Contemporary Noir on the Net: Part 2

Ascent Aspirations Magazine

Ascent Aspirations Magazine is an independent press and quarterly online literary publication. A print anthology is also distributed semi-annually.

I chose AAM as a companion site to last week's review of Underground Voices Magazine, as both publications emphasize short fiction, poetry, and science fiction that cover the themes of social alienation, political angst, and cultural malaise. Implied is a body of work whose dark diction and bleak narrative offers a stark and gritty examination of social interaction and human emotion not found in the sanitized alternatives now available across the net. In light of the content presented and the audience sought, to what extent have they succeeded in creating an online presence immediately recognizable for its subaltern yet metastasized originality of voice and layout? The results, unfortunately, are mixed.

Unlike UVM, the layout of Ascent Aspirations Magazine is well organized and easy to navigate. The home page conveniently offers an index column listing current and past issues in addition to a set of recommended links that borders the center graphic of AAM's logo. Clicking on the "current issue" hyperlink leads to another intuitively arranged page where AAM displays author names by genre category. To the far right hovers a featured work of visual art, which, for this quarter, is the abstract expressionism of Patricia Carroll, who conveys her pieces with a surprising freshness despite the over saturation of the genre itself.

Although the layout is straightforward, it is quintessentially bland and not at all suggestive of literary audacity; AAM's alternating font colors of light blue, red, and yellow are neither striking nor provocative. Though it is understandable that such an underground outfit may not have the necessary resources to craft a visually sophisticated website, limited financial means has never precluded creativity. Take for example the avant-garde literary and visual movement of Vorticism that took place in London just prior to WWI. Hardly known and struggling within the suffocating vestiges of Victorian hypocrisy, founder Wyndham Lewis still managed to distinguish his underfunded publication of BLAST with its iconoclastic and erratic font size that continues to attract admirers even today. The most typographic creativity AAM displays is an italicized font for headers and the occasional water colored "Ascent" logo that hovers awkwardly in hues of smudged purple and orange. For a magazine that claims to publish the works of subversive authors its layout is in serious need of overhaul.

The content put forth by AAM is fairly typical of most online literary publications, a varied blend of literary and visual amateurs, veterans, and talents in progress. I, for one, welcome such a mixture because few other mediums allow for writers and artists of such contrasting styles and degrees of skill to share and compare their works. One such gem among AAM's short story submissions is Lee Gimenez's "Enzyme." Gimenez imparts narrative through the format of several email exchanges that takes place between two scientists, Samantha Ryker and Leonard Smith:

From: Samantha Ryker
Date: October 11, 2012
To: Leonard Smith
Subject: Enzyme

Leonard,

I have some great news! While working (as always) on the enzyme project, I came up with a new formula. I think this will give us what all of us have been working on for the last five years. Yes, you heard me right. We'll now be able to make ethanol from wood chips. I know it sounds incredible, after all of the dead ends. I can't wait to get in the lab and start working with this.

Regards,

Samantha

This is just one of a series of emails to follow, through which Samantha's scientific break through is subsequently challenged by Leonard. What unfolds is a psychological exploration of scientific single mindedness whose consequences can portend and lead to great disaster. Gimenez's short story executes this format flawlessly. His handling of telling a story through email correspondence is the embodiment of experimental online literary content at its finest.

Of course, there are in AAM plenty of Charles Bukowski imitators and overly maudlin and tired relationship pieces to go around. Asides from Patricia Carroll, I was none too pleased by the crop of visual artists available for the current quarter.

In conclusion, I enjoyed UVM and AAM's selection of entries. It is clearly evident that much effort is given to ensuring the highest quality of submissions. Nevertheless, the primary weakness of both magazines is their less than stellar internet layouts and the near absence of thematic organization. In addition to random entries, why not collaborate with writers around a particular style or theme? Perhaps, and again through collaboration, why not seek to articulate a new philosophy not only in content but also in terms of layout?

Contemporary Noir on the Net: Part 1

Underground Voices Magazine

One of the most important aspects of the Internet is the opportunity afforded to various talents to showcase their unique works outside of the mainstream media.  Though corporations and their marketing adjuncts are now fully vested in the limitless power and reach of the Internet, their efforts, thus far, have not hindered the ability of a certain class of innovative artists to present works particularly edgy, dark, and raw.  Foremost among this list of creative daring is "Underground Voices Magazine," an LA-based print and online literary magazine.  

Gripping the viewer instantly on UVM's home page is a monthly feature of a visual artist who, for the site's May 2009 issue, is Russian born George Grie.  The fact that Grie's work is displayed so prominently, to such an extent as to marginalize even UVM's own introductory header and navigational panes, is a testament to UVM's commitment to the artist.  Grie's digital 3D neo-surrealist rendering, entitled "Mind scape or virtual reality dreamscape," is a captivating collage of provocative and playful imagery full of paradox, alienation, and tension: observe as an 18th century ocean vessel sails through an arched window and out towards an unknown horizon of vaunted mountains.  All this is placed against a foreground of aristocratic furniture, spiraling staircases, and hanging Gothic chandeliers.  

Once the visual impact subsides, however, the two rectangular index windows that edge the sides of Grie's impressive work are neither the most intuitive nor in keeping with the stylistic content of the site's larger body of works featured.  The left-hand side of the page displays the site's genre categories, though to the far right, and completely disassociated from the genre to which each author belongs, hover the names of the month's contributors.  It would be nice if the two were merged.  Furthermore, only after fortuitously scrolling around does it become apparent that under Grie's work are listed the titles of monthly features, but again, no indication of authorship.  Lastly, though the choices of font color (alternately white and red) and the background color (black) allows for easy reading and a fairly streamlined appearance, overall the layout fails to capture the unconventional energy and intriguing titillation that distinguish the works themselves. 

In the category of Fiction, Zachary Amendt's "Marvelous Time Starving," is a respectable attempt at modern noir in its portrayal of a sell-out, booze swilling novelist full of calm sarcasm and self-deprecating, yet uncannily honest, irony.  Zachary's narrative, though in need of some minor editorial shearing, is generally strong and refreshing:  In an example of his brightly colorful literary illustrations, he describes the dive bar "Taqueria Arandas" as "cheap beer and deep leather booths and saucy Canadian fishermen, grizzled and hulking, Baffin Bay and the St. Lawrence Seaway to Loreto and the Sea of Cortez."

UVM's May 2009 poetry submissions are equally varied in style and content, ranging from Michael Shorb's gratuitous political poetry, "Rush Limbaugh Smokes a Cuban Cigar, Alone on the Balcony of his Florida Mansion," to Paul Hellwig's poetry of wry self affirmation, "Confessions of an Amateur Drunk," and most notable, Sinta Jimenez's penetrating, yet measured, poetry depicting the enduring and haunting experience of racial and ethnic discrimination. 

The artists whose works Underground Voices Magazine brings forward are commendable.  To most submissions, UVM adds a complementary image as an extension of the author's content, a nice touch and one whose collaborative potential I am always eager to see tested.  Though UVM's layout lacks the originality reflected in the depth of its content, this literary magazine succeeds in establishing itself as an appropriate forum for those writers, visual artists, and readers interested in publication oriented around material that is fearless in its exploration of the darker shades of the human psyche.