Three guesses as to what this book is about.

An index of the cover-photo: half-drunk stale amber liquid nestled in the dawn-phobic shadows of sleaze; dilapidated teal panties in a bunch; frilly white bra draped over a red chair cozying up to what looks like a wrinkled blue shirt; condom escaped from its wrapper; strewn-about novels by Miller, Nabokov, Sade, et al…

Perhaps three’s a bit excessive.

Ah yes! Another work exploring agriculture in America! An incisive look into the country’s pervasive use of corn and pesticide. Michael Pollan and Rachel Carson would be proud.

It’s about sex.

Issue 7 of Black Clock is out and fit for consumption. The magazine, beloved spawn of the CalArts MFA Writing Program, appears in print semiannually and does not limit its submissions to the work of the Institute’s students. It has variously showcased pieces by heavyweights such as Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace and Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Issue 7 hosts pieces—novel excerpts, short stories, poetry—by 29 writers. And although no lit-mag can be entirely free from self-adulation, post-modern posery and self-adulating post-post-modern posery, this one’s also chock full of talent.

I went to the issue unveiling at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s subterranean Ahmanson Auditorium, a perfect match for the magazine, MOCA being one of the starkest, most installation-favoring venues in town. The gathering was all witty and full of ironic flannel and double-braided hair. I enjoyed myself. Editor Steve Erickson introduced the work and welcomed a host of readers.

I found my favorite reader in Geoff Nicholson and my favorite work in Janet Fitch’s acerbic, poignant, dream-like “Room 721,” a piece that traces a Russian emigre’s feverish thoughts and fantasies in 1920s Los Angeles.

Nicholson’s British accent colored his already hilarious short piece titled “Index for a Lost Autobiography.” His “Index” laments the premature loss of a voluminous alphabetical recounting of every sexual “event, thought, feeling, touch, sound, smell [he'd] ever experienced.” He explains that the work is incomplete, running only through the letter B, due to his inability to salvage it from the wreckage of a catastrophic fire. The A section alone, though, is impressive, including entries like:

Alabaster: dildo made from, skin compared to
Albinism: mild fetishistic attraction toward
Alcohol: effects on libido
Alda, Alan: as sexual role model
Alfa Romeo Spyder: automobile, failed attempt at sexual intercourse in
Aliens, from space: sex with (imaginary)

Not having read anything else by the man, I can’t speak for his other work. But for the curious,
Nicholson calls this place home.

Among the works included in Issue 7, readers will find Victorian-style interior dramas, ribald tongue-in-cheek numbers, vampire fare and uncluttered observations on a common pass-time. In short, I guess there really is something for everyone. Wink~