Black Clock 18 — Steve Erickson

In an age that defies the definitive, Black Clock 18 offers its version of the cinematic "director's cut." Most authors have buried in their cyber-catacombs the book that got away, or the less compromised version of the published magnum opus stained with the blood of those darlings every writer learns must be killed; this edition of Black Clock is filled with those cherished artistic detours that finally were abandoned for the sake of the whole. From an alternate version of Brian Evenson's The Open Curtain to an excised chapter of Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake to a deleted excerpt from Greil Marcus' The Shape of Things to Come to a newly reconsidered version of a Jonathan Lethem story that originally appeared in another journal to Rick Moody's "Thirteen Stories" that turned into another book entirely to Joanna Scott's "Untelling" of her upcoming novel, Black Clock 18 either represents the resurrection or provides the final resting place of editorial decisions regretted, rued and reconciled.