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 audience, the first issue of a hot new literary mag about to make its way onto your streets, is just that. Attractive to look at, and pleasurable to read, this balanced glossy contains seven relatively short stories, four poems, a play and an interview. The styles are varied, as are the messages contained in the work, and the honest presentation is thought provoking, occasionally political, mostly deep, and always fun.
Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
audience
World Audience, Inc
Issue 1, June 2006
Edited by: M. Stefan Strozier, Hareendran Kallinkeel, Raymond Hammond, Calvery Lee Stringer
Does the world really need another literary magazine? Is your home littered with them? Your local bookstore? Mine certainly isn’t, and I’ve got a literary home with more books than shelves, and a huge Borders nearby without a single literary magazine on its shelves. At a quick glance, I counted something like 300 different literary magazines in Australia, and I’m sure there are more – mostly funded by the government, and many containing superb work by some fairly well known authors. Worldwide there are thousands of expertly produced, beautifully edited and well written literary journals, so there are plenty of magazines out there, and even more writers. The one thing missing is readers (and purchasers of course). But other magazines like Cleo, Vogue or Australasian Dirtbike, to name just a few, have plenty of readers, and are indeed sitting on the shelves of Borders. So there are readers. And literary readers are buying Booker prize winning novels in the droves. So where are those literary magazine readers? Perhaps what the world needs more of is literary magazine promoters: someone to let readers know just how good literary magazines can be. At their best, literary magazines make damn fine reading.
audience, the first issue of a hot new literary mag about to make its way onto your streets, is just that. Attractive to look at, and pleasurable to read, this balanced glossy contains seven short stories, four poems, a play and an interview. The styles are varied, as are the messages contained in the work, and the honest presentation is thought provoking, occasionally political, mostly deep, and always fun. Future issues promise to have even more variety, and hopefully will make use of the medium to present artwork as well. One of the things which sets audience apart is its borderless (not as in Borders, but as in frontiers) approach. The magazine is resolutely international with writers from around the world bringing their very different visions together. This first issue contains writers from India, France (via Iran), and various locations around the US and even contains a poem which isn't in English. The first two stories are by Indian writer Hareendran Kallinkeel. These stories are a lighthearted combination of humour, good characterization, and the rich sensual settings which evoke the smell and visual overload of India. Both stories end with the shock of humour, evoked by taking social mores to task:
Mammucka's murmur rang in his ears, "The green chili should do the
trick. Break it into two. Squeeze the tips with your fingers. Stuff the chili
up its anus. It should move like it's on fire. The red chili is just an extra
precaution, in case the green one doesn't work. But that won't be the case;
the green one should spice things up fast enough."(20)
Graham Hayward’s two stories provide excellent contrast, luring the reader with easy prose and then providing a hard twist to shock the domestic sensibility. His first story is the simple tragedy of a childhood overachiever’s later decline, and the second on the demise of a serial killer. In both instances, the stories read very quickly, and play the surreal nightmares off the mundanity of the situations preceding them:
They hung on to what she had to say, she walked the walk and
they all knew it. She presided over meetings about whose basement would
host the next sleepover, or, who would be chosen to ring the Funkwaller’s
doorbell for the one-thousandth time. In the fall she’d rake the leaves from
the browning grass, keeping her practice area clear. My father would
watch her from the living room on the weekends, cocktail in hand,
marveling at the work ethic his daughter possessed. (30)
Other stories in the collection include Edward Musto’s clever “Another Metropolis,” in which dinner party conversation constructs an elaborately played out series of scenerios that belie the supposed rationality of the speakers. There is something of Becket in these scenes, including the slight sense of claustrophobia they evoke. It would be relatively mundane if it weren't so utterly black under the light surface. M Stefen Strozier’s “The Man and His Wife” is a funny and slightly absurd tale of marital un-bliss with a Kafka like twist, while “Taming an Old Friend” creates a metaphoric dialogue between a man and his demons which ends in the knife edge twist which audience seems to favour.
The poetry is similarly varied, entertaining and thought-provoking, mapping mismatched relationships, alternative perspectives, and even provide a French language perspective on exile:
Et moi,
Mes mains ont, à regret,
Enterré le plus fort d'entre eux
Dans ce pays
Au jardin de mes souvenirs (77)
(French poetry is hard to translate--and I'm particularly bad at it--but with apologies to the author, this is my best attempt to convey the gist: “My hands have buried the worst of my regrets in this country; in the garden of my memories.”) This poem works like a Haiku to convey the richness of emotion with simple, brief images, and linguistically, it is basic enough for a reader with only a little French.
M. Stefan Strozier’s play “Guns, Shackles & Winter Coats” is a painful look at post-traumatic stress disorder from the perspective of a Gulf War veteran. As a complete play which has undergone many revisions and the ultimate revision of being performed, it works well when read in conjunction with Strozier's piece on writing plays that follows. It is an enjoyable reading experience to compare the stated difficulty of obtaining: “balance of rhythm, emotion, intensity, humor, and contrast” with the fully revised finished piece. The play itself is disturbing and insightful, taking the reader to the edge along with its protagonist.
The magazine ends with an interesting and in-depth interview with Calvery "Lee" Stringer, who shares his thoughts on a broad range of topics from his own writing style, to the politics of homelessness (something Stringer has a unique perspective on), to his own writing style.
Although the first issue is perhaps a little insular, the authors interviewing one another, and editing one another’s work, the overall quality and breadth of both style and substance are promising and provide plenty of good reading. audience is a literary journal which speaks to the modern reader, never straying from the goal of thoughtful amusement. For reading in small snatches of time, and for pondering between readings, this is a literary magazine which has much to add to the genre of the literary journal. A revival of the form is bound to be imminent, as it is perfect for the modern attention span, and provides high quality, varied work able to be enjoyed in tiny bites.
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