William Heath is also the author of a book of poems, The Walking Man (Icarus Books, 1994). His stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines. He and his wife, Rosér, divide their time between Frederick, Maryland, and Vilanova i la Geltru, Spain. Heath is a professor at Mount Saint Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. I don’t know that there are a lot of great writers among us these days. I rather doubt it. But I do know there are a lot of very talented people making a very serious effort to write good fiction and that this culture has lost interest in keeping track of who our good writers are and what books are truly worth reading. Obviously, I think all this matters enormously. --William Heath from the July 1999 interview in The Cortland Review

There was a time, not so long ago, when people in movies exchanged more words than bullets, good books were actually read, and at least a happy few assumed that artists, working in solitude, had something important to say. Nowadays, of course, we are witnessing the trashing of taste in America: freak shows monopolize the midway in our carnival culture and the monkey-see, monkey-do mass audience seeks out the most tawdry barkers and the longest lines. Because, as Alfred Hitchcock once said, what people want is "a piece of cake, not a slice of life." Thus the Public Interest is determined by the public’s latest interest, and the age-old role of culture to delight and inform is replaced by a mindless compulsion to be diverted and amused, as the boob tube spreads its blight among the couch potatoes, boom boxes break the ear drums, loud-mouthed louts rule the radio, and books provide merely escapist fantasies, whether they be paramilitary firefights or Veronica and Raoul sailing into the sunset. I do not mean to initiate a game of oneupmanship between the hoity-toity and the hoi polloi, the snobs versus the slobs, rather I wish to point out that only an individual assertion of taste and value can counteract the victory of cultural vulgarity in our society.

We in Frederick County are fortunate to have a local Arts Council, a Weinberg Center, a Delaplaine Arts Center, a Square Corner Bookshop, a Wonder Book and Video, the Frederick Magazine, and The Monocacy Valley Review, and so forth. These are the things that keep our local culture viable, and they are deserving of everyone’s support. In this issue we are proud to present once again the work of local artists as well as poetry and fiction from all over the country. The Monocacy Valley Review still believes in the integrity of the individual artist and that the only true dialogue comes from listening to singular voices and looking at particular visions, one at a time.

William Heath
from his Editor’s Note
The Monocacy Valley Review
Number 11, 1994