A PLACE TO PAUSE

Editor Litchfield presents a collection of work from the literary magazine Lowestoft Chronicle, loosely centered on “humorous writing with an emphasis on travel.”

The latest in a series presents 32 pieces with settings that range from Africa to Asia to North America, with many stops along the way. The collection is evenly split between poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, with three interviews with authors added for background. Outside of the table of contents, the book makes no effort to distinguish when a piece is fiction or not, although with the poems this is generally self-evident, as with Mark Jacobs’ quasi-dystopian story “After the Meltdown, On the Hunt” or the slight surrealism of Mary Donaldson-Evans’ “Bulkhead Seat.” (Both authors receive in-depth Lowestoft Chronicle interviews.) In other cases, readers may find themselves having difficulty suspending disbelief, as when traveling along the knife’s edge between absurdity and danger in Jeff Alphin’s nonfiction piece “Family Circus,” about a bizarre lottery-commercial shoot. Still, with all the blurring of lines, this collection delivers a certain uniformity in tone; some readers might have preferred an earthier, less erudite approach to the material. Still, despite the stated preference for humorous writing, readers will find that not every tale falls cleanly into that category. For example, interview subject Robert Wexelblatt’s fiction piece “Lost City” leaves little room for laughter. The story, which starts as a chronicle of former college buddies seeking a “vacation adventure to take us away from our humdrum lives,” involves a trip along a minor trade route in Central Asia; along the way, the story takes an intense detour into a haunting chapter of regional history. Similarly, the authors of stories such as “Singapura” use tales of human foibles and flaws to venture into shadowy, if not pitch-dark, places.

Creative variations on a theme that often makes for vibrant reading.