The very first image you see when you get to Drunk Monkeys is their logo (currently decked out in a Santa hat) and their tagline imploring you to tell them a story. They don’t say what kind of story, or in what way, they just want you to tell them a story. They want you to “build worlds and break hearts.” After some perusing, it is clear that worlds are certainly built within the content on DM. With an eclectic mix of fiction, poetry, movie and television reviews, artwork, interviews, and other nonfiction pieces, there are quite a few different worlds constructed within the bounds of DM.
The sheer amount of content that DM publishes is impressive. Every few days, a reader can expect some sort of new content. Often, this takes the form of a movie or television review, but they also publish poetry and fiction with some regularity. For the purposes of this review, I read the content published between October 1 and November 14, 2014.
The fiction varies widely in DM. There are traditional literary fiction stories mixed in with pieces that either fall into a specific genre (in this case horror and dystopia/sci-fi—Bud Smith’s “Mi Casa Es Su Casa” and Kirsten Imani Kasai’s “Black Sun,” respectively) or push at the bounds of the traditional in pleasant ways (Rolli’s “I am a Robot”). A good amount of the pieces, though, seem to fall into the same category and because of this fall by the wayside in terms of interest. They are stories about hipsters and the problems of teenagers. I have nothing against stories with teenagers as main characters, but these seem to fall flat. The stories in this group, as a whole, don’t have many defining characteristics that lend to memorability. Instead, they are the same stories about the same problems and, more or less, lead to the same resolutions.
There are, however, a few different bright spots in the fiction department. Nathaniel Tower’s story “Coma Wife” perfectly encapsulates the idea that an epiphany is not the be-all, end-all that some writers may have us think. Instead, following many of Chekhov’s characters, the protagonist, Jacob, has his moment of clarity and chooses to ignore it, ending up back in the staff room with Nurse Betty while his wife lays in a coma elsewhere in the hospital. We get this at the beginning of the story, “My wife’s in a coma, but we’d both be better off if she’d just die already,” but Tower crafts his prose well, allowing the reader to hope against hope that the narrator may have some change of heart.
The pieces that fall outside traditional literary work—and therefore outside of the realm of what I normally read—I found entertaining as well. In Bud Smith’s “Mi Casa Es Su Casa,” a man drunkenly kills another, becomes haunted by said dead man, becomes roommates with the reanimated corpse of said dead man, and eventually ends up doing the bidding of the corpse when the narrator finds out the dead man has fallen in love with a dead woman. It isn’t the kind of story I would typically read, but the dark humor in the story, combined with the utter oddness of what is happening, creates a pleasant and funny read that was perfect for Halloween.
Kirsten Imani Kasai’s “Black Sun” is a global recounting of a “supereruption” told through diary entries, tweets, and a news piece. Again, the piece falls outside of my typical purview, but Kasai more than competently draws readers into the chaos and desperation that erupts in the wake of the disaster.
Where DM truly shines, though, is their nonfiction section. Specifically, DM’s interviews sections takes the cake for the most interesting section of their site. What is so enjoyable about their interviews—especially in the last two-ish months—is the variety of subjects. Aside from the typical author interviews (here with authors Caroline Kepnes and Allie Marini Batts), the crew at DM has spent time digging into the minds of a plus-size model/photographer (Faye Daniels) and a writer/director who first found fame on the big screen as Roland Kincaid in two Elm St. films and is currently trying to crowdfund a short film about social justice (Ken Sagoes). The interviewers dig into their subjects, allowing the interviewees to really open up in exciting and stimulating ways.
As mentioned above, the bulk of DM’s content consists of television and movie reviews. The reviews, often written by the same few people, are informative and enjoyable and cover a fairly wide range of movies. They are succinct when they need to be and unafraid of saying when a movie does not cut it, as in Ryan Roach’s review of Horns, which begins “You’d think a movie about a man literally becoming the Devil would be hard to screw up. But unfortunately, that’s what happens here.”
There is a lot to consider in DM; if you are looking for a traditional literary magazine with fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, this is probably not the place to go. For those that revel in all things entertainment-industry, but seek a more intellectual approach than, say, TMZ, DM is a great fit. By mixing in a variety of different types of work, the editors can fairly effectively draw in a range of readers that other magazines may not.
DM is currently closed to poetry submissions, but is accepting flash and short fiction, essays of various stripes, and artwork through their Submittable page. For a $3 fee, writers can receive feedback on their fiction work.