A Letter From the Editor: Spring 2001

by Keith Jason Wikle

         A year passed, not too sure where it went. I do know that the magazine put out some interesting material in the premiere run. The Worst Star Wars Cast Ever Game still gives me a chuckle, (Rowan Atkinson as the AT-AT Commmander who removes his underwear without taking off his pants first). The turtleneck.net litgeek Dreamcruise Car Reviews (is that too many nouns?), which seemed to give a sense of astonishment to those who thought we couldn't make anything goofy and literary. Many thanks to our extra-ordinary, certifiable contributors, Coral Hull, Radames Ortiz, Aidan Baker, Rich Baker, Richard Raleigh...and many others. We also capitalized on the opportunity to bring on two contributing editors, also known as the hired guns: Chris Switzer and Karl Erickson.
         At one of our editorial meetings, our new contributing editor asked a very simple question, "what is your target audience?" I interpreted this to mean, "what are you two jokers actually trying to do?" I thought I had a ready-made response, but soon discovered that I did not. I fumbled over my own tongue, like a snag in the rug, trying to come up with something. I stuttered for a moment about Vonnegut and some kind of wild-eyed una-bomber type of demographic, but in the end it was a question to which I was wholly and completely unable to articulate an answer.
         This bothered me to say the least. I decided I would set out to get something solid on what turtleneck.net is about, who the audience is, and what we (jokers) are trying to do. So I immediately retreated to the proverbial mountain to find an answer to this question. In my zen-like trance, I came away with nothing save a bump on the noggen from my son Gabriel's plastic lightsaber.
         I didn't get it until I attended a Saint Patrick's Day party at a friend's house. While seated in a comfortable chair, sipping Guinness, a friend asked me what I'd been reading. Goosed and giddy at the chance to talk about books, I excitedly dove into the specifics and generalities of the Jose Saramago books I read for the magazine. I spoke for about three, possibly four minutes about Blindness, and then The History of the Siege of Lisbon.
         My friend in the meantime went first limp, then glassy-eyed, and finally semi-comatose.
         I thought to myself as I was nudging my buddy awake, this is it, this is why I have a magazine. No, not to bore people to tears, but instead to take the literary big wigs and kick the stuffing out of their image of complete inscrutability, or unattainable comprehension. turtleneck.net isn't in the business of making cliff notes. But we are in the business of putting the texts written by Saramago, Pahlaniuk, Murakami, Tolkein, Will Gibson, that old southern fart Faulkner, Roth and others into the realm of the culture we live in. So that when somebody asks me what I've been reading, they can visibly see–via turtleneck.net–the connections between a Portuguese author's book about an epidemic cultural blindness and the ethnic clashes of Kosovo, Bosnia, or Rawanda.
         Comparisons and parallels–this is how I approach literature, and almost everything else. Where is there a parallel between what I read and what's happening here in the USA or abroad? And if the literature does exist outside of the cultural spectrum, why?
         Literature in and of itself does have difficulty appearing cognoscente and relevant. Italian author Italo Calvino points out how literature must evolve and include all fields of knowledge, "Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function. Since science has begun to distrust general explanations and solutions that are not sectorial and specialized, the grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various "codes," into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world." This statement from Calvino demonstrates that literature struggles to communicate the incommensurable, collides with difficult topics or ideas, and sometimes obfuscates itself. However literature does make the obligatory step towards comprehension by getting in the wading pool where all the other kids swim, as opposed to sitting cross-knee'd on the side.
         So the mission, in short, is taking the piss out of that "stuffed shirt" image of literature, to make light of its comedy, its roots in the world we all live in, and to draw connections to other texts and mediums (film, music, and anything else our creative staff comes up with).
         While literature is sometimes the lofty, unattainable, grande hotel, for a few lanky egg-headed guys with woolen underwear and elbow patches, we at turtleneck.net claim that it is also a woman wearing a pink bathrobe and yellow rabbit slippers, sipping Nescafe with whiskey.
         So perhaps next year, while kicking back in that easy chair, we'll all be better equipped to relay an amusing, or insightful anecdote about literature, that will amuse your friends, impress your boss, or frighten your enemies.