The most recent issue of Sein und Werden offers up a selection of works tied to the theme "Glamourama". The contents are highly polished, as if the contributors wrapped their harlots and hit-men in the slinkiest sequined gowns and perfectly tailored tuxedos, then Rachel Kendall invited them to an arsenic cocktail party where you're the guest of honor. The highlight of the evening is slicing away the diamonds and dance routines to reveal the skeletons hidden under all the make-up.
Meanwhile, my favourite high priestess of the weird, Rachel Kendall has published three "Exquisite Corpses" in the latest copy of the online magazine Sein und Werden. An "Exquisite Corpse" was a nickname given to a writing game devised by the Surrealist artists led by writer Andre Breton, not dissimilar to the British picture game 'consequences', except that each writer must write the next paragraph of story having read only the paragraph before, written anonymously by someone else, and so on. All in all, a brilliantly liberating and unpredictable experiment, and a lot of fun.
I'm impressed. Rachel Kendall, the high priestess presiding over the cult mag Sein und Werden has typed up the entire latest issue (guest edited by Marc Lowe) on an old fashioned antique typewriter thingy in order to capture the correct grungey ethos for this issue's theme: "Sur-Noir", an exotic blend of Noir crime writing and the Surreal.
This is a literary magazine, make no mistake about it, and Sein und Werden shows itself off in grand style -- absolutely horrifying and on the loose in this dense and sophisticated carnival of monstrosity.
"...'Love Drugs' by Willie Smith is a very short but powerful story... 'Brauner's Vision' by Marc Lowe [is] very well-written, suspenseful and full of paranoia. Excellent use of detail and mood... Michael Estabrook's 'Dr. Joe from New Mexico' is a dark but amusing take on one of the most disrespected types of medical practice... 'Karas d'Carcasse' by Mark Howard Jones, is a grim story about dealers and their users that is just a relevant today, even though set in World War II... Noel Slobada's 'Pluck,' one of my favorite stories of this issue, shows how a single flaw can get in the way of a relationship... Drugs are a seductive, powerful lover, and this is made very clear in 'Song of the Impure', by A.A. Garrison[,] the longest story, as well as the best..."
Sein und Werden is one of those great little magazines that cannot be pigeonholed but is always guaranteed to delight, shock and infuriate. Is it a horror magazine, a very, very dark fantasy publication, literature, avant garde? Well, all of those things and none. And, like a pill that will be good for you, it must be swallowed whole.
Throughout the issue there is almost always a sense of danger that makes drugs somewhat more irresistible than merely conducive to judgments of overt irresponsibility or purposefulness on the part of the user/abuser. If the working theory is, before the pages are opened, that some drugs like crack or methamphetamine are so irresponsibly dangerous as to belie sympathy for the abuser, then a story like Lowe's may imply that the "fairness" of the consequent rewards and punishments might be unknowable once the pain or pleasure begins.
After a long (far too long) hiatus, Rachel Kendall returns to her post as editor for the Pharmacopoeia issue, opening the secrets of the locked medicine chest your mother always told you to leave well enough alone. Like previous issues, the material comprising Pharmacopoeia all follow the titular theme, and the cadre of poets, authors and artists dispense a horrific formulary of experimental medicine sure to cure your ills...or at least make you forget them for a while.
Each issue of this magazine has been in some way a unique object with some home-made aspect to its construction. This issue has been painstakingly cut and pasted (yes, with scissors and glue, folks!) into a spiral bound notebook--it's a truly lovely little object, decorated with some neat little geometrical studies by Tray Drumhann and Andrew Abbot.
What did I like about "Philias and Fetishes" and what do I like about Sein und Werden in general? Think of a football stadium filled with thousands of loud, garish, ball-busting types-then think the opposite. Better yet, imagine all of those thousands bound and gagged and left to dine on each other's spoils in the kind of oubliette for which the London Tower gets a knowing nod.
Sein seems to attract a wonderful cross-section of up and coming writers, trying their most innovative stuff. It's risky, provocative and of the moment.
SEIN UND WERDEN is going from strength to strength, and editor Rachel Kendall is tending a very special garden among those many new plots that are flourishing outside the mainstream. Her garden is a strange one, lit with a hellish light, and playful for all that, in the way that dangerous animals can be playful.
'Here's a curious thing,' begins editor Rachel Kendall's short-and-sweet introduction to the winter issue of SEIN UND WERDEN. Curiosity is indeed aroused as the assembled talents turn their attention to the peculiar and compelling world of 'philias and fetishes'. Leave your prejudices, your fears, your everyday sanities behind you and prepare to say, with young Alice 'Goodbye, feet!'. The writers here telescope in on a variety of strange and compelling behaviours, each of which becomes a window onto some dark corner of desire.
I have not been able to cover much of the fabulously strange and beautiful work included in this issue… and so I bid you (beg you, actually) to read it-all of it-for yourself and see if you don't agree that Sein und Werden is one of the coolest, edgiest, out-and-and weirdest 'zines in existence on the web or anywhere else.
Online there's also a pile of noisome delectations, savory as a little bunch of chopped corpse fingers sautéed in widow's tears, both hypocritical and genuine.
You will find in issues of Sein Und Werden magazine echoes of William Burroughs, of, I think I'm right, the Russell Hoban of Riddley Walker, and most definitely of Douglas Adams. Not derivative, note, but picking up, tuning into the most incisive voices of American writing, and the joyous exuberance of English, American/English.
I think I should say at once that this is the last time I shall review Sein und Werden because I know I'm simply not the right person for the job, and can't do justice to the poetry or the 'odder' pieces, finding it difficult to distinguish between sheer nonsense and a true 'ism'...
"Bring Out Your Dead," a collection of ghost stories, and, on the flip-side, "Send in the Clowns," a section replete with some of the more gruesome types of clownish humor. It's certainly not for everyone, but then the idea behind underground journals like Sein und Werden is just that -it's not your mama's mainstream literature. And for that, we applaud the journal.
What strikes a new reader is the variety and richness on offer. There are 20 writers, artists and poets featured, short stories, poems, novel excerpts and artwork all brought together in a dynamic collection. It is the raw energy, variety and intensity in the writing that kept me turning the pages.
Sein und Werden is getting better, wilder, more ambitious each time. This issue is a rough, relentless, perplexing, worthwhile collection of literary slaps... Get it while you can.
I believe this area of surrealist fiction is powerful in the publishing world. The ideas and concepts that SuW allow us to access, that they support and encourage, are those of gods. Self-made gods, sure, but gods none the less.
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Flicking through the pages of this publication it's obvious that a lot of thought has gone into the production and layout, with efforts to make it as interesting for the visual aspects as the written content. There are subtle differences from page to page - white text on black background and vice versa, pages with several items and those that have only one, some unadorned and others with borders - and yet despite all the variety a guiding intelligence is at work, so that the separate parts complement the whole perfectly.
Of all the genres, horror has consistently been the one that achieves its best effects through the distortion of "reality" (the one word in the English language, according to Vladimir Nabokov, that should always be encased in quotes). Her exploration of the exaggerating techniques of Expressionism and Surrealism is exciting and, as evidenced by this issue, worthwhile. ---------
"I think we're both agreed that SuW is a magazine that's carving out a path of its own and publishing material you won't find the likes of elsewhere, for which the editors deserve recognition." ---------
"This group of collaborative experiments are what you expect of any attempt to enter new territory: you stub your toe sometimes, but that's par for the course and there are so many interesting, scary and beautiful things around you soon forget it." ---------
"The appeal of Sein und Werden is its endearing punk, d.i.y. photocopied quality, a perfect anecdote to the current glut of pretty but mind-numblingly inane celebrity author obsessed journals... and, better yet, a nice compliment to their own website, which runs a whole other batch of similarly themed writing." ---------
"Sein und Werden is a magazine that takes risks and revels in being different. Certainly won't be to everybody's taste, but full credit to the editors for giving a home to quirky prose, poetry and artwork of this kind, and chances are if you're willing to take a chance on the magazine you will find something, probably many things, to delight and disturb, amaze and amuse, to challenge your expectations of what literature and art should be. Recommended." ---------
Energy. That is what comes off the Sein und Werden print version Issue 2, the doppelganger issue in which many of its stories fair crackle with the stuff. Even the magazine itself, the cover, the paper, the slightly rough-edged feel of the thing gives off a sense of immediacy, of you must read this now! ---------
"...But the discriminating reader (that old bastard) is certain to find something suited to their literary cravings in this diverse yet coherent issue, which sports the colours of a special brand of surrealism / existentialism." ---------
