The Newsletter of
The Council for the Literature of the Fantastic
Volume 1, Number 4 (1997)
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Fiction edited by Mark Jay Mirsky

Volume 12 Numbers 2 & 3, Copyright 1994,
Department of English, The City College of New York, N.Y. 10031, $10.95, 311 pages.

Reviewed by Kathleen Moffitt, katraemof@aol.com
Copyright © 1996 Kathleen Moffitt

Because I had recently received a rejection slip from FICTION for one of my stories, I was all the more interested in reviewing this literary journal from the City College of New York. At the very least, I would be following the mantra chanted by most editors to aspiring writers who wish to submit: READ THE MAGAZINE.

FICTION, edited by Mark Jay Mirsky, is not your typical little college mag. In all senses of the word, my review issue--Volume 12--is HUGE. Not only is it packed with about 300 pages of tales, the selections represent a veritable International House, offering narratives from places as diverse as South Dakota, Norway, and Haiti.

In addition, this volume contains well-stylized plots based on esoteric and sometimes creepy concepts. Such brand-name writers as Donald Barthelme, Ann Beattie, and Joyce Carol Oates have contributed through the years to this enterprise.

In this particular issue, Robert Musil, a renowned Austrian author writing at the turn of the century, opens things up with "Diaries"--a journal containing brainstorms about his life and his writing theory. He offers this good writerly advice:

"Creating tension...means making the listener anticipate what is coming. Making him think along with us, allowing him to go on his own down the way we point out for him. A certain cozy feeling of being there with us. The comic novel lives off this feeling. One points toward a situation that is about to arise and the thought emerges: what will good old X do now then?"(21)

All of the selections in FICTION do create tension and keep the pages turning. There's often a cozy and frightening thereness inherent in the tales. Furthermore, some of the sporadic themes in Musil's "Dairies" are amplified in the subsequent pages ofFICTION. For instance, the issue of mother as lover discussed by Musil reappears in an imaginative way in Mark Jay Mirsky's "A Mother's Ghost".

Musil, particularly in an excerpt from THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, reminds me of D.H. Lawrence in his detailed depictions of sensual experiences. A modern equivalent of this lush writing style has its echo again in this volume with Rene Depestre's "Rosena on the Mountain." This intriguing narrative successfully revolves around an unusual triangle: an Irish missionary, a Haitian seminarian, and their seductive housekeeper Rosena. This plot deals with the clash of two cultures; Catholicism extols the soul, while voodoo valorizes the body. There is a constant insinuation of black and white imagery as, for example, the Irish priest is trying to turn the visceral seminarian and Rosena into nurses (who signify whiteness) tending to dying bodies. The secularization of sacraments, such as baptism and matrimony, makes this read an English professor's dream--or a horror reader's nightmare.

In fact, many of the stories dabble in the macabre. Some of the terror arises from within a fantastic framework, as in "The Man Who Committed Suicide," by Morton Marcus--a terse and and ingenious tale about the afterlife a character experiences upon taking a bottle of sleeping pills. Most of the stories, however, create a feeling of horror by dealing very heavily in reality.

"Happy Times, Brittle World," by Robert Menasse, is fueled by a son's raw hatred of his mother. This story traces the narrator's reactions to the news that his mother is dying in a Vienna hospital, to his response to her death and cremation, and ultimately to his handling of her urn full of ashes.

"What I Saw," by Ellen Cooney, similarly takes a graphic look at reality. I'm not going to tell you what the narrator saw--but it was all the more atrocious as the images appeared on a larger-than-life drive-in movie screen.

"Winter Whites," by Earl M. Coleman, creates that cozy feeling between writer and reader as he transports us to a crowded household in 1928 where a family depends on a showy and quixotic father who is perennially trying to hit it big. This time, the father is introducing a clothing line of Winter Whites to the Miami retail market. The colloquial dialogue is superb as evidenced in this exchange between the father and his friend Lou.

"...Orders rolling in. Every beachfront store I stocked. All of them. Next year I open up my own." With awe. "Your own? A store? Miami on the beach?" "Why not? Someone orders me I have to live here in the snow?" Beneath the naked bulb his tiny eyes rejected the presumptions of anyone's commands. (159)

Ultimately, the tragic element of the story--the family's persistent economic failure--is underscored by a disturbing game of penny ante.

Likewise, that cozy feeling is evoked in "Crow Dance," by Joseph Monninger. This saga involves a Native-American family who must see their father, an out-of-shape school teacher, through his Sun Dance--a prolonged dance marathon involving a shocking piercing and a quest for visions.

In effect, FICTION is a coherent effort that will surprise you with its cleverness and, at times, stun you with its compelling, stick-to-you conclusions. So as they say in the biz: READ THE MAGAZINE!