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Out of the gutter and into your head
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Matt Louis started working on Out of the Gutter, a journal of pulp fiction and degenerate literature, in late 2006. He has since put out four issues that have been well-received in the crime fiction community. “I came around to the idea because I think fewer and fewer people read short fiction these days,” said Matt. “So I’m trying to put it in a format that entices people to actually read it and pay attention to it. That’s pretty much the thought behind the whole project: making a journal that people can’t resist at least thumbing through. Because if you can get them to that point, something will pull them in.”
photo / Chad Hanna Out of the Gutter #4
That Other Paper So when did you get into pulp literature? And when did it occur to you to start your own journal?
Matt Louis Well, it’s not so much that I was into pulp literature. I mean, I enjoy crime fiction and a good read — whatever it happens to be — but the way this all ties into pulp magazines is that a pulp magazine’s objective is to be so sensational that anybody will pick it up and read it. Pulp magazines were designed to get read and bought. Mainly bought, probably [laughs]. So that’s the tie-in more so than the genre or literary tradition of pulp. We want to give people something so visceral — something that just totally goes for the throat — so that they just can’t resist it.
TOP I particularly like the way you arrange the content — by the time it takes to read something. You’ve got five-minute reads in the front all the way up to 30-minute reads in the back. Had you seen this done in other journals, or did you come up with the idea on your own?
Matt I came up with that on my own. I hadn’t seen it done anywhere else — though it’s possible. That idea is loosely based on the idea of a bathroom reader — it’s so accessible because everything is arranged into neat little compartments. You know what you’re getting into. So I want to take that out of the bathroom and into whatever situation a reader might find themselves in. But, yeah, like I said, I hadn’t seen the read-times anywhere else. I was just racking my brain, trying to find a way to make the journal even more accessible, more likely that someone will dig into one of the stories.
TOP I felt like Out of the Gutter was particularly refreshing because so many journals today are pretentious or else just kind of ineffectual, whereas Out of the Gutter is really hard-hitting.
Matt Most are definitely pretentious. We try to stay away from that. You know this is for fun — either it’s fun or it’s pointless. And either people are going to respond to it, or it’s pointless. I figure, why not just go for broke because I’m starting at zero? Chances are if I went the route of trying to make this thing look like a “respectable” publication, no one would pay attention. I’m more likely to get a second look being like, “Fuck off.”
TOP So you’ve got four issues so far. How often do you put them out?
Matt Well, the first year I had no idea what I was doing. I started this late in 2006 — I started putting it together — I didn’t actually publish anything in 2006. But originally I set myself a publication schedule of every four months — three times a year. And that turned out to be just a ridiculous grind. I had to spend every single spare minute working on it since there’s no real staff or anything other than friends I draft into the project. So that turned out to be way too difficult. And now we do twice a year.
TOP I really like the cover art on this fourth issue.
Matt Yeah, Justin Gordon made that connection. The guy is in fifth gear all the time. He got John Rubio to do the illustration, and we did the design.
TOP How did you meet Justin?
Matt Justin sent a story in — Rules in the current issue — and I liked it and we started bullshitting and I told him he was more than welcome to get involved with the project. Next thing I knew he was all over it, getting books in stores, finagling free beer from Schlitz and handing it out in OOTG brown paper bags, and getting people to contribute artwork. He’s got all kinds of plans and schemes, and from what I’ve seen, he’s capable of bringing them to fruition. The guy is nuts. But in a good way.
TOP When is the next one coming out?
Matt We’re looking at October, but we haven’t totally committed to that yet — but it will definitely be in the fall.
TOP So what were some of the practical considerations you had to contend with in getting the project together?
Matt Well, the original thought came like this: I am a writer myself, and I had been generating short fiction and sending them out and nothing was coming of it. The market is flooded. Few people publish short fiction, but everyone writes it. So I wanted to create a venue for short fiction — I figured I wouldn’t be short on submissions.
TOP Do you receive a fair number of submissions?
Matt I get as many as I can handle. Our project is run on a small scale and we haven’t been around long — so we get a lot of submissions, but not as many as some journals. But plenty.
So back to your earlier question. I really didn’t know how any of it was done: how to format anything, I didn’t have any software to do the artwork — the first Out of the Gutter is pretty much frankensteined together. Basically I just jumped in with both feet to see what would happen and it turned out that I received a real positive response and from people in the industry, too, established writers, and people who are in the business of crime fiction. So that’s how it was — I’m just a nobody that saw a hole in the market, jumped in there, and just kind of got obsessed with it. Trail by fire.
TOP What would be your ideal future for the publication?
Matt Ideally, Out of the Gutter will keep reaching new people and keep improving in terms of entertainment value, presentation, and attention to detail. Of course I’d like to see it become a large-scale, profit-generating enterprise, but that’s only provided that it keeps its reckless edge and continues to be fun. I guess the answer is that I would like it to remain what it is — a big fuck you to people who can’t take a joke, a place for talented new writers to get a little exposure (and for established writers to go slumming) — an item that people can’t help but pick up. Once it’s in the reader’s hands I want them to have to know what’s inside. That’s a lot more of a response than most fiction journals get these days. All that, and I would like it to make me rich.
Comments
I feel that guy’s pain in regards to getting fiction published. There is nothing more frustrating than having a story you feel is great but having nobody willing to give it a chance. But such is the life of a fiction writer, I suppose.
When asked how to define a short story, Flannery O’ Connor — who probably went further into the gutter than any criminal, outlaw, or recusant — said that a short story was “anything you could read in one sitting.”
She said this with a wink. What she meant was “anything you can read on the shitter without your knees going numb or people thinking you died.”
She would have liked the five minute stories in this magazine best, I think.
It’s nice to see a publication interested in collating the tales of the low, the crazy, and the intentionally malicious. Short stories should never, ever be written by people trained to write short stories. Why? Because the kind of story you can teach people to write is precisely the kind of story that no one ever wants to read.
The best stories are those whispered between naked people between sheets between fucks — or those told at offensive volumes to tables full of fellow drunks (or sober lunatics) to impress or terrify. This magazine is full of them!
The best stories are nightmares that have to be typed up immediately, lest they come true. The best stories are not — in fact — regional fairy-tales, coming-of-age parables, metaphors about the current political situation, or stories about professors sleeping with students. The best stories got edges so sharp that you can’t hold them at all, and you have to pass them on.
“No choice, no choice! Here! You deal with this!”
“Out of the Gutter” is claiming all the stories that people with reputations are afraid to handle, and good luck to them in their hog-scramble for glory. I hope the editors get burlesque dancers to give them free private shows for signed copies, and bartenders at the SHITTY bars give them free drinks just to get early dibs on the next issue.
They may not be quality; they may not be genius — but they are aiming for READERS, and that makes them warriors on the front lines of literacy, and they ought to be given a fucking grant.
I was standoffish with these guys when they first got rolling—arms crossed, like, “You’ve got something to prove. Show me.”
Well, they did. Stunned me. Proved their point, now I’m a believer. Kudos to OUT OF THE GUTTER for keeping the pulp faith.
LOVED the comments about Justin - he IS off the hook and into the gutter (in a good way) - when he sees something he likes, he just goes for it with his foot pressed firmly on the accelerator!!
Will now have to check out the mag - consider me on my way into the gutter…
I got my hands on issue #4 a few weeks ago, and they just keep getting better. I’m proud to be part of the OOTG team.
Great interview, Matt!
It is really commendable that you guys are kicking in doors when so many people are content to sit on their ass and complain. This is rally inspiring, I’ll order your magazine and try it out. It’s the least I can do.
The journey to courage is a rocky, uphill disaster-laden climb. The courage to create a happening - a new scene, is fucking heroic. Establishing a print alternative to mundane and convention? Well, that’s super heroic.
This guy…With the notion that it could be done, and done well…then going up against a sap market of Show me don’t tell me fiction fast food slop…inviting the lowly, the unheralded, the basement geniuses and punks, locked up tight convicts and anyone with some guts to step up to the plate, sling words his way, well, in my humble opinion, that makes this guy, Matt, a role model for the nineties. Giving us all a chance is always a beautiful thing…but to bank on it? man, that’s a tall order.
Seems 2 years later, the order is being filled.
There’s late, there’s great and there’s invisible ambition vying for a spot in the upcoming “Revenge” issue.
Why?
Because the forum is real. It’s attainable. And it’s a little corner of this fucked up Universe we may, for that five-ten minutes, call our own.
Gotta dig the cat for trusting his own gut… making this a happening.
thankx bro.
Out of the Gutter is the baddest of the bad.
I’ve been published in it and have dealt with the top-notch gutter-snipes who make it all happen.
Subscribe now or lose all street cred.
Again, since yer security sucks. As a reader and writer ‘Out of the Gutter’ is where I wanna read and publish.
Justin Gordon rocks! The grassroots aspect of this magazine makes it even more awesome. I never thought I’d read pulp fiction, but OOTG brought me into the gutter (in little segments). I have a feeling the magazine will find a steady following, especially with Justin on board.
Out of the Gutter is bloody brilliant! I just can’t put down No. 4! It’s got some of the best pulp writing I’ve read since Frank Miller’s Sin City!
This is the only Literary Journal I read. I liked it so much that I started carrying it at Bookpeople, where I am the magazine buyer. It even has me coming up with ideas for submissions, and I haven’t written anything in a couple of years. Great stuff, and hopefully it will get even better.
Hard to envision a new scene in the dreary day-today shelf-life of “Herd Fiction” Journals and magazines..Entertainment in general.
The herd? They are the sheep that buy Best Selling crap, garbage entertainments that are formula written and suck ass about as much as a Rush Limbaugh listener.
Yada and blahsayblah.
“Out Of The Gutter” is the first of its kind, celebrating the dark, the humor and the grit of average fucked up people.
It also has been paramount in giving amazing talent a voice from the confines of prison.
Seth Feranti, a prisoner in the absurd fascist “War On Drugs” who received a 25 year sentence with the fed for conspiracy to flog some LSD pumps “Out Of The Gutter” up with authentic thug life accounts. He ain’t no crime tourist, kids.;
Any magazine that has the balls to give these and other unknown voices a national, print forum, not only deserves to be funded by National Art Endowments and donations and purchases, it deserves to reach into America and Europes very heart and soul.
Help perpetuate this scene by purchasing this incredible magazine.
I do.
I came back from the dead just to buy the last four Out of The Gutter publications.
Where I ended up, they got shit to read
Sure it’s hard to get home delivery where I am. Think about guys like Seth Feranti - world-class convict scribe. Here’s a guy who can’t freakin leave home. A guy who endorses this Out Of The Gutter from the very Belly Of The Beast that a lot of today’s crummy crime fiction writers try and imagine in their lame attempts at authenticity in crime fiction.
If Out Of The Gutter supports guerrilla convict fiction, prose and non-fiction,from inside a fed joint, maybe Main Stream writers want to check this Out Of The Gutter out - buy some back issues so they can get an idea of what it’s really like…nowhere else but “Out Of The Gutter” seems to give a fuck or believe that the best scene of all, is a real one.
I may have conquered more square miles than any other thug in the history of the world, but I never had the cojones to put out a print miracle like “Out of The Gutter
Awesome interview. I may just have to submit to this magazine soon.
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