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I spent part of this past summer—the dreamy summer of ’one—trolling about the avenues and backroads of Saint Paul and Minneapolis in search of good places to drop off Whistling Shade. The independent book stores were happy to take it in; they seemed to recognize immediately the purpose for and significance of a Twin Cities literary journal. The librarians were rather slower to grasp the concept. And the puzzled secretary of the English department at the ‘U’ to whom I presented the newspaper seemed to look over my shoulder, as if searching for the spaceship.
But I had the most fun at the cafés. There is such a range of ambience among the cafés in this town—from the laid back sophistication of The Black Dog, to the youthful angst of The Ginko, to the new age aura of the Blue Moon and the family atmosphere of Old Man River in my own neighborhood. But they all accepted Whistling Shade with the easy friendliness that cafés engender. The only problem was that they all had that insatiable coffee aroma—I found myself buying a latte or mocha at each one. And after visiting four or five cafés in a row...okay, so my driving got a little erratic, enough said.
The theme for the fall issue appears to be identity. Michael Ramberg’s Burning Leaves is both an account of and metaphor for the swift but irrevocable shifts in relation that sometimes take place within a family or marriage. In Showdown in Yellow Sky, a continuation of Stephen Crane’s famous tale, Henrik Paaske reminds us that much of what we define ourselves by is social, ephemeral. Sandy Carlson’s The Deer takes this further, casting human drama against the changeless depths of nature.
Our nation itself has had an identity crisis of sorts, as the open space where the World Trade towers once stood becomes filled with the whine of fighter jets and the shouting of war slogans. Even as I write, bombing raids are underway in Afghanistan. And there is a terrible chance that this new conflict will rekindle the medieval war between Islam and Christendom (or the West, as it’s now called). But can any of this really change us? In Knock at the Door, Judd Spicer intimates that America is simply too busy, too preoccupied with its own maturing inner life to worry about the tattered muslim countries—or wreak vengeance on it. Still, it will take a long time to forget this tragedy. I spent a few hours on the phone recently with a friend of mine who works in Manhattan. The thing she kept dwelling on was how dark, how very black the sky turned after the towers collapsed. She is only now starting to sleep at night with the light off in her room. Next time I will be stone, Brooke Noble writes in ‘Sweet Anger for the War Horse’. Perhaps. At any rate, “the dreamy summer of ’one” is over for good.
- Joel Van Valin
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