Month: January 2006

Literary magazines have long occupied a sort of members-only, marginal status in the world of publishing. Many of these things are butt-ugly, deadly earnest, and, where not subsidized by universities or literary organizations, marked for extinction from the get-go. What a marvel it is, then, to have Minneapolis-produced Conduit delivered to our door “when least expected,” as its masthead says (but always twice annually). That masthead routinely offers up entertaining surprises, including one of the magazine’s proud mottos: “Grant Free Since 1993.” That’s a virtuous and almost shocking boast. Conduit–without grants, advertising, or paid contributors–is consistently distinguished by its beautiful and playful design, its thoughtful, thematically organized content, and contributions from poets, writers, and artists of international repute. Take the new issue, which tackles the subject of work and features interviews with Barbara Ehrenreich and Thomas Frank, poems by James Tate, a batch of photographs by Lee Friedlander, and stunning collages by the late Ray Johnson.

Conduit editor (and poet) William Waltz produces the magazine along with his wife and deputy editor, Brett Astor, and a handful of friends who share their zeal. We recently caught up with Waltz while he was hanging out with his three-year-old daughter and watching Bob the Builder at his home in Minneapolis.

Conduit always looks so fantastic, and seems like it would be mighty expensive to produce. How do you do it without grants or advertising, and why?
We’ve become addicted to color, and every time you add more color, the cost goes up. The current issue features the most color ever. We print a thousand copies, and subscriptions and sales of the issues come close to covering most of the costs; whatever they don’t cover, we pay out of our own pocket. We’re trying to approach a break-even point, but that might just be a dream. We haven’t sought out grant money for the simple reason that IÕd rather spend time making the magazine and working with people than researching and writing grants. It’s always a temptation, of course–you’d love to be able to pay the contributors and the people who help to create the magazine–but there’s also this sort of risk-averse, victimization aspect to the whole grant world. I guess I feel like the thing should be supported and paid for by readers, and that it should stand or fall on its own merits.

The spirit of the magazine seems pretty clear, but how would you define its mission?
When I was coming out of graduate school, it didn’t seem like there were many literary magazines that appealed to me. They weren’t much fun to read, and I was kind of fed up with that world. We wanted to make a magazine that was different and that might appeal to people outside the world of academia and poetry circles. At the time, it seemed like humor and design were totally absent from most stuff–everybody these days seems to be paying more attention to design, but I like to think we were way ahead of the curve there. We’ve tried to mix it up, and the object is to maybe get people interested through the interviews and art, and then maybe get them to read a few poems. It’s an uphill battle, but it sometimes seems like we’re making inroads.

The names in the table of contents are astonishing. How do you get so many great writers and artists to work for free?
We’re always coming up with wish lists of people we’d like to get into the magazine, and we’ve been remarkably fortunate. We send copies to them, and to our continued amazement they often agree to send up something. Now that we have a little bit of a profile–that’s all relative, of course–we’ll get people who contact us. It’s all pretty amazing, really.

You guys eschew typical pagination, using words rather than numbers. What’s up with that?
I guess it’s just one more attempt to get humor into the magazine. If nothing else, Conduit has a sense of humor. We’ve abolished page numbers as part of our struggle to emancipate curious minds everywhere, and, given our fondness for poetry, page-words give us another opportunity to squeeze in more language. Mostly, I suppose, we just think they’re fun. Conduit salutes the impractical. We’re all about the good time, you know?

Ayelet Waldman is perhaps best known for having set off a bit of a moral brushfire when she announced in an essay in the New York Times that her love for her husband, the writer Michael Chabon, trumped her feelings for the couple’s children. While that strange business didn’t exactly paint the most attractive portrait of Waldman, there’s no denying that with Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, she has produced a truly compelling novel. The two women at the center of this rather disturbing story are at the opposite ends of a nasty divorce and child custody arrangement; both are self-absorbed and neurotic enough to make Waldman’s perceived transgressions seem petty by comparison. There isn’t really anyone to root for here, but that doesn’t get in the way of the nasty fun (or the happy ending). Almost certainly coming soon to a theater near you.

If the wild West still exists anywhere in North America, it’s along the Rio Grande, the border between the U.S. and Mexico. This film, the second directed by Tommy Lee Jones, who also stars as rancher Pete Perkins, explores the emotional and geographical terrain along that great divide. A Mexican man, Melquiades Estrada, is shot by a border cop and unceremoniously abandoned in the Texas desert. The body is found, thanks to a hungry coyote, and buried in a town cemetery. Then Estrada’s friend Perkins insists that the body be disinterred, and accompanies the decaying corpse on an arduous journey through the gorgeous Mexican wilderness. 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

Robinson’s Gilead is one of the truly great and revelatory novels of the last decade. This is a quiet and almost impossibly elegant meditation on life, faith, doubt, and death–issues Robinson tackles with graceful prose that never feels labored and is suffused with gentle yet devastating shocks of wonder. Gilead has the potential to change the way you look at the world, and to make you re-evaluate your place in it. Robinson, who lives and teaches in Iowa City, has also written two books of nonfiction that address everything from religion to the dilemmas facing contemporary society, which should make for a wide-ranging conversation for her appearance as part of the “Talking Volumes” program. It’s been a banner year for the series, what with Joan Didion, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Kaye Gibbons, but as far as we’re concerned, Robinson is the clear highlight. 651-290-1221, www.fitzgeraldtheater.org

We used to champion Steven Soderbergh for his versatility and, even more so, the utterly spastic subversion that he wrought with the little-seen Schizopolis. But then he kept inserting Julia Roberts into his films, and, by the time of Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve, seemed to have coasted off, down Easy Street. Now he appears to have reverted to his oddball ways with this tale; shot in a depressed Ohio town, it uses resident, nonprofessional actors who plod through a plot that is at times comically dull. Resolutely avoiding glamour and artfulness and escapism, Bubble calls to mind such disparate films as Dogville, Waiting for Guffman, and American Job. Whether it’s crucial or inconsequential or both, Soderbergh seems to be trying to say something about Americans and American film. www.landmarktheatres.com

We would have given you decidedly long odds on the chances of us falling for a dandified, self-absorbed porcelain rabbit, yet the latest story from the Newbery Award-winning novelist Kate DiCamillo (whose "See How Far You Get" we published last June) has as much darkness and light, terror and love, and real human warmth and redemption as any book you’ll find in any section of the local Barnes and Noble. Go ahead and look all you want. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is nothing less than a classic fairy tale, and the gorgeous, frequently chilling color illustrations of Bagram Ibatoulline are a perfect complement to DiCamillo’s heartbreaking (and heart-mending) tale. This isn’t simply another kid’s book; this is a book for everybody who still believes it’s possible to be transformed by stories, by art, and by love. 651-290-1221; www.fitzgeraldtheater.org

Inspirational and occasionally outlandish, this Anthony Hopkins vehicle is a satisfying throwback to old-style, crowd-pleasing cinema. Reuniting with director Roger Donaldson, who took him to great heights in the underrated Bounty, Hopkins plays Burt Munro, the feisty New Zealander who came to America in the 1960s, intent on breaking the world’s land-speed record with his beat-up 1920 Indian motorcycle. 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

French/Austrian director Michael Haneke forces the viewer to take the point of view of a stalker in this dazzlingly complex thriller, which topped many a critic’s list for 2005. Daniel Auteuil–and Juliette Binoche–star as a middle-class Parisian couple whose lives are disrupted by a series of increasingly personal surveillance tapes sent to them anonymously. Each tape contains clues, but it’s not always clear if what is onscreen is the film’s action, the stalker’s video surveillance, or footage from the tapes played by the victims on their television.As the story unfolds, a sordid event from the husband’s childhood surfaces, and the mystery culminates in one of the most shocking scenes of despair you’ll ever see. This film offers a challenge to one’s perception of reality, as well as a subtle parable on Western attitudes and bigotry. 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com