BookFox

The Drawbacks of Diversity in Book Lists

2009-11-05T13:36:57-08:00

A lot of people have been complaining about the lack of women on the Publishers Weekly top ten list. For commentary, check out the NY Times, The Rumpus, and The Arts Blog.

I have a problem not with this particular attempt to encourage diversification (and it is pretty strange that not a single woman appeared on the top ten), but with the overall attempt to make sure every list is diversified (Remember the complaints about The Millions Best of the Millennium?).

When people use the notion of diversity to bludgeon a selection of literature, what they are really encouraging is not diversity per se, but their unique cocktail of diversity. For instance, they complain there aren’t enough women. Or enough international authors. Or enough writers of color. (Or, as this blog might even argue, not enough short story collections!).

In other words, they’re encouraging prejudice/special favor toward a specific group of people under the guise of “diversity.” But this diversity can never be achieved. As soon as you add more women, or more authors in translation, this skews some other—still significant—portion of the list’s demographic.

What about diversity of age? What about diversity of religion? What about diversity of fame? What about diversity of education? Diversity of class? Diversity of Genre (no poetry?) Diversity of single/married/polygamous? These diversities are no less important, yet they are often ignored by people invoking diversity as a moral good.

Remember, diversity is not the only value in town. Remember unity? Also a good thing, whether you’re talking about employees or Best of Literature lists. I actually want “Best Of” lists to have a flavor—not that diversity doesn’t have a flavor, but that lists lacking a perfectly balanced demographic often portray a certain perspective or a unique point of view that is enjoyable.

The problem would be if every list actively ignored a group of people. Then that would be an absolute lack of diversity. But in the age of the internet, where we’ll see hundreds—no, thousands—of Best Books of 2009 lists, I’m confident that across this spectrum we’ll have plenty of diversity. For instance, check out the wiki that lists the best female-authored books of 2009. If one list of one publication lacks perceived diversity in one category, stop complaining. Just find another list.

The truth is that we wouldn’t want absolute diversity. If every list tried to choose evenly across a diverse spectrum, we’d get politically correct lists, but not accurate portrayals of the passionate opinions of editors/authors/readers. I’ll choose a passionate list every time over a sanitized, carefully diversified list.

Responses to Amazon/Walmart Price Wars over Books

2009-10-31T17:19:08-07:00

Emily Pullen at Skylight Books blog:

What kind of soulless person would think that cheaper isn't better? According to Merriam Webster, the verb to cheapen also means "to lower in general esteem; to make tawdry, vulgar, or inferior in some moral sense." And frankly, that's something that I'd rather not do to our concept of reading and its influence in our lives. I'm amazed that publishers don't seem more outraged about this. As luxuries go (and reading is usually a luxury), you can't get much more economical than a book. Let's say you read one page per minute for 30 minutes every day. At that rate, it would take you 10 days to read a 300 page book, or 5 total hours. Where can you get 5 hours of entertainment or education for less than $15, let alone 10 DAYS of entertainment or education for about $25?

In the Huffington Post, Praveen Madan and Christin Evans write about what important things independent bookstores offer that Amazon and Walmart can't provide:

It seems to us that independent booksellers are not in the same business as Amazon.com and the chain stores. They are in a much broader business – it’s the business of building community. Successful independent bookstores use their love and knowledge of books to build community just like a contractor uses bricks and wood to build a house. You can buy a book anywhere but you can’t buy community. Community doesn’t enjoy every day low prices at WalMart nor does it show up in a box delivered by UPS.

Atlantic Monthly offers a roundup:

Publishers should then use this turn of events to start putting their money where it matters: the emerging writers.

The Wall Street Journal points out the latest in this book pricing war is that the behemoths have begun to ration the number of books customers can buy:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has limited its online customers to two copies each of certain bargain books. Amazon.com Inc. has a three-copy maximum on certain discounted titles and Target Corp. has a five-copy limit online.

The Literary Saloon has some excerpts from a subscriber online WSJ article about how price wars are banned in Europe (sounds like a wise position):

In much of Europe, the discount-pricing battle that has erupted among Wal-Mart Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Target Corp. could never happen because most major publishing markets, with the exception of the U.K., are bolstered by laws requiring all bookstores, online retailers included, to sell books at prices set in stone by their publishers.

UPDATE: The New Yorker wades into the fray:

"The best way to win a price war, then, is not to play in the first place. Instead, you can compete in other areas: customer service or quality. Or you can collude with your putative competitors: that’s why cartels like OPEC exist. Or—since overt collusion is usually illegal—you can employ subtler tactics (which economists call “signalling”), like making public statements about the importance of “stable pricing.” The idea is to let your competitors know that you’re not eager to slash prices—but that, if a price war does start, you’ll fight to the bitter end. One way to establish that peace-preserving threat of mutual assured destruction is to commit yourself beforehand, which helps explain why so many retailers promise to match any competitor’s advertised price. Consumers view these guarantees as conducive to lower prices. But in fact offering a price-matching guarantee should make it less likely that competitors will slash prices, since they know that any cuts they make will immediately be matched. It’s the retail version of the doomsday machine."

Poets and Writers' MFA Program Rankings by Seth Abramson

2009-10-24T22:38:29-07:00

Poets and Writers offers the Top 50 MFA Programs in the nation, as compiled by Seth Abramson. Most of the article explains what criteria were excluded from the rankings. I don't think it's a bad idea that he completely avoids such subjective criteria as professor status -- after all, as he notes, excellent writers are sometimes poor teachers.

It's also probably wise that he avoids quantifying long-term alumni success, and that he avoids considering MA programs, low-residency programs, and Ph.D. programs. Also, I applaud his attempt to make MFA programs more transparent about funding. Some are certainly notoriously tight-lipped about dispensing information.

But Stacey Harwood, at the Best American Poetry blog, complains that Abramson's methods are faulty:

"Unlike a valid poll, which would survey a randomly selected representative sample of the total pool of current and potential MFA applicants, Abramson's poll reflects only the responses of self-selected readers of his blog, and there is nothing to prevent individuals from responding more than once from multiple locations."

It's true that the pool was self-selected. But I have to disagree with Stacey: I think this makes the stats more accurate -- all the students visiting the MFA blog are likely to know much much more than a random sampling of MFA applicants. After all, we don't want to find out the majority's opinion -- we want the opinion of people who are in the know and have a good idea of program's strengths and weaknesses. Plus, the poll is only one piece of information -- Abramson offers 12 other categories of info.

But the bigger problem isn't whether the pool was a representative sample or self-selected; it's that the pool size was limited to prospective students. Really? Ask any MFA graduate and they'll be much wiser about the state of the industry and programs a couple years out of their MFA. The poll should not have repeated the errors of the 1997 Newsweek rankings (which Abramson rightly points out was flawed because they only polled directors and professors) by only polling another group of people -- prospective students. Wouldn't the best poll take into account all the various constituencies -- directors, professors, prospective students, post-MFAers, literary journal editors, and publishers?

It's also necessary to point out that a poll such as this can't fulfill what Stacey wants it to do. We don't want to know about the popular perception of programs. We actually want an authoritative ranking of programs. In that aspect, even if the polling was done to the approval of a statistician, all we are left with is perception, which isn't enough.

Which is why Abramson's data is the best stuff. Annual funding ranks. Acceptance percentages. Postgraduate placement records. These things are helpful, and whoever wants to focus on funding or selectivity rank can prioritize accordingly. But what potential MFA students think about programs? I'll take it with a grain of salt.

It's truly unfortunate that the Best American Poetry blog has silenced further debate by deleting Abramson's comments -- I would really have liked to hear more from both of them.

Nook: B&N E-Reader

2009-10-21T00:54:53-07:00

So Barnes and Noble released its e-reader today, which will compete with Sony's e-reader and Amazon's Kindle. Over at Business Center, they're calling the Nook a Kindle-killer. Ironically, wasn't this the term for not-yet-unveiled-but-hoped-for Apple Tablet? I guess they've waited so long to bring it out that it will have to be a Sony/Nook/Kindle killer.

Anyways, the Nook has lending capabilities. I find this notion of lending fascinating:

"One of the differentiating factors of the Nook is that customers can “lend” books to friends. But customers may lend out any given title only one time for a total of 14 days and they cannot read it on their own Nook while it is lent."

Does anyone else think that 14 days is a very, very long time? I read some books in a day, most others in a few days, sometimes in a week. 14 days seems less like a promotional time period and more like the way lending physical books works -- take your time to consume, but you can't keep the physical object and display it on your shelves once you're done.

The deletion after 14 days reminds me of 007 (this message will self-destruct in 3 seconds) and a weird electronic "Fahrenheit 451" -- there's going to be electronic book burning going on at an astonishing rate, with files shared and destroyed.

The trouble with such convoluted software is that someone will disable the 14 day countdown and break the code disabling you to read it on your own Nook. Ask the music industry.

John Grisham's Ford County

2009-10-20T23:56:29-07:00

On November 3rd, John Grisham is dipping into the short story realm with his first collection, "Ford County," which has a manly ring to it (it's where his first novel, A Time to Kill, takes place). Nice to have the commercial boys dip into a realm normally owned by the literary folk. I predict sales that haven't been seen since Steven King published his last short story collection.

There's a video interview with him, in which he describes his motivation for writing this collection: "Well, I tried everything else but poetry." Oh, if only all short story writers could have such noble aspirations.

Grisham says that they're long short stories -- there are only seven -- but no matter the length, it's excellent publicity for the form.

"The Writer's Notebook"

2009-10-14T00:35:31-07:00

Over at The Reading Experience, Dan Green isn't happy with Tin House's "The Writer's Notebook":

If we take The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House (Tin House Books) to be a representative gathering of critical wisdom from current American writers, what does it ultimately tell us about these writers' understanding of the purpose of fiction, their widely-shared assumptions?

Unfortunately, in my view it tells us that their understanding of fiction's purposes is very limited indeed, their assumptions about its possibilities, its potential to surprise and to creatively challenge established conventions, very narrow and constricted.

Green goes on to specify why the advice in "The Writer's Notebook" fails to measure up to his expectations -- it encourages conventional notions of time, scenes, and dialogue, rather than encouraging more risk-taking experimental fiction.

First, I doubt that such a book of advice could be written for experimental literature -- how do you instruct someone in how to break all the rules? How do you teach them to do what hasn't yet been done? I would argue that the best way to lead a student towards experimentation is by laying a solid foundation of the rules themselves -- for example, only by learning the "clock" of fiction in all of its configurations can a writer learn to subvert a reader's notions of time.

Also, if someone is sophisticated enough of a writer to conceive and successfully implement a revolutionary structure in fiction, then they don't need to be reading any how-to-write books. They might want to consider writing them.

In my former review of "The Writer's Notebook," I highlighted a few passages that seemed to be quite sophisticated evaluations of the role in fiction. And looking again at the book in light of Green's criticisms, I've categorized the book more accurately.

Considering the entire spectrum of books that teach writing, I would place "The Writer's Notebook" in the top fifth percentile, when based on a sliding scale of degree of difficulty. Here's why.

Nearly all of the books that teach writing focus on the basics. This is because beginning writers are more likely to read how-to-write books. I would say that 95% of these books repeat the exact same rules, with minor variances: show, don't tell, create memorable characters, offer detail, story rises to a climax.

"The Writer's Notebook" does none of that. Instead, when it does take on a cliched topic, it tends to invert it: instead of choosing the "right" word, choose the wrong one; instead of valuing content over form, find shapes to find content; instead of showing, please tell. I would never recommend this book to someone early in their writing career -- it's clearly meant for post-MFAs.

Now, admittedly, I will concede that these lectures don't go into some level of educational experience that would impart to writers how to pen experimental literature, but I would still argue that these instructions offer a high-level architecture off which writers may, if they so choose, launch off into the stratosphere. Also, some chapters in this book could apply equally well to many forms of writing. Reading well -- as the advice in "Material" by Lucy Corin teaches -- is a precursor to being able to write an intricately structured piece of conventional or innovative fiction. (which Green admits -- saying Corin's and D.A. Powell's essays are exceptions to his critique)

But the last defense I would give of this book is that it's simply not meant to teach experimental literature. You can't critique a book for what it's not trying to be. And might I add that from a publisher's perspective, a book of that nature might not sell so well?

Lessons from the Nobel Prize Winner Herta Muller

2009-10-08T08:29:46-07:00

What can we learn from this year's announcement that Herta Muller has won the Nobel Prize for Literature? Here's Seven Tips for Future Predictions.

The Nobel Prize Committee has a leak. When Herta Muller rockets from 50/1 odds to 3/1 odds in the last few days of voting, that’s not a hunch. That’s a good old-fashioned black-market leak. Someone squeaked. And the same thing happened last year with JMG Le Clezio. Even though the chair of the Nobel Committee said they’d prevent a recurrence from last year’s leak, it happened again. All the secrecy isn’t working, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps someone’s fake book cover slipped?

The Nobel Prize Committee Misdirects. Two days before the prize is given to a European (German) author, the leader of the Nobel Prize jury, Peter Englund, says the award has been too Eurocentric, and that U.S. authors and the Americas have as fair of a shot as anyone. Lesson learned? Never pay attention to public statements before the award’s announced. It’s more political than perspicuous. Also, recognize that the statements aren't meant for this year, as much as for years to come. Perhaps a non-European winner in 2010?

Politics, Politics Politics. Herta Muller is the daughter of an SS officer. Herta Muller's first book, a collection of short stories called "Lowlands," was censored by Romanian authorities. Muller's two novels, “The Land of Green Plums” and “The Appointment,” deal with totalitarian regimes. This is why recluses like Pynchon and McCarthy don't stand a chance. Engagement with the world is key.

Europhilia Persists. Out of the last 11 Nobel Prize Winners, 10 have been European. And they think America's insular? (Note: Gao Xingjian has lived in France for decades). Also, three of the last ten winners come from the German Language (Elfriede Jelinek, Gunter Grass, and now Herta Muller). Let's spread the love.

Never Count Out the Poets. Okay, so a poet hasn't won since 1996, true. (That was the polish poet Wislawa Szymborska). But Herta Muller does write essays and novels, as well, so this isn't a straight poetry prize. However, the Swedes did highlight both her poetry and prose in awarding the prize: "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose."

Highly Popular Authors Get Passed Over. Haruki Murakami? Everyone dreams about it, but no way. Philip Roth? But people read him already! The Nobel Prize jury prefers the lightly known. Although to be fair, at least some of Herta Muller's books have been translated and reviewed here -- JMG Le Clezio was a complete unknown in the U.S.

Amos Oz Feels Disappointed. For the second year in a row, Amos Oz has been the frontrunner and then been supplanted by an upstart at the last minute. For what it's worth, BookFox sends its sincerest literary apologies. Now suck it up and write a book about peace between Israel and Palestine. Maybe that'll get the Swedes' attention.

Nobel Prize for Literature Speculation

2009-10-07T11:56:50-07:00

Okay, last minute speculation here before the big announcement tomorrow.

The Guardian notes that the Swedes have given a tip-off by critiquing their European focus in the last decade:

Peter Englund [the new frontman of the Nobel literature prize jury] has said that he believes the prize has been too "Eurocentric" in recent years (nine of the 10 previous winners have been European) and that there are plenty of worthy American writers for the award.

Or maybe this just evens the score after Horace Engdahl's rant against American literature?

There's also a pitch for EL Doctorow, which I think is misguided. If you want to pick an outside American shot, give it to Cormac McCarthy (100/1 odds).

As Newsweek notes, no Latin American author has won since Octavio Paz in 1990, and that might give an edge to Mario Vargas Llosa or Carlos Fuente.

The Associated Press says that Joyce Carol Oates jumped in the rankings from 7/1 to 5/1, which I think is wrong, wrong, wrong. If she wins before Philip Roth or Alice Munro I will tear my hair out.

The Literary Saloon and a number of other sites have been picking Herta Müller as a solid option. She's risen from 50/1 odds to 3/1 odds in less than a week.

If you want the true experience of competing conversations, try the World Literature Forum. Everybody's got a guess and a theory.

Of course, there's a 31% percent chance that it won't be anyone on the list, or even someone we've even heard of before. In that case, kiss your bets goodbye, and start reading.

[This is Part II of Nobel Prize Speculation. See Part I.)

The Case for Books by Robert Darnton

2009-10-05T23:34:05-07:00

When arguing for the importance and relevance of physical books in "The Case for Books," Robert Darnton mentions smell as a factor:

“Books also give off special smells. According to a recent survey of French students, 43 percent consider smell to be one of the most important qualities of printed books—so important that they resist buying odorless electronic books. CafeScribe, a French online publisher, is trying to counter-act that reaction by giving its customers a sticker that will give off a fusty, bookish smell when it is attached to their computers.”

Well, okay. Let’s review “The Case for Books” by smell, then. Using the Bloodhound Method of dipping my nose close to the pages and inhaling deeply (much better than the Fan Method of flipping pages), I detect a chemical smell. A second sniff reveals it as glue. To be honest, not the most appealing book scent – a bit too acidic. Any pulpy paper smell is overwhelmed by the glue scent. We could hope that the book might age well, like a wine that blooms after a decade or so, but this hope might be misplaced.

Yes, that is the first book I’ve ever reviewed by smell. And to be honest, when talking about a book that praises physical books, we might as well stop and concentrate on the very physicality of the medium.

Now to the more cerebral review.

Darnton, a pioneer of the field of the history of books, breaks “The Case For Books” into three sections – Future, Present, and Past. The Future section is the most relevant. In the four chapters in the Future section, Darnton speculates on how Google Book search will change the library landscape. We are witnessing an era when the Gutenberg Galaxy shifts to the Google Galaxy. In other words, the reign of print and ink repositories of books is giving way to the infinite Borgesian library.

Darnton is theoretically optimistic about this Google invasion, but pragmatically pessimistic. Theoretically, as a librarian for Harvard, he can’t help but to be excited by a library that dwarfs the Alexandrian library. But pragmatically –- oh, he spends chapters and chapters detailing everything that could go wrong. From Monopolies that are the antithesis of open-access (who’s to prevent Google from charging outrageous fees?) to the problem of technological transience (it's difficult to access an 8-track, and how long ago was that?) he assembles a convincing array of problems.

His only less-than-convincing point is that Google can’t scan rare books, or at least not enough of them. Aside from the fact that this could be overcome with enough time, I’m not going to complain (and neither is the rest of the world), if only a couple hundred million books are digitized. That’ll be quite enough, thanks. The goal of digitization is not to reach a totality, it’s to reach a critical mass. And that mass is approaching quickly.

Since these are essays collected from as far back as 1982, some -– even the late 90s pieces –- seem dated. No one is arguing (except in some librarian circles) that microfilm preserves better than newspaper. There’s also some overlap between essays, as we read multiple times that many subscriptions to scholarly journals can cost more than $20,000. But some are interesting because of their historical information, such as his chapter “The Mysteries of Reading” detailing the “Commonplace Book,” which was like a favorites file RSS feed of the 18th century. Readers wrote down beloved quotes, forming a self-edited compilation.

But back to the good stuff –- the Google discussion. In Chapter Three, “The Future of Libraries,” Darnton lists some wonderful suggestions on what the Google judge should do when deciding the Google settlement with authors and publishers:

Regular monitoring of prices by a public authority
Representation of libraries and readers on the registry
A provision for unclaimed works to be made available for digitization by the potential competitors to Google
A requirement that Google seek an antitrust consent decree from the Department of Justice to prevent it from abusing its monopolistic power
Some measure to protect the privacy of individuals from Google’s all-seeing electronic eye.

These are wise suggestions for the present seismic moment, and the first four chapters are worth the price of “The Case for Books” if you’d like to educate yourself on the whole shifting literary landscape.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes

2009-09-28T20:05:46-07:00

First: Who decided to give a melancholy book called "Nocturnes" a bright white cover?

Check out the British cover -- much more evocative.

But aside from quibbles over cover art, I enjoyed Ishiguro's latest very much. Slow, stately prose reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri, and highly readable.

Also, "Nocturnes" holds together remarkably well. In fact, almost too well. This might be the only collection I've ever read that seemed too tightly themed. Every story hit upon the exact same themes, to the point where new plots disappointed me because of their familiarity. It's like reading your favorite author's fourth or fifth book and feeling like they are just repeating themselves.

Almost without fail, each story includes:

Musician protagonists.
Disintegrating Marriages/relationships with crabby wives
A single man intervenes/comes between the couple
Ambition to gain/re-gain career heights

Still, taken by themselves, these are remarkable stories, especially "Come Rain or Shine," in which a married man recruits his best friend to temporarily live with his wife so she can see that her husband is not as bad as a failure as others. It has quite a humorous ending, unlike the rest of stories, which seem to be steeped in reflection and melancholy.

2009 Nobel Prize for Literature Predictions

2009-09-27T10:47:27-07:00

Thank God for bookies. While literary prognosticators give us wet dreams of lit crushes, bookies give us good old numeric odds, backed up by hard cash. Not that they usually know what they're doing (see: last year. J.M.G. Le Clezio, 14 to 1 odds -- and when Harold Pinter won, he wasn't even in the odds). To be honest, betting on the Nobel prize is crapshoot compared to any other literary prize (Man Booker) where you actually have a shortlist. But it's still fun.

I'm doubling down and picking two this year. Don't hate me because of it. Les Murray, the Australian poet, and Ngugi wa Thiongo, the Kenyan novelist.

I admit, though, I'd love to see Haruki Murakami take it down. I just think it's unlikely because his wave is at an all-time high right now, and the academy has recently picked authors without international fame (J.M.G. Le Clezio), or ones at the end of the career (Doris Lessing), and has focused tightly on European authors (see the last decade).

What really surprises me about these odds is how high Americans are situated, especially in light of the anti-American outburst last year by the academy. And file this in WTF: why is Joyce Carol Oates on the list at all, much less higher than Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon? She doesn't stand a chance.

What shifts have been divined in the academy mood since the previous year? Dylan Thomas has shifted from 100 to 1 odds last year up to 25 to 1. Amos Oz, leading the pack this year, was also favored last year. Adonis has slipped a bit -- the poet was previously a unanimous (meaning, the bookies) choice for second.

According to Lanbrokes, Claudio Magris was the forerunner last year, and now he's slipped to a tie for seventh. Milan Kundera has also slipped in the rankings -- perhaps due to that rumor/controversy about selling out a spy to the communists? John Updike's no longer in the running because he passed away.

If you have a favorite pick, on the list or not, tell me in the comments on join the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature Betting Pool on Facebook.

But still, the current list:

Amos Oz 4/1
Assia Djebar 5/1
Luis Goytisola 6/1
Joyce Carol Oates 7/1
Philip Roth 7/1
Adonis 8/1
Antonio Tabucchi 9/1
Claudio Magris 9/1
Haruki Murakami 9/1
Thomas Pynchon 9/1
Thomas Transtromer 12/1
Arnot Lustig 16/1
Atiq Rahimi 16/1
Don DeLillo 16/1
Ko Un 16/1
Les Murray 16/1
Mario Vargas Llosa 16/1
Yves Bonnefoy 16/1
Cees Nooteboom 20/1
Peter Handke 20/1
Alice Munro 25/1
Bob Dylan 25/1
Juan Marse 25/1
Margaret Atwood 25/1
Ngugi wa Thiongo 25/1
A.B Yehousha 40/1
A. S. Byatt 50/1
Bei Dao 50/1
Carlos Fuentes 50/1
Chinua Achebe 50/1
Gitta Sereny 50/1
Herta Muller 50/1
Mahasweta Devi 50/1
Michael Ondaatje 50/1
Milan Kundera 50/1
Vassilis Aleksakis 50/1
Adam Zagajewski 66/1

TriQuarterly Shuts Down

2009-09-24T18:02:40-07:00

Okay, so let's get the order of events correct.

First, Cliff at Perpetual Folly tipped me off to Evanston Now, a local online news source in the Northwestern area (where TriQuarterly is published). Evanston Now reported that the Northwestern University Press, which publishes TriQuarterly, would be scaling back a number of its operations. Mentioned in the article is the idea that TriQuarterly would move to an online venue rather than print.

Okay. That didn't sound disastrous to me. A number of new journals have used the online format rather than print. Plus, two powerhouses are now in the online arena -- Electric Literature and Narrative. I think they lend a lot of credibility to the medium.

Is it a shame to all us print-and-ink nostalgiacs that TriQuarterly has to stop printing after 45 years? Absolutely. But does it ruin the literary journal? Not at all. In fact, I think that in the future the hierarchies will be reversed, and online publication will be more highly prized than print.

But then Hannah Tinti of One Story tipped me off to this new post on Work In Progress, which says TriQuarterly isn't moving online, it's being shut down. Apparently, "moving online" was a euphemism for cutting all paid editorial positions and giving some open-source software to students. Bleh.

Apparently, associate editor Ian Morris apparently sent out this email:

"After terminating TriQuarterly’s print operation and our editorial positions next April, Northwestern University will be giving the name TriQuarterly to an online “open source” student-run journal in the university’s department of continuing studies."

I'd like to wait and see what shape this new journal with the old name takes, but cutting all the funding virtually guaruntees a plunge in quality.

The real question on everyone's minds: Which literary journal will be next to fall?