Unsaid No. 3
Monday, October 13, 2008 at 05:46PM 
I spent several hours this morning reading various stories in the third issue of Unsaid, a literary magazine which I've heard nothing but great things about for the past six months or so. Without a doubt, this issue lives up to all the hype I've been hearing from friends.
The first story I read was Deb Olin Unferth's "Sickos," which starts off with a great first line ("Remember we wanted to grow up and be prostitutes?"), then proceeds, through small vignettes, to describe how a woman known only as N becomes entangled with an old friend turned sex worker and her friend's strange life:
—The friend tells N about the father of the child. He was in and out of jail all the time, says the friend. She lived in a house by the prison and he’d come and go, in and out, all the time. But then she got the idea he was trying to kill her. One time she was going to get in bed and it looked funny, dark sort of, and she had a feeling, she just knew, so she went to the switchbox and shut off the electricity and then, what do you know, the bed was soaking wet and she turned over the covers and there was a live wire in there. So she could be dead right now. And then another time he attached a bomb to the light switch but right before she turned on the light, she suspected, had that feeling again, and she got someone to come over and disarm it because she knows people who can do that sort of thing, disarm bombs. And then she packed up and moved out, pregnant and broke. Even though she loved him.
—N is impressed that she knew what to do.
—N does not know where the switchbox in her building is. But anyway, she doesn’t believe anyone would try to electrocute her.
The issue is full of good first lines, like in Robert Lopez's "The Middle of Timbuktu," which begins, "I am almost finally asleep when I hear Pity Jimmy say he's gonna whittle me into kindling come morning time," or Kira Henehan's "The Kookaburra's Tale," which starts with the line, "After the secession, well, strange forces came into power. A disposable symmetry was the order of the day." Even better than these first lines are the stories they introduce, many of them strange and terrifying and utterly satisfying.
In a move I would love to see more magazines imitate, Unsaid includes a Peter Markus story, "Our Mother is a Fish," then follows it with a short piece of criticism by Brian Evenson, who breaks down the purpose of repition in Markus' work, analyzing his word choices throughout the story, including the fact that 33 of the 587 words of the story are the word "fish," outstripping even the generally more common word "the." Evenson then compares the Markus story to Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River," making distinctions between the objectivity of Hemingway and the abstractness of Markus by noting that "Hemingway has trout and no fish; Markus has fish and no trout."
The last third of the issue is given to Evenson's own fiction, in the form of novella "Last Days" (which makes up the second part of his upcoming novel of the same name). This novella is dark, brutal, and fascinating, following a detective named Kline as he delves into the depths of a mutilation cult. Here's the opening:
The second time was worse than the first, both because he already knew how it would feel and because of how much thicker an elbow is than a wrist. Still, he managed it, left-handed, despite Borchert's pistol trained at his head. First he carefully tourniqueted the upper arm, and then brought the cleaver down hard, chopping all the way through on the first try, and then he thrust the stump against the burner. The stump sizzled and smoked, his vision starting to go. He shook his head and took two steps toward Borchert, and then collapsed.
After that, it became more complicated. He came conscious to find Borchert beside him, still aiming the pistol, grinning eagerly down.
"And what," Borchert asked, eyes glittering, "shall we cut off next?"
All this, and I haven't even mentioned the poetry. I'm less qualified to comment on it, but there's work here from a number of fine poets, including Lauren McCollum, Brian Kubarycz, and Cooper Esteban, whose "Departing From Wang Wei" is among my favorites from the issue:
If no one else is making the ascent, why
so many voices echoing?
The sun cuts through undergrowth
to find the pupil asleep on black moss.
Much of this issue can be read online, at Unsaid's website. The new issue should be out sometime in the new year, and personally I can't wait. Unsaid's reputation as one of the most exciting new magazines seems well-deserved, and I'm looking forward to see what appears next in its well-designed pages.
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Reader Comments (4)
yes. unsaid is magic. good post.
I keep telling people first lines matter.
David McLendon is doing wonderful things with Unsaid.
Hey blog out why you left New Pages cause I kinda wonder, which means a few people wonder.
No biggie
But lay it out there, friend.
S