EDITORIAL 

KINDRED BY CHOICE 

A couple of issues back I mentioned Cyril Connolly’s wartime magazine Horizon and quoted some thoughts by Ian Hamilton on the genre. Ian, something of a prickly sod, was quite critical:

The fourth year, which brought Horizon perilously close to its predicted suicide, was in fact much as before, though Connolly did show signs of wishing to introduce more war reportage into the magazine. A comparison with John Lehmann's New Writing shows how half-hearted that wish really was. Indeed, such a comparison demonstrates how extraordinarily little Horizon did manage to say about the war in forms other than the opinionating essay or editorial.

I had a few issues of New Writing and then found a full set on eBay for £35 (yes, a quite freakish bargain – you won’t find Horizon this cheap) Lehmann’s mag was much more oikish (although he was also Eton and Oxbridge like Connolly). He encouraged oik unknowns like Sid Chaplin, George Garrett, Jack Clemo and Willy Goldman, and quite a bunch of political dissidents from Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Czechoslovakia and even China.

How come these magazines sprang up in such hard times? Beleaguered hardly covers such an existential crisis.  The need to connect with similar minds must have been the impulse – to seek solidarity and endorsement against the totalitarian threat. And what better vehicle than the little magazine? Even though no German soldiers were harmed in the production of these tracts they were a significant part of the resistance. And who’s to say, as we enter another phase of irrationalism, that similar phenomena won’t pop up? It could be “Farewell Crazy Oik: Hail Angry Oik!” – ironically of course since it was actually angry oiks who got us here in the first place.

But on to more important matters – our new contributors. Oik 33 has something of a cosmopolitan flavour with Graham Fulton of Paisley, pal of Irvine Welsh and Alasdair Gray, and David Erdos just back from reading in Baghdad, a mate of Iain Sinclair and Heathcote Williams. He doesn’t seem to know our own Ivan de Nemethy - strange really since they both live in London. Ivan‘s house in Hackney burned down a few months ago and one would have thought the charred shell worth a butchers by the perambulating trio.

The home team is still up to snuff; we welcome a newcomer, Colin Dunn. Ron Horsefield’s mad ramblings are confined to incidents at Eddy’s (his Manchester book dealer) while more arcane philosophical investigations (usually Ron’s patch) are banished to the decent obscurity of the back pages where distinguished editor of little mag MQB Alan Dent bangs on about Free Will and Determinism in a dialogue with the editor of The Crazy Oik. You don’t have to read it but remember in more conventional publications the back end would be devoted to crosswords, horoscopes, sudoku and football. We attempt, like King Canute, to hold back this rising tide of ephemeral shite and invite like minds, elective affinities if you like, to join us.

Ken Clay April 2017

GRAHAM FULTON 

miles to go before we sleep

We were there to do a marathon. Sweat the streets of New York City wearing sashes of tartan so they all know where we come from. Our history. Our hemisphere. Who we were. What is Scotchland? Is it part of England? And we found the time to see some things, and here we are in the photograph in my hand at this very second decades later posing for the very same photograph outside World Trade Center One. Centre spelt the wrong way. The tall American entrance. Smiling. Reflections of buildings in the glass behind us. I don’t remember who took it. Some kind-hearted bozo who seemed trustworthy and wouldn’t  run off with my camera. Wouldn’t hold a gun against my nose as he demanded that I hand over all of my traveller’s cheques. Hand over all of your traveller’s cheques you Scotch asshole. Nothing like that ever happened. We went up in the express elevator to sit at the thick observation deck glazing and stare down at the tiny office people and the low grey air conditioned buildings and the pot-bellied policemen. An Empire State Building. We walked to each corner and looked from every side. Statue of Liberty with the torch removed for renovation. The ghosts of immigration ships. Flying Dutchmen. Reflections of ourselves in the glass in front of us. Funny to think it’s not there anymore. That very time in that very space. The place where I sat a mile in the air. I can smell the melting metal and taste the smoke. I can see myself running into Central Park. See myself falling straight down in a straight line in a photograph in a newspaper in breathtaking silence except for people screaming.

Roger de la Fresnaye - Family Life 1912