Polyphony

The Journal of Experimental Fiction Verified independent store

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Polyphony is the ninety-eighth issue of The Journal of Experimental Fiction, the milestone that puts the press within sight of its hundredth number. Eckhard Gerdes edited it as a g eneral anthology, gathering many voices rather than orbiting a single author. The title names the editorial principle the press has run on since 1986. Polyphony is several independent lines sounding at once, none subordinate, which is as good a description as any of what an experimental-fiction anthology is for: idiosyncratic voices the major houses ignore, set side by side so the differences register. The issue carries that as its declared theme, and its contributors bear it out: Yuriy Tarnawsky, Lance Olsen, Harold Jaffe, Derek Pell, Brion Poloncic, Larry Fondation, and Michel Vachey (in translation), among others. That the journal reached issue 98 at all is the quieter fact worth noting. The numbered issues have continued, bi-annually and on purpose, for nearly four decades, in the same general-gathering mode the press has carried since A-Way with It!: voices set down beside each other, not in argument, but in counterpoint. Show more