If you are already familiar with poet and critic Dan Schneider, you likely either love him or hate him. If you don't know him, I'll simply tell you that he has an ability to cut through literary BS like no one else.
In the last few weeks we've all heard about the scandal at The Virginia Quarterly Review. How the editor of that prestigious university literary journal supposedly bullied an underling into committing suicide.
Well, after reading Dan's examination of the issue I realized that suicide drama isn't the real scandal. Instead, it's the fact that editor Ted Genoways was paid $134k a year to run a magazine which only had a few thousand readers and was supported by public funds. Even worse, the magazine lost amazing amounts of money each year even as Genoways spent down the magazine's once-sizable endowment.
As Dan points out, this is similar to how corrupt CEOs and high-flying Wall Street firms nearly brought down our economy even as they coated their parachutes in solid gold.
In the second half of the article Dan also critiques some of the writings published by VQR and states that the real reason journals like VQR are in trouble is because of their "I'll publish you if you publish me" attitudes. This is an issue which has been debated around literary publishing for decades and I doubt Dan's comments will change anyone's mind. But it's still an interesting analysis.
Now I'm a fan of literary magazines, and even helped found an online journal called storySouth. However, the numbers Dan has pulled together about VQR are outrageous and must be seen by everyone. Go check out the essay.
I fell sort of dirty for ever having subbed there now.
Posted by: Barry Napier | September 24, 2010 at 08:52 AM
No wonder they rejected you, Barry, if you can't even spell 'feel'. (And by the way, Jason, that's 'publishing', not 'publiching'.)
Posted by: Robert Laughlin | September 24, 2010 at 01:43 PM
Robert: I fixed the typo. Thanks.
Barry: Don't feel dirty. It's not the authors' fault they behaved like they did.
Posted by: Jason Sanford | September 24, 2010 at 09:33 PM
I'm sorry, but what? I'm all for supporting college journals and the like, but not when you're sinking that kind of money into it. The thing that gets me the most is that he's getting over 100K for a *quarterly* journal. That's a lot to get paid for a monthly journal, but one which he only has to work on at a snail's pace? Come on...
This is absurd...
Posted by: SMD | September 24, 2010 at 10:23 PM