Faultline Review

Reviewed: Faultline: Journal of Arts and Letters

Issue: Spring 2014, issue #23

Who is my audience for this piece? Perhaps people who want to know which literary journals might accept their work, or perhaps – and less cynically-- this review is for people who want to know if they should read the 23rd Issue of Faultline: Journal of Arts and Letters, published by the University of California, Irvine.

Because I'm just starting this process of reviewing literary journals and I've never quite read them this way, I don't want to be too harsh to Faultline. The magazine seems like it makes a valiant effort to include fiction that is well written, terse, sometimes experimental, and occasionally interesting. The stories vary from hyper-short to medium length, the longest being 18 pages, though the median seems to be about eight pages. There is plenty of flash and micro fiction represented here, with some stories, Micheal Martone's “Hint Fictions,” bearing titles longer than their content.

The types of fiction vary here too, but are mostly contemporary in setting, and while some hover on the slipstream or speculative spectrum, most are pretty naturalistic. Narrative structures are slightly varied, with one story told through e-mails and another told as a series of excerpts from a fictitious (?) “anthropological medicinal study” (57).

That's all kind of banal, cursory analysis, though it is perhaps the best way to describe Faultine, a journal which seems to exist to be banal and cursory. The most interesting aspect of the journal is the way it splits itself into two halves. The book has two “front” covers, a fiction and a poetry cover. Starting on one side, the side with the vintage sci-fi cover artwork, you would be able to read all the fiction, until two-thirds of hte way through teh journal you would reach upside down text, this is the poetry, and now the book must be flipped, turned, and read from the other cover. So the titular Faultline denotes the division between the two halves of the book, which is aesthetically pleasing, if not, ultimitally, meaningless.

Again, I see this first analysis as something of a “norming” so I don't know exactly how to grade the quality of the work, except to say that I “sort of” enjoyed reading the text. Or, I didn't hate reading the work in the journal. The fiction was well-realized and hit all the expected marks. There were some great lines: “He had eyes like shiny new shovels and when no one was looking I suspected he dug deep into the pharmacy stash” (11) and “She asks if we have any waffles and when I say no, we never have any waffles, she says it's too bad because she and Geoff love waffles and I shoul dthink about keeping waffles in the freezer” (53) to give a couple examples.

I gave a cursory glance over the poetry, which seemed, like the fiction, to inhabit a place of “publishability.” In fact, when I think of UC Irvine's magazine as a whole, I am mezmerized by the implicit acknowledgement of the somewhat grotesque relationship with writers and literary journals. What I mean is this: Faultline seems to be self-aware of it's status as a literary journal, so it publishes things that should be published in literary journals. The quality of the pieces almost doesn't seem to matter. None of the pieces take real risks, or maybe they all take risks of the most calculated sort, the kind of risks one might expect a piece of “literary journal text” to enact. Everything about Faultline seems so calculated to fit a sort of “performance.” It's like a hipster who knows he's a hipster, and so he grows a beard and wears tight trousers and drinks craft beer, and so self-fulfills himself as a hipster. That is what Faultline seems to be doing. But maybe this is common among literary journals.

I think it's striking, furthermore, that each of the pieces published by Faultline is written by an established writer. What does this say? If established writers are getting mediocre pieces published in lieu of a new writer's more scintilating though perhaps more raw and indigestable work, then what is the point of these journals? To propigate the nepotistic nature of these literary discourse communities? Is that what is happening here? Once a writer gets in the club, gets published, gets a book, then in a way, by publishing that writer, even if an unknown has better work, then a Literary Magazine ensures its status.

To take one example, there is a story called “Marrow,” which I actually quoted from. In other words it is one of the more memorable stories in teh journal, but it is by no means exquisite or trancendant. It is a passable work of fiction written by Michael Czyzniejewski. Here's Czyzniejewski's bio: “author of three collections of stoires[...] Assistant professor at Missouri State University, where he edits Moon City Review and serves as Managin Editro for Moon City Press. In 2010 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts” (115).

I get it, but it's still wierd.

Stats:

Content: Micro to medium length fiction is prevalant. Tendency towards contemporary settings and themes. Experimental form is common, though there is little to no abstract language or structure.

Quality: Fiction ranges from banal, to passable, to solid, but nothing will change your life.

Submissions: “Faultline welcomes submissions of poetry, fiction, essays, and translations between August 15th and January 15th. Please include the necessary self-addressed stamped nevelope.

X-factor: If you've published a book or recieved an art grant or have been published in more than three places you have just increased your odds 10-fold of getting published in Faultline.

Score(on a scale of 1-11): 7 (*let it be noted that this is a soft 7. I was between a 6 and a 7, but because this is my first review I thought I'd give Faultline the benefit of the doubt)

Other info:

Faultline: Journal of Arts and Letters

UC Irvine

faultline.sites.uci.edu

Annual Publication

Poetry, fiction, essays, and translations

Editor-in-chief: Tagert Ellis

Fiction Editors: Tagert Ellis, Kat Lewin

Poetry Editor and Art Director: M. Maugh