12/15/02

Feeling ambivalent about submitting your fiction for publication on the World Wide Web? Are you wondering if appearing in that new online literary zine is as legitimate as being publishing in a print magazine? Or maybe you are thrilled at the opportunity to read (and hear) hundreds of poets online who you would never know about without your Internet browser. The Internet, for better and for worse, has transformed the world of the independent literary magazine.

In Without Covers: //literary_magazines@the_digital_edge, a collection of nineteen writers and editors reflect on the unsettling and exciting ways in which our technology revolution has forever changed the way in which we write, edit and enjoy the work that was until recently-- the exclusive domain of the literary magazine.

Many of the contributors in this anthology acknowledge that for literature lovers, the move to digital publishing results in a loss of pleasure that is part of the reading experience. R.M. Berry describes what is compelling about holding and reading a book is its "tangibility" and its "heft in the hand." The portability of a printed text (more than one writer mentions the undeniable comfort of reading in bed), its physical presence, and its immutability are just some of the qualities that are mourned in this age of the Internet press.

These essays are quite straightforward about the real and perceived downside of the move that literary magazines are making to the Web. Many contributors express the concern that the accessibility of Web publishing results in a surplus of poetry magazines and literary zines that threatens the "prestige" of the publication experience from the perspective of writers, editors and readers. "Will standards evaporate with an outlet for everyone who turns out a story or a poem?" asks Walter Cummins, who then answers his own question by noting that: "there are many strong Web-only magazines, with clear categories of quality emerging." Although the 1990s saw an initial explosion of Web-based periodicals of all genres, in recent years, existing literary magazines have survived and thrived only by learning to adapt their practices according to the demands and opportunities presented by this new electronic medium while maintaining the heart and soul of their original print-based publication.

As a detailed and enlightening example of this uncertain process, Without Covers includes Marion Wrenn's essay about the "electronic transformation" of Painted Bride Quarterly (PBQ). Wrenn's wonderfully honest account of the difficulties and rewards of taking PBQ from the brink of extinction to a thriving journal on the Web is one highlight of the anthology. PBQ now happily exists as an online literary magazine with an annual compilation issue in print, thereby bridging the Web world with the world of the printed page. Wrenn discusses the challenges of working with others who can't make the professional leap from the printed page to the virtual page and is enthusiastic about the possibilities and flexibility afforded by judicious use of the new media.

Ultimately, the anthology writers almost all agree that the printed page and the online page will come to coexist in harmony, even complementing each other in form and function. In her essay on the inevitability of change in literature and the arts, Paula Geyh notes that "The Web not only prints what can be seen in print form, but it offers a new integration of animation, film, and recordings of music and art." After all, Robert Kendall points out, providing streaming audio of the poet reading his or her own work along with the full text is the "true marriage" of between written words and the poetry of the voice.

After reading Without Covers, I am sold on the benefits of Web publishing. Moving to a full or partial Internet-based text is more affordable than conventional publishing practices, provides writers with a wider audience (bridging artists and readers in new and exciting ways), and allows editors to forge new literary and publication frontiers by the incorporation of color, images, and sound into a somewhat staid genre.

Most importantly, Without Covers does not try to address all of the conundrums and concerns that have arisen with the rapid increase in Web publishing and the transformation of the literary magazine, but instead gives us a thoughtful place to begin to ponder the traditions of our recent past, our present "revolutionary" moment, and the possibilities of our future as readers and writers.

To write to the Without Covers folks, click //literary_magazines@the_digital_edge

Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction 1
What Is a Book? 8
Out on a Raft, Reading a Book 17
A Marriage That Might Have Been, or Living, Haply, Ever After 25
The Literary Magazine, the Web, and the Changing of the Avant-Garde 36
From Mimeograph to html: Literary Magazines Online 56
No Use in a Centre 63
The Editor in an Internet Age 72
The Left Hand of Capitalism 82
When Horses Fly: Parables, Palimpsests and PBQ 89
The Same Thing a Little Better 103
The Naked Litmag of the Future 107
Organizing a Literary Journal as the World Changed: The Formation of Archipelago 110
To Have and To Hold 120
Burgeoning Possibilities with Untamed Enthusiasm 123
Epublishing and Literature: Challenge and Opportunity 127
Illuminated Pages 132
Electric Dreams: What Words Tell Us 140
Big Sky Country 145
Contributors 155