Dear reader,
Welcome to Issue 114!
In an interview published in The New Republic, William H. Gass said that, when writing, he made use of signs, naturally, yes, but when he did so, he did so in the manner of someone gathering up highway signs and making a sculpture out of them. One could look at the sculpture and read Chicago — 35 miles but one’s attention would be drawn to the sculpture and not to Chicago, not to the distance one happened, just then, to be from Chicago. He was, he said, intent on creating an object, not on passing on information.
Reader, it won’t take long to see that signs of all kinds have had their way with this issue: from natural phenomena occurring out of season to full-on extinctions, from bodies of water to bodies in flux, dreams, the objects we interact with every day, objects we marvel at, money—the list could be as long as the issue.
When confronted with a sign, we look underneath, inside, beyond, past it into its future, in part, surely, because we are, at base, users of tools; to the man with the hammer, everything looks like a nail, you know? But, obviously, we here at The Rupture hold with Gass that when the creator has given their attention to the object, it will be, for others, more satisfying to consider the object, to admire it for what it is, keeping at arm’s length for as long as one can what it does. One can, after all, create a quiet space for reading by simply reading, in other words, not allowing the outer world to intrude, thinking of the sculpture and not of Chicago, and just now, reader, at this particular moment in time, a quiet space for reading certainly seems like something to treasure.
In truth, maybe that’s all we meant to assert here: that there is value in quiet spaces, in treasuring. We believe the poems, fictions, essays, and reviews in this issue are worth your undivided attention, and we very much hope you agree.
Sincerely,
Gabriel Blackwell