a guilty conscious

Online literary magazines seemed to me for the longest time some form of blasphemy. Not much compares to the tactile and aesthetic appeal of a printed, bound journal. Maybe that sounds a little creepy, but I’m a creepy guy.

So when writer and friend Christopher Dwyer posted over at Write Club about this online lit-mag called Dogmatika I wasn’t exactly crushing keys to get over there. But call me a convert.Dogmatika was the eye opener. It stands as not only the first online lit-mag that I read with regularity, but also the first I loved so much that I felt compelled to submit my own fiction. Head over to Dogmatika now to read my short-short, “Petty Injuries.”

Maybe I was a literary snob. Maybe I yearned too much for the prestige that comes with a printed journal. Maybe I was too focused on the canvas, not the art. I think Albert Camus is correct, that “a guilty conscious needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”Despite the form, the work needs to get out there.*

*Though I would say that many theorists, the late Jacques Derrida being one of them, might point out the impossibility of separating message from forum, that they are part of the same end. I agree. But that keeps me from being able to use the Camus quote, and I really like Camus’s work. And yes, I used the quote out of context. What are you going to do, dig up Camus’s corpse and tattle? You are? Can you get me a postcard or something?

Call it the month of Write Club. Four of us have stories in Dogmatika this month. The aforementioned Christopher Dwyer’s Parabola Jason Kane’s “Letter From Point Pleasant“ and Mark Lazer’s “Three Times Dead“ all share page space in June.