The Winter Issue

Long ago I stopped looking over my shoulder to see what litmag might be gaining on me. First there was Glimmer Train. Then Zoetrope. Then Tin House. All eating my lunch.

Now there's bloomingdale's, which arrived yesterday. Perfect bound, 7 x 10 (a bit bigger than ZYZZYVA), image-driven, just sniggly-jibbets of text on each of its 128 pages.

The frost-colored front cover has a concrete poem a la Brazil '66: a jumbly flower with petals of the word "celebrate" in many languages.

The key text, on the (green) inside cover, seems to be a prose poem, although it may be a short short: "THERE'S A KIND OF RUSH, ALL OVER THE WORLD." I myself do not think there should be a period in a headline, but it is, after all, a complete sentence.

(The rush is about "scattering to the four corners in search of the perfect gift." I suppose Mme. Vendler would point to Donne.)

The models (except for two females) do not have blond hair, which indicates, I think, that bloomingdale's is serious and non-exploitative. There is one African American model, female, used on four pages. And one Hispanic/?/Asian/ model, female, who's stigmatized as rough trade by her long-sleeve white [!] thermal with the chest-text ROCK CITY.

Overall, bloomingdale's strikes me as just another postcapitalistic rag, but I do like its emphasis on giving.

Around here, we emphasize tax-deductible charitable giving, but you wouldn't go wrong stuffing my stocking with Pal Zieri Concept No. 18 Eau de Toilette, since it's designed for "the man with impeccable taste."

Better Read, Not Red

The NEA announced on Halloween, that spooky day, that 72 American "communities" have been given "Big Read" grants to read a book. The books they will read were also announced:

http://www.nea.gov/national/bigread/communities.html

The amounts of specific grants, from $5,000 to $40,000, were not announced.

This program is intended to "revitalize the role of literature in American popular culture and bring the transformative power of literature into the lives of its citizens."

The program was launched in response to a study that revealed the accelerated decline of reading, esp. among the young: "The Big Read aims to address this crisis squarely and effectively. It provides citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. The initiative includes innovative reading programs in selected cities and towns, comprehensive resources for discussing classic literature, an ambitious national publicity campaign, and an extensive Web site."

Yesterday, NEA czar Dana Gioia took the next step and announced a follow-up initiative, "Better Read, Not Red," in which every American's reading will be arranged by the NEA.

The required reading will be age-appropriate, although those over 40 will not be required to re-read some text they were assigned in Media Studies 101. Those under 20, however, who may never have read a book, will have to enter chat rooms to discuss such aspects of transformative literature as style, tone, and theme.

It is still unclear whether reading "printed" material will count (or even be allowed). Because print is notorious for being convenient, eye-friendly, and imagination-stimulating, it is difficult to track and therefore considered by some as no longer appropriate.

Then, too, claims Gioia, only the elite still have access to printed books, since stores no longer stock them.

Gioia also suggests that many old-style books contain difficult words and explore concepts, like freedom of choice, that are no longer applicable.

Gioia feels that e-reading is more democratic, because it can be streamed directly from nea.gov servers.

And, since most writers are really teachers in creative-writing programs, truly effective content for Americans to read ought to be provided by NEA-supported (and supervised) content-providers.

Top Ten, NoDak, late Nov.

Over Thanksgiving, we visited my wife's family in Hamilton, a town of about 50, in northeast North Dakota. My mother-in-law, aware that I had visited New York City earlier in the month (see my post for 20 Nov.), suggested that things in Hamilton must seem quite different.

"New York's a lot warmer," I replied, since it was 14 above zero in Hamilton, although I've been there when it was 14 below. In any case:

10. The night-after-Thanksgiving Christmas parade in downtown Cavalier, eight miles west of Hamilton, consisted of 40 floats (trucks, cars, snowmobiles, ambulances, tractors...), all lit up with Christmas lights, at 5 p.m. You watch sitting in your car (because it's so cold), with the headlights on, aimed at the street. My favs were the CHS "royalty" in their muscle car, and the bagpipe band, whose members, I hope, were wearing something under their kilts.

9. The lilac Lanvin FeatherSuede blazer I got the next afternoon at the Used Store for $1.

8. The banner in the Presbyterian Church in Hamilton showing a swastika "crossed out," above a cross rising from raging red flames. Although no one remembers who made it, it must have been done during the War. (During the summer, everyone goes to the Methodist Church, which is big and therefore cool; in the winter, the Presbyterian is small and therefore easier to heat; the Baptist has been decommissioned and ought to be given to the Fire Department to practice on.)

7. No snow, except dirty stuff in the ditches and, on the streets of Hamilton, stripes of frost, protected by the shadows from being burned off by the very weak sun.

6. The chow main at the 4-H International Food Fair at the Cavalier High School's "old" gym.

5. The white table cloths in La Tea Da, which reopened in June, in downtown Cavalier. They open at 7 a.m., but don't serve eggs or potatoes (which would attract the wrong crowd), but they do make their own scones and bring in bagels from Grand Forks. During the parade, they served hot cider, for free, on the sidewalk. Those of us who walked around were very grateful.

4. The red marble obelisk in the Hamilton cemetery, memorializing a 24-year-old killed in Paete, The Philippines, during the Spanish-American War. Wikipedia says the yo-yo was invented in Paete, a wood-carving center.

3. The two great parallel earthworks of sugar beets, each stacked up 30 feet high, 60 feet wide, and 150 feet long, just off the highway east of Hamilton, waiting to be taken to the mill.

2. My mother-in-law's turkey soup.

1. Her rhubarb pie, specially made for me, from rhubarb from the patch back behind the garage.

No Joke

The O.J. fiasco last week prompted me to revisit the analysis of O.J. jokes done for us in Winter '94, by the late Alan Dundes, then professor of anthopology and folklore at UC-Berkeley.

Unfortunately, I can't post that piece because it appeared before we went online, as had his first contribution, an analyses of AIDS jokes in Winter '89.

However, in Spring '99, Professor Dundes looked at Clinton jokes and included one about O.J.:

http://www.zyzzyva.org/sp99-dundes.htm

If you'd like a copy of any of these pieces (and if you're a subscriber), just let me know and I'll mail it to you. Nonsubscribers may send in a buck to cover photocopying and postage.

Te Deum

(this blog will resume on the 27th)

Meanwhile, we give thanks.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, a Te Deum (We praise Thee, O God) is "occasionally sung in thanksgiving to God for some special blessing (e.g. the election of a pope, the consecration of a bishop, the canonization of a saint, the profession of a religious, the publication of a treaty of peace...."

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14468c.htm

Let us therefore recall that on page 727 of the S&S paperback of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which I bought at The Booksmith, that venerable Haight St. institution and faithful advertiser in ZYZZYVA, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes Lincoln, the day after Lee's surrender, coming to a second-story window in the White House to acknowledge a jubilant crowd:

Lincoln then announced a special request for the band. "I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard," he began. "Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it." This was followed by tumultuous applause. "I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance."

Pushcart Comes to Shove

A story by Katherine Karlin, ZYZZYVA Spring 2005, appears in this year's Pushcart Prize Anthology paperback, which just arrived:

http://www.zyzzyva.org/sp05.karlin.htm

One Clifford Garstang, of Staunton, Virginia, recently tallied the number of Pushcart Prizes each journal received from 2001 to date.

http://perpetualfolly.blogspot.com/2006/11/pushcart-prize-list.html

In a comment to this blog, which somehow never got through because of server problems, I suggested that:

All "prize" and "best" lists are corrupt in an essential way: Art is not a race, and whether you prefer apples or oranges is just a matter of taste.

If you were to chart how many of the annual "prize winners" were included at the next level (The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, The Granta Book of The American Short Story, The Best American Short Stories of the Century...), which I once did, you would find that taste is fickle and that almost none of the selections actually made the annual anthologies of the year they were first published.

It is hard to recognize new talent, when it is still new: No one was willing to publish F.X. Toole until he was 69, when he appeared in ZYZZYVA Spring '99; this story was not selected for any of the annual anthologies, but eventually it helped inspire Million Dollar Baby.

http://www.zyzzyva.org/sp99-toole.htm

The Pushcart winners are first "nominated" by former winners; litmag editors also get to nominate. For a long time, we've only nominated our unknown (and especially our first-time) writers, who have a distinctly less likely chance of being chosen than our "famous" writers. (Kathy Karlin's a doctoral candidate at USC.)

The nomination itself means something to these writers, and, conversely, not racking up another prize means nothing to us.

Top Ten Sights, NY early Nov.

10. Twyla Tharp’s woefully misconceived Bob Dylan jukebox musical, which should have closed before I'd ordered nonrefundable tickets. Proof positive that sometimes when critics say a show stinks, it really does.

9. The NY Times clip of Robert Shelton’s absolutely perfect and prescient rave review of one of Dylan's early gigs, in the fall of 1961; in an exhibition at the Morgan Library. (J.P. must be, like, rolling over, stoned, in his grave.)

8. All the ornamental cabbages, Brassica oleracea, purplish, yellowish, whitish, set in planters, around sidewalk trees, on window ledges, on stoops.

7. "Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art," at the China Institute, http://www.chinainstitute.org/gallery/current.html#books

6. Whistler’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, at the Met, on loan from Boston
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Americans_in_Paris/obj.asp?gal=4&i=11

5. The leather-covered bannisters at Hermes, Madison & 62nd

4. The austere front desk, backed by a wall of artists’ binders (for slides) and an equally black-clad attendant, at Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea. Of course, nobody's used slides for ages, but who doesn't love the intimidation factor?

3. Among the iconic photos of shootings & executions (Rudy/Oswald, the Vietnamese general, Capa's Spanish Civil War) in the hallway leading to MoMA’s “Manet and the Execution of the Maximilian” http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2006/Manet/index.htm an Associated Press photo shows the execution of three German spies; they were soldiers (disguised as civilians) captured while doing reconnaissance near the Meuse, probably in late 1944, but not shot, according to the caption, until May 1945, that is to say, in a last-minute rush, because the war was almost over (VE Day was May 8th). Manet painted explosions at the tips of his firing squad's rifles; the bullets have not yet hit. In the AP photo, an American officer pins a small, white target on the chest of a spy.

2. A film clip of a frail Auguste Renoir with dealer Ambrose Vollard, at the Met.

1. The Empire State Building. No kidding, from Madison & 34th: with the sun behind me, I looked west and noticed, for the first time, the gleaming metal molding strips that run up the sides of the windows (btw, in the photo, that ain't me, babe):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ottoni/pictures/12_2003_nyc/Gui_Empire_State_Building.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ottoni/pictures/12_2003_nyc/Gui_Empire_State_Building.html&h=1024&w=768&sz=441&hl=en&start=10&tbnid=mKvN383aAcSaaM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=113&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dempire%2Bstate%2Bbuilding%26imgsz%3Dxxlarge%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den-us%26sa%3DN

Steerage

Traditionally, litmags require an SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) with which to reply to unsolicited manuscripts. It's a question of the cost of postage and an envelope, but also of the time required to write out the address.

We take advantage of this opportunity to communicate with a writer by including, along with the form rejection letter, a card that says: "YES, I'm hurt because my manuscript was rejected. But I will subscribe because [and here there's a box to check] ZYZZYVA is beautiful and fun to read. And I'm grateful such a magazine exists." [and another box that says: "Just send me a sample copy...."]

Needless to say, rejected writers almost never subscribe. Or buy a sample copy. But a few do. And if we didn't ask, none would.

I recently received a note from a rejected writer, signed illegibly: Howard, I didn't believe my friends who said it (you) were really this bad, so I submitted work to you that was already considered very good as a test, (all the writing I sent to you is now in press at typically decent and unread journals) but Oh-my-god, a rejection SASE used to solicit for a magazine???? Novel for sure, save on money, unexpected, sure marketing genius. Unfortunately, such behavior along with reports that you treat truly good and protean writing (and writers) with contempt. (sorry dude, first hand reports, I sympathize, it sucks) seems to confirm for me that I and others of my ilk should steer a wide course away from you. How do you get away with this? Suffice it to say, to the extent possible, I, along with my friends will get the word out, and to be clear, I'm talking about well known and established writers. My sense is that you knew this already, and go on because it works for you. I would never write such a letter to any other literary arts journal. I know how hard it is to keep such an enterprise going, unfortunately, I really don't like the "tude" you put out.

Then there was JKCohen's recent blognote: http://jkcohen.livejournal.com/40104.html

And then there was Lois Meltzer's recent letter (tacitly belying the claim that all wannabees are poor): The most important thing I learned when I went to that conference on Maui for which I paid $900 (not counting the airfare or the oversweethened drinks with little umbrellas)....is that the secret to getting published is to submit, submit, submit....

Tu Few

As Tu Few, the noted SingSong poet, once remarked to his sagacious colleague Po Mo:

Writer
Subscribe
Not

In my humble transliteration, a lot of the resonance is lost, but the quintessence is clear: unfortunately, for publishers of litmags, writers want to get published, not to subscribe.

For example, of the 27 writers in the Winter issue, the so-called all-sex issue (see my post for Sept. 27), which is now rolling cross country from the printer in Salinas, MI, only 7 indicated on their contracts that they would like to subscribe.

AND THEY ARE GETTING PUBLISHED IN THE NEXT ISSUE.

(And being paid $50 for their efforts, regardless of length or genre. And they get two "author's copies" and five copies we'll send to whomever, if they give us their addresses.)

So it is not surprising that those who get rejected, which includes virtually everyone who submits (98%), most of whom have never seen the journal in its fleshly form, don't want to subscribe.

(continued tomorrow)

West Coast Offense

I take offense at the way New York museums disrespect Richard Diebenkorn.

MoMA puts him (and Sam Francis) in a stairwell.

So does the Met, put Diebenkorn in a stairwell.

MoMA's stairwell is distinguished by Matisse's Danse, which is on the top level, but still.

In an online note to the collection, as if to justify that installation, MoMA declares: "The influence of another touchstone for Diebenkorn, Henri Matisse, is apparent in Ocean Park 115, as in the rest of the series, in the way the space is divided into flat planes and bands of color. Built up of successive layers of pigment, the painting's blues and greens shift in their density, invoking a translucent luminosity."

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80422

Please note the banality of the observation about "space divided into flat planes and bands of color." It must have been Diebenkorn's wishy-washyness, and his West Coast "luminosity" that relegated him to marginality.

Thus, the late Kirk Varnedoe, former Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, in his 2003 Mellon Lectures, just published as Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock, doesn't even mention Diebenkorn.

He does have time, however, to discuss such flat-plane-and-bands-of-color artists as Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, Piet Mondrian, Peter Halley, and Gerhard Richter...all of whom were kind enough to follow the party line and do hard-edged flat planes and bands of color.

PS: MoMA owns one Thiebaud, Cut Meringues, 1961, but doesn't even put it up on the website.

Missing in Action

Thanks, I missed you, too.

I was in New York last week, to see some things and a couple of people.

One of the people was an editor who had been very kind to me at a point when my career was in disarray and whom I realized I had never properly thanked.

We had just started on chestnut soup at a cafe across the street from Dean & DeLuca, where you can buy an eight-inch-round loaf of "San Francisco Sour Dough" for $5.50 and an ounce of white truffle for $250, when a woman seated at the next table scooted over to say hello to my guest, who introduced her to me: a very important critic; I was thrilled to meet her; a New York moment.

This woman talked about the stroke she had had some six years ago, on and on, how she had struggled, yet managed to recover. Our soup was getting cold.

Finally, she stopped telling us of her ordeal, got up, and left.

My guest acknowledged that she had heard this story many times, every time they'd met. That this telling and telling must be a way of resisting the terrible insult.

Next In Line

posted by Kristin:

I was in line at Trader Joe's on Friday night, wearing my ZYZZYVA T-shirt. The word was partially obscured by my sweater, and the cashier, bagging groceries for the woman ahead of me, asked what it said.

"ZYZZYVA," I said, feeling like a human advertisement. I was far enough away from him that my tone actually did approach all caps.

A few heads turned. I said, "It's a literary magazine."

"Oh," he said. "Isn't it also a type of weevil?"

"In fact, it is," I said, surprised that someone actually knew the definition, and also a little taken by the definition itself. I tend to forget that it has a meaning apart from the magazine.

How did he know what it meant?

The other day, he told me, he'd been hanging out with a little kid who'd wanted to look up the last word in the dictionary.

On Vacation

This blog will be on vacation until 13 November.

After 27 daily posts, this is a welcome break.

After 21 years as an editor, expressing myself through the words of others, I'm enjoying the yoga of writing on deadline and trying to developing a voice appropriate to the medium.

In the days when I thought of myself as a reviewer/reporter, I always wondered if anyone actually read my stuff. That same nagging applies now.

Shouldn't there be lots of comments submitted for every post?

And yet, thanks to Technorati.com/search, I know I've been read by a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. And the magisterial Ron Silliman http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ has included me among his links. And, somehow, a professor at Western Kentucky University tuned in, and so did an old girlfriend (from the good old days of '68, when she played for Time on the same softball team as a researcher who later married Donald Barthelme. Forgive me for mentioning that Newsweek, my team, crushed them).

PS: In case you were wondering what the ZYZZYVA assistant editors, Kristin and Mattie, were doing Halloween: http://truckermythology.blogspot.com/

Man Booker

In Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery (1901), which I've just reread in the lovely 1970 Limited Editions Club edition I found on the new-book shelves at USF's Gleeson Library:

"Time and time again I have been asked, by people who are trying to secure money for philanthropic purposes, what rule or rules I followed to secure the interest and help of people who were able to contribute money to worthy objects. As far as the science of what is called begging can be reduced to rules, I would say that I have had but two rules. First, always to do my whole duty regarding making our work known to individuals and organizations; and, second, not to worry about the results. When the bills are on the eve of falling due, with not a dollar in hand with which to meet them, it is pretty difficult to learn not to worry, although I think I am learning more and more each year that all worry simply consumes, and to no purpose, just as much physical and mental strength that might otherwise be given to effective work."

If my man Booker says not to worry, then I won't.

Tin Ear

Talking about makeovers, the new Tin House arrived yesterday.

[Vibrant quarterly founded in 1999. Named after the building housing its office in Portland, "an old Victorian with corrugated zinc siding known in the neighborhood as 'the tin house.' The East Coast office is in Brooklyn." www.tinhouse.com]

It is, the cover declares, "dramatically illustrated with more than 80 color pictures," which is a lot in 224 pages, but appropriate because it's billed as "The Graphic Issue."

I worry that it may be a "jump the shark" moment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

Tin House has always had a lot of visual effects to make dreary print more lite-hearted: pull-quotes in the fiction, for example, which I find despicable since they telegraph what the author has struggled to weave into context.

And lots of colored rules and doodads and even color backgrounds for texts (which I find despicable).

And recipes...but that's just a matter of taste (Nice joke, eh?) This issue has three recipes, including one for the Tin House Martini, which sounds delish.

And it also has the juvenile cartoons of Michael Chabon, Dan Chaon, Jonathan Lethem, Chris Offut, and Luc Sante, juvenile meaning that they did these cartoons when they were between nine and twelve years old.

Wow. For the first issue of The Paris Review, the editors interviewed E. M. Forster in order to be able to put a famous name (oh, surely you remember him) on the cover. (Thus began the Writers at Work series.)

What will Tin House think of next?

This issue is so rich in hi-key stuff to look at that it's hard to read the regular prose & poetry. I felt jumpy, that is, I couldn't keep my eye scanning smoothly on the conventional stuff.

This is the visual-culture abyss all litmags face. I hope Tin House will be able to step back from the brink.