From the Oct 7 – Oct 13, 2004 issue

News

'Rivet'

Earnest New Local Mag for Pointy Heads bores Pointy-Headed Writer

by Sean Nelson

Seattle Magazine isn't the only Seattle magazine you've never read or heard of. In fact, there's a slew of tiny local publications. Many of them (Bandoppler, If Six Was Nine) are rock-centric and spiritually akin to zines, while others (Resonance) are glossies that glancingly cover other subjects while focusing pretty squarely on popular music. And though these magazines face all the usual start-up struggles--coming out regularly, selling ads for a publication no one has heard of, getting good writers to contribute when you can't pay a nickel--they all seem to be working their way toward a recognizable (if well-worn) niche in the hearts and minds of readers.

Which brings us to Rivet.

Rivet is literary-journal sized, which is appropriate, given its pointy-headed leanings. ("Discover. Inquire. Repeat.") Each issue includes fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, reviews, lists, and recipes that correspond, sometimes loosely, to a theme. The most recent edition, number 10, was the Perspective Issue, featuring a bit of art history, some satire, a crossword puzzle, and even details from paintings that bear some relation to the idea of perspective. Unfortunately, none of it was very engaging. Reading several back issues (the Pressure Issue, the Invention Issue), it was clear that the people running Rivet are aiming to put together an interesting, challenging magazine. And while that's what it looks like, the reality of Rivet is that it only resembles something interesting.

While many publications start off stumbling with regard to the quality of the writing (ever see the first few years of The Stranger?), it's disconcerting that a journal dedicated to being smart and original could allow so many naive, academic, and boring pieces to flesh out the thematic structures its editors dream up. Cases in point: an essay in the Perspective Issue about radical Islam that contains the line, "There will always be rebellion. This is a fact... Our job as members of a liberal society is to decrease its potency and learn to understand what it means..." Uh, thanks. The piece about Frank Gehry in the same issue compares his Bilbao museum to a "ship of Chinese junk." Does the author mean a Chinese junk ship? And right there in the introduction, editor Leah Baltus admits, "I don't believe in objectivity, in blunt and sterile facelessness obtusely masquerading as truth with a capital T." That's admirable, but, like all the other ideas advanced by Rivet, it has been covered elsewhere, extensively, for a long time.

There's a good magazine waiting to be born from Rivet, but it's not there yet.