Books or Butter

In a post titled “Print Culture and the Fate of the Literary Quarterly” Salon blogger Front Porch Republic (FPR) references TriQuarterly and Shenandoah going online and worries what these changes mean for print literature. FPR sites similar concerns from George Core, the editor of Sewanee Review, a journal to which he subscribes, and also quotes R.T. Smith, editor of Shenandoah, who, in part, blames Shenandoah’s predicament on “the disproportion between the number of people who would love to publish in Shenandoah and the number of who would love to read it.”

FPR goes on to say that he buys or subscribes to a select number of literary magazines “out of duty, I suppose, and out of loyalty too, and perhaps out of guilt, but also out of the belief that my money is better spent on, and is more needed in the service of, a Republic of Letters in print.” While I don’t know a magazine editor who would want anyone to subscribe out of a sense of duty or guilt, it is true that the profusion of graduate writing programs over the last 20 years has led to a profusion of writers and a profusion of new magazines but not a profusion of subscribers. And I would go so far to suggest that if you have an advanced degree in creative writing and can’t find any magazines that you would not only willingly subscribe to but also eagerly anticipate each number of, then you are likely in the wrong line of work.

Take, for example, FPR commenter JustJuli, who seems to view her time spent in a graduate writing program as like living in a North Korean gulag. Now, set loose with an MFA from her (apparently compulsory) course of study, and consequently unemployable, JustJuli says she must choose between subscribing to literary magazines and shoeing her children. Fortunately, having been deprogrammed from her harrowing brush with creativity, she finds the choice a no-brainer.

Commenter tomreedtoon too says piffle to FPRs concern for the future of print culture because, he states boldly (literally), “nobody reads any more (sic).” And he has proof that this is true—for tomreedtoon has said the exact same thing in comments to previous posts that were about people reading things and yet people still keep putting up posts about people reading things! How does tomreedtoon carry on in the face of such willful intransigence? One is inclined to wonder. Of course, the notion that no one reads anymore is common these days, largely, one imagines, among people who don’t read.

H/T Marya