What We Need Is More Editor Resignations
Perhaps a new batch of readers will give literature its beauty and truth.
In September 2022, I wrote a piece about a dustup at a small press literary magazine called Hobart. At issue was an interview conducted by Hobart’s editor, Elizabeth Ellen with writer (and Iowa Writers Workshop alum) Alex Perez. In the interview, Perez drove hard to the paint, mocking the current literary power structure as controlled by mostly white, professional-class women living in Brooklyn. The interview went viral and led to a mass exodus of Hobart’s editors, who resigned in disgust that an editor of a literary magazine would ask a writer for his opinions and he would give them. If you care to read about that particular brouhaha, the article is linked here.
In that piece my opinion was basically a “good riddance” to the editors who resigned. That opinion hasn’t changed much.
Last week, we saw another meltdown and another mass exodus, only this time at a much more reputed and “career-making” outlet. Guernica. On March 12, the prestigious literary magazine pulled down an essay written by Joanna Chen and put up, in its place, a message that read: “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it.”
The obvious Streisand Effect notwithstanding, I discovered the piece in the WayBack Machine archive. You can read it here. Or, if you prefer to take my word for it, the essay is basically a reflection of Chen’s experience as an Israeli citizen and volunteer whose life in Israel attempts to straddle both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. She volunteers her time driving Palestinian children to hospitals for treatment and works as a translator for both Hebrew and Arabic poetry, a vocation that attempts to bridge the cultural gaps between the two warring groups. But after the horrors of October 7, she finds her volunteer work to be fraught. Inefficient. And she’s conflicted with her feelings of inadequacy in the face of such cruelty on both sides. In one particular section, she relays the story of a fellow Israeli mother who soothes the fears of her children by explaining that the explosions they hear in the distance (Israeli bombs pounding Gaza) are the “good booms.” Meaning, the children needn’t fear that the bombs are going to land on them. Her explanation is simultaneously understandable and ghoulish. And that’s the point Chen is making. Please do take a moment to click the link and read it before you pass your own judgment.
Interpretations of the essay verge upon the unhinged in my estimation.
“Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read,” said a nonfiction editor at the publication before resigning from the magazine. “Such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’”
A poetry editor at Guernica called it a “horrific settler normalization essay.” That person resigned as well.
“A hand-wringing apologia for Zionism,” is how another nonfiction editor described the piece in their resignation announcement.
All told, as many as 15 volunteer editors at the magazine tended their resignation in the furor until, at length, on March 10, Guernica retracted the piece. The magazine promised a more “fulsome” explanation to come, but so far that hasn’t happened. I’ll post an update if they do put something out.
Phil Klay, who won the National Book Award for his debut collection of short stories, Redeployment, wrote eloquently about the cowardice of Guernica for pulling the essay down. And indeed it is cowardice, and it’s contagious, and it seems to surround all of us in the arts these days. This is not a case where Guernica reconsidered the piece and ultimately decided that their blind spots prevented them from seeing its problems. This is very nakedly a heckler’s veto. Some people stomped and crossed their arms and the magazine folded like a bad hand. In the arts, in something as serious as literature, it’s unforgivable.
But it’s also an opportunity. As more and more editors resign from such gatekeeping positions, perhaps there’s an opening for writers, readers and people who care passionately about literature to fill the void. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for Guernica to fill its masthead with editors who don’t read submissions as though they were actually child psychologists, draping their approach to art in words like “harm,” “normalization” or “ism.” If submissions readers and managing editors were comprised of a more diverse range of people–people who head up book clubs, people without MFAs, people who attended community college, high school English teachers–then maybe we can begin to see more short stories and poetry that serves it actual purpose in society.
I’m not angered by the resignations at Guernica; I celebrate them. We need more of them from other prestigious magazines. The literary world has become captured by activists masquerading as trauma victims, moonlighting as therapists. Perhaps this is the reason why fiction and poetry is losing its connection to the average person riding the train to work in the morning. Here’s a thought experiment. Think, for a moment, about how many classical works of literature would probably not be published (or retracted) if they were written today. Lolita. A Clockwork Orange. Moby Dick. Shooting an Elephant.
Lately I’ve been searching for inspiration by delving into short story collections from contemporary writers. I’ve read hundreds of stories, dozens of collections, and I won’t be so cruel as to name names, but I’ve been terribly disappointed with the fiction that is getting published in these major outlets. I feel such a disconnect between contemporary fiction and the fiction or poetry that captured my imagination when I was young. John Gardner said “art leads; it never follows.” I don’t see art leading in these collections. The stories end without clarity. A character arranging matches. It’s amoral. It lacks the muscle of epiphany. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that we have one MFA graduate holding the tin can on one end of the string, and another MFA graduate holding the other. Or maybe it’s because we’ve developed such nihilistic dread in our society that we don’t see the way out, nor appreciate, anymore, the kind of art that points to it.
But I’m an optimist at heart, and I still believe that stories are important. The stories we tell ourselves as a society leads the way forward. Let these editors who resigned from Hobart in 2022, and now from Guernica, go become activists. Godspeed to them. I can only hope that the batch of editors who step in to replace them recognize that art is supposed to be complicated. That a narrator’s struggle with dueling identities isn’t an “apologia;” it’s nuance. That a writer’s job, sometimes, is to provoke, to strike out, to poke at norms. Complete moral clarity on some political issue is not a prerequisite. Allen Ginsberg famously said: “You don’t have to be right; just be candid.” To that end, I’ve already reached out through Guernica’s Twitter account to volunteer my time as a reader. I’m doubtful that they’ll respond, but I’d feel like nothing short of a hypocrite if I didn’t at least try.
As we head into a peak time for fiction and poetry submissions, let’s hope for more sanctimonious resignations. It can only help to dynamite the logjam of uninspiring and navel-gazing works that have pushed our national literature into a corner of the room nobody cares to visit anymore.