It's not too late to subscribe to the last three issues of TriQuarterly in print, which includes our double 45th anniversary issue and our last issue guest edited by Ed Hirsch.
Email us your address at triquarterly@northwestern.edu and put "last print subscription" as your subject. You will receive a complimentary copy of a recent issue with a subscription form enclosed. (Please indicate on the form "last print subscription").
This offer is extended for a limited time only and ends December 15, 2009.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Bonnie Jo Campbell - Finalist for National Book Award
“The musician had invited her to sleep in his tent again, but Susanna decided to stay home for a change. Just before going to bed, she ate the last two pawpaws the musician had given her. Pawpaw fruits were ripening, and those people who had pawpaw trees and who pitched tents behind their houses in order to watch over them, people who were willing to use pellet rifles to protect those trees from squirrels were privileged to eat some of that flesh the color of pumpkin meat. The mellow flavor resembled mango but with no tropical fibers to stick in your teeth, and the several seeds within each fruit were dark and smooth as magic beans. Susanna wouldn’t wear a crystal like Lisa’s, but she might string shiny lobed pawpaw seeds into a necklace. According to the musician, who had fifty pawpaw trees, this part of Michigan was the top of the tree’s range, and so when they grew here at all, they did so under cover of larger trees which could protect their branches from harsh cold and heavy snows.”
This is an excerpt from “September News from Susanna’s Farm” a story featured in TriQuarterly #133, written by Bonnie Jo Campbell, who is a finalist for a National Book Award for her book American Salvage, a collection of short stories published by Wayne State University Press, 2009.
This is an excerpt from “September News from Susanna’s Farm” a story featured in TriQuarterly #133, written by Bonnie Jo Campbell, who is a finalist for a National Book Award for her book American Salvage, a collection of short stories published by Wayne State University Press, 2009.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Charles Newman on...
The University
Proof of pluralism is that we can now talk of the university in the same breath with art and society. Higher education has come in for a good share of attention lately. It has been criticized both for a willful aloofness from society and its needs, and for a fatally perfect adaptation to society and its impositions. One thing is clear – its scope has been immeasurably increased – not only does everyone end up at college, but as institutions, universities have been made responsible for everything from driver training to the preservation of grand opera. Given modern military and technological goals, some have acquired a power, prestige, and concommitant awe, once reserved for nation-states. The competition between them is purer than between our oligopolies; the politics within them as proselytizing as in any of our parties. They insist upon tangible credentials from a society whose motive force has always been a pragmatic test of talent. They talk among themselves in specialized languages provocative as any underground, yet justify themselves to society in common counter-revolutionary rhetoric. They are becoming a sub-culture unto themselves.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the number of artists who are not only educated in universities, but make their subsequent living off them. What this relocation of dissent will cost us is not yet clear. It has gone far enough, however, that the old Bohemian/ Bourgeois debate bas been set along new lines; the “academic” and the “beat”, or in Robert Lowell’s words, between the “cooked” and the “uncooked”. We want to elaborate that debate – make the dialectic something more than the rejection of some foul unity. We are not interested in making anybody’s career, although we hope our experience may dignify many. We hope to search out new talent, and encourage the established to venture beyond their reputations.
One recalls, however, that universities, like all institutions dependent upon the good will of the community, have not always been receptive to the kind of questions good artists ask. One can then tell artists to avoid such institutions, or demand that the institutions become more accountable. It may be that in the expanding university, we are witnessing an affluent democracy’s oblique answer to the patronage system of the old world – although we could not afford to call it that yet. Still, leisure does strange things to people. And the university’s function, most magnificently conceived, has after all been roughly akin to the artist’s, in that it is pledged to the damnation of spurious order, and devoted to questions that society will not, alone, ask itself. This does not negate synthesis; it simply enhances its value. The university serves art by witnessing the pluralism of society.
All this implies the concept of limited revolution; revolution in the American tradition by chance, in that it makes use of the Establishment. We believe that to be more in accord with both the ideal and the real. This is not the time to profess loyalty to institutions, but to the discipline which keeps institutions alive.
Our task is to assemble. Literary reviews provide no more viable standards than I.Q. tests or annual income. They are simply another alternative; an attempt to bind temperament and action through language. Without resorting to epilogues or manifestoes, we want to embellish those proper nouns and common verbs which have made our culture too often a vehicle for minor aspirations and mock debate. It will be a modern enterprise, perhaps embarrassingly so, in that we are justified by little save our own potential. We’re getting dressed up to celebrate the fact we’re still looking.
-From the introduction by Charles Newman to TriQuarterly 1, 1964
Proof of pluralism is that we can now talk of the university in the same breath with art and society. Higher education has come in for a good share of attention lately. It has been criticized both for a willful aloofness from society and its needs, and for a fatally perfect adaptation to society and its impositions. One thing is clear – its scope has been immeasurably increased – not only does everyone end up at college, but as institutions, universities have been made responsible for everything from driver training to the preservation of grand opera. Given modern military and technological goals, some have acquired a power, prestige, and concommitant awe, once reserved for nation-states. The competition between them is purer than between our oligopolies; the politics within them as proselytizing as in any of our parties. They insist upon tangible credentials from a society whose motive force has always been a pragmatic test of talent. They talk among themselves in specialized languages provocative as any underground, yet justify themselves to society in common counter-revolutionary rhetoric. They are becoming a sub-culture unto themselves.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the number of artists who are not only educated in universities, but make their subsequent living off them. What this relocation of dissent will cost us is not yet clear. It has gone far enough, however, that the old Bohemian/ Bourgeois debate bas been set along new lines; the “academic” and the “beat”, or in Robert Lowell’s words, between the “cooked” and the “uncooked”. We want to elaborate that debate – make the dialectic something more than the rejection of some foul unity. We are not interested in making anybody’s career, although we hope our experience may dignify many. We hope to search out new talent, and encourage the established to venture beyond their reputations.
One recalls, however, that universities, like all institutions dependent upon the good will of the community, have not always been receptive to the kind of questions good artists ask. One can then tell artists to avoid such institutions, or demand that the institutions become more accountable. It may be that in the expanding university, we are witnessing an affluent democracy’s oblique answer to the patronage system of the old world – although we could not afford to call it that yet. Still, leisure does strange things to people. And the university’s function, most magnificently conceived, has after all been roughly akin to the artist’s, in that it is pledged to the damnation of spurious order, and devoted to questions that society will not, alone, ask itself. This does not negate synthesis; it simply enhances its value. The university serves art by witnessing the pluralism of society.
All this implies the concept of limited revolution; revolution in the American tradition by chance, in that it makes use of the Establishment. We believe that to be more in accord with both the ideal and the real. This is not the time to profess loyalty to institutions, but to the discipline which keeps institutions alive.
Our task is to assemble. Literary reviews provide no more viable standards than I.Q. tests or annual income. They are simply another alternative; an attempt to bind temperament and action through language. Without resorting to epilogues or manifestoes, we want to embellish those proper nouns and common verbs which have made our culture too often a vehicle for minor aspirations and mock debate. It will be a modern enterprise, perhaps embarrassingly so, in that we are justified by little save our own potential. We’re getting dressed up to celebrate the fact we’re still looking.
-From the introduction by Charles Newman to TriQuarterly 1, 1964
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Charles Newman on...
Art
Modern art is the creative personality’s confrontation with pluralism – the sharing of the spectrum. There is an old and engaging ideal that art, literature particularly, might structure reality in such a way as to develop human sensitivity, and if not create values, at least indicate alternatives. A figure as recent as James Joyce is said to have thought that the worst thing about World War II is that it kept people from reading Ulysses. The Sturm und Drang literary reviews at the time of “two nations” believed that after that blasting, what floated back to earth would find new roots, grow new patterns. It is no secret that all the pieces did not fit together. The tradition that Art might affect Life, even uplift it, is now carried on, not so much by artists, but be considered a rear guard action in terms of art.
A most compelling fact of modern life is that much of modern art seems to repudiate it. It is the old debate between Jefferson and De Tocqueville again; whether you choose to celebrate the dynamism or vulgarity of a pluralistic world. The cultural elite used to allow that people get along pretty well without art. It has taken them the last half-century to say that art gets along pretty well without people – since the people confuse their capacity to react with the artist’s ability to explore.
It is not for us to gauge the proper relationship between art and society, or even to bring the mind and marketplace together. They are already too close for comfort. The idea that art should serve society is impractical, not because some societies, like ours, have failed at it, or others like Russia, have succeeded all too well – but simply because it is impossible to harness the creative personality to a phenomenon which is more or less than himself. It takes too much out of everybody concerned.
But what if society should serve art? The artist’s task, we have often been told, is to question without regard to the consequences. Society’s task is less newsworthy, but no less compelling – for they must have the courage to confront questions which not only don’t occur to them, but which they could not answer if they did. In that sense, appreciation is a selfless act. It is the audience, themselves, who must reject the synthetic order of those who serve their needs or presume to create them. In the supermarket, the consumer must provide his own synthesis.
The necessity for the artist’s personal vision, the value of his partiality is clear. The creative individual has his place, such as it is. Art, and what passes for it, is surely taken seriously enough. Perhaps it is the audience in which we no longer believe.
-From the introduction by Charles Newman to TriQuarterly 1, 1964
Modern art is the creative personality’s confrontation with pluralism – the sharing of the spectrum. There is an old and engaging ideal that art, literature particularly, might structure reality in such a way as to develop human sensitivity, and if not create values, at least indicate alternatives. A figure as recent as James Joyce is said to have thought that the worst thing about World War II is that it kept people from reading Ulysses. The Sturm und Drang literary reviews at the time of “two nations” believed that after that blasting, what floated back to earth would find new roots, grow new patterns. It is no secret that all the pieces did not fit together. The tradition that Art might affect Life, even uplift it, is now carried on, not so much by artists, but be considered a rear guard action in terms of art.
A most compelling fact of modern life is that much of modern art seems to repudiate it. It is the old debate between Jefferson and De Tocqueville again; whether you choose to celebrate the dynamism or vulgarity of a pluralistic world. The cultural elite used to allow that people get along pretty well without art. It has taken them the last half-century to say that art gets along pretty well without people – since the people confuse their capacity to react with the artist’s ability to explore.
It is not for us to gauge the proper relationship between art and society, or even to bring the mind and marketplace together. They are already too close for comfort. The idea that art should serve society is impractical, not because some societies, like ours, have failed at it, or others like Russia, have succeeded all too well – but simply because it is impossible to harness the creative personality to a phenomenon which is more or less than himself. It takes too much out of everybody concerned.
But what if society should serve art? The artist’s task, we have often been told, is to question without regard to the consequences. Society’s task is less newsworthy, but no less compelling – for they must have the courage to confront questions which not only don’t occur to them, but which they could not answer if they did. In that sense, appreciation is a selfless act. It is the audience, themselves, who must reject the synthetic order of those who serve their needs or presume to create them. In the supermarket, the consumer must provide his own synthesis.
The necessity for the artist’s personal vision, the value of his partiality is clear. The creative individual has his place, such as it is. Art, and what passes for it, is surely taken seriously enough. Perhaps it is the audience in which we no longer believe.
-From the introduction by Charles Newman to TriQuarterly 1, 1964
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Charles Newman on...
Pluralism
When Dos Passos said, “All right! Now we are two nations.”, he was right save in one particular – the number. Dualism for his generation dramatized a final disgust with the oneness, the phony unities of the modern world. We have since learned that even something elemental as disgust is not easy to come by. In a society where poets use the marketing techniques of advertising, where businessman hire poets to sensitize their images, where radicals captivate the very audience they are pledged to destroy, where the bourgeois find anarchism fashionable, where the ethics of corporations and universities appear interchangeable, it is difficult to draw that old dialectic taut again. Heaven and Hell are no longer popular concepts in an affluent democracy. The social scientists have given us another, less pejorative vocabulary to explain ourselves. What De Tocqueville noted as the tyranny of equality, Jefferson envisioned as the chance for each talent to find its own authority, we call now Pluralism – which is both the fear and promise of unlimited possibility. Now we are x nations.
It is possible, of course, that we simply cannot calculate fast enough, that a machine will come up with that number and set us straight again. But that is to assume that mere naming will again suffice. It is who makes use of that pure mathematics, and how, which concerns us. Pluralism means that the number in Dos Passos’ retort is an unknown integer. It does not mean that any single reply is inadmissible – but that answers are viable, dangerously so, precisely because they are mutable. Pluralism means that the stuff of each choice is a genuine confusion, and that order may be various as the unique personalities which lay claim to it.
Order is perverse then, when a personality is absent or synthetic. Modern journalism is awesomely adept in avoiding the price of order. In collective editorializing, the personality is subsumed by committee for the sake of consistency. The voice must never catch or waver; that would complicate things. There are the ‘Objectivists’, on the other hand, who would let the “images speak for themselves”. Thus, we are treated, in successive exposures, to a president, a quadruple amputee, tomato soup, a debutante, and earthquake – bound together simply because they are all “news”. In one case, the perspective is synthetic; in the other it is non-existent. Both lack the unity of personal vision, and the courage implicit. Commercialism is only one kind of cowardice, however. Who knows what to make of that president, that cripple, that girlie, that soup, that disaster?
-From the introduction by Charles Newman to TriQuarterly 1, 1964
When Dos Passos said, “All right! Now we are two nations.”, he was right save in one particular – the number. Dualism for his generation dramatized a final disgust with the oneness, the phony unities of the modern world. We have since learned that even something elemental as disgust is not easy to come by. In a society where poets use the marketing techniques of advertising, where businessman hire poets to sensitize their images, where radicals captivate the very audience they are pledged to destroy, where the bourgeois find anarchism fashionable, where the ethics of corporations and universities appear interchangeable, it is difficult to draw that old dialectic taut again. Heaven and Hell are no longer popular concepts in an affluent democracy. The social scientists have given us another, less pejorative vocabulary to explain ourselves. What De Tocqueville noted as the tyranny of equality, Jefferson envisioned as the chance for each talent to find its own authority, we call now Pluralism – which is both the fear and promise of unlimited possibility. Now we are x nations.
It is possible, of course, that we simply cannot calculate fast enough, that a machine will come up with that number and set us straight again. But that is to assume that mere naming will again suffice. It is who makes use of that pure mathematics, and how, which concerns us. Pluralism means that the number in Dos Passos’ retort is an unknown integer. It does not mean that any single reply is inadmissible – but that answers are viable, dangerously so, precisely because they are mutable. Pluralism means that the stuff of each choice is a genuine confusion, and that order may be various as the unique personalities which lay claim to it.
Order is perverse then, when a personality is absent or synthetic. Modern journalism is awesomely adept in avoiding the price of order. In collective editorializing, the personality is subsumed by committee for the sake of consistency. The voice must never catch or waver; that would complicate things. There are the ‘Objectivists’, on the other hand, who would let the “images speak for themselves”. Thus, we are treated, in successive exposures, to a president, a quadruple amputee, tomato soup, a debutante, and earthquake – bound together simply because they are all “news”. In one case, the perspective is synthetic; in the other it is non-existent. Both lack the unity of personal vision, and the courage implicit. Commercialism is only one kind of cowardice, however. Who knows what to make of that president, that cripple, that girlie, that soup, that disaster?
-From the introduction by Charles Newman to TriQuarterly 1, 1964
Saturday, September 26, 2009
NEWS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 21, 2009
CONTACT: Alan K. Cubbage at 847-491-4886 or a-cubbage@northwestern.edu
NORTHWESTERN REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT TO UNIVERSITY PRESS; TRIQUARTERLY MAGAZINE GOES ELECTRONIC
After an extensive review of Northwestern University Press, its academic publishing house, Northwestern has reaffirmed its commitment to publishing and disseminating scholarly writing. A nationwide search for a new director of the Press will be launched soon, said Sarah Pritchard, the Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian.
Northwestern University Press is renowned for its strength and commitment to publishing scholarly works in the humanities and the role it plays in supporting many of Northwestern’s academic areas. Last fall, the Press received a grant of more than $800,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support innovative efforts with the Program of African Studies and the Performance Studies and Theatre departments. One of the first major outcomes will be the launch next year of a new electronic journal, Islamic Africa, which will be produced in collaboration with the Program of African Studies and will draw on Northwestern's established research strength in African studies.
The move to digital publishing will continue with the transition of TriQuarterly, the Press’s literary journal, to an online format next year. TriQuarterly already has an online blog, TriQuarterly To-Day.
TriQuarterly will be integrated into the Creative Writing program of the School of Continuing Studies. Such distinguished writers as Stuart Dybek, Aleksander Hemon, Alex Kotlowitz, Mary Kinzie, and Ed Roberson teach in the program, which has gained increasing recognition in recent years. The acquisitions, editorial and design aspects of the journal will be carried out as part of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program with technical support provided by Northwestern University Information Technology staff. The journal will continue to solicit and publish offerings from external writers, and will be made freely available on the web.
“This move will align publishing efforts more closely with the University’s academic enterprise while at the same time expanding electronic dissemination and public access to the wonderful literature and essays that are published in TriQuarterly,” Pritchard said. “Scholarly publishing is increasingly moving to open access, allowing greater distribution of academic work. This reflects that trend and allows the journal editors to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities offered through online publishing.”
The search for a new director for NU Press will be launched this fall, Pritchard said. “We will be seeking an energetic leader from the academic publishing community with strong vision to guide us as we focus on the traditional strengths of the Press, implement new business models and expand digital strategies,” she said.
TriQuarterly Books will continue as an imprint of NU Press and the Press also will continue to distribute books from other academic and small presses.
“After a year of significant economic setbacks, the Press has undergone a careful review. The University has reaffirmed its commitment to the dissemination of scholarship as part of its academic mission,” Pritchard said. “The Press will be a more efficient operation and we will deepen our alliances with the University’s academic programs while moving forward with the delivery of content in a digital format. There undoubtedly will be challenges, but it also should be a time of exciting opportunities.”
###
CONTACT: Alan K. Cubbage at 847-491-4886 or a-cubbage@northwestern.edu
NORTHWESTERN REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT TO UNIVERSITY PRESS; TRIQUARTERLY MAGAZINE GOES ELECTRONIC
After an extensive review of Northwestern University Press, its academic publishing house, Northwestern has reaffirmed its commitment to publishing and disseminating scholarly writing. A nationwide search for a new director of the Press will be launched soon, said Sarah Pritchard, the Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian.
Northwestern University Press is renowned for its strength and commitment to publishing scholarly works in the humanities and the role it plays in supporting many of Northwestern’s academic areas. Last fall, the Press received a grant of more than $800,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support innovative efforts with the Program of African Studies and the Performance Studies and Theatre departments. One of the first major outcomes will be the launch next year of a new electronic journal, Islamic Africa, which will be produced in collaboration with the Program of African Studies and will draw on Northwestern's established research strength in African studies.
The move to digital publishing will continue with the transition of TriQuarterly, the Press’s literary journal, to an online format next year. TriQuarterly already has an online blog, TriQuarterly To-Day.
TriQuarterly will be integrated into the Creative Writing program of the School of Continuing Studies. Such distinguished writers as Stuart Dybek, Aleksander Hemon, Alex Kotlowitz, Mary Kinzie, and Ed Roberson teach in the program, which has gained increasing recognition in recent years. The acquisitions, editorial and design aspects of the journal will be carried out as part of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program with technical support provided by Northwestern University Information Technology staff. The journal will continue to solicit and publish offerings from external writers, and will be made freely available on the web.
“This move will align publishing efforts more closely with the University’s academic enterprise while at the same time expanding electronic dissemination and public access to the wonderful literature and essays that are published in TriQuarterly,” Pritchard said. “Scholarly publishing is increasingly moving to open access, allowing greater distribution of academic work. This reflects that trend and allows the journal editors to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities offered through online publishing.”
The search for a new director for NU Press will be launched this fall, Pritchard said. “We will be seeking an energetic leader from the academic publishing community with strong vision to guide us as we focus on the traditional strengths of the Press, implement new business models and expand digital strategies,” she said.
TriQuarterly Books will continue as an imprint of NU Press and the Press also will continue to distribute books from other academic and small presses.
“After a year of significant economic setbacks, the Press has undergone a careful review. The University has reaffirmed its commitment to the dissemination of scholarship as part of its academic mission,” Pritchard said. “The Press will be a more efficient operation and we will deepen our alliances with the University’s academic programs while moving forward with the delivery of content in a digital format. There undoubtedly will be challenges, but it also should be a time of exciting opportunities.”
###
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