Prima Materia: New Fiction by Hudson Valley Writers

photo by Megan McQuade

First-time editor/publisher Brent Robison debuted last month with Prima Materia: Writings, a journal featuring works of short fiction by two dozen writers from the Hudson Valley. Slated to appear semiannually, the 5.5" x 8.5" perfect-bound trade paperback is published by Bliss Plot Press, an imprint founded by the multimedia writer/producer along with his wife and associate publisher Wendy Klein, an artist and maskmaker. The duo launched the premier issue, which features over 170 pages, at a reading and reception held on May 11 at the Deep Listening Space in Kingston's Rondout.

More than fifty people, including mainstay local literati, filled the gallery and performance space to hear six of the contributors read their work. Robison, who served as MC, chose the performers to showcase the variety of writings featured in the journal, ranging from the "flash fiction" (under three pages) of readers Phillip P. Levine, Jennie Litt, and Del Marbrook (all with postmodern leanings), to more conventional stories by Kate Schapira, Peter Cooper, and Jessica Schabtach. Their selections likewise were meant to illustrate the aesthetic concept behind Prima Materia, explained by Robison in a preamble to the readings portion of the event.

According to the editor, ancient philosophers believed that the universe, in addition to earth, air, fire, and water, contained a fifth element called prima materia, "the quintessence-invisible, ethereal unifier of all things." The work of alchemists, who sought to transmute base elements into gold, "was founded on the search for the elusive qualities of the prima materia." Likening their seeking to a "spiritual" quest metaphorically connected to his own editorial choices, Robison explained, "I find writings that have what I consider the essential elements-the right stuff." In the introduction to the book, graced with his mixed media cover art, he further states that though "local poets seem everywhere visible and audible," fiction writers have fewer forums. Proud to give two dozen writers "voice", he believes that their stories "make the claim: Truth x 24 [the volume's subtitle]."

Schapira, among the youngest contributors and one of several in the collection published for the first time, led off the Rondout reading with an excerpt from her "All Saints," the first piece in the book. By way of introduction the publisher announced, "From the title (which I think is about all of us), straight through the end, ['All Saints'] illustrates what I want Prima Materia to be about." The story of a young woman recently released from prison for killing a child while driving home one Halloween night, its action commences on the anniversary of the accident, just as "the trick-or-treaters are assembling on their front porches." As much a commentary on the universal need to express contrition as on our collective love affair with automobiles, it acts as an overall frame to the collection, presented in a deliberate order, the "delicate threads" of which Robison intends to congeal as if in "a single big story." For example, other selections in which the car motif figures largely include Wendy Klein's "The Bus," Nina She ngold's "Off the Road," and Marta Szabo's "Tampered With."

Rather than a story, Levine's "Soon" came off like a "language" prose poem, in which sound and imagery make meaning, replacing narrative structure or concrete ideas. "My main interest is in poetry," the author, known for his ubiquitous presence in the local spoken-word scene as both reader and MC, freely admitted to me. Similarly, Robison confesses in the introduction to Prima Materia "that many of the pieces here would never qualify, by textbook definition, as a 'story'," reading instead like "fragments of something much larger." Storyteller Litt's "Linguistics", which originally appeared in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, exemplifies this idea. Though more plotted than Levine's piece, it reads like the postmodern prose of Italo Calvino, deliberately commenting on its own style ("metadiscourse") in the act of narrating an encounter between two academic types. For instance, Litt writes: "When they had used a word, they would discard it onto the pile of used words at their feet. At first, the woman conscientiously swept all the used words into a dustpan and threw them away each night." Likewise in the postmodern vein, Del Marbrook, a retired newspaper editor's zany zoomorphic "Ice Storm, 1999" recalled the writings of Donald Barthelme and Ishmael Reed.

My fondness for modernist fiction-stories possessing a clear beginning, middle, and end-draw me to the more traditional offerings in Prima Materia, above all Shengold's "Off the Road." A stage and television writer whose credentials include an ABC Playwright Award for Homesteaders and the Writers Guild Award for Labor of Love, she has edited seven theater anthologies for Viking Penguin and Vintage Books. Her first published work of fiction, "Off the Road" is a well-crafted, emotionally satisfying tale of Vietnam-era draft dodgers encamped in Canada as told through the eyes of a child. (Other noteworthy Prima Materia selections with child protagonists include Marilyn Stablein's "Bad Barbies" and Valerie Wacks' "What Simon Doesn't Say.") Its title derived from Carolyn Cassady's memoir by the same name, Shengold's story presents familial as well as political conflict while subtly honoring the Beat Generation literary canon through characterization, her central figures adopting undercover aliases taken from the pages of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

Off-Broadway playwright H. N. Levitt's "Incident at The Summer Writers' Conference" also pleases me. Though he claims that this illumination of author egos is influenced by James Joyce's story "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," it follows more closely in characterization and plot to Paul Theroux's "Biographical Notes for Four American Poets." Of the Prima Materia selections with sex as an overt theme, previously published fiction writer Lannette Fisher-Hertz's "Quitting", about a housewife whose recidivist smoking habit parallels her lust for her brother-in-law, reads most like a story spun from imagination, as opposed to diffused autobiography. Another good pick, Iris Litt's "The Stuff," provides an engaging character sketch of a misanthrope, plagued by mosquitoes and companionship in a Mexican mountain town. Litt, a widely published poet, fiction writer, and essayist who has taught at Ulster Community College, Educational Alliance, and New York Public Library, leads writing workshops in Woodstock.
An engaging read overall, Prima Materia does a service to the local literary community in honoring established as well as emerging fiction writers. —Pauline Uchmanowicz

Prima Materia will host two readings this month in Woodstock, featuring fiction from its pages: Sunday, June 9, 2PM, at the Woodstock Town Hall; and Saturday, June 29, 5PM, at the Woodstock Library. For more information call 688-7217 or 679-2213.

Prima Materia accepts short, literary fiction (50 to 5,000 words, no genre fiction, poetry, memoir, or journalism) only by writers from the Hudson Valley, NY. All submissions for consideration in the next issue should be e-mailed (preferred) or postmarked by July 31, 2002.

To order the spring 2002 issue ($11.95) or for more information about the journal, contact Brent Robison and Wendy Klein c/o Bliss Plot Press, PO Box 68, Mt. Tremper, NY 12457.
blissplot@brentrobison.com

For a full submission guidelines:
www.brentrobison.com