You know that piece of notebook paper that flutters on the sidewalk, next to the trashcan that it was intended for, but never made it into? Or that scratched up photo of people in outfits straight out of 1975? And that squished key, melted into the tar on the street that glints in the sun just for a split second - but just long enough to catch your eye? Someone out there can't resist bending down and picking these objects up. Where did they come from? Who lost them? Or were they cast aside? Each one has a story to tell and Found Magazine is here to tell them.
Old birthday cards, love notes, Polaroids, napkin drawings, snapshots, grocery lists, notebook doodles, teacher-course evaluations, homework assignments, restaurant bills, hate mail, journal entries, lost pet notices, even road kill - anything you can find and fit in an envelope - can be seen gracing the pages of Found, bad grammar, poor spelling and inability to grasp the concept of three point perspective be damned.
Some of these objects are hilarious, like the note that reads, "Paul and Olivia - our doorbell is not a toy, stop ringing it or I'll have to call your parents." Some are frightening, like the warning, "If you mess this up you WILL regret it." Some are sweet like the book inscription, "Over a year since first you daringly touched my knee and the magic just soars higher daily. Feel very much like you're here with me, which puts a bound in my step seven miles high." And some are just plain heartbreaking, like the note written on a barf bag found in LAX airport, which reads, "I think this is it for us. It has been for awhile." All of these objects are intriguing; they make you stop and wonder, why was that photo torn in half? What door did that key once open? Who are Paul and Olivia? And who writes a break up note on a barf bag?
On the face of it, Found is just a clever idea, slap dashed together. But it's more than witty captions and a collage of paper scraps. Found exists for the curiosity that leads us to bend down, pick up that fluttering piece of notebook paper, and recognize something of ourselves in the scribbled words written by a stranger. As one Jon Spayde, whose review of Found was published in the last issue said, "...In a very real sense, the abject little object I find on the street discovers me."
Another interactive 'zine, the premise of The First Line is simple. The editor writes the first line of a short piece of fiction, and readers fill in the story without altering that sacred sentence in any way. It's a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book for grown-ups. What results from this grand literary experiment are about 10 stories chosen from amongst many submissions; each one starts from the same place, but ends up in wildly divergent directions.
On the whole, The First Line is an interesting read if done in one sitting so that the various stories can be contrasted to one another. However, some of the writing sounds amateurish and stilted; take for example the line, "But I figured there might come a day, years from now, when I would want to revisit a time that had been intensely thrilling and infinitely precious right up to the moment that it had evaporated like a mist rising up from a river to be devoured in the sun's fiery embrace." Uh, whoa.
Besides the varied versions of "It was a dark and stormy night" fiction, The First Line also ponders the very nature of the many splendored first line through "My favorite first line" essays and criticisms dedicated to grasping the essence of what it is to be a memorable first line.
The current sentence is: "I opened my e-mail with a mix of apprehension and excitement." Take it away.
What is it about humans that makes us fascinated by what we fear most? We all have something of a sick attraction to horror, to violence. To sickness. For most of us, it's only fulfilled every once in a while by the latest Stephen King novel or a Fox special called something like, "When Animals Gore the Crap out of Little Kids: 3", but for Todd Lesser, founder and publisher of the Baltimore-based Monozine, that fascination with sickness is his career.
Monozine is a collection of stories about illnesses, injuries and other maladies, how people contract them, and what they do about them. The idea is not to freak the reader out (well, not entirely), but rather to "compile the medical stories that really matter." But the way I see it, it's also meant to nourish that desire for the sick and the unusual. Monozine No. 1 urges you to "laugh along with the victims of broken legs, a partial colon removal, the nightmare of having all your teeth pulled..."
Something about Monozine seems very much in tune with the rock 'n roll spirit. It's damn good writing, but the feeling it leaves you with is like the first time we heard Marylin Manson or the Misfits: dark, dirty, not completely sane. Not coincidentally, Lesser is also a rock concert promoter, and Monozine No. 6 was a collection of illness testimonials from well-known rock bands.
