Let There Be Light

Anyone who knows me might expect that I would immediately dismiss a publication such as The Sun as a liberal rag. If I didn’t know better myself and had just read a casual review or heard someone discussing some of the articles presented therein, that would almost certainly be my verdict. But I also think that it’s important to know what “the other side” is thinking. At the same time, though, I don’t really consider The Sun to be on “the other side.”

The very title of the magazine connotes enlightenment. A magazine for free thinkers couldn’t very well be called “Darkness” or “Fog.” “The Sun” fits perfectly. I think that I had to read a few issues before this dawned on me, and I’m generally more perspicacious than that.

The Sun is a magazine you might find lying on one of the tables in a coffee house, or protruding from a poet’s backpack along with twenty or thirty hand-written drafts of his latest prosaic pretenses. You won’t find The Sun in the waiting room of a doctor’s office; it would be an anomaly there.

The photography is intensely thought-provoking, usually accompanied by little or no explanation, thus leaving ample room for prolonged pondering. The cover photograph always catches my eye. Sometimes the image is beautiful, sometimes ugly, but always fascinating and inspiring in its own way.

The fiction is not always what I consider to be the hallmark of good storytelling. I enjoy reading the stories, but often they are more like extended prose. They make me feel like I am reading a diary or someone’s stream of consciousness rambling. Confessional pieces and stories dealing with coming of age seem to be popular with The Sun.

The interviews really make me think, though they are often with people whose beliefs are very different from mine. I vehemently disagree, I shake my head, I laugh, I snort, I occasionally concur. Who wants to read a magazine where the writers agree with everything you think, patting you on the back and cajoling you on every page?

Environmentalism is a big theme with The Sun, but they deal with the subject without decrying everyone who happens to disagree or by advocating a return to mud huts and handmade tools. The confluence of science and environmentalism can be a harmonious one, as environmentalist Stewart Brand maintains in a September, 2001 interview.

As with fiction, I tend to be a traditionalist where poetry is concerned, which is why I don’t really like the small amount of poetry presented in The Sun. I don’t insist that poetry rhyme –although I’m partial to that- but writing poetry means saying something meaningful within certain parameters. At the very least poetry should have some form, but poetry in The Sun falls into the same drab category as 99% of modern poetry.

Although each issue is less than 75 pages, The Sun is by no means minimalist. The publishers make maximum use of all the white space allotted to them. Some of the reading can become a little tedious, but I have never yet set aside an issue without coming back to finish eventually.