Tucker Baines
My father used to say, Ambition is a good thing. He wasn’t one for poetry, but you get the idea.
In the case of The Murky Fringe, ambition is bogged down by necessity, hindered by the self-imposed rule to post once a day. Instead of polished pieces we get sketches, which are often the seeds of good ideas that never bear much fruit.
Imagine if posts like Step Fathers Don’t Forgive a Botched Kabuki Face Paint and Animal Photography were given more consideration by their authors. As it is now, we have two forgettable pieces that may have been so much more.
The problem is that The Murky Fringe exists not as a journal, but as a sketchbook, an online idea pad for Ms. Deever and Ms. Tate, the authors/editors responsible for most of its content.
There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, except that the Fringe tries to pass itself off as a literary journal of sorts, when the caliber of work that it puts out each day does not have the same level of craft as that of legitimate journals.
I often feel like I’m in the backseat, two days in to some grand road trip while Ms. Deever and Ms. Hale sit in the front trying to make one another laugh.
And I’m sure they do–make one another laugh–but as a reader, I am often lost in that backseat, cut off from their inside jokes and partially developed shtick. At the end of the ride, I’m wondering if it was worth it at all. Is it worth diving into a realm of expression that does not have much to offer me?
This is often true of McSweeneys–a site they have clearly modeled themselves after–where the humor is so clever, so wry, it often alienates anyone who is not a bookish smart aleck trying to impress the rare other who can list all the characters in both Wuthering Heights and Masters of the Universe.
What The Murky Fringe should aim for, then, is Diagram, a literary journal that’s bookish enough for the smart kids, yet less catch-me-if-you-can. It’s challenging and humorous, and most importantly, it invites us into the front seat for a road trip we can share.
Once and a while, the girls at The Murky Fringe do hit on something. Mao comes to mind. So do A Coal Miner Remembers His Canaries and My First Nude.
But overall the Fringe is a place for silliness and absurdity, more fun than a whoopy cushion, but rarely more substantial. Perhaps with more editing I would check the site everyday and recommend it to my colleagues across the country.
Every so often I check the Fringe on the weekends, scanning its Random Posts for titles that catch my eye.
And perhaps this is a mistake, considering the pieces I’ve enjoyed the most have had pedestrian titles. The Milkman is a particular favorite. So is Pa at the Bar and Caricature.
I will say this about Ms. Deever and Ms. Tate: they’re nothing if not ambitious. My father would respect that. And so can I–as long as I remember it’s their effort I’m admiring and not always their product.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Mr. Baines correctly diagnoses a certain tendency to the erudite in Fringe work (one might say that the more outré posts go Beyond the Fringe… tittle).
However, his powers of analysis are illusory, since he does not exist.