{"id":952,"date":"2010-07-07T08:56:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T15:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/07\/slake-tells-las-stories.html"},"modified":"2010-07-07T08:56:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T15:56:00","slug":"slake-tells-las-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/07\/slake-tells-las-stories.html","title":{"rendered":"Slake Tells LA’s Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
PORN, celebrity, poetry and sharp graphic design: It\u2019s got a little of everything, just like the city it chronicles. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I\u2019D heard enough good things about the new LA-centric quarterly, Slake<\/a>, to have high hopes for it. But so far, to my initial assessment, Slake \u2013 a publication of fiction, art, photography and journalism — has exceeded he high expectations I had for it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/a>Part of the reason for my high hopes \u2013 and my lack of interest in being \u201cobjective\u201d in my assessment — comes from its founders: Joe Donnelly was very briefly an editor of mine at New Times LA, and Laurie Ochoa was the well-regarded editor of the LA Weekly, to which Joe moved just before New Times went under. (Both were canned by the new owners.) <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I expected the journal to include work by Weekly writers \u2013 there\u2019s a typically witty, incisive piece here by John Powers on celebrity and crime, \u201cOut Stealing Purses.\u201d And local legend (and current Weekly scribe) Jonathan Gold offers a brilliantly observed piece about sex and the still life in \u201cFallen Fruit.\u201d I\u2019m looking forward to reading the story \u201cSeparation\u201d by novelist Michelle Huneven and the report by Judith Lewis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
But there are surprises here, including a provocative essay (or is it a manifesto, or a piece of fiction?) by House of Leaves<\/i> author Mark Danielewski, a witty meditation by walking freak Geoff Nicholson, \u201cThe Hollywood Pedestrian,\u201d and a striking photo essay by Shannon Donnelly. Slake includes a number of drawings and paintings by Sandow Birk.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
There are also a lot of names I barely know, and there is no clear house style or single vision, though the graphics work together well. (Like LA, you might say, it has no obvious center.)\u00a0<\/span>The focus on life in Southern California, on its art and literary scene, feels fresh.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s too much intellectual talent, creative talent, and dynamism in this city not to have something really great to reflect that, to serve as an amplifier,\u201d Joe Donnelly told when he met to discuss Slake with The Misread City. He also wanted to reflect the move of the city’s culture to the Eastside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cIn LA, we\u2019re dependant on New York as an intellectual and cultural filter. Having lived long stretches in both cities, I can say that LA is a more interesting place. New York is ossified \u2013 it was an awesome 20th<\/sup> century city.” Manhattan, he says “is a shopping mall now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
But LA has had a problem New York doesn\u2019t: Its publications are pieces of out-of-town media chains. Or as Donnelly puts it: \u201cThey all suffer from the same problem \u2013 outside ownership,\u201d by people who don’t quite get the West Coast And they\u2019re all obsessed with celebrity and consumerism: \u201cThe bling, the stuff, the how-to-live-this\u2013lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Part of what is heartening about Slake is its commitment to print. It\u2019s full of long pieces of prose \u2013 Ochoa has compared their mission to that of the Slow Food movement \u2013 and to the kind of graphic design that makes sense only on paper. The visuals, he says, \u201chelp take some of the earnestness out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
But Donnelly didn\u2019t want to be like the other literary journals: He thinks of Granta, with its visual austerity, as a little \u201clike cod-liver oil \u00a0— \u00a0good for you, but hard to digest,” and finds McSweeney\u2019s entertaining, “but sometimes its reliance on irony and postmodernism leaves me a little cold. It can feel out of touch with the real world to me.”\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Of course, the difficulty of launching a magazine in Los Angeles was well known even before the latest print-media meltdown. And unlike the institutional support enjoyed by Black Clock, which is put out by Cal Arts, an off-the-mainstream publication does not have it easy. So as much as I love Slake and want it to thrive, I wonder about its ability to survive in a ruined economy. (The LATimes estimable media critic James Rainey praises the publication and wonders as well, here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Donnelly can\u2019t promise Slake will survive, but he and Ochoa are already working on another one, and hope to get more sponsors on board. (The first issue has a few, including the Hammer Museum and Pasadena\u2019s Europane Bakery, where by coincidence I had an excellent lunch on the 4th<\/sup>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0It\u2019ll be a scramble, he says. \u201cBut we want to publish books, we want to have an imprint, we want to grow our website but not have it replace this [magazine]. We want to do documentaries \u2013 these are the grand ambitions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Several Slake contributors — Gold, Danielewski, Huneven and David Schneider —\u00a0will read at Skylight<\/a> Books this Sunday at 5 pm.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Here\u2019s a tip of the pen from The Misread City to Slake \u2013 long may your flag fly.<\/p>\n

BREAKING: The retro-minded Los Angeles architect Stephen Kanner has died. Here’s<\/a> an appreciation by Frances Anderton of KCRW’s “DnA: Design \u00a0and Architecture.”<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PORN, celebrity, poetry and sharp graphic design: It\u2019s got a little of everything, just like the city it chronicles. I\u2019D heard enough good things about the new LA-centric quarterly, Slake, to have high hopes for it. But so far, to my initial assessment, Slake \u2013 a publication of fiction, art, photography and journalism — has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52,261,34,30,260,259,258],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-architecture","7":"category-la-weekly","8":"category-literary","9":"category-los-angeles","10":"category-skylight-books","11":"category-slake","12":"category-stephen-kanner","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}