The Match #115 [Summer 2016]
72 pages, 9.5" x 7", Subscription: Free, although donations welcomed and needed, Edited and Published by Fred Woodworth, Post Office Box 3012, Tuscon Arizona 85702, USA
It sure is a Great Mail Day that day when the latest issue of The Match! appears in my mailbox. And it's always a bit depressing reaching the end of the issue. However, it does have its flaws, as I was reminded with this issue - as I read through it, time and time again I savagely grabbed my pencil and hacked a withering criticism into the margin [example above]. From the cringeworthy, fawning nature of some correspondents in the letter column, to the occasional clumsy choice of words ["an attemptedly free society"]; and from the belaboured use of modifiers to the confusing rhetorical style - I'm thinking of contributor J V Langdon here - where I had to read a section over again three times before I understood that a point was being carried through, and it wasn't, as first thought, a new and separate point. Of course, it could be just me. I haven't seen these issues raised in the letter column. [Haw! Because it wouldn't meet the 'fawn level' required!]
Yet, any criticisms I have are certainly overshadowed by the great qualities of The Match! - Exhibit A: name one other publication that takes on our favourite 'Religion of Peace'? Exhibit B: how about a publication that includes a 20-page letter column [that, until his death last year, included regular correspondence from underground comix luminary Dennis P. Eichhorn]?
Finally, one thing I really enjoyed this issue was the review/evisceration of Earth First! journal. This runs for three-and-a-half pages[!] Fred really does a number on it, and quite justifiably I think - there's something seriously wrong with this kind of ostensibly 'right-on' publication that believes naming its letter column 'Dear Shit For Brains' is a good idea.