Black Clock 11 « Black Clock

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Listen to BC 11

It’s undeniable that music influences our sensory experience of the world–especially when we are in the position of the receiver of information. This is to say, it doesn’t take a professional film critic to know that the score or soundtrack is just about as important as what is being visually presented on the screen. What is thought about less often, perhaps, is music’s tie to the reading experience. To be sure, there is a great contingent of readers who prefer not to allow music to mingle with their experience of a text. However, a well-picked (or coincidentally synced) music selection can enhance our consumption of what’s on the page. As such, I’d like to offer the following playlist for Black Clock 11.

1. “NYC” by Interpol
2. “Sleep Alone” by Moby
3. “Twice” by Little Dragon
4. “Despicable Dogs” by Small Black
5. “Naked If I Want To” by Cat Power
6. “The Times They Are A-Changing” by Bob Dylan
7. “Graceland” by Paul Simon
8. “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” by Stevie Wonder
9. “Border Guards by The Rosebuds
10. “By This River” by Brian Eno
11. “Aperture” by Wes Willenbring
12. “We Have A Map of the Piano” by Mum
13. “Tomorrowtoday (part 2)” by Triosk
14. “Masonic Funeral Music” performed by Herbert Von Karajan; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
15. “Down the Line” by Jose Gonzalez

Track 1 rides the energy of issue 11’s first two pieces, while tracks 2 and 3 span the flow and length of Jenny Burman, Joanna Scott, and Veronica Gonzalez’s pieces. Track 4 picks up with the mood of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s piece. Track 5, Cat Power’s second cover of Moby Grape’s “Naked If I Want To” fittingly takes us into David Grubb’s meditation on the immortality of the recording. Tracks 6, 7, and 8 lift us up for Greil Marcus’s reflection on Election night. The twang of the Dylan track, referenced in the piece, flows into Paul Simon’s sweetly hopeful song for “Graceland;” and both of these tracks culminate in the campaign’s anthem, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.” The pace begins to slow and the mood sombers with track 9 and Danielle Blau’s piece. Tracks 10, 11, and 12, and 13, take us through the magazine’s next five pieces. Track 14, an eerie classical composition, submerges us in Chris Abani’s piece, and track 15 launches us into Richard Powers’s novel excerpt, with the rush of being onboard a plane, fidgeting, glancing out the window, and a sense of impossible height.

by Mallory Farrugia
a writer and freelance editor living in Venice, CA

Black Clock 11

Forsaken cities and blasted landscapes, characters in exile from their own times, mysterious connections in the air just beyond the grasp of those who barely understand them: Black Clock 11, California Institute of the Arts’ (CalArts) acclaimed literary journal, is slated to arrive on the stands mid-November. This issue features work by such prominent authors as Joanna Scott, Chris Abani and Susan Straight, and introduces the usual selection of dazzling new voices.

In Richard Powers’ “Over the Limit,” freely adapted from his just published novel, a young African woman genetically predisposed to happiness stands at the nexus of a brilliant, narcissistic scientist and the discontented moderator of a TV news magazine. In Rob Roberge’s “Stooge” and Lou Mathews’ “Hollywoodski,” Vegas drug deals go bad and drunken Tinseltown conversations run wild, and in Antonia Crane’s “Rosebud,” a self-designated “sexual outlaw” and stripper looking to retire gets caught up in the intrigues of an aging decadent Hollywood couple. In “This Is How the Past Turns Up”, Greil Marcus charts one of his patently revelatory longitudes between Barack Obama’s election-night victory speech, the fiction of Philip Roth, and Sam Cooke’s perennial contender for the greatest record of all time, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

Singular, idiosyncratic, and a little mysterious, Black Clock has become one of America’s leading literary journals since its inception in 2004, featuring such authors as Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Miranda July, Jonathan Lethem, Darcey Steinke, Rick Moody, Samuel R. Delany, Lynne Tillman, Geoffrey O’Brien, Aimee Bender, William T. Vollmann and many others, along with a growing roster of striking literary debuts. Work appearing in Black Clock has been anthologized in best-of-the-year collections and nominated for O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, and two excerpted novels have gone on to win National Book Awards.

Black Clock‘s staff includes Steve Erickson, acclaimed novelist, critic and member of CalArts MFA Writing Program faculty in addition to being the magazine’s Editor, Senior Editor and adjunct member of CalArts’ Writing Program faculty Bruce Bauman, Managing Editor Michaele Simmering, Production Editor Laura Vena, and Art Director Christopher Morabito.

Black Clock is published semi-annually by the CalArts MFA Writing Program. One-year subscription (2 issues): $20. Single issue cover price: $13. To subscribe, consult Black Clock subscription agent fictionondemand.com.

For more information see blackclock.org.

Posts Tagged ‘Black Clock 11’—

Listen to BC 11

Black Clock 11

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