New Magazines

Today I got three new magazines. I bought one of them a long time ago. I bought one today. I got one for free. I read one story from each so far. Now they are sitting on my floor together and I feel good about having a lot of new things to read.

The one I bought a long time ago is the new issue of Avery Anthology. It looks very different than the first issue, which I liked. It has a lot of new authors I have not heard of plus one author I know and one I have heard of and have not read. I read the story by Ryan Call, who is the editor of Phoebe and a nice guy. His story is excellent and made me feel simultaneously good (because of the excellent, clean sentences) and bad (because the story is sad in a new way). I would recommend buying this new issue on the strength of Ryan Call's story alone.

The one I bought today was a copy of the new Fence, Fall/Winter 2007-08. I don't know if they are going to send me a contributor copy because they never said, and I saw it today so I bought it. Besides my own thing, I read a poem by Major Jackson, who started teaching at my school after I finished at my school, and his poem was very good. I also read the Reading Lists in the back, which is to stand in place of contributor notes. They ended up including my reading list even though I was told they hadn't, though they cut about half of my list of favorite books out because I think it was too long. From the looks of the text shapes in this issue it looks like it is going to be an excellent issue.

The one I got for free was the Vice Fiction Issue, which I found at Wish, a very expensive modern clothing store. I looked at some of the clothing while I was in there so it didn't look like I just came in to take the magazine, which I did. I touched a t-shirt that had a $175 price tag on it. It looked like a blue cotton t-shirt with a light blue print of a man's head. I also touched a hat like the kind old men wear and it cost $225. A gray sweater was $400. I read Tao Lin's story about shoplifting at American Apparel and I laughed a lot. The issue looks nice and is free. It also includes William Vollmann and Jim Shepard and Mary Gaitskill and Robert Coover. I am impressed that Vice did such a good job putting together good fiction writers. You can also download it free from their website.

Christmas.