New Genre – Summer 2009
Issue 6
Summer 2009
Annual
Trelaine Ito
At first glance, the content of New Genre looks just as its title asserts: a super modern magazine fitted out with cutting edge writing and concerns. This impression is accurate. Take “A Sing Economy” by Adam Golaski, for example. Golaski attempts to explain the plight of the poet in a money-based society. Golaski disagrees with the attitude that such writers, those of short stories included, are to blame for their pitiful financial situation. It is in fact marketable print that lowers the overall intelligence of the population – or specifically the population’s ability to actually recognize thought-provoking writing – and the responsibility for that sorry state of affairs rests with publishers not writers. Golaski says: “Blame the publishers, then blame the editors, then blame the writers, and not the other way around.”
At first glance, the content of New Genre looks just as its title asserts: a super modern magazine fitted out with cutting edge writing and concerns. This impression is accurate. Take “A Sing Economy” by Adam Golaski, for example. Golaski attempts to explain the plight of the poet in a money-based society. Golaski disagrees with the attitude that such writers, those of short stories included, are to blame for their pitiful financial situation. It is in fact marketable print that lowers the overall intelligence of the population – or specifically the population’s ability to actually recognize thought-provoking writing – and the responsibility for that sorry state of affairs rests with publishers not writers. Golaski says: “Blame the publishers, then blame the editors, then blame the writers, and not the other way around.”
New Genre is filled with short stories that run the gamut in exploring contemporary angst. Michael Filimowicz’s “Jack and the Satellite Jockey” depicts a futuristic world of space in constant repair with characters as avant-garde as the scenery. Eric Schaller’s fired low-wage worker discovers a new path in “The Sparrow Mumbler” and finds that life is what one makes of it. Matthew Pendleton’s “I Am Antenna / Antennae” blunts the flow of the narrative with multiple breaks and diary entries. Most striking is a Stephan Graham Jones’s brilliantly twisted story of a medicine man roaming the Wild West, deviously scamming seemingly innocent townspeople with remedies that create a death and a second death. This tale, entitled “Lonegan’s Luck,” is set in a time of horses and saloons and centers around Lonegan’s scheme: creating deadly zombie-like symptoms in people, then looting his mindless victims. Lonegan himself suffers the same fate when he encounters a rogue cake baker and her last work.
New Genre’s writers explore modern themes in contemporary, futuristic, and historical settings. The stories delve into ideas like motivation and a quality life versus mere existence; contemporary thinkers would thoroughly enjoy the combination of the dark, the intriguing and the uplifting. New Genre does suffer from some over-the-top prose at times, but its innovative thought, and by extension writing, is extremely praise worthy. In this case, it is praise the writer, then praise the editor, then praise the publisher.
[www.new-genre.com]