The 1987 adolescents-battling-monsters classic The Monster Squad has just been released on a special 20th Anniversary DVD.

The film mostly lives on in memory for a scene where one of the monster-hunting kids kicks the Wolfman in a most sensitive region; the Wolfman doubles over in pain, and the kid, who’s shocked to see a supernatural being hurt by such a juvenile tactic, says, “Wolfman’s got nards!” My brother and I would use the phrase pretty much all the time; I don’t really think “nards” had any meaning before The Monster Squad, but it sure did afterwards.

Two Pittsburgh tie-ins to the movie and that magical phrase:

One, Pittsburgh’s Unicorn Mountain, a collective of artists, earlier this year published Wolfman’s Got Nards: A Compendium of New American Monsters in collaboration with another Pittsburgh entity, Encyclopedia Destructica.

Two, the writer of the Monster Squad screenplay, Shane Black, is a Pittsburgh native. He’s got quite the resume: Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight are all Shane Black scripts. However, film historians will no doubt remember Black largely on the strength of The Monster Squad.

Okay, perhaps not. But apparently the making-of feature on the anniversary DVD is longer than the film itself, so someone is taking The Monster Squad pretty seriously. (Either that or, as the AV Club review suggests, DVD extras are getting out of control.)

-Adam

The best example? Johnathan Wilber’s “(de)jamais vu,” which gave me fits as I proofed it for the site–it’s a textual minefield full of particular accents, footnotes, punctuational flourishes, and selections from esoteric vocabularies. (My annoyance was nothing, however, as compared to that of Carolyn, who had to format the story for publication.) It was kind of a tough sell at HMB’s editorial meeting, and it’s not surprising: it’s a weird story, and with its fragmentation and the aforementioned excess of style, it can be tough to dive into.

But it remains one of my favorite things in the issue, largely because the weirdness and style feel necessary and embedded in the world of the story, and the fragmentation pays off in the end. But, looking through the site again, I came upon almost a distillation of all the things I like in the story: the separate page that contains “(de)jamais vu”’s footnotes. I could type a while longer trying to recommend the story, but I couldn’t make it seem as interesting as do these twelve short footnotes.

-Adam

Let me throw this out there: I have tried to read this novel, and I have never come close to finishing it. I finished and enjoyed (moderately) The Sportswriter, the prelude to Independence Day featuring the same main character, Frank Bascombe. Certain of Ford’s stories (”Communist,” of course, and the one where the guy hooks a dead deer with his fishing rod) utterly floor me. And yet the book that’s thought to be his masterwork is so utterly tedious and unfulfilling to me that I have ended up not just bored but in that weird place of getting angry at the thing that is boring you so thoroughly; throwing-the-book-across-the-room territory.

Am I a complete philistine? Does my failure to finish Independence Day betray a fatal lack of character? Of literary taste? I am interested in being persuaded to suck it up and stick with Frank Bascombe, but I’m also wondering how alone I am in this opinion.
~Adam

This summer I needed work, and having paid my dues in food service and public education, it was time for a summer gig that would beef up my writing resume. My requirements were few: work from home (to accommodate two vacations and my internship schedule) and that my work be compensated with money (to accommodate the rest of life). I didn’t want to pay $30 to Writer’s Market, and Media Bistro had mostly full-time gigs in New York and L.A. To Craigslist!

“Technical Writer for Commercial Software.” “Pittsburgh Bloggers Wanted.” “Co-Screenwriter Wanted.” ” Need Someone to Write a Few Press Releases.” “Steelers Writer Wanted.” “Breast-man seeks breasts.” Most of the jobs were full time, beyond my expertise, or paid in Google ad revenue or Hong Kong dollars.

But wait, what’s this? Writing 300- to 400-word articles with little research required? An estimated rate of three to four articles per hour at $3 (American) per article with a constant demand for material? Off went my resume and writing samples, compressed to nigh unreadability to fit under Craigslist’s oppressive 150K email attachment limit. Remembering something about chickens and hatching, I applied for a real job involving telephones.

I didn’t want the telephone job. It involved calling members of an environmental conservation organization and asking them for money. I’m bad at asking for money. Makes me queasy. However, I’m equally bad at telling anyone, myself included, that I hate something and won’t do it no matter how many Hong Kong dollars it puts in my pocket.

As I was walking around downtown Pittsburgh, getting lost looking for the telephone job’s interview, my cell phone buzzed. I almost ignored it, frustrated as I was with matters pedestrian. I’m very bad at ignoring phone calls, or perhaps very good at taking them.

It was the short article guy. He was impressed with my resume and would offer me $4 per article because I was a grad student. I abandoned the Liberty Avenue Tunnel of Death, sat on a park bench next to the train station, and felt relieved. Maybe it was hot for mid-spring, and maybe I was lost, but soon I’d be an employed man. I could hear the penny plink with each word. Just one small matter remained.

“What kind of writing is this?” I asked. The guy told me that his local company searched the internet for products and services sold online. The company sent their cadre of crack writers lists of these products. The writers found advertisements for these products, sometimes press releases. The writers then wrote a short review of each, turned it in, made bank.

Each review should end with a little summary, he told me. “For example, if it were a weight loss product, you might say, ‘This product will help you lose weight even if you don’t want to spend hours each week in the gym.’” Online…weight loss…amazing results…. Something about that example didn’t sit well. So I stood, then paced. A car honked on Liberty Avenue.

“I see. What if the product is a complete joke? Am I free to say that?”

“Well.” He paused, but only for a moment. “Every review needs to be positive.”

“I see.”

“But there’s no byline for these articles. Your name is never attached to them, so you don’t need to worry about your journalistic integrity.” I imagined him leaning back in a ratty dining-room chair in his home office with holes in the drywall, putting finger quotes around those last two words.

I’m bad at telling someone no. To help me decide, he offered to send me a sample review, and I agreed. It’s been a month. He knew.

I’m bad at reading maps, so I never made it to the telephone job interview and declined their offer to reschedule. I discovered that downtown Pittsburgh is a very nice to wander.

Back to Craigslist, only wiser. “Essay Writers Wanted.” After years of paying institutions of higher learning to read my essays, could the world really turn on its heels like this? Could it be true? “Variety of topics. Develop your own area of expertise. Higher pay for fast turnaround.” I was intrigued, but like our president said, “Fool me twice…you can’t get fooled again.” The hyperlink led me to a sharp, blue website. It mentioned essays, quality writers, areas of expertise, fast turnaround, clients.

With a click I descended into “For Writers.” One circle down: Our clients require fast, professional essays on many topics. Deeper still, and here it got uncomfortably warm: Topics range from literature to history to business to science. One level deeper, I swore I heard a raspy growl: Our clients are busy students, business professionals, and many others. Once you turn in your initial application, we’ll tell you more about their needs and how you can join us! Jooooiiiiin ussssss!

When I escaped back up into Craigslist, I could still smell the sulfur.

I wonder if job ads have always followed the inverse proportion of specific information about the work to sleaze. Did Gutenberg presses crank out handbills saying, “Many poundf for mere triflef of assiftance. No apprenticfhip required!”

Since then, Craigslist got me hired to write business franchise manuals. I won’t bother to explain, but the ad gave lots of details and the contact name of a real person. Pay was great. The work wasn’t too demanding and could be done from anywhere. A few hours’ worth of training writing were well received. My boss told me about a 22-manual project coming down the pike.

I mentioned it to the Hot Metal Bridge fiction editor. He named the woman who hired me and said, “Yeah, I took that same job last summer. Never heard back from her.” It’s been a month for me, and she keeps promising me that big, juicy, 22-manual project. I guess that leaves me with just one question.

“Would you like fries with that?”