Review: Anderbo.com
A Review of Anderbo: Writer’s
Amputated Digits No Handicap in the Digital Age
By Lysa Fisk
The “facts” about http://www.anderbo.com/ are as follows… It won the StorySouth Million Writer’s Award in the “Best New Online Literary Journal 2005” category. Rick Rofihe, frequent contributor of short fiction to The New Yorker, started it when he decided to publish nine of his own short stories online in an eBook format. They are always looking for short fiction, “facts,” poetry, and photography. Since the website is continuously updated, all the existing content is always there, plus there is always something new to be discovered. They read submissions all year around, but they do not pay authors for the pieces they publish.
As a strictly online journal, the website is more like a place than a thing. The homepage seems more like a coffee shop I frequented in Des Moines with its notices of local bands, art for sale by local artists, collection of books, magazines, and board games on the hand-crafted bookshelves, and unmatched assortment of tiny bistro tables inside its small space in a renovated wood and brick building on a side street downtown (or in Greenwich Village). The journal/coffee shop/homepage entices the reader to come inside with a black and white (no colors) color scheme such as one would expect to see in a newspaper (or underground, alternative newspaper) with a serif typeface that looks like newsprint. It has the journal’s logo in the center of the homepage: an antique, manual typewriter with round keys, and the name of the journal etched into the typewriter’s carriage. This reminds me of the types of icons we see elsewhere on the web in which the image of a telephone receiver or an envelope identifies a particular online function.
The homepage is simple to navigate. For instance, beneath the antique typewriter there are hotlinks identifying the various sections of the journal. One can easily choose to read the masthead section to learn about the editors, the poetry section, the fiction section, the “facts” section for creative non-fiction, or look at pictures in the photography section by clicking on the appropriate word. Each section then has a table of contents with a list of selections and at the bottom of each page, the same logo with links to all the other sections to make this website a breeze to navigate. The homepage lists the most recent additions as if it is “the latest issue” with blurbs to entice the reader such as “Most Read Story.” It also provides links to information about annual contests in the different genre that the journal runs. For visual interest and to help the reader orient himself to the text, each item on the list appears in various shades of gray. Each piece is set in a narrow column with a space between each short paragraph and plenty of white space on the page. Each selection appears on one continuous page that is scrolled rather than clicked through to turn pages. The items print well due to this formatting so if a reader wants to print out a piece, that is very easy. The look-and-feel of the journal’s website and the ease with which it can be navigated really takes the challenges of online reading into consideration and overcomes them. The journal also contains links to items published about its editors in other sources such as a link to the article this was copied from:
“What attracted you to working on this journal?”
“E-publishing itself. Because, in a practical sense, the paper book or journal or magazine or newspaper is already as obsolete as the vinyl LP-record is, especially when it comes to the time and costs devoted to their manufacture and, especially, distribution.” --Rick Rohife
The writing is fresh and edgy but done in good taste and of good quality. According to the writers’ biographies that appear at the bottom of each selection, most of the writers have at least a bachelor’s degree, and many of them are either pursuing the MFA or have earned one. Just like the editors, the writers have been published in other places. This journal is positioned as a part of the New York literary scene but has the global reach of the worldwide web. This online journal would be a good place to read entertaining literature and a good place to spot trends in what people are reading and writing.
Winner of the 2012 RRofihe Trophy, “Her Voices, Her Room,” by Martha Clarkson, opens on a scenario that any writer can almost relate to: the main character, Marjorie, who does convincing impersonations of Truman Capote, has decided to go to a Haiku writing workshop one weekend in January. She does not really know much about writing Haiku or even about writing poetry, but when she was young and living in Kansas she had wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, Marjorie never wrote more than a few stories before she got pregnant and had to get married to a man who sold veal, drank, and beat her. Marjorie is now an elderly woman, in her 70s, among a group of 30 somethings where she does not fit in or get asked to join in though she does write over seventy Haiku more than the four or five everyone else had written. She remembers having met Truman Capote when he was in her town researching In Cold Blood, and because she admired him so much, she had perfected her impersonations of him. She bonds with her classmates over scotch and a hilarious performance of her impressions. This is a wonderful and entertaining story that knits together slices of Americana and depicts our ever evolving sense of diversity and the assortment of personalities that make up the postmodern, digital age community—both virtual and actual.
Billed as “Soon to be a major motion picture? Our Most-Read Story!” Kara Janeczko’s “The Rules of Urban Living” shows us what might be going on behind a Facebook relationship status like “It’s Complicated.” We find the story’s main character, Lorraine, calling her boyfriend, Simon, in the middle of the night because she is being kept awake by the sounds of a “mouse rearranging its furniture inside her walls.” She tells him “It’s reckless how you throw around love” to which he answers, “You’re degrading my feelings.” What follows is a meditation on urban living in which Lorraine “feels as if her neighbors were in the room, their couches and blue-lit televisions lifting and melting through transparent ceilings, floors and walls, as if the entire building were within her apartment.” She sees rats copulating openly on the sidewalk when she goes outside to smoke, imagines that she can hear her neighbors eating dinner and having sex and that they can hear her, and asks herself why she thinks the guy downstairs is a fireman. And although she tells Simon when she first meets him that she has no expectations, she is lying. This story is an edgy, meaningful Sex In the City kind of narrative and, word for word, very well written.
Anderbo is a very fashion forward example of an online creative writing publication brought to us from one of the publishing capitals of the world. Here you will find everything from a memoir of being a rock n roll groupy in the 70s to a photo essay of Berlin to movie and book reviews and more. The content all has the polish of fine literature while also having broad appeal to the sort of wide, unpredictable audience of the internet. Best of all, by the time everyone else catches onto reading http://www.anderbo.com/, you will be able to say that you’ve been reading it for years.
At this moment, Lysa Fisk has to write four papers, revise a short story, and submit to a final exam in order to achieve a respectable GPA and at last complete her Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing with a Spanish minor at Valparaiso University. Her biography continues to write her life into existence as it leads her. She views her life as both work of art and work in progress. Once completed, the reader may find the holons of her scattered soul among the ruins of works she has yet to write.
The “facts” about http://www.anderbo.com/ are as follows… It won the StorySouth Million Writer’s Award in the “Best New Online Literary Journal 2005” category. Rick Rofihe, frequent contributor of short fiction to The New Yorker, started it when he decided to publish nine of his own short stories online in an eBook format. They are always looking for short fiction, “facts,” poetry, and photography. Since the website is continuously updated, all the existing content is always there, plus there is always something new to be discovered. They read submissions all year around, but they do not pay authors for the pieces they publish.
As a strictly online journal, the website is more like a place than a thing. The homepage seems more like a coffee shop I frequented in Des Moines with its notices of local bands, art for sale by local artists, collection of books, magazines, and board games on the hand-crafted bookshelves, and unmatched assortment of tiny bistro tables inside its small space in a renovated wood and brick building on a side street downtown (or in Greenwich Village). The journal/coffee shop/homepage entices the reader to come inside with a black and white (no colors) color scheme such as one would expect to see in a newspaper (or underground, alternative newspaper) with a serif typeface that looks like newsprint. It has the journal’s logo in the center of the homepage: an antique, manual typewriter with round keys, and the name of the journal etched into the typewriter’s carriage. This reminds me of the types of icons we see elsewhere on the web in which the image of a telephone receiver or an envelope identifies a particular online function.
The homepage is simple to navigate. For instance, beneath the antique typewriter there are hotlinks identifying the various sections of the journal. One can easily choose to read the masthead section to learn about the editors, the poetry section, the fiction section, the “facts” section for creative non-fiction, or look at pictures in the photography section by clicking on the appropriate word. Each section then has a table of contents with a list of selections and at the bottom of each page, the same logo with links to all the other sections to make this website a breeze to navigate. The homepage lists the most recent additions as if it is “the latest issue” with blurbs to entice the reader such as “Most Read Story.” It also provides links to information about annual contests in the different genre that the journal runs. For visual interest and to help the reader orient himself to the text, each item on the list appears in various shades of gray. Each piece is set in a narrow column with a space between each short paragraph and plenty of white space on the page. Each selection appears on one continuous page that is scrolled rather than clicked through to turn pages. The items print well due to this formatting so if a reader wants to print out a piece, that is very easy. The look-and-feel of the journal’s website and the ease with which it can be navigated really takes the challenges of online reading into consideration and overcomes them. The journal also contains links to items published about its editors in other sources such as a link to the article this was copied from:
“What attracted you to working on this journal?”
“E-publishing itself. Because, in a practical sense, the paper book or journal or magazine or newspaper is already as obsolete as the vinyl LP-record is, especially when it comes to the time and costs devoted to their manufacture and, especially, distribution.” --Rick Rohife
The writing is fresh and edgy but done in good taste and of good quality. According to the writers’ biographies that appear at the bottom of each selection, most of the writers have at least a bachelor’s degree, and many of them are either pursuing the MFA or have earned one. Just like the editors, the writers have been published in other places. This journal is positioned as a part of the New York literary scene but has the global reach of the worldwide web. This online journal would be a good place to read entertaining literature and a good place to spot trends in what people are reading and writing.
Winner of the 2012 RRofihe Trophy, “Her Voices, Her Room,” by Martha Clarkson, opens on a scenario that any writer can almost relate to: the main character, Marjorie, who does convincing impersonations of Truman Capote, has decided to go to a Haiku writing workshop one weekend in January. She does not really know much about writing Haiku or even about writing poetry, but when she was young and living in Kansas she had wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, Marjorie never wrote more than a few stories before she got pregnant and had to get married to a man who sold veal, drank, and beat her. Marjorie is now an elderly woman, in her 70s, among a group of 30 somethings where she does not fit in or get asked to join in though she does write over seventy Haiku more than the four or five everyone else had written. She remembers having met Truman Capote when he was in her town researching In Cold Blood, and because she admired him so much, she had perfected her impersonations of him. She bonds with her classmates over scotch and a hilarious performance of her impressions. This is a wonderful and entertaining story that knits together slices of Americana and depicts our ever evolving sense of diversity and the assortment of personalities that make up the postmodern, digital age community—both virtual and actual.
Billed as “Soon to be a major motion picture? Our Most-Read Story!” Kara Janeczko’s “The Rules of Urban Living” shows us what might be going on behind a Facebook relationship status like “It’s Complicated.” We find the story’s main character, Lorraine, calling her boyfriend, Simon, in the middle of the night because she is being kept awake by the sounds of a “mouse rearranging its furniture inside her walls.” She tells him “It’s reckless how you throw around love” to which he answers, “You’re degrading my feelings.” What follows is a meditation on urban living in which Lorraine “feels as if her neighbors were in the room, their couches and blue-lit televisions lifting and melting through transparent ceilings, floors and walls, as if the entire building were within her apartment.” She sees rats copulating openly on the sidewalk when she goes outside to smoke, imagines that she can hear her neighbors eating dinner and having sex and that they can hear her, and asks herself why she thinks the guy downstairs is a fireman. And although she tells Simon when she first meets him that she has no expectations, she is lying. This story is an edgy, meaningful Sex In the City kind of narrative and, word for word, very well written.
Anderbo is a very fashion forward example of an online creative writing publication brought to us from one of the publishing capitals of the world. Here you will find everything from a memoir of being a rock n roll groupy in the 70s to a photo essay of Berlin to movie and book reviews and more. The content all has the polish of fine literature while also having broad appeal to the sort of wide, unpredictable audience of the internet. Best of all, by the time everyone else catches onto reading http://www.anderbo.com/, you will be able to say that you’ve been reading it for years.
At this moment, Lysa Fisk has to write four papers, revise a short story, and submit to a final exam in order to achieve a respectable GPA and at last complete her Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing with a Spanish minor at Valparaiso University. Her biography continues to write her life into existence as it leads her. She views her life as both work of art and work in progress. Once completed, the reader may find the holons of her scattered soul among the ruins of works she has yet to write.
On behalf of everyone at Anderbo, thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteRick Rofihe
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief