To promote Best of the Web 2010 from Dzanc Books, The Collagist is running a series of posts on its blog featuring writers from that collection who have also appeared in their journal. They recently talked to J.A. Tyler about his story Jimmy and his Father and the Ways About Them, which appeared way back in the first issue of > kill author. We, the editors, answered a couple of questions too. You can read the full blog post over here.
James Bridle, who writes a fascinating blog at booktwo.org all about the increasing coming together of publishing and technology, has a fascinating new post about book covers in an age where we not only buy books online, but buy digital versions of those books too:
“But it feels like we’re missing an opportunity here, before book jackets go the way of album covers. To encode some of our knowledge of books in a way that’s both attractive and useful to readers. To remake the cover in the service of the digital book. Representation and recommendation are two possible approaches.”
The minimalist typographical designs of Melville House’s novella series and the e-book versions of classic novels from Odyssey Editions both get a mention.
And after yesterday’s post, here’s an opposing view — Enough is Enough: The Slushpile is Not the Enemy by Roxane Gay over on HTMLGIANT. It’s much more in tune with our thinking:
“I can’t speak for the big fancy magazines, but for the smaller magazines such as PANK, we live and die by the slushpile. With no slushpile we would have no magazine and frankly, it would take way more time and effort to solicit writers for twelve monthly issues and a 240 page annual than it does to read submissions. Save for a handful of writers, literally, a handful, we have published the magazine exclusively via work from the slushpile or as we simply call it, the submission queue. Let me go on record as stating that even on the most frustrating days, I love reading submissions. It is what I get to do to relax and step out of my ‘real’ life. I actually feel fucking lucky to be able to co-edit a magazine. Even when I’m reading something terrible I think, ‘well this is just awesomely bad, and I feel a little thrill. I literally feel a thrill. When I stop feeling that thrill, I will take a break.”
There’s so much more to what Roxane says, and the whole post is worth reading, but it’s the quote above that really sums it up for us.
We’ve asked the question before: if, as an editor, you don’t like reading submissions, why keep pursuing an open submissions policy? To give an “illusion” of democracy, maybe? To allow writers to think they might still have a chance of appearing on your exalted pages? Why bother yourself with the hassle of a task you evidently loathe so much? Just stop doing it. Get your work only through soliciting writers, fine. It’s a valid editorial choice — just not one that we could ever see ourselves following for this online journal. Why? Because we think it can lead to repetitive content, even stagnation. The same names, the same writers, the same styles, time and time again. What we value about the submissions queue — and yes, like Roxane we prefer to call it that, because “slush pile” seems like such a derogatory term that you might as well go the whole way and call it “shit heap” if that’s all you think of it — is the chance to discover that astonishing, jaw-dropping piece from a writer we’ve never happened across before. We’re proud to say that we’ve published a few such pieces in our journal’s lifetime, including some from writers for whom this was their first taste of wider publication. That simple fact makes us feel honored, just as we consider it an honor to read everything we get sent, whether or not we end up publishing it.
Also: we have better things to complain about than the terrible sacrifice of editing an online literary journal. More mundane, everyday things. We’re boring and normal like that.
Posting a link to this on the blog of a literary journal could be seen as shooting ourselves in the foot. Or the head. We don’t care. Jim Hanas has a lot to say in his provocatively titled post Nobody Likes the Slush Pile, Let’s Get Rid of It, and even if you don’t agree with all of it — which we don’t, because we’ve got some doubts about whether the impact of what Hanas is saying has really been thought through — there’s a lot there to talk about. Read. (Found via Fictionaut on Facebook)
Issue Eight has been coming together in the background and will hit the web during the first half of August, but in the meantime our blog has gone a little unloved. We also realized that one of our contributor mini-reviews of a favorite piece from Issue Seven hadn’t been posted. So with apologies to him for the delay, here’s Troy Urquhart:
“Jennifer Gigantino’s poem ‘Trivial Pursuit’ tucks away meaning, neatly embeds the things that matter most between things that seem to not. “This poem is about you” is tucked between lines about Leonard Cohen and Tristan Tzara. “Your name is my favorite blues song” is almost hidden between facts about Cindy Margolis and U2. And we find “I like / kissing you as much as I have ever liked drinking” between a comment about Fitzgerald and one about women getting the right to vote. Does Fitzgerald matter? Sure. Does suffrage? Absolutely. But it’s the personal that takes precedence here.
I am quite taken with this poem, with the way that the details of the speaker’s personal life get scattered among details from politics, from history, from culture, and with the way that the juxtaposition of these things makes the trivial anything but trivial. Too often, we’re told the personal doesn’t really matter against the greater scale of world events, but here, those intimacies shine like flecks of quartz in granite.”