Opium – 2005/2006
Number 1
2005-6
Annual
R.T. Duffer
Opiummagazine.com has taken its “literary humor for the deliriously captivated” into the print world. No.1, with an Eggersly subtitle, “A Whopping Collection of Fanatical Literary Brilliance,” retains the clever wit and sly characterizations of its daddy on-line journal, including estimated reading times.
Opiummagazine.com has taken its “literary humor for the deliriously captivated” into the print world. No.1, with an Eggersly subtitle, “A Whopping Collection of Fanatical Literary Brilliance,” retains the clever wit and sly characterizations of its daddy on-line journal, including estimated reading times. It could best be categorized by a random sampling of the titles: It is What Fiction, I Gave an Apple to my Teacher, Suicide Note, Modern Communication Techniques in Des Moines, New Doritos Flavors with a Limited Future and, of course, You Are Strange. Humor abounds in editor Todd Zuniga’s 250+page journal of stories, drawings, poems and axiomatic page dividers, like the one reminding you to call your mother. In “Fortune,” by David Barringer, a husband and wife discover a ‘misfortune’ in their Chinese cookie, supplant it with their own comic list, then get food poisoning and the awareness that “the planets of our children have eclipsed our love life.” “Insomnia for a Better Tomorrow” by Tao Lin begins with the petty disagreements of a doomed couple, which is funny, until Brian devolves into a hapless, feckless bundle of atoms held together by the muck of depression. There are memoirs that read like science-fiction, angry adolescent recollections that move at a horror movie pace, like “The Four Angries” by David Fromm. “The Night Salesman” by Nick Antosca is received by a drunken misfit who would attack the 2 a.m. salesman if he weren’t so drunk. One of Darby Hudson’s enjoyable drawings, “Tunnel,” explains: “confused man attempts to fuck a tunnel before being hit by an oncoming train.” Zuniga’s interview with novelist Amanda Filipacci demonstrates a dedication and passion for storytelling that pulses throughout the pages of Opium, where humble pathos underlies manic ethos, and non-sequitors get tangled in string theory.
