To Emerge from the Cave: A Pretentiously Titled Review of “Booth 7"

I have never read a literary journal before. At least, I haven’t read one cover-to-cover. I’ve skimmed and scanned, pulling out poems and stories and essays from various journals I’ve found lying about over the years, but never have I been so emotionally whacked by one that I was forced to plow through the entire thing in one afternoon.

This is exactly what happened with Booth 7.

Booth is a literary journal out of Butler University in Indianapolis. In a way this issue’s aesthetic reflects much of the Midwest itself; blooming life hidden in an overtone of grey, a winter hiding the promised spring. The text and pictures within are in variations of black, white and grey. Yes, most printed text is in black, but the addition of different hues for standout passages as well as the monochrome nature of the works of art smattered throughout add a stark nature of contrast to the vibrant language of the stories. The journal looks lovely and feels nice in a reader’s hands. The material of the jacket and the weight of the pages inside give it a feel of quality, allowing preliminary weight to the pieces inside, almost like a promise from the editors; These pieces are too good to be held in a shabby paperback. When looking at the cover, the reader sees a portrait of two young children in a boat surrounded by darkness, a lone horseman silhouetted on a rise above them against a red sky. It writhes with a dark energy. When picking up the journal, I immediately expected to find a lingering tone of darkness within its pages due simply to its cover. I committed a cardinal sin of readers everywhere, but for this instance I refuse to repent.

Because I was right.

Many of the pieces of writing in this issue deal with themes of loss, pain, sadness, and a host of other negative emotions. While there is not a specified theme for this issue, for the most part it dwells somewhere to the murky side of the dark/light binary. “The Architect’s Gambit” by Matt Bell starts the issue off with a short story that deals with abandonment in the form of a woman accepting her parents’ passing. This story has a sense of childlike confusion to it; it highlights the nature of acceptance of life’s hardships through prose that lingers just outside of the realm of the specific, leaving the reader with questions to consider. An excerpt from The Cultivationists by John McManus also continues the issue’s intent on examining humanity’s less cheery wares through the tale of a man with a horrific secret. His life, a shambles, centers around whiskey and attempting to raise his son, albeit neglectfully. In harsh, apocalyptic writing McManus is able to simultaneously make the reader both hate and feel sorry for this man. Late in the story, the man considers if “God was dying by half-life”; there is a meditation on the nature of suffering here, an acknowledgement that not everything (good or bad) is ephemeral. Many of the other stories in this issue function much as these two do. They examine issues of human suffering in an extremely high-resolution way, focusing not on solutions but on experience and the pure humanity of this neglected half of the aforementioned binary. Herein lies the power of these stories. They connect with an oft-forgotten part of the soul, and in this there lies an awareness that is brought into the light far less often than it should be. I found myself putting the issue down many times simply to soak in the weight of what I had read, and I have a feeling other readers will do the same.

Now, not only are stories included in Booth 7. There is an abundance of poetry, interviews, non-fiction and even artwork contained in this collection. “A Conversation with Cheryl Strayed” is an interview conducted by Ashley Petry in which Strayed speaks about how to translate lived experiences into writing, be they good or bad. In doing this, she offers some advice on how to not only help oneself, but to help support others as well as the connection with the readers that authors are forging every time they put words on a page. Poems such as “Hal 9000, Upon his Mind ‘Going’” by Nate Fisher and “In Medias Res” by Jessica Rae Bergamino touch upon the necessity of mistakes and emotion in the human experience. They posit that life without these bugs in our programming is meaningless, and even in sadness and our imperfect rhythmic ways of life there is a beauty to be found.

Furthermore, there is an abundance of visual art in this issue, something not traditionally associated with a literary journal. Some might say that it distracts from the pieces, but in the case of Booth the linocuts, all by visual artist Philipp Hennevogl, allow a captivating visual element to pervade the stories. While the individual works of art are not directly related to the pieces of writing, the placement of each (such as a torn-down church preceding “The Architect’s Gambit”) heightens the sense of awareness that each piece has about itself, and in doing so elevates the reader’s experience of the ideas that these pieces explore. The art reflects the words, just as many times the words reflect the images. There is a very nice interplay between these two artistic mediums in this issue, especially highlighted in the graphic stories, including “Come Into My Heart” by Andy Warner. The interplay between the mediums allows for a multifaceted experience of themes and ideas, and builds onto what was already a fantastic issue.

Despite the prevalence of shadows, not everything in this issue is focused on darkness. “Gianboy59 Falls in Love with MysteryWhispery” by Jacob Grana is a playful take on the age-old story of how two lovers met. The writing deals with how relationships have changed in the internet age, bringing two frail humans together in a relationship that lifts them both up, albeit in a quite non-traditional way. In fact, I found myself enjoying this story the most. While I love a good dark tale, the happiness in this story and the sense of emerging into the light after a long time spent in darkness (much as the characters do) provided a window out of the emotional mire of many of the pieces in this issue. We can lurk in the dark as long as we want, but eventually we need to come into light. This is, in fact, the best part about Booth 7. Even in the darkness that many of its pieces contain there is an ample dose of humanity, an understanding that while we all suffer, there is a solidarity in our human consciousness of our own pain and a hope for renewal even in the wake of tragedy.