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Outsider Ink
Edited by Sean Meriwether
Reviewed by Ingrid Woodrow

	Outsider Ink Edited by Sean Meriwether outsidermedia@hotmail.com

Outsider Ink is a 'zine subtitled, "The Voice of the Individualist.." The editor, Sean Meriwether, knows a thing or two about Outsider Artists because he, apparently, is one of them. They are "normally overlooked during their own time and later held up as a defining or pivotal voice by a later generation." Meriwether informs us that he has established Outsider Ink as a "platform" for those voices. Unfortunately, the pompous editorializing diminishes — and misrepresents — the work in this journal: an impressive array of thought-provoking fiction and poetry that's recognizable as good literature right here and now.

I liked Lorraine Berry's "The Joy of Teaching," about a philandering academic husband whose graduate-student wife languishes at home in "thesis limbo" as she takes care of his kids. His burgeoning affair with a teaching assistant evokes memories of previous conquests, such as Laura: "She was an ocean — God she was wet — and she undulated against his hand again and again like the incoming tide." There is also the positively creepy "Company" by Viet Dinh who, according to his bio, "is very undisciplined. He most likely needs to be punished." (His email address is supplied for anyone who's interested.) I liked the way the narrator and a secondary character swap positions at the story's climax, implicating the reader in the narrative.

Daniel A. Olivas' "Los Angeles, 1970" is a bittersweet piece about Claudio who, watched by his basketball companions, accidentally flings a used condom onto the rim of the hoop. In a hilarious introductory sequence, the offending article hangs there like a "deformed icicle" as the players decide what to do. Things become a little more complicated when the boys become aware of a Brother from the nearby school watching them from a window.

Greggory Moore's "The Nasty Astronaut" is an intriguing piece. The protagonist, Robert Stevenson, is condemned to spend his remaining days in space after being diagnosed with an inner-ear condition that would cause his death if he were to attempt a return to earth's atmosphere. The story is told from the point of view of the astronaut's attorney and reads more as reportage than fiction.

I also liked Eric Smiarowski's poems, particularly "Blue Collar Friday":

At home
I pick up my woman
Spin her around till she slides
Out of my grip
The dog barks and jumps
We smoke cigarettes and drink
till it's gone
Rush to the bar for dollar pints
Skip dinner
Drink until we fight
until we forget about the week
Go home and have great drunk sex till daylight
Then sleep till noon

Robert Klein Engler's "The Theft of a Pencil" is another solid piece, told from the point of view of a Junior Scribe who has worked in the Scriptorium at the McGill Monastery "for five years without ever ruining a document or wasting paper":

My desk is its own country. It does not change with the seasons, but remains as constant[s] as daily rituals. From a brown prairie of wood I see that a white lake of paper stretches to the hills of tools and implements. Pens and rulers sprout up like trees there. Beyond those hills and to the left are the mountains of boxes and baskets that hold the scraps of this and that project. Here in my miniature land of letters all the tools my hand needs to copy and illuminate reside as law-abiding citizens.

From what I can discern, the "Voice of the Outsider" is predominantly (and predictably) male. Only four women have been featured in Outsider Ink, and one of them is a sixteen year-old from a little town in Wisconsin "who plans to escape to New Orleans with a travelling puppet show and steal a shrimp boat." There are also details of an upcoming writing contest that must incorporate a given sentence in 600 words or less. We're advised to "keep an Outsider point-of -view ... make it alternative, unusual or just plain odd." No prize money is offered, but "won't it make your mom proud." (I guess even Outsider Artists worry about Mom will think.)

Editor Sean Meriwether, in styling himself a risk-taking patron of "marginal" literature, takes more credit than he deserves for the work he has selected for inclusion in Outsider Ink. It is my guess that most of what is here would be at home in any of the quality mainstream literary journals such as Oyster Boy or Twelve-Gauge. Ignore the self-aggrandizing editorializing and immerse yourself in Outsider Ink.

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Ingrid Woodrow is a writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Her first novel, Goddess and the Galaxy Boy, will be published in early 2001. She is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland and working on a new novel.She is also the founding editor of the online writing journal Mangrove, which is listed as a "Site of National Significance" in the National Library of Australia's PANDORA archive.

Further information and samples of her work can be obtained by visiting www.uq.edu.au/~eniwoodr