About
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Sharon McCartney’s poem “Deadlift” on Numéro Cinq
Selected for The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2013
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Amanda Jernigan’s poem “Aubade” on Numéro Cinq
Selected for The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2012
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Sharon McCartney’s poem “Katahdin” on Numéro Cinq
Selected for The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2012
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Sion Dayson on Numéro Cinq
Picked By Utne Reader, The Best of the Alternative Press
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Melissa Fisher on Numéro Cinq
Winner of the 2012 3 Quarks Daily Arts & Literature Prize, judged by Gish Jen
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—The Calgary Herald
delightful webmag
—Lynn Coady on Twitter
…a tsunami of art.
—Robert Vivian
The smartest analysis on Empire-Post Empire I’ve yet come across: “In Hell We Will All Burn Brightly” by Brianna Berbenuik on Numéro Cinq…
—Bret Easton Ellis on Twitter
…one of the best and most vital of the online literary journals
—Keith Maillard
…the site is definitely worth checking out
—Three Percent
…an excellent online magazine
—Pierre Joris at Nomadics
Holy shit! This looks great! Even the fine print (I always read credits at movies too).
—a reader
I think it looks spectacular! Numéro Cinq is one handsome webzine…
—a reader
NC is only getting better and better.
—a reader
Must read with coffee & rejoice that NC continually makes neurons fire and leaves readers a little smarter than before.
—another reader
…yesterday was the first time I looked at N.Cinq in a while, not because it isn’t great which it is but because it makes my ambition stand up and scream and on days when I have so much else to do (most days now that it’s summer) this is like eating something really good in small spoonfuls, some sugar, some fire, mostly fire.
— yet another reader
Well, I live by myself on a rock in the middle of the woods, so you’ve elevated the level of discourse for one person, anyway. I don’t even have a dog to converse with any more.
— even again another reader
Humanity is being preserved at NC, along with literature. (Just saw Court’s piece.)
—a reader
You have structured NC beautifully. It has a strong visual aesthetic and has an excellent high ratio of quality content. (Thankfully not uniformly outstanding; taking chances is good. Dare I cite the Lost Poems of Paris Hilton as a cool idea that went south?).
—a reader!
After your most recent post of a sermon, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what Numéro Cinq is. Certainly not the derogatory term “literary Facebook” one reader called it. Does it need an invented word? It’s not a blog, it’s not a magazine. It’s a blogazine? An ethology? (e-thology), an e-journal? Nothing quite fits, but whatever it is, I love it.
—a reader!!
You’ve done a really great job with NC. Very cool place. Easy-going but chewy, dense stuff. Perfect mix I think. I’m apt to hang out a bit more often. I just wish it served drinks….
—a reader!!!!
I love how it carries a conversation in a dark house, voices popping up from various corners, passing thought threads here and there. And I love how it carries back through you, too. Like some strange heartbeat that you pulse out, but returns to give you something in response.
— incredible as it seems, another reader
Numéro Cinq started January 11, 2010, as…
a reading, discussion and resource site for a small group of Douglas Glover‘s friends and writing students. It has morphed into something monstrous, tenticulate, multiform and quite possibly (gasp) alive!
Now in its fourth year the magazine has published a stellar array of new and known (international, award-winning) writers including, from Canada, Connie Gault, Elise Levine, Jane Eaton Hamilton, Maggie Helwig, Robert Currie, Leon Rooke, Diane Schoemperlen, Mavis Gallant, Bill Gaston, Mark Anthony Jarman, Caroline Adderson, Christy Ann Conlin, Billie Livingston, Amanda Jernigan, Ann Ireland, David Helwig, Cynthia Flood, Lynn Coady, John B. Lee, Karen Mulhallen, Stephen Henighan, Genni Gunn, Goran Simic, Dave Margoshes, Keith Maillard, Clark Blaise, Steven Heighton, and Jack Hodgins; from the U.S., Donald Hall, Mary Ruefle, Keith Lee Morris, Darin Strauss, Anthony Doerr, Brad Watson, Philip Graham, Nick Arvin, Jack Myers, Alex Cigale, Ralph Angel, William Olsen, Nancy Eimers, Trinie Dalton, Nance Van Winckel, Joe David Bellamy, Jess Row, Sydney Lea, Fleda Brown, Rigoberto Gonzalez, David Rivard, Donald Breckenridge, Johannah Rodgers, Richard Jackson, Dawn Raffel, Russell Working, Lynne Tillman, and Dominic Stansberry; plus work in translation by Daniil Kharms, Quim Monzó, Juan José Saer, Anton Chekhov, Mihail Sebastian, Giacomo Leopardi, Habib Tengour, Besik Kharanauli, Rilke, Mathias Énard and many others. We’ve published novellas, entire books, plays, poems, translations, fiction, nonfiction, sermons, criticism, memoirs, music, art work, hybrid art, conceptual art, provocative graphics.
And this is not to forget our intrepid band of NC staffers, contributors and contributing editors, all convicted felons of the literary type, dedicated artists fast making a name for themselves in the brash new digital universe.
The Name
The name for the magazine comes from DG’s short story “The Obituary Writer” in which story the hero, based loosely on the author as a young newspaperman, harasses a distraught neighbour who lives in the apartment across the hall by making loud noises in the night and pretending to be a member of a sinister terrorist group called Numéro Cinq.
Sgt. Pye evicts Earl Delamare. It’s my fault, too, because I was taunting Earl, playing on his fantasies. It’s possible I have driven him mad. One night he came to my door, first listening, then mumbling, then beginning his litany of wild accusations. Instead of responding with my usual silence, I put Night on Bald Mountain on the stereo. As the music rose, I began to intone the French advertisements on the backs of cereal boxes in my kitchen cupboard.
The music gave Earl fits; he practically howled with rage. “Numéro Cinq! Numéro Cinq!” he cried. I played John Cage on the stereo and read the cereal boxes backwards, imitating several voices at once. Earl began to beat the door with his fists, perhaps even his head. I could see the panels giving with the force of his blows. In the midst of this I heard Sgt. Pye climbing the stairs. When he came into my apartment, he found me sitting in an old Morris chair, eating a bowl of Rice Krispies, with the stereo low. Earl had retreated to his room like a mole going underground. But I could still here him shouting. “Numéro Cinq! Numéro Cinq!” When Sgt. Pye let himself into Earl’s room, the black man went through the window and down the fire escape.
After Earl is evicted, the hero slips into his abandoned room and discovers a photograph of a young woman. Later, he finds Earl living at a shelter while he awaits a decision on whether or not he will be committed to a mental hospital. The hero buys Earl a beer and the two walk through town at which point, for no particular reason, he starts to needle Earl again.
When we finish the beer, I take a deep breath and hand him the photograph. It turns out, as I had begun to expect it would, to be a photograph of his dead wife, a woman he loved deeply but who betrayed him with another man. I tell him I am researching a newspaper story about a secret terror organization called the Numéro Cinq, that I’d appreciate him telling me anything he knows about it. Earl is silent, but tears come to his eyes. I say, “I don’t know much. I’ve been tracking them for years.” Earl nods vigorously. “But they’re everywhere,” I say. Earl hides his face in his hands. “Everywhere,” I say, “and we’re doomed.”
–from “The Obituary Writer” in A Guide to Animal Behaviour; also in Bad News of the Heart.
Douglas Glover is…
often referred to as “the most eminent unknown Canadian writer alive” (Maclean’s Magazine, The National Post), an epithet that delights and consoles him (the “alive” part). He has also been called “a master of narrative structure” (Wall Street Journal), which is nice but misses the tragic tone of the other. A new story collection, Savage Love, is due out this fall.
He is the author of five story collections, four novels, two books of essays, Notes Home from a Prodigal Son and Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing, and The Enamoured Knight, a book about Don Quixote and novel form. His novel Elle won the 2003 Governor-General’s Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was optioned by Isuma Igloolik Productions, makers of Atarnajuat, The Fast Runner. His story book A Guide to Animal Behaviour was a finalist for the 1991 Governor-General’s Award. His stories have been frequently anthologized, notably in The Best American Short Stories, Best Canadian Stories, and The New Oxford Book of Canadian Stories. He was the subject of a TV documentary in a series called The Writing Life and a collection of critical essays, The Art of Desire, The Fiction of Douglas Glover, edited by Bruce Stone.
Since he washed up in the hinterlands of upstate New York in the early 1990s, Glover has taught at Skidmore College, Colgate University, Davidson College, the University at Albany-SUNY and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, the University of Lethbridge, St. Thomas University and Utah State University. For two years he produced and hosted The Book Show, a weekly half-hour literary interview program which originated at WAMC in Albany and was syndicated on various public radio stations and around the world on Voice of America and the Armed Forces Network. He edited the annual Best Canadian Stories from 1996 to 2006. He has two sons, Jacob and Jonah, who will doubtless turn out better than he did.
See also the author’s web site at Douglas Glover, a short story called “A Paranormal Romance” at The Literarian, another story called “Snow Days” (with a sound file of author reading) on the CBC Canada Writes website, three stories “State of the Nation,” “Shameless” and “Crown of Thorns” at The Brooklyn Rail, an excerpt from the story “Savage Love” in Geist, “Pedro the Uncanny: A Note on Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo” an essay in Biblioasis International Translation Series Online, “A Scrupulous Fidelity: Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser,” an essay in The Brooklyn Rail, “Mappa Mundi: The Structure of Western Thought” an essay on the history of ideas also in The Brooklyn Rail, “Difficulty and Revolution” an essay on the novels of Hubert Aquin in Context, “The Mind of Alice Munro” an essay in Canadian Notes & Queries, an excerpt from The Enamoured Knight in the Globe and Mail, and eleven extremely wise epigrams at Global Brief. Shelagh Shapiro interviews DG on the radio at Write the Book on The Enamoured Knight and on Attack of the Copula Spiders. Streaming video of DG reading from his novel Elle and answering questions from the audience is available, should you choose to inflict this upon yourself, at Canadian Writers in Person.
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