Issue 5 - Winter 2002

From the Editors

"This time around failbetter comes to you with a slightly new look and more...."

Fiction

"The Last Trash Day" ..... Richard St. Germain

"....Linoleum over a fault cracked and crumbled, creating passage for ants. Coins ended up stuck between the backrest and bottom cushion of the recliner and beyond the reach of pencils in the springs and slung in the fabric under the loveseat. Three good pulls with the throttle open started the mower. Past the wheelbarrow was East."

"Mother and Son"..... David Ohle

"Mother had a new linen jacket tailored for me when I came to live in Hollywood. “My followers think the dull, oversize, coarse gray suits you wear hardly become the son of the inventor of edible currency,” she said, before presenting my measurements to a tailor from Chungking, who made the jacket...."

"Behavior Pilot"..... Matthew Derby

"People kept having children, and the government kept taking them away.  We wanted, more than anything else, to have one.  Not because we didn’t think our children would be ashamed of us, no.  We knew that they would be ashamed   Like everyone else, though, we believed that whatever it was we might create as a result of the fitful, brief conveyance of our bodies onto one another could help us reclaim the dignity we had lost simply by agreeing to stay in whatever place we found ourselves...."

"The Form of Things"..... Nathan Long

"... Three months ago, the intern had moved to the city and taken on an evening waitress job, just to work at the journal. This editor was well known within traditional literary circles and she was lucky to have gotten the position. She had made few friends, for she spent her spare hours reading manuscripts, looking for a story she could present to him, certain of its brilliance—she wanted to find a diamond in the rough...."

Feature Interviews

George Saunders

"... I guess my feeling is this: Every story has a preferred length programmed into it, like DNA. If you honor that, then you have a chance of getting an intense product, and that is the most important thing."

Poetry

"Sensation" ..... Arthur Rimbaud (trns. by Joshua Mehigan)

"Blue summer evenings, pricked by stalks of wheat,

I’ll walk the paths, crush short grass where I tread:

Dreaming, I’ll feel its coolness on my feet.

And I shall let the wind bathe my bare head....''

"Alarmed" ..... Arthur Rimbaud (trns. by Joshua Mehigan)

"The Poor at Church" ..... Arthur Rimbaud (trns. by Joshua Mehigan)

"Days" ..... Jon C. LaPree

"So he carved his days
into
miniature masterpieces,
feeding them to the
hungry lions,
who did not try to
understand them,
but nonetheless
found such curious shapes
delicious.''

"Etherday" ..... Jon C. LaPree

Art

"Little Blue Star"..... Ross Bleckner

"It is well known that much of Bleckner’s work makes references to AIDS and the deaths related to this disease. His past focus on and use of cell structures and microscopic images have furthered this notion. But as time progresses, so too has Bleckner's art, as he continues to creatively blend the abstract with the representational -- to create something truly original...."

"Arrangements"..... Ross Bleckner

"Sky"..... Ross Bleckner

"Selection"..... Ross Bleckner

"Counseled Ascent (left)
Consell de Cent (right)"..... Daniel Richardson

"My work is a double exploration: one that examines our modes of communication and how they work when used in fragments or in part; and one that wonders aloud about our emotional responses to the written word, the use of symbol, the serial occurrence...."

"Detail from "In the Interim" (Or: To Understand This Apocalyptic Event)"..... Daniel Richardson

"Detail from "In the Interim" (Or: Pregnant Women and the Mothers Pushing Strollers)" ..... Daniel Richardson