Professors, editors talk about the 'perfect' magazine

What makes a magazine perfect? To find out, students, professors and community members congregated in the rotunda of East Pyne Wednesday to hear prominent editors and writers discuss the importance of fostering small, intellectual publications.

Chair of the Council of Humanities Tony Grafton organized and moderated the forum, named "The Perfect Little Magazine." He called it, "a conversation about the perfect little magazine — what it is and what it could be."

In his opening remarks, Grafton described journalism's recent move toward complete conglomeration as "pretty scary." He stressed the need for smaller, more specialized magazines, both nationally and on college campuses.

For the first part of the event, four editors of small magazines spoke about what Grafton labeled "the magazines we have." After a break for dinner, a panel of four magazine contributors discussed "the magazines we don't have."

The first round panel included creative writing professors Gabe Hudson and Joyce Carol Oates, as well Wendy Lesser, editor of literary magazine The Threepenny Review and a visiting professor last semester.

The other panelists were Sina Najafi, the coeditor in chief of the art and culture quarterly Cabinet, and writers Adam Kirsch, Francine Prose, Judith Shulevitz and Lawrence Weschler.

Contrary to the name of the forum, Lesser said little magazines should not strive for perfection.

"I think the whole point of these little magazines is not to be perfect — to make lots of mistakes, to make an effort to do something different and new," she said. "To make honorable mistakes for good reasons, that's something that doesn't get to happen much today."

Prose, a prolific novelist and contributor to little magazines, also stressed the value of independent literary publications.

"I think literary magazines are much more important now than they ever have been," she said. "Each one is a kind of un-corporate or anti-corporate entity — a protest against the corporatization of American culture."

Prose also cited a need for a well-paying literary magazine. She said she would much prefer to write for The Threepenny Review than for Vogue, even though the latter would pay her ten to twenty times more.

Despite the two rows of foldout chairs added to accommodate an unexpected turnout, many students were still forced to stand in the almost completely full rotunda.

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Grafton said he was pleasantly surprised by the number of students who attended the forum, as he had doubted there was much interest in small magazines on campus.

"I'm incredibly happy to see so many students," he said. "I had no idea anyone would come."

One student who attended, David Levine '07, an editor of the recently created Green Light magazine, said the discussion of small magazines was especially important for him.

"I think it got at exactly what this campus needs," he said.