Context

Most people interested in contemporary literature already know about Conjunctions. Since its inaugural issue in 1981, it has staked out an aesthetic territory, and has become one of the most widely recognized and respected venues for serious poetry, prose, plays, interviews and criticism. More than any other literary magazine over the past two decades, Conjunctions has provided a meeting ground for contemporary writing of a particular quality. You could call this quality "innovation," and that wouldn’t be far off the mark. It might be more appropriate, however, to point to some authors, for it is the authors who have made Conjunctions so rich in content and so vibrant for so long.

The first issue was subtitled "A Festschrift in Honor of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions." This says much about the tradition Conjunctions draws from, and in fact many of its contributors through the years have been New Directions authors: Robert Creeley, John Hawkes, Gilbert Sorrentino, Tennessee Williams, Octavio Paz, Denise Levertov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Hayden Carruth, Cid Corman, Walter Abish, Forrest Gander, Rosmarie Waldrop, among others. Stylistically, these authors can often be worlds apart; what brings them together is a tradition of change, i.e., the broadly defined tradition of Pound and Williams.

What this doesn’t mean is that Conjunctions has always had the same group of contributors. There are "regulars" (in addition to some of the above names, add William H. Gass, John Ashberry, Paul West, Nathaniel Mackey, Barbara Guest, Harry Mathews, Diane Williams, Mary Caponegro, David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann, Carole Maso . . . ), but these have typically appeared alongside a variety of other writers and artists. Over the years, the names have gotten more and more diverse: John Cage, Barry Hannah, William Wegman, Kathy Acker, William S. Burroughs, Stephen Dixon, Georges Perec, Amiri Baraka, Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje—the list goes on.

One thing such lists suggest is how Conjunctions has grown, and continues to grow, without having sacrificed its original aesthetic ground. So in the latest issues we find long-time contributors like Paul West, William H. Gass and Gilbert Sorrentino, but we also find names like Richard Powers, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jonathan Franzen and Cole Swenson. There seem to be roughly three generations of writers whose work has appeared in Conjunctions, each new generation adding to, not replacing, the one before it.

Take the last two issues. Conjunctions: 32 starts off with an original translation of the Thomas Bernhard novella Walking. This is a wonderful and challenging work, most overtly comparable to Beckett’s Watt (although any comparison probably undervalues Bernhard’s real inventiveness). Following this we have the theme section—"Eye to Eye: Writers and Artists"—a series of collaborations including works by John Yau with Trevor Winkfield, Robert Creeley with Archie Rand, Rikki Ducornet, Joyce Carol Oates and Conjunctions’s editor Bradford Morrow. The last section of the issue includes excerpts from Marguerite Young’s biography of Eugene Debs, Harp Song for a Radical, and Suzan-Lori Parks’s play In the Blood, along with poems by Donald Revell, short fiction by Diane Williams, and William H. Gass’s translation of Rilke’s "The Seventh Elegy." Conjunctions: 33 contains its own list of who’s who in contemporary literature, and includes, in addition, a special tribute to William Gaddis.

Much of what’s made Conjunctions valuable over the years has been its ability to bring together several generations of authors, to place their works in a context determined by quality (or certain qualities) rather than by age. It seems clear from the richness and variety of these latest issues that this is as true now as ever.

Conjunctions comes out twice a year, and is lengthy for a literary magazine—about 400 pages. Its physical mass gives the magazine the substantial feel of a thick novel. To add to this impression, in 1989 the issues started being organized around themes: "The New Gothic," "The Music Issue," "Fables, Yarns, Fairy Tales," "Unfinished Business" (excerpts from works-in-progress), "The New American Theater," and so on. At the least, these themes function as organizational tools, giving each issue a kind of internal coherence (or reemphasizing the coherence each issue already has). At the most, they expand the magazine’s possibilities, exposing its readers to new and valuable cultural products (interviews, original manuscripts, translations). As a rule, though, the themes are only as interesting as the works they include; so, again, the important thing is the writers.

Conjunctions is available at bookstores and by subscription (for information call 914-758-1539). There’s also a website—www.Conjunctions.com—that includes an archive of past issues as well as original works not appearing in the print version.

CONTEXT is a triquarterly publication intended to create an international and historical context in which to read modern and contemporary literature. Its goal is to encourage the development of a literary community.

CONTEXT is available at bookstores nationwide.