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Fence:
Break and Enter in 2008
Sam Ruddick
I
just received the Fall/Winter 2007-08 issue of Fence
in the mail the other day, and it looks like a good one.
But that’s hardly a surprise. I’ve been reading
Fence for a few years now, and it has never let me
down. To my mind, the poetry is outstanding; you can preview
a couple pieces by Joe Wenderoth on the web, at www.fence.fenceportal.org,
or—better yet—just buy the magazine. “Gloria
Evaluates the New Desert,” an aggressive gem by
Heather Christie, was especially entertaining. But I’d
like to confine my discussion here to fiction, because
fiction is sort of my area, and the fiction in Fence is
consistently interesting – consistently alive –
for some very compelling reasons.
It
almost seems tasteless to acknowledge it, but much of
the work we see in literary magazines, if not the vast
majority of it, comes out of creative writing workshops.
The stories are either by teachers, students, or formers
students, and most of the readers (myself included) are
also connected, in one way or another, to creative writing
programs. In a lot of ways, that’s a good thing;
in a culture as commercial as ours, the academic environment
provides a venue for literary work and a lifeline for
literary magazines (Fence itself comes out of
SUNY, at Albany). But still, let’s face it, sometimes
things in workshop land get a little rigid, a little insular,
and a little dull. And Fence breaks the rules.
In
the new issue, for example, Erika Mikkalo’s “Your
2nd Husband” is a stunning success. It was stunning
to me, anyway, because it did almost everything I don’t
want a story to do, and I liked it anyway. For one thing,
it’s in second person. I know some workshops let
that slide, and some very respected writers—Junot
Diaz and Lorrie Moore, to name a couple – have written
from that point of view, but many times workshops frown
on that sort of thing, and I’ll be the first to
admit that I normally don’t like it. At varying
points in time it’s been considered innovative and
edgy or trendy and passé, but most of the time,
my problem is that it’s just annoying: a writer
says, “You look in the mirror, push a stray curl
behind your ear,” and I think, “No, I don’t.”
But Ms. Mikkalo pulls it off beautifully, primarily because
she breaks a bunch of other rules along the way.
It’s
the same principle that applies to breaking the law: if
you want to rob a jewelry store, you have to break and
enter. If you want to sell crack, you better carry a concealed
weapon.
In
order to get away with breaking one law, you’ve
got to break a few.
And Ms. Mikkalo’s story breaks several. First of
all, there is no story. Not in the conventional sense.
An emotional progression takes the place of plot, but
there’s no actual plot – no course of action,
per se – until late in the text. What’s more,
the main character doesn’t seem to be the center
of attention. Not at first. For the most part, the focal
point is the second husband, described in all his shortcomings.
In fact, most of the story is a description of him, so
Mikkalo doesn’t spend page after page telling me
what I do, what I think, and what I feel. That way, I
resist a little less when she does, because she’s
only telling me how I feel in relation to him. He’s
fastidious, for instance, and it drives me crazy. Through
him, we gain an understanding of the protagonist, the
fictional “you,” and through her, we gain
an understanding of ourselves, and our need for one another,
in spite of our flaws.
But
I can imagine the story being presented to a creative
writing workshop, and I can see people – more troubling,
I can see myself – asking, “Where’s
the story?” or “What’s at stake?”
“Shouldn’t this really be the main character’s
story?” And it gives me pause. Not because they
aren’t good questions. They are. And if I’m
not mistaken, Ms. Mikkalo has an MFA. But in “Your
2nd Husband,” she’s gone beyond asking questions
about craft. She’s asking questions about being
human.
Which
is aiming a little higher, to say the least.
Justin
Micah Kramon’s story, “A Final Peace,”
violates conventional workshop wisdom, too, shifting point
of view four times in the first three pages. I’ve
heard that trick discouraged over and over again. I’ve
discouraged it, myself, a dozen times. Admittedly, Mr.
Kramon handles his transitions with uncommon grace, a
level of expertise not generally seen in work by first
semester graduate students, so I want to stress the point:
I’m not trying to say that workshops are bad things,
or that it isn’t a good idea to encourage beginning
writers to master one point of view before they try to
tackle anything as ambitious as four. And I don’t
mean to suggest there’s anything wrong with traditional
narrative, just good story-telling. But as helpful –
and even vital – as workshops may be, I’m
willing to concede that sometimes guidelines start to
sound like rules, and it’s enormously gratifying
to read a magazine like Fence, where the rules
don’t apply; where anything can be done, as long
as it’s done well.
There’s
more, of course. New fiction by Joyelle Mcsweeney, Paul
Maliszewski, Rikki Ducornet, and Hettie Jones, plus the
poetry, and the art, and the often fascinating work listed
in the table of contents as “other.” So check
it out. It's worth the ten bucks.
Sam
Ruddick
is a fiction writer who has had work in Gulf Coast
and Opium, among other fine places.
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