Outside Providence (continued)

WHILE ALL OF 3RD BED’S entries are more or less weird, the journal does not sing in just one note, and associate fiction editor Brandes suggests, "The pieces run from varying degrees of expected and unexpected." 3rd bed may not be publishing slick genre fiction in which everything is spelled out, but it’s not peddling nonsense, nor are all of the pieces difficult to understand.

3rd bed’s audience is difficult to pin down. Initially, Standley had assumed that most of 3rd bed’s readers were writers themselves, probably in their twenties, and likely MFA students. Now he’s not so sure, and notes that readings have attracted crowds of people in their forties and fifties, as well as those in their twenties. "I don’t think you can locate the demographic age-wise," he says. "It’s more a cross-generation aesthetic."

In addition to being a journal of the experimental and the absurd, offering dense nonlinear stories and poems that come missing certain parts, 3rd bed can also be described as a post-modern meta journal. Much of the work that appears in the publication is keenly aware of its own construction and is writing that serves as a commentary on writing. 3rd bed interrogates what "good writing" means, and flipping through the journal, one can’t help asking, Is this literature? Which leads to the further question, What is literature? To this end, issue 9 features all kinds of odds and ends, including an ostensibly non-fiction piece by Kathryn Rantala titled, "Johnny Hendrickson and the La Brea Tar Pits" consisting of paragraphs about the La Brea Tar Pits, motor oil, Norwegian oil production, bees, UPC codes, ZIP codes, and Norwegian Fjord horses, among other things. Graphs and charts are included and each component is quite straightforward, although sometimes obscure, such as the table presenting, "The Division of Colors in % of Registered Nordfjordhest Stallions." The author makes no connection between the piece’s elements, leaving the reader to puzzle through the pastiche and divine their own significance from it. Other selections in issue 9 include a visual representation of sound waves, and a one word "short story inspired by actual events," whose one word is "foreclosure."

Literary journals don’t so much compete amongst themselves as they battle a wider literary culture (and beyond that an even wider junk media culture) that favors the author as celebrity (or even worse the celebrity as author), the book as movie, and literature as a product to be marketed, consumed and disposed of. 3rd bed has survived and grown in this arena by dint of Standley’s relentless efforts to get the journal into as many hands as possible while containing costs, a struggle familiar to all independent literary magazines.

Lately, Standley has focused increasingly on networking, in part by serving as a panelist at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Chicago in March. Over time 3rd bed has expanded its reach with the evolution of its Web site, a more elegant design for the print edition, and national distribution. This latter is a key point — it’s difficult to sell a journal if it is not in bookstores. Currently, Small Press Distribution, a Berkeley-based nonprofit, and Ingram, a national behemoth, distribute the magazine. Having been burned by less reputable outfits in the past, Standley regards these deals as absolutely crucial to the magazine’s continued existence.

3RD BED IS CONSTANTLY IN SEARCH of funding and its editor struggles to get each issue published. Beyond the money from sales of the magazine (1100 of every 1500 issues are actually sold), Standley relies on loans and odd cash contributions. He recently sent a mass e-mail to all of 3rd bed’s subscribers, supporters, and contributors asking for donations so that issue 10 could be produced. "For two months I had this low-grade vertigo that went away when the funding for this issue was finally resolved," he says. 3rd bed, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation, is unlike many literary journal in that it is not affiliated with a university creative writing program. Standley suggests that without some kind of institutional support, or a grant from a body such as the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the journal is likely unsustainable. A 3rd bed board is currently being formed, and Standley hopes that this body will enable the journal to obtain the necessary ongoing financial support.

Financial difficulties aside, one sign of 3rd bed’s success is that it publishes more "name" authors than it used to, leading to what might be called a beneficial or vicious cycle, depending how you look at it. The publication of well-known authors attracts new readers, as well as other high-profile contributors, increasing the magazine’s recognition, thereby attracting further "names" and so on. We’re not talking about Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, but such prominent experimental writers as Robert Coover, Tomaz Salamun, Diane Williams, and Michael Burkard, among others. This issue of "name" writers is a touchy one for Standley. When I asked him about prominent authors who had appeared in 3rd bed’s pages, he became agitated and uncomfortable (and asked that I write that he was agitated and uncomfortable, which I have). He then rattled off a few names but concluded, "We publish unpublished writers."

Standley recognizes the dilemma inherent when an ostensibly experimental journal becomes an organ open only to established writers, even if these are people who fly below the mainstream radar. How can you get at the margins of the culture if all your contributors are flush with book contracts, prestigious teaching appointments, and literary awards? Standley well recognizes that if an experimental literary journal wants to stay that way, it needs to be open to new voices. This is not to say that well-established writers don’t have an important part to play. In addition to the quality of their work and the prestige they bring, Standley sees writers such as Coover and Williams as reference points for younger and less well-known writers, showing them that experimental/absurdist/surrealist writing is part of the culture and has a place in the ongoing conversation about what constitutes literature.

3rd bed has managed to handle its modest success well. In any given issue, a few of its contributors are big names (at least within experimental writing), but most are writers without book contracts who publish principally in small literary journals, and a few are finding their work in print for the first time. As a general rule, 3rd bed contributors are people writing not for the money (contributors are unpaid), or the fame, but the sheer sport and pleasure of the thing.

Literary journals also have a peculiar problem — they generally have many would-be contributors and relatively few readers, meaning that the editors spend a great deal of time reading and responding to submissions, even though the magazine’s revenues are modest to say the least. 3rd bed receives about 100 print and electronic manuscripts monthly and publishes only two issues a year. Most submissions are rejected, in many cases because they do not fall within the bounds of the journal’s editorial scope — gritty confessional realism is just not 3rd bed’s bag. Most of the material that does make it in, "Simply transcends the slush pile in some way," says associate fiction editor Brandes.

Standley prides himself on 3rd bed’s uncompromising stand. Since its inception, the magazine has remained consistent in its particular and peculiar vision, and Standley has no intention of changing or diluting the magazine to make it more palatable to a wider audience. This brings up another touchy subject for Standley: Is 3rd bed inaccessible, even elitist? Standley and Brandes don’t like the question, and find the whole matter problematic if it assumes that "accessibility" and "readability" aren’t loaded terms. Standley cites William Faulkner as a notoriously difficult, dense, and at times impenetrable writer, yet one who occupies a central place in American and 20th-century literature. And the same might be said for much of Joyce, Woolf, and more recently, Pynchon. Standley suggests that in order to be a good reader, "It takes a commitment to not know what’s going on." He argues that one of the functions of 3rd bed is to take the unusual, the absurd, and the difficult and give it a venue, thereby conferring some authority and legitimacy on it by virtue of publication.

Standley and Brandes are quick to point out that 3rd bed is not publishing writing that is obtuse or obscure simply as bitter medicine for dull-minded realists, nor are they doing it just because they can. "We’re not trying to put stuff out there that is impossible," says Brandes, and Standley stresses that 3rd bed is not a prank, nor is it camp.

If anything, the 3rd bed editors see the journal as a means of stretching the bounds of what literature is capable, "of expanding the modes of realism" as Standley puts it. And they have had some success. While a copy of 3rd bed might not be on every nightstand, the journal definitely has a following. Still, regardless of their efforts, Standley and his fellow editors recognize a certain ceiling on how many copies of 3rd bed they can ever hope to circulate. Absurdist or experimental literary journals remain a niche within the subculture of little magazines, a situation not likely to change anytime soon.

Tim Lehnert can be reached at timlehnert@ids.net.