Front & Centre
litzine, #1, $4,25 Avalon PI., Hamilton, ON, L8M 1R2
This is the new litzine by the creators of the memorable Black Cat 115. The mag starts out with an homage to Daniel Jones, subterranean icon whose posthumously published punk novel 1978 is excerpted. An excellent kick- off but it quickly becomes apparent that F&C isn’t keeping with the gritty, ugly truth that was Jones’s hallmark. The stories here tend to be obvious. A woman pretends that she’s looking for a house even though she’s flat broke. We figure it out by the fourth paragraph. It’s not until Mark Jarman’s wild-eyed, blood thirsty accounting of Custer’s last stand, and Julie Roorda’s homage to the power of a child’s fantasy life, that this thing really gets going (and by then it’s over). A good read though much of this could easily have been in conventional litmags. A litzine should challenge language and destroy plot. Showcase our lives in moments, our lives front and centre in the doomed campaign against literary conformity. (HN)