So I guess summer is over, huh?
It came and went as it always does. We loved, we learned, we drank too much, we fixed our AC units, we still sweated a lot, we made beautiful, beautiful memories.
But, yeah, summer is over. It’s time to open up that credit card app and check the damage. It’s time to maybe have a serious conversation with the person you were “just having fun” with because, as everyone knows, that shit doesn’t fly when it’s cold out and some real human connection is necessary.
But it’s not all dreadful right? Fall is pretty nice depending on where you’re reading this from. Some good movies might come out before the end of the year. You might not blow it with that aforementioned “just having fun” person and could even slip into something downright romantic. Hot damn! Look at that! Come on now Fall!
Also important to a healthy and full fall: reading, seeing, hearing, etc.-ing good stuff. That’s why we at Cult. Magazine have decided, you know what, it’s about time we put out a damn newsletter highlighting the stuff we think is worth checking out. So stomach that dread the first few chilly days might be bringing you and check some of this stuff out.
Poetry of the Northern Triangle Diaspora by Daniel Flores y Ascencio
Part three of Bomb Magazine’s “Poetry of the Northern Triangle Diaspora” recently dropped. The three part series is an examination of the Northern Triangle diaspora through the voices of poets hailing from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. U.S. interventionism and brutal exploitation has plagued the region with violence and stoked greater and greater instability for over a hundred years. Daniel Flores y Ascencio’s project seeks to give a stage to the many voices of “poets of the Northern Triangle diaspora [who] are coming of age across the US and around the world.” He explains, “They are creating their singular voices and aspirations not only for their dignity, but to explore a sense of belonging which has been denied from colonial times to the imperialist present. Their voices are rising from an ever-burning ancestral fire; they are the voices of liberation. In their writing, they express their hopes, their questions, their resistance to the concepts of nation-building, militarism, and the destruction of our ecosystems.”
Figurski at Findhorn on Acid new archival version
Beloved Cult. contributor Richard Holeton’s debut hypertext novel “Figurski at Findhorn on Acid” is available for both reading and listening online. Originally published in 2001 by Eastgate Systems, Inc. with Storyspace software, this unique hypertext novel has been re-created as an archival version in open web languages and now features the original radio version of the novel for listening as well. The story, in simplest form, follows “three larger than life characters, Frank Figurski, The No Hands Cup Flipper, and Fatima Michelle Vieuchanger, converge at Findhorn, Scotland, a small fishing village and home to an intentional community of New Age eccentrics seeking one—perhaps two!—mechanical pigs of incalculable value while stewing in Spam, acid—yes, that acid—and wit-slathered repartee.” One of the trailblazers in electronic literature, Holeton’s novel––and much of his other works––serves as an important touchstone of what is literary possible through embracing technology rather than being such freaking Luddite about everything.
Speaking of Luddites…Read this article by Devin Thomas O’Shea
Friend of the mag and contributor Devin Thomas O’Shea recently got a piece published in Jacobin considering the pre-Marxist worker’s ethos to the actual English Luddites and how this got buried in the capitalist sweep of time until people just began to use the term to describe their friend who is taking a break from instagram. We are living in a time in which technology––and the small, private group of people responsible for the innovation and implementation of technology into society––seems to promise more and more while the general quality of life seems to continue to decline and the likelihood of a pleasant future for everyone seems to be fading away quicker everyday. Try as our technocratic overlords might to wipe the record of any organized and thoughtful resistance, O’shea suggests that the Luddites are only one iteration of a long history of revolutionaries, and, as Carl Jung said, that shit is hardwired into the human unconscious and is irrepressible. So go break something bad for the environment today. You were born to do it!
Although this is from eight years ago, Tom McCarthy’s essay about how data saturates literary reportage could not be more relevant in the context of emerging tech through generative AI. He lays out how writers attempt to bear witness to their time, but accelerated technological advances (often brought on by corporate capitalism) force writers to rethink their role. With so much readily available information, it almost makes writers seem unnecessary as informers or enlighteners for the reading public. If that is indeed the case, what is the actual purpose of a writer in the digital age?
And finally, some self-promotion
Our second print issue came out earlier this summer and if you still don’t have one, dude, what the hell, get one. (Might as well buy the first one while you’re there too.) We also have some exciting stuff lined up for the fall including an ongoing Sunday happy hour at Victoria! in LES where we’ll be hocking our stuff as well as featuring other publications and people selling the various things they’ve made. There will also be DJs. And booze, obviously. The next one will be on October 6th 3-6 PM and will be featuring City Fishes Magazine, Julian Magazine, and some prints from Frazer Robertson. Crystal Television will be DJing. Come through!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
You really liked that newsletter didn’t you? Earlier today you were all like damn, really wish there was some kind of semi-regular thing that would show me stuff worth checking out so I can’t quit just staring at this wall. And then, boom, we gave that to you.
Alright but what if I told you you could sign up to have the next newsletter sent straight to your inbox? That would be crazy right? You wouldn’t even have to go through the effort of opening up a website. It would just go straight to you. Well if this sounds like something you need––which it definitely is––you can sign up for that here.
That’s all for now. See ya next time. Go wear a sweater or something.