SSM 2011: Why I Love LOS ANGELES REVIEW 9 (by Stefanie Freele, Fiction Editor)

When I heard the news that our Spring 2011 issue might be dedicated to Bruce Holland Rogers, I couldn't have been more overjoyed: this is the teacher who turned me on to the odd and often hilarious poetry of Russell Edson, introduced me to the otherworldly and unforgettable stories of Ray Vukcevich, exposed me to more of the never-waste-a-word short-shorts of Lydia Davis, and enthusiastically championed my own writing.

This is Bruce: http://www.sff.net/people/bruce/.

If you are lucky enough to meet Bruce Holland Rogers, hear him read, chat with him a little in the corner, he may produce a small tin from his suit-coat pocket and offer you a strange candy from one of the faraway lands where he has taught or written or wandered. Accept the candy. Most likely, it will taste terrible, perhaps a mixture of cough medicine and starting fluid or mint and feet. He will watch your face as you chew or suck on said item. Whether you like it may not be important. I am convinced, although I have no proof nor have I interviewed Bruce about his motives, that he is interested in your reaction. Will you pretend to like it? Mask your face of your disgust? Or, are you the type with wickedly reckless taste buds who'll ask for more?

This may have been how I went about reading work for the Volume 9 issue: looking for stories that had varied flavors and produced reactions: a big fat yes! (Curtis Smith's "The Quarry"). Or, we must have this story right now before another magazine gets it! (Ryan Call's The Walker Circulation excerpt). Or, this is deliciously strange (Alan Michael Parker's Excerpts from The Committee On Town Happiness). And, damn, why didn't I write that? (Nancy Stebbin's "Jonah Overboard").

Putting together the fiction had never been so exhilarating. Because three pieces of work, from Bruce Holland Rogers (work hereafter known as Brucian) anchored the issue, it was a joy to gather the rest. Brucian stories are somewhat experimental, carefully crafted but not pointing to themselves, clever, often surreal, always intriguing.

An excerpt from Bruce's "Aglaglagl":

He invents a language that contains all of his awareness. His sentences are marvelously efficient, each one containing a whole chapter of his philosophy. Aglaglagl is one. He says it when the dog's nose comes to visit the bassinette.

Aglaglagl strikes Gabor's parents as a sound of contentment, but they don't know just how right they are. Aglaglagl contains what any number of wise men have tried to write in their holy texts using language entirely unsuited to say Aglaglagl.

It is an excerpt so fitting, so Brucian. The story becomes even more meaningful when you know that Bruce speaks several languages, seems to always be teaching himself a new one – (is it Finnish or Ukrainian right now?) – and is an supreme aficionado of the origin of words.

Ray Vukcevich's "What The Socks Meant" came to the issue next. A story of a man who "ambushes" his own emotions by analyzing his replies to a gift given to him by his now-late girlfriend: what he should have said, what he didn't say:

It hadn't been my birthday the day you pushed the small flat box across the breakfast table to me. It was about the size of a checkbook. There was a blue bow. Your secret smile said oh just wait until you see what's in this box! You may have been bouncing a little with excitement in your chair. Yes, I definitely remember some bouncing.

It is a story of realization and healing. The exploration of a common human moment - sometimes as small as a thought and other times as large as a decade – when a character fights his regrets and wrestles with self-compassion. His mate has died suddenly and if only… he could go back in time and do it right.

I've killed myself with a sock. The thought does not frighten me now. I need only to write out my last thoughts to you, and that will be that. I will tell you how I should have put on those socks. I will tell you how I should have stayed home that last day, how I should have seen somehow that it was the last day. I will try not to be snippy about the fact you have done no haunting.

There are bunches more stories in the issue worth shouting about, worth presenting, worth pointing to and say read this already, wouldja! For instance, Leslie What's wacky and wonderful "Crash" in which an airplane divides a home leaving each spouse a half of the house. And, don't miss the delightfully- squeamish office politics in Tara Laskowski's "Bottomfeeders" or the irrational-all-of-a-sudden- young-love in "Pearls" by Dawn Allison.

Which leads me to my reaction to putting together the fiction in the issue: An irrational-all-of-a-sudden-love for these stories, laced with the reckless flavors of rosemary, sawdust, winter, kerosene and something else I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Stefanie Freele

Stefanie Freele is the Fiction Editor of the Los Angeles Review. She is also the author of the short story collection Feeding Strays (Lost Horse Press), a finalist in the John Gardner Binghamton University Fiction Award and the Book of the Year Award. Her recent and forthcoming fiction can be found in literary magazines such as: Glimmer Train, Pank, American Literary Review, Night Train, The Florida Review, Whitefish Review, Necessary Fiction, Smokelong Quarterly, Word Riot and Corium Magazine. Stefanie has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts - Whidbey Writers Workshop where Bruce Holland Rogers teaches.