LitMags

Un lungo articolo sulle riviste letterarie che sembrerebbero sparite, almeno dal panorama editoriale italiano, e invece pare siano ancora fiorenti in America. 
"Why on Earth would you start a literary magazine? You won’t get rich, or even very famous. You’ll have to keep your day job, unless you’re a student or so rich you don’t need a day job. You and your lucky friends and the people you hire—if you can afford to pay them—will use their time and energy on page layouts, bookkeeping, distribution, Web site coding and digital upkeep, and public readings and parties and Kickstarters and ways to wheedle big donors or grant applications so that you can put out issue two, and then three. You’ll lose time you could devote to your own essays or fiction or poems. Once your journal exists, it will wing its way into a world already full of journals, like a paper airplane into a recycling bin, or onto a Web already crowded with literary sites. Why would you do such a thing?" Stephen Burt, newyorker.

Academic Publishing

Un articolo molto interessante sul presente e il probabile futuro della stampa accademica. "Publishing is evolving very rapidly,” says the Harvard Library’s Sarah Thomas. “We’re having a kind of shift away from formal publications that are relatively static. In the old days, a published book would be bound between covers and sit on the shelf for centuries, maybe with some marginalia added. Now publishing has become dynamic: not individual authors, but multiple authors acting to create across geographical regions and across time. Think about scientific publication. For centuries, the journal article has been the form in which scientists communicated. Now, it’s more likely to be an idea put out online by multiple labs, and it may change from day to day. You get alerts; there will be new information added; you’ll get corrections.” And academic careers may assume new forms. A few years ago, art historian Shearer West, now head of the humanities division at the University of Oxford, observed that in the future, scholars will publish one great book, and one great digital project". Craig A. Lambert, harvardmagazine.

Founding The New York Review

Jason e Barbara Epstein

Continuiamo con la serie di articoli sugli inizi della New York Review of Books, che risalgono a 50 anni fa. Qui è uno dei fondatori, Jason Epstein, l'unico sopravvissuto, a ricordare i fatti: "Of the four friends who met for dinner fifty years ago in Barbara’s and my apartment on West Sixty-Seventh Street during the New York newspaper strike, I am the sole survivor. Though we had no such plan in mind beforehand, it was at that dinner that Elizabeth Hardwick, her husband Robert (Cal) Lowell, Barbara and I saw all at once the opportunity that would become The New York Review of Books. The dinner was impromptu, a last minute plan of Lizzie and Barbara’s, who had met unexpectedly on Columbus Avenue that afternoon; we sat around a makeshift table in our as yet barely furnished apartment, which, with its double-height living room and huge north-facing window, had been designed at the turn of the century for artists. The Lowells also lived on West Sixty-Seventh Street, an easy walk from our own building. ..." nybooks.

Ancora sui 50 anni della NYRB

Martedì scorso alla Town Hall di New York si è svolta una grande festa in onore dei cinquant'anni della New York Review of Books. Vi hanno partecipato molti dei più famosi collaboratori, come John Banville, Mary Beard, Michael Chabon, Mark Danner, Joan Didion (nella foto), Daniel Mendelsohn, Darryl Pinckney, e Robert B. Silvers, il fondatore insieme a Barbara Epstein. nyt.

Scorsese e la NYRB

Questa settimana a New York si sono svolti vari party in onore del cinquantenario della New York Review of Books. Pare che Scorsese sia interessato alla storia della rivista per un prossimo film/documentario.
"On Monday evening, at a small private party commemorating the magazine’s 50th anniversary, held in its Greenwich Village offices, Mr. Scorsese, accompanied by a film crew of about a half dozen, interviewed various current and former writers and dropped boom mikes into clusters of casual cocktail chat. A crew will also be filming an event at Town Hall on Tuesday night featuring Joan Didion, Michael Chabon, Daniel Mendelsohn, John Banville and other longtime contributors, as well as the magazine’s editor and co-founder, Robert Silvers". nyt.

Bob Silvers e la NYRB

Emily Stokes, del Financial Times, intervista Bob Silvers, fondatore ed editor della New York Review of Books, che quest'anno compie 50 anni. "As an editor working at a literary magazine, I find Silvers’ work ethic inspiring, if hard to mimic; he is in the office seven days a week, often until midnight, where he keeps a bed in a cupboard. He edits every piece in the NYRB himself. Contributors speak of his long polite memos revealing an encyclopedic knowledge of even the most obscure subjects, as well as a disregard for normal working hours; many have stories of receiving clippings and queries from “Bob” in the middle of the night or as they sit down to Christmas lunch". ft.

Lavorare alla New York Review of Books

Janet Coleman ci racconta gli anni dell'inizio alla New York Review of Books. "I arrived in December 1963, before the NYR had been on the newsstands a year. I was twenty-one. ... Through William Phillips and Phillip Rahv, the founding rabbis of the New York intellectual press, I also knew the work (and phone numbers) of the whole Upper West Side of critics newly prominent on the writing roster of the NYR.
From Rahv, the more admired of the partners (Saul Bellow called Phillips a “devious rat”), I’d learned the most important factor in producing our line of work. “Philip,” I’d asked, “What’s the key to great critical writing?” “Sensibility, Janet,” he said. You would never guess from his jackknife prose that Philip Rahv spoke like a Russian bear schooled at City College for a Group Theater production of a Chekhov play. “Sensabitty, Janet,” was what he actually said. “Sensabitty.” nybooks.

Com'era lavorare alla New York Review of Books

Il primo numero della NYR

Ce lo racconta Janet Coleman, che ci lavorò dal 1963 al 1966, i primi anni della rivista fondata da Robert Silvers e Barbara Epstein. 
"I arrived in December 1963, before the NYR had been on the newsstands a year. I was twenty-one. I’d had a similar job at the legendary literary and left-wing political quarterly Partisan Review, entering and updating subscriptions, all hundreds of them, on 3x5” index cards. Through William Phillips and Phillip Rahv, the founding rabbis of the New York intellectual press, I also knew the work (and phone numbers) of the whole Upper West Side of critics newly prominent on the writing roster of the NYR.
From Rahv, the more admired of the partners (Saul Bellow called Phillips a “devious rat”), I’d learned the most important factor in producing our line of work. “Philip,” I’d asked, “What’s the key to great critical writing?” “Sensibility, Janet,” he said. You would never guess from his jackknife prose that Philip Rahv spoke like a Russian bear schooled at City College for a Group Theater production of a Chekhov play. “Sensabitty, Janet,” was what he actually said. “Sensabitty.” nybooks.

Jim Shepard e The Milan Review

Leggendo un'interessante intervista allo scrittore Jim Shepard, uscita sulla Paris Review, scopro che l'intervistatore, Tim Small, è il traduttore in italiano di Shepard e intervista lo scrittore "on Skype, from my ex-girlfriend's kitchen in Milan, Italy". Vado a cercare Tim Small e scopro che è il fondatore e il direttore editoriale di The Milan Review, una rivista letteraria che così si definisce sul web "The Milan Review is a semi-annual litmag which is vaguely thematic and definitely in English. It is distributed pretty much all over the world but conceived and printed in Italy.

It includes only short stories and hand-made artworks, such as paintings, drawings, collages and the like. No photographs—not for now, at least. Every issue is radically different from the others in size, form, concept, shape, color and taste.
It is almost certainly the best Italian-American literary journal in the world". themilanreview.

Literary Magazines

In un'intervista al Johns Hopkins Magazine Lorin Stein, il direttore della Paris Review, parla del ruolo, ancora importante, delle riviste letterarie.

"We don't need to find a mass market, - Stein says.  - The Paris Review needs to be trusted enough that you make the time [to read it] because we are always going to publish things that are a little bit spiky, a little bit outside one’s comfort zone. We’re a laboratory for fiction and poetry. And if you want to do that and not publish stuff that is easy to publish, then you really need to have a very strong identity [and] people need to trust that brand." jhu.

The Modernist Journals Project

Una notizia che rallegrerà gli studiosi: le riviste americane che hanno pubblicato i primi testi modernisti sono state digitalizzate e sono ora disponibili in pdf, grazie a un progetto congiunto di Brown University e The University of Tulsa, The Modernist Journals Project.

The New Inquiry

Thinkers and writers of our generation face an unprecedented set of cultural realities. The growing supply of career academics has flooded the university job market, and 21^st century technologies have thrown traditional media into crisis. Although the future of higher education and print remains obscure, these cultural sea changes have yielded one definite side effect: an abundance of young writers and thinkers resolved to pursue a public intellectual life for its own sake—a pursuit ordered and enabled by Internet technology.

The New Inquiry is a space for discussion that aspires to enrich cultural and public life by putting all available resources—both digital and material—toward the promotion and exploration of ideas. thenewinquiry. Interessante, no?

Brooklyn’s best free literary zines

Per chi non può permettersi l'abbonamento al super chic n+1, e vuole leggere della buona letteratura, ecco un elenco di riviste letterarie gratuite online da Brooklyn: Assembly Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Harp & Altar, Staccato Fiction. brokelyn.

The Literarian

The Center for Fiction ha lanciato una nuova rivista letteraria che sembra molto promettente, The Literarian. Si presentano così, "We'd love to develop an online community that is as crazy about The Center as our NY members and audiences are. So whether you are a reader, a writer, a book-group member, or a publishing type, welcome! Take some time to explore the site, read all the great content, and share your thoughts. If you like what you see - and we think you will! - please return often and, please, help us spread the word about this new online resource for readers and writers." Lo faccio con piacere e con i migliori auguri, perché effettivamente mi sembra molto interessante.

Il primo numero contiene, "New stories by Alan Cheuse (a rude - and heartbreakingly funny - awakening), Terese Svoboda (a hell of a honeymoon), Stuart Dybek (the poetry of laundry) and more... interviews with Cynthia Ozick and Yiyun Li... Martha McPhee's five favorite books about women behaving badly... " centerforfiction.