Current Issue 5

Cover story on LISA CARVER:

“Do other people have reliable memories? How would we know? We make constantly shifting stories out of what we imagine is happening, what we imagine other people are thinking, what we imagine we are thinking. And what we imagine we are remembering. I’ve written about my father making me watch him kill my kittens in three books (so far!), once every ten years, and I mean it did happen that my father cut their heads off with a shovel, but what it means has totally changed, ergo what happened totally changed. It’s like Rashomon but I’m all the characters and I’m not lying, things really are different all the time. It’s dizzying and liberating to realize we can never “get it right” (reality, I mean), because there is no “it” to get, so may as well stop trying.”

DAVID FITZGERALD interviews DAVID LEO RICE:

“I think it’s this very undead, zombified age. Over the past 200 years, since the enlightenment and the industrial and scientific revolutions, there was this promise that we could dismantle religion, or we could marginalize it and mock it and shame it, all in the expectation that we would achieve scientific breakthroughs on a level that would make us not need it. We could stop believing in life after death, because we could conquer death, right? Or we could stop believing in the soul because we would come to actually understand consciousness, and really know who we are and why we are the way we are. And yet now, I think we’ve reached a point where it’s pretty clear that that’s not happening. Maybe it’ll happen hundreds of years from now, but it doesn’t feel imminent. It feels like we’re in this point of now having to accept that we’ve killed God prematurely.”

CHARLENE ELSBY reports from VOID CON:

“VoidCon 3 was a fucking good time. Imagine a horror convention where nobody sucks, nobody is there just to wheedle their way into a publication or make everyone else their fan. The VoidCon vibe has refined itself over the past three years such that anyone who sucks doesn’t show up. (The ongoing joke is that there are no Cthulhu plushies at VoidCon, which gained a whole new level this year with a last-minute request to vend from Cthulhu cookbook guy, politely declined.)”

JAMES NULICK stalks his favorite author FRANCISCO TENASCA:

“My mother sleeps in Violet’s mobile, on the sofa. I sleep in Mr. Tenesaca’s much smaller mobile home, on the couch. Mr. Tenesaca, drunk, asks if I brought my botas. I don’t have a pair of boots, only my sneakers. Sorry. Then I guess you’ll be riding a horse in your sneakers. You ever been on a horse? Yes, when I was a kid. Mr. Tenesaca laughs. You’re still a kid. Emboldened by multitudinous tequila shots, I toe off my shoes, unbutton my shirt, pull it over my head, and drop my pants to the floor, kickboxing my way out of them. Can I crash on your couch? Sure, let me get you a blanket. Nah, I don’t need one. Mr. Tenesaca, laughing. What’s so funny? You’re just like me when I was young, puffed up and stupid. Angry with his quick assessment, I ask Why didn’t you ever write another book? Because I had nothing else to say. Good night, mijo.” 

JARDINE LIBAIRE on Young Thug, autofiction, drill rap, Blake Butler, and the Market Value of Truth:

“He pointed me to the Judge’s statement in 2023 regarding the Young Thug case, in Newsweek, May 2024: ‘Days before Williams’ [Young Thug]’s trial began in November 2023, Judge Ural Glanville ruled that lyrics from [YT’s] 17 tracks could be used against the hip-hop star and his YSL co-defendants during the trial. Countering the defense’s argument that the lyrics were protected by the First Amendment, Glanville said: “They’re not prosecuting your clients because of the songs they wrote. They’re using the songs to prove other things your clients may have been involved in. I don’t think it’s an attack on free speech.” 

So…they’re not prosecuting the defendant because of the songs, but they’re using the songs to prosecute the defendant. Interesting.” 

PLUS

GRANT MAIERHOFER on Writing and Depression, VALERIE STIVERS shares her recipe for Kafka Pretzels, GIANLUCA CAMERON crashes Mailbox Baseball.

Reviews of Bodycount, Alice or The Wild Girl, Being Towards Death, The Butcher of Nazareth, Cropper’s Cabin, DOE, Doom is the House Without a Door, The Ecstasy of Influence, Eradicator, Female Loneliness Epidemic, Moth Girl, More Hell, My Struggle On High at Red Tide, Possession: Dreams of Suffering and Insanity, Release the Horse, Ripcord, Scenebux, Squimbop Condition, Twentynine Palms, Yeezus in Furs, You Know It’s Black, and more.