MISCmedia for 8/11/00
Getting 'Edge'-y

BACK IN THE '80S, I used to complain about what passed for "regional" literature here in the PacNW, as officially defined by a certain clique. Quaint little nature poems depicting still-life scenes devoid of human presence; humorless prose about rugged living-off-the-land types.

Back in the '90s, I noted the apparent passing of nature-lit, and also recounted some of the diverse writings that have come from here that weren't like that.

Now, a few of these other strains have finally gotten their recognition as a "genre" of sorts, thanks to the new trade-paperback anthology Northwest Edge: Deviant Fictions, edited by Lidia Yuknavitch and L. N. Pearson and published under their Portland-based Two Girls imprint.

It's a fast-paced, well-rounded revue of stories and experimental prose-works, with a few photo-narrative pieces (mostly by Richard Kract and L.N. Pearson) mixed in for relief.

Among the highlights:

• Chuck (FIght Club) Palahniuk's "Survivor," in which a clueless rich couple is totally dependent upon their impoverished house servant to instruct them in proper deportment at bigtime dinner parties.

• Paula Coomer's "Almost Plum," a light and sincere love triangle among drag-queen cowgirls in Spokane.

• Steven Shaviro's three terse essays on UFO abductions, transsexual-vampire fiction, and Italian horror movies.

• Allison Owens's "Waiting," a brisk little tale abruptly juxtaposing tragedy and childhood "innocence."

• Lance Olsen's "Strategies in the Overexposure of a Well-Lit Space," a surrealistic nightmare of complete TV immersion gone utterly weird.

• Our pal Doug Nufer's "Restraining Order," a cleverly laid-out dark-comic vignette about your basic Co-Worker from Heck.

• Meagan Atiyeh's "What It Lacks," a disciplined, taut short-short of exquisitely-described loneliness ("Raising a glass of water for a pill the maid had brought, she is aware of her own restlessness, a vague and cloudy nature full of sediment, full of doubt, full of phrases and notes to be made in pocketbooks").

Virtually none of the pieces revel in the old nature-poet Northwest of herons and seals and sunsets on the beach. And some of them simply reflect a global bohemian zeitgeist.

But the best of them depict a Northwest state of mind. It's a hard thing to encapsulate, but it comprises hefty doses of droll skepticism, dry humor, and a BS detector set to eleven.

MONDAY: Political conventions--I say let's keep 'em.

ELSEWHERE:

• Acclaimed-in-some-circles author Douglas Coupland wonders what would happen if "breakfast-cereal mascots ran for public office (found by Metascene)....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• What's really the matter with you kids these days.
• Go ahead--become a walking billboard.
• What e-books might be good for.
• My sordid past with John Carlson.
• The He-Man Woman-Lover's Club.
• Yeah, I still like Seafair. Wanna make something of it?
• Surviving Survivor.
• Does a potential future 'Post-Corporate World' have to be one of those baby-boomer utopias of mandatory mellowness?
• Learning to love the cacophany that is Digital cable TV.
• De-mall-ishing the suburbs.
• Ballard Avenue, the next Pioneer Square?
• Parts one and two of existence in moving purgatory.
• Abandoning Belltown to the Ucking Fupscale.
• Misadventures in the housing market.
• Thoughts on driving and intelligence.
• The 'clueless look' in designer men's fashions.
• Nostalgia for gender relations past.
• Parts one and two of the confessions of a lonely 16-year-old girl during the Bicentennial summer.
• Nostalgia for gender relations past.
• A bad night on the town.

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