The Sun, Issue 277,

Jan. 1999;
The Sun, Issue 278,
Feb. 1999.
Edited by Sy Safransky.
12/yr.; 107 N. Roberson St.,
Chapel Hill, NC 27516;
$34/yr.; $3.95/copy.

The Sun is a magazine I’ve seen on many newsstands, but I never picked up a copy in the

belief that it was New Age in outlook and therefore not to my taste. Then two issues appeared in

the latest batch of review materials I received from SMR. Reading each issue I learned that my

preconceptions were wrong.

The January 1999 issue marks the magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary. To celebrate this

milestone, The Sun invited past contributors to write about their relationship to the magazine.

This section serves as a virtual altar of worship for The Sun’s editor Sy Safransky. I thought, “Oh

boy, this magazine is not only New Age, it’s a cult publication.”

Undaunted, I continued reading the issue and discovered some finely crafted poetry, short

fiction, and nonfiction which proved to be not so cult-like or New Agey after all. For example,

“Manna,” by Corey Fischer, is a strong story about a down-on-his-luck travel writer meeting an

icy Israeli scientist who has been unable to have children with her husband. During his interview,

both let down their guard and, in the husband’s absence, attempt to “make the desert bloom.”

The February 1999 issue contains more of the same well-wrought writing, including a

fascinating excerpt from a memoir by the late Jacques Lusseyran, who writes of his teenage years

during World War Two. Lusseyran was the leader of an underground youth resistance movement

in occupied France. After his arrest he survived until the end of the war as an inmate at the

Buchenwald concentration camp. Making his story even more remarkable, Lusseyran was

completely blind since age eight.

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 All of the writers represented in the two issues of The Sun under review write with skill,

power, honesty and earnestness. Perhaps they write with a bit too much earnestness, actually,

since not a stitch of humor turns up in any story or poem. Also, every single piece is written in the

first person, which enables psychological depth but can become monotonous through an entire

issue of a magazine. Still, The Sun takes you to exotic corners of the mind and world. Andrew

Ramer, a former contributor, sums up the magazine’s purpose pretty well when he writes, “In a

culture where there’s room only for bestselling books by authors we have no connection with,

The Sun is a taste of how the world should be, a tribal gathering on paper, a meeting place,

singing place, dancing ground.”