Who Reads A Literary Journal?

In 1820, a brief article entitled "Who Reads An American Book?" appeared in The Edinburgh Review. It summarized a British attitude and supposition, widely held in the United States itself, that English Literature was English, not American, and that America would never contribute anything to the world of letters. And this just as Washington Irving was publishing The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, containing "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," a great American short story with a very serious legacy. Sidney Smith, though he voiced a popular sentiment, couldn't see very far into the future.

Almost 200 years later, I hope it's clear that the question is absurd, but a similar question is being asked now: Who reads a literary journal?

Though the literary journal is one of the first forms of publication to take stable root in the United States, and, after the broadside, the pamphlet, and the newspaper, one of the longest continuously-running forms of publication in this country, it is now, it seems, in a precarious state of supposed irrelevance. As the catch-line for Ted Genoways' essay in the newest issue of Mother Jones ponders: "Lit mags were once launching pads for great writers and big ideas. Is it time to write them off?"

As Genoways considers, some long-standing titles, such as The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, and New England Review, have sustained sizable budget cuts, are being transformed into electronic-only publications, or have been given a short period of time to become self-sustaining or disappear.

In a discussion on Middlebury College's president's blog this summer, the terms of justifying the cuts were fairly simple: the journal doesn't do anything. Despite demonstrations to the contrary, the position remained stable, echoing, I think, a popular sentiment, that the literary journal doesn't do anything.

I suspect this line of concern, which may express some feeling that contemporary literature may not do anything, is abetted by the general sense that, as newspapers fold up shop and e-readers emerge (weekly it seems), print is antique and soon to be fossilized.

And this misses a very important point. Format is one thing---the book versus the e-reader---but content is quite another. What are you paying for when you buy a book? Is it the paper? Is it the production cost? These things certainly have the most direct impact on the cost of a book, but you're really paying for expertise: the unique expertise of the writer, in his or her craft or imagination, and the expertise of the editors and designers and booksellers who bring the book to you.

Just so with the literary journal. You're investing not in a paper factory but in imagination and language, and the cost of this investment is, in most cases, fairly small.

Our 13th issue is almost ready to ship to readers, those who are investing in these kinds of expertise, and it is now available to you for the lowest price we've ever been able to offer---$10 a copy direct or $13 for a one-year subscription (two issues). That's a fairly small threshold.

So, whoever you are, reading this blog, maybe you'll also read a literary journal. Maybe that journal will be Copper Nickel. Our web server tells us we're reaching 3000 unique readers each month. If half of those readers would subscribe to the print journal, that print operation would be around for a long time to come.

And, who knows, maybe we'll all be around to see what comes out of the journals make a lasting contribution to a literature, despite whatever the prevailing temperament may be.