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.