The 2012 edition of long-running literary journal Going Down Swinging is an expansive collection of literary miscellany, loosely hung together by several disparate threads. The journal pulls together short stories, flash fiction, poetry, essays, line drawings, cartoons and memoirs into a nearly 300 page rumination on Jesus as a specific kind of cosmic journeyman – that being the kind who spends a lot of time in his favourite local dive exaggerating his cosmic journeys and in the process forgetting significant details. The journal also features a 15 track spoken word CD, slipped neatly into the cover.
The Jesus theme snuck inconspicuously into the editorial room, as editor Geoff Lemon tells it, before eventually it became evident that it was going to be hanging around, and getting significantly less inconspicuous along the way. The tone is set by the journal’s first written work, an autobiographical essay by Andre Dao, who meditates on the transcendental potential offered by maintaining distance from, rather than disdain for, religion. Besides sharing an affinity for things left unsaid, a twist where the effect is to pivotally underwhelm readers, and a lucid yet systematic approach to finding the work’s centre, ‘Out of Our Bodies’ introduces the thematic concerns which give the journal its consistency, in all senses of the word. Dao touches on the complications dogma presents, and the improbability of things going to plan, but the probability that that’s part of the plan, all in the form of a mostly subdued exercise in applied mysticism.
The journal’s literal centrepiece, ‘Atlas Dharma’, a collaborative commission between artist Simon MacEwan and writer Cate Kennedy, recalls a childhood family ritual which leads the narrator’s younger self into an early encounter, via a Reader’s Digest Atlas, with the strangeness of the stars and the belittling, mocking power the universe holds over mortal souls. As an adult, the Atlas is rediscovered, on eBay, a peculiar 21st century victory against the cosmos, and a rather typical example of what Going Down Swinging offers readers: a precarious balance between nostalgia and Nostradamus, plot-lines that aim for the stars but rarely fire, and a fixation on the serendipitous. That’s not to say the stories aren’t exceptional – there is brilliant writing, only most of it is somewhat forgettable, due to an insistence on clever writing and flashy, aphoristic turns of phrase which cover up sometimes banal observations of human wonderment.
The journal is at its best when the writing is direct. In ‘Badass’, by Michael Trudeau, a long-form short story forgoes the passivity so present elsewhere for a deliberately uneasy melancholy, which manifests itself in an unsettling revelation of universal truths extant in dead-end lifestyles. In ‘I Used to Be a Young Poet’, Daniel East employs a runaway rhythm to deliver pointed lines which leave every other ‘writing about writing’ piece in the collection for dead. The two significantly theory-driven pieces are exceptional essays which are at their best when they leave what they’ve read behind and put forward genuinely revelatory perspectives, which incidentally fill in or expand some of the spaces the narrative and poetic works leave behind.
Meanwhile, the accompanying disc of spoken word and other recorded paraphernalia serves a strange purpose in a project already spanning a sea of intentions. Some of it is much more literally focused on Jesus, using him as an easy mechanism to turn a fantastic trope into a social commentary, while other tracks find the stand-ups in rant mode (‘Fuck You, Glee’, courtesy of Emily Zoey Baker) or indulging in some straight-up satire (‘Free Wifi’ by The Bedroom Philosopher). The disc is almost a flip-side of what is contained inside the journal – where the printed work is contemplative, restrained and often trying to hide the punchline, the voices that compose these recordings are loud, obnoxious and generally hammer home whatever point they’re trying to make. This makes for a useful counterpoint, but one which ultimately kind of seems at odds with the aesthetic of Going Down Swinging’s interior.
In conclusion, the latest Going Down Swinging is a formidable collection of contemporary literary experiments, presented beautifully amongst neat cartoons, line drawings and found diagrams which reflect the words in an attempt to assert the uniformity I’ve tried to identify. As a whole, the journal is sometimes plodding and less breathtaking than its stargazing undertone signifies, yet the knock-out punches come with a regularity that makes it all worth it.
Going Down Swinging No. 33
Edited by Geoff Lemon and Bhakthi Puvanenthiran
Paperpack & 15 track spoken word CD
Writers and Artists include: The Bedroom Philosopher, Cate Kennedy, Jillian Pattinson, Nathan Curnow, Eric Yoshiaki Dando, Eric Paul Shaffer, Briohny Doyle, Felix Nobis, Sietta, Joe Dolce, Mantra, and Anita George
RRP $29.90
