This manifesto of a new genre is echoed to some degree in some wonderful anthologies filling in some of the ever-more-noticable gap. Lucid Fiction is something that overlaps with Surrealism and Irrealism, much of experimental and mystical literature, anti stories, and Interfiction, and Metafiction. It has elements in common with Slipstream and New Wave Fabulist, both of which are reaching the public in beautiful new ways right now. Looking at the anthologies which are presenting these, such as Paraspheres, Interfiction, and Feeling Very Strange, and some current issues of magazines calling themselves innovative, I am encouraged to find a few pieces that I feel explore progressive concepts if not always the challenging subject matter I would like to see addressed head on. I have found a large number of Lucid Fiction stories in Feeling Very Strange, the new Slipstream Anthology. But in this essay, I'll be narrowing my scope to issue 48 (the Spring 2007 issue) of Conjunctions1, and the works published and advertised therein.
Conjunctions is a hub of burgeoning literary movements within their advertisements, which adds to the feeling that something exciting is happening. Conjunctions is doing a great service that way, helping create a community that is willing to support the small presses, and I would like to explore some of their advertisements in this essay. I didn't find much in their Spring 2007 issue that I would label Lucid Fiction, or that I could even understand to be innovative, but there were a few stories that were experimental, and a couple stories that were Lucid Fiction.
I chose Conjunctions partly because it has the most extensive set of advertisements for new genres that are in between other major ones. It is advertising itself as innovative as well, and the other innovative magazines I have found are not as much of a network for this exploration of genres through their ads for forthcoming Lucid Fiction novels. I'm not trying to do a complete overview of all Lucid Fiction coming out now, or pointing out only the work out there that epitomizes it most. Instead, I am combing what has any elements of it within a somewhat limited set of choices to see more precisely and thoroughly what is really there in a particular area of the vast ocean of literature. This method allows me to expand my vision of it, and assess more realistically what percentage of the innovative fiction seems to be of the Lucid type.
My choice to organize this essay around issues advertised in Conjunctions was instrumental in ushering in New Wave Fabulism through a previous issue, the 3.9. They are known for that bold support of something pushing the boundaries of literature, and Lucid Fiction overlaps this genre in many ways, perhaps more closely than any of the other new genres I found out there. There are other excellent magazines on the forefront of innovative literature, which may be more experimental than recent issues of Conjunctions, with Unlikely Stories being one of the most striking ones. I chose it to present this article in because Unlikely Stories is so bold and has the power of movement behind it, the strong life force which propels new ideas along and the fascinating stories that makes innovation appealing, and Penton's unrivalled marketing of their new issues.
In Conjunctions, "Obsession in Outer Mongolia," by Paul West, fell into my idea of Lucid Fiction because it is a "serious" work of literature that addresses issues that are commonly relegated to Sci Fi, and because it doesn't have a traditional plot, plays with the idea of time to some degree, and takes into consideration the state of our planet. In this particular case, it deals with aliens. His main character puzzles over the reasons they haven't come to earth and contacts us. (And I wonder—where has he been? They…well, they have, if not something pretending to be them.…) In the process of mulling over this worthy question, he also admits to the blood thirsty nature of humanity. (Page 323)
The story proceeds not by action, but by thought, with a whimsically, poetically beautiful conclusion, and yearning forming the climax. Instead of encouraging conflict, requiring a plot based on drama and dualism, he offers excellent writing about the subjective, quirky experience of wishing that sort of thing would get over itself before everything is destroyed.
"Self Portrait with Beach," a beautiful story by Frederic Tuten is another story in this issue that could be called Lucid Fiction. It begins with lines that are not sentences: juxtaposed nouns pointing out the natural world the story is set in. Like West's story, the action begins with a character's question. "Is the body the house for the soul, or are body and soul one and inseparable?" (page 399). It explores yearnings as they manifest as they would in a dream. A man arrives on the scene selling special beverages that do miraculous things, including play with time by reversing aging. The story could be called Slipstream, or New Wave Fabulism. And birds happen to sing in German, but the character barely notices that that's unusual. When it becomes clear there is a good reason for the birds singing opera, there is a bit of a let down back into the mundane reality. Or is it mundane? The borders cross poetically, the symbols being made increasingly tangible, so much so that nothing else exists.
In Conjunction's advertisements, we find Agni Magazine. Some of it is online, where I found some Lucid Fiction. "The Invention of Birds", by John Lindgren, is a fantastic poem, and the perfection of every line takes us into the dreamlike world, surreal, and it takes us into the dream, and then the very beauty of the writing wakes us up within it, just a bit. His poems relate our world as a conversation between the two levels of consciousness, through every moment within it.
The short story "Glass" by Guilio Mozzi, translated by Elizabeth Harris Behling, is in the fiction section, and to call it fiction, when it could be called creative non-fiction, makes it much better to me and makes it fit into the Lucid Fiction net. That label makes it break all the rules of needing a plot, action, dialogue, characters, an arc of climax. It's purely about a compelling habit of his in which the narrator relates to the natural world, and his insights about them slowly surfacing into words.
In the short story "Fishman", John J. Clayton writes about breathing under water in a style that puts literary flippers on the he uses symbols and sends them down into the dreamworld to play vividly. The narrator doesn't go through a traditional plot, and his experience could be called slipstream, or New Wave Fabulist. He exchanges with air, and people as if they were meshed, without the usual separation, and cause and effect.
His question is: once he's become comfortable in the more lucid world away from the strife and everyday human reality, will he bring that perception back with him? Will he just live in the false world thereafter?
Note:
1 Conjunctions: 48 Faces of Desire, edited by Bradford Morrow, Bard College, Annadale on Hudsen, NY, 2007. See also Conjunctions: 39 New Wave Fabulists, edited by Bradford Morrow, Bard College, Annadale on Hudson, NY 2002.
