Open City #9: Bewitched

Open City Magazine #9

by Daniel Pinchbeck (Editor), Thomas Beller (Editor), Edvard Munch

The most important new literary journal to emerge since Granta, Open City has published some of the best work by major writers and artists such as Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Jeff Koons, David Foster Wallace, Irvine Welsh, Terry Southern, Patrick McCabe, Sam Lipsyte, and David Berman. Edited by the writers Thomas Beller and Daniel Pinchbeck and originally published by the late Robert Bingham, writing from Open City has been included in many prestigious anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Known for launching the careers of today's best new writers, the editors are also committed to printing important unpublished work by writers from past eras, such as Richard Yates, Delmore Schwartz, Jim Thompson, Cyril Connolly, Edvard Munch, and Gregor von Rezzori. With its innovative and daring mix of the old and the new, Open City combines undiscovered writing by classic authors with a fascinating portrait of a literary generation in the making.Open City #12 includes "After the Wall", a special section on Berlin's new generation of fiction writers; a story by Lewis Cole on the end of radicalism; and debut fiction by Sam Brumbaugh and Heather Lorimer. This issue features a previously unpublished story by Ford Maddox Ford.

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 2000

About the author

Daniel Pinchbeck is an American author. His books include Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, and Notes from the Edge Times. He is a co-founder of the web magazine Reality Sandwich and of the website Evolver.net, and edited the North Atlantic Books publishing imprint Evolver Editions. He was featured in the 2010 documentary 2012: Time for Change, directed by Joao Amorim and produced by Mangusta Films. He is the founder of the think tank Center for Planetary Culture, which produced the Regenerative Society Wiki.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this a decade ago for the Ames and Dyer pieces and only now picked it up to read from cover-to-cover. It has me feeling a little misty-eyed for the heydays of numerous literary journals on newsstands in musty bookstores with terrible service.

The aforementioned stories are quite good, though I believe both were included in their authors' respective essay collections. This may have been where I first read Sam Lipsyte whose "Cremains" wasn't his best but was enjoyable. Others were less successful, especially Branca's piece and some of the poetry.

It does have me curious about David Lida whom I'll have to seek out. I've also just discovered that Open City is still publishing so I'll have to pick up the most recent volume.