FRENCH MAGS

by Norma Cole

The invitation from Peter Neufeld and E. Tracy Grinnell to contribute a “French section” for the inaugural issue of Aufgabe coincided with my completion of Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France (Burning Deck 2000). Many of the texts in that volume had first appeared in French literary journals of recent decades. American readers frequently expressed complete unfamiliarity with these journals, in fact surprise that such journals would exist. My response was to make a “French section” which would begin to address this blank.

This section begins to map spatially and temporally the variety of poetics and aesthetics of the editors. Some of these publications existed as a vivid flash, others have endured over time. Claude Royet-Journoud’s l’in-plano was programmed as a daily single page event produced for one year. On the other hand, Henri Deluy’s Action poétique (Revue trimestrielle) initiated by Gérald Neveu, recently celebrated an extraordinary fifty years of publication. As its front matter indicates, the periodical Change was directed by a collective with Jean-Pierre Faye at the helm. When Banana Split ceased publication in France, it was “adopted” by editors in Denmark, at which point its former editors in Marseille, Liliane Giraudon and Jean-Jacques Viton, along with Henri Deluy and Jean-Charles Depaule, began to publish if. Z U K, Tartine and SKORIA were single folded sheets of paper, l’in-plano a single unfolded sheet, whereas Nioques, Siècle à mains, détails, fig. ,FIN and Java for example, are perfect bound.

Presented within our publication constraints (alas, no color reproductions; and our uniform page size presents publications of varying sizes, formats, with gorgeous color covers, graphics & a range of production values—try to imagine them!) this section is an introductory display in which front matter indicates editorship & dates in order to anchor the existence of a journal within a history of written production. Tables of contents reflect demographics. The section is an array of particulars, a sampling of the editorial art itself, inextricable from the instants of writing among which publishing events take place. Selections are inflected by the desire to make known the dedication with which writing from other languages has been sought and translated for French readership.

© Norma Cole. All rights reserved.