Win McCormack

Yeah, yeah, I know, this is a quarterly literary magazine, but as this is the last issue—after twenty years of featuring some of the finest examples of the written word—I feel that it deserves a look and a review. Issue volume 20, number 4, spans over 400 pages and includes an impressive array of fiction, essay, other nonfiction, and some grand poetry. There are goodbyes from both the editor in chief/publisher, Win McCormack, and the editor Rob Spillman, that set the stage for a magazine show more that I just can’t believe is gone from the literary landscape. There is even an apt quote from Bob Dylan.

But the time ain’t tall
Yet on time you depend and no word
is possessed
By no special friend
A though the line is cut
It ain’t quite the end
I’ll just bid farewell till we meet again.

I ordered this back issue online (even got a T-shirt) and once I started flipping through the table of contents, it was truly impressive. Favorite writers of all stripes were everywhere. My favorite poet, James Tate—a current fixation of mine—was even well represented. Just some of the more than sixty writers that shined between these covers were: Karen Russell, Elizabeth McKenzie, Aimee Bender, Anthony Doerr, Sharon Olds, Nick Flynn, Colin Whitehead, Brenda Hillman, and Fran Tirado. However, if you happen to find a copy of this issue, please ignore my list, and take every writer for a spin, as it was nearly impossible to be disappointed in this collection.
I never read every issue of the magazine, but I was always glad when I did pick one up. Literary magazines are great places to find new favorite writers, as well as to visit an old friend. Certainly, there are many other fine literary magazines left, but there is now a large hole in the world of magazines. The name Tin House continues on as a publisher of some fine books, but you will no longer be able to first read a writer’s work in the magazine or on their website.
This is a great collection to keep on a shelf, to always have ready to be taken down at any moment, flipped through, and to impress you. show less

After several years, I re-subscribed to Tin House. I thought it would inspire me to be more diligent in my reading, but I’m afraid it may make me fall farther behind, which is why I unsubscribed the first time. It just makes me feel better about myself to subscribe to a great literary magazine. Sometimes you just need those false and worldly self-esteem boosters. Anyway, here we go. The Winter issue is subtitled “Strong Coffee and a Good Read.” Most issues have a theme, but I think I show more am correct in saying this issue is theme-less. If I have missed it, please let me know.

The issue kicks off with “iff,” a short story by Antonya Nelson. She is considered a “master” of the form, but I’m not seeing it in this example. I found the narrator extremely annoying, and by the end of the story I thought, “No wonder your husband left you, your kid’s whipped by his girlfriend, and your mother-in-law is suicidal.” Moving on.

Michael Dickman’s poem “False Start” is one of my favorite pieces in this issue. Each of the five segments begin with the line, “At the end of one of the billion light years of loneliness…” With an opening line like that, the poem has to be great. The speaker addresses his mother, father, and brother. It begins with his mother in the kitchen feeding flies from her fingertips, but the imagery shifts to the ocean and restoration. I’m not sure what it all means, but I like it.

Karen Shepard’s “There Be Monsters” is a subtle dismantling of an wife and mother. She begins by telling us that when Natalie and her husband were dating, they joked about “deal breakers” in a marriage.

" Now Natalie thinks of the things that deserved to be deal breakers but that you let slip while you waited for further evidence, extenuating circumstances, explanations worthy of forgiveness. Things that now, twenty years down the road, are off-limits, unfair game. You took them off the table yourself. They sequestered themselves in their own little room, emerging for purposes of mockery and torment."

Natalie wishes her husband would do something unforgivable, something to let her out of her marriage. I felt for her at first, but as the story progresses, Shepard reveals that Natalie is not as together as she imagines. Towards the end, I didn’t like Natalie very much, but I got the feeling Natalie didn’t like Natalie very much. There is a moment of light at the end, but it’s hard to say if it is enough for the family.

Ben Marcus’ “The Moors” is the centerpiece of this issue. Editor Rob Spillman describes it this way”

Ben Marcus, who, in true literary-convention-spanking style presents us with “The Moors,” in which he blatantly ignores Fiction Rule Number 12: It is impossible to write a thirty-seven page story about a hapless man tied in knots over what to say to a colleague as they arrive at the coffee station at the same time.

That doesn’t quite do this story justice. It will make you laugh. It will make you want to beat the ever-living snot out of the narrator. It will make you question your own sanity by the time you finish it. The Moors is the break room in the labs where the narrator, Thomas, works. He describes it this way:

" The Moors may just as well have had a genital-removal station you visited on your way out, water-fountain height, retractable into the wall. Tilt in your hips and come back clean. And the egghead architects laughing and pointing, maybe even rubbing themselves into states of ecstasy… It was a pornographic pleasure, no doubt, to watch people killed in buildings, killed slowly, brought just near death and held in suspension simply by precalculated dimensions, by room design."

You see, in real time the events of the story would probably take five minutes at the most, but Thomas goes on for thirty-seven pages thinking of these things in his head, while the attractive co-worker in front of him pours her coffee. To give you a clue as to Thomas’ mental state, he describes his co-worker breathing as “A soft wall wall swollen with something almost unbearably luscious underneath. Was that an okay thought to have? Hello soft wall, he wanted to say. I love you.”

There is much more sweet goodness in this issue, but I feel I have already overstayed my welcome. I will leave you with Ana Menendez’s excellent essay about traveling through Afghanistan in the late 1990s- “From Kandahar to Herat.” Menendez witnesses boy soldiers patrolling the streets with whips and a Friday execution. Her epiphany comes when she is traveling through Dasht- e- Margow, “The Desert of Death.” They are caught on the road after dark because of car trouble. Bandits are a serious fear. She writes, “As the sun began to set and the desert went on and on, panic started to set in. What if the drivers were in league with the bandits? How would we respond to a roadblock? To a rape?”

And then, of course, they encounter a roadblock. As they approach, their fear turns to joy. “The translator cheered: ‘It’s Taliban!’” They CHEERED because it was Taliban. They were safe. Menendex concludes,

" …The image lingers more than a decade later. “Taliban!” With what joy we said it. And with that flood of relief, I remember, also came a terrible wisdom. In the years since, I’ve learned not to rush to understanding. That life’s brutality can be unfathomable. And that freedom is a pleasing abstraction until some horror finds you vulnerable and alone. Then, you gladly trade your visions of hell for a truck full of boy soldiers who once filled you only with a pure and uncomplicated fear."

Yep. I’m glad I re-subscribed. show less

I confess I did not read through this entire volume. I will echo what many others have offered: the selection here is very inconsistent. I somewhat enjoyed to loved: Jane Avrich, Aimee Bender (always), Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Mary Caponegro, Julia Elliott, Samantha Hunt, Miranda July, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, Alissa Nutting, Paisley Rekdal, Stacey Richter, Gina Zucker, and the Rick Moody essay on Angela Carter. The rest I found kinda boring or too muddled and glossed over. Still, this was a show more good read for being holed up with shin splints, and I've got a few more authors to add to the future readings list. show less

Aside from the cover, this was a lot less steamy than I'd anticipated. All the same, it's a decent collection on a theme--sex as love, as romance, as power, as coping mechanism, as social anthropology.

This is a collection of stories and essays, but no distinction is made for which is which. I suppose it doesn't matter much--good writing is good writing--but fiction and essay are evaluated differently in my mind; distance between reader and author is blurred. The anthology is arranged show more alphabetically by author, which makes some transitions a little rough but is a pretty standard method of organization, even if it's not my preference. As with any collection, quality varies from author to author; there are some stand-out pieces and some forgettable ones, and plenty that fall somewhere in between. (The essay on the furrie convention was particularly interesting, even if the author did have a definite "aren't these people kind of weird?" vibe coming through her writing.)

I'm waffling between keeping this four stars and acknowledging that it's probably more like 3.5, so I'll call it three-and-three-quarters and be done with it.

One last point: as far as I can tell, Steve Almond is nowhere in this collection, but he's tied to it on Amazon and therefore here on GoodReads. show less