I first became aware of Chicago Review in North Dakota, around 1960, through the agency of Big Table, the first issue of which was essentially comprised of the suppressed 1959 Winter issue of CR on the Beat writers. There are several accounts of this notorious event in literary journalism—including my own in TriQuarterly 43 (1978)—but suffice it to say here that, by challenging the University of Chicago for suppressing what is now recognized as some of the liveliest and most insightful writing of the time, it signifies one of the most conspicuous proclamations of the postmodern reformation of academic modernism. It took me a few years to understand that that was the implication of the suppressed issue; this is what I learned while editing CR from 1961–64. I had come to the University of Chicago to study Aristotelian literary criticism, which I did assiduously with Elder Olson. As it turned out, even as I was attempting to master the categories of that rigorous discipline I had to unlearn them to function as an editor. It was a complex, not to say precarious, posture, but it provided an incredibly instructive dialectic as I gradually got a grip on it.
When I joined the CR staff Hyung Woong Pak was the Editor. I subsequently found out that he had been the only member of the editorial board who had not resigned when the University censored the Beat issue. That had cost him and CR the loss of some trust among writers and editors, as I discovered in a latrine when I went to the second meeting of the Association of Literary Magazines of America (ALMA) in 1964. I was confronted there by an irate editor, who growled abruptly, “You from Chicago Review? ” He had just delivered a peroration in support of Karl Shapiro, whose Prairie Schooner had recently been censored by the University of Nebraska. His tone implied rough road ahead, so I replied warily in the affirmative. By this point I was tending to business, and in my defensive agitation nearly turned on him in full arc. I should have. Trailing clouds of righteous glory, he began arguing that editors countrywide, obviously including me, should boycott the University of Chicago and go on strike; what kind of reptilian quisling was I, he continued, had I no pride, no morals, blah blah blah…. By this point I was drained, adangle and defenseless, when luckily John Logan, then editing Choice, entered. He outranked my antagonist, dismissed his tirade, and in fact complimented CR’ s new literary character.
The anecdote illustrates the not infrequent problems and tensions, internal and external, little magazines and their editors face, as I discovered in future editing projects, including the ill-fated Purple Sage in Wyoming (1968–69) and the rather successful Rolling Stock, which I edited with Ed and Jenny Dorn in Colorado for a decade (1981–93). The external problems tend to be financial, while the internal ones are counterpointed by the pleasures of working creatively and productively with colleagues. That was certainly the case during my time at CR. I had persuaded several of my fellow graduate students to join me at the magazine: John McManmon, then a priest from Notre Dame, Beverly Gross, John Dwyer, and Eugene Wildman. As an editorial team we worked well together and learned especially about that modernism/postmodernism dynamic I mentioned above. We had largely been trained in the prevailing modernist assumptions about literature, a kind of New Critical formalism. At that point our vocabulary did not include the term postmodernism, notwithstanding the fact that it was happening all around us. Obscenity, for example, was a preoccupation that signified a more profound shift in aesthetics than was understood then. That was the principle cause in the suppression of the 1958/59 Beat issue of CR. I was consequently obliged, though it was never clear by whom, to take each issue of CR to the US Post Office, presumably for approval. Whether anybody there ever read it, I never knew, but we never received disapproval.
Moreover, I do not recall our editorial discussions ever focusing on obscenity. When we published William Burroughs’ s “The Boys Magazine, ” at a time when his work was still being censored for obscenity, this work was far more debatable for its form and style than its obscenity. It was a similar case with the sections we published from Ronald Tavel’ s novel Street of Stairs, which featured a fair amount of homosexual content; but its quirky style and vitality validated its publication. On the other hand, we did botch the call when we rejected Kenneth H. Brown’ s play The Brig, which was more theatrical than literary, which we subsequently recognized was its strength. This was our most humbling mistake, not to have understood that and thereby to have misjudged its quality. Luckily it was published by Tulane Drama Review and, within a year of our rejection, it became a celebrated item in The Living Theater repertory, which illustrates how the vitality of little magazines in general transcends their individual mistakes.
The irony was that we were especially interested in publishing plays, which is why Brown had sent it to us. We had published Tavel’ s verse play Christina’ s World, and we published full-length plays in the next three issues, a bold practice at the time considering the page space required for plays. I still think that we were right, notwithstanding our misguided rejection, to encourage drama. As literary magazines do, CR encourages writers to keep at it, whether or not they become stars. They signal creative vitality to those who need that signal. In that regard I am pleased with, even proud of, what we did.
Tavel, for example, is someone whose career we helped start by publishing his verse and prose in several issues. He went on to become the principal playwright for what became known as the Theater of the Ridiculous in New York and he subsequently wrote screenplays for Andy Warhol’ s Factory among other highly respected works. Similarly, when we published “A Zen Anthology ” (CR 16.3, 1963), compiled and translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto, Stryk had not yet been recognized as a serious scholar of Zen or as a poet. After the anthology became a successful book, Stryk’ s career received a much-deserved boost. Helping to secure an audience for new or scarcely known writers and artists is clearly one of the biggest satisfactions in little magazine publishing. We had that satisfaction as well with a number of other poets, including Miller Williams, John William Corrington, Barry Spacks, Earle Birney, and a few others. Some, like A. R. Ammons or Sandra Hochman, did not need a boost from us but did get increased distribution and exposure. Burroughs was another writer who didn’ t need us, but we provided space for experimental work. In a sense Burroughs’ s reputation exceeded his prerogatives. While Playboy or Esquire would pay him for his journalism, they were not so receptive to the kind of experiments that earned him his literary reputation. We, on the other hand, were receptive to this work, which not only encouraged Burroughs, but other writers as well. For Tavel, being in the same issue as Burroughs was, he wrote, “like a swig of pure oxygen. ”
We had a taste for translation and contemporary international writing as well. Peter Zekeli’ s translations of four Swedish poets—Artur Lundkvist, Harry Martinson, Erik Lindegren, and Gunnar Ekelöf—and a special feature we called “Latin American Supplement ” (CR 17.1)—which presented work by Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Juana de Ibarbourou, Alfonsina Storni, and others—were published at a time when neither Swedes nor Latin American poets, especially women poets, were familiar to American readers. We also got Kenneth Rexroth’ s piece on modern Chinese literature long before expatriate Chinese writers became American Kewpie dolls. Likewise, we published Galway Kinnell’ s translations of Yves Bonnefoy’ s poetry when Bonnefoy was still news in this country.
And so it went. For me, Reinhold Niebuhr’ s essay “The Nuclear Dilemma ” and our last issue on Chicago writers and artists (CR 17.2/3) were perhaps the most satisfying. At the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion, shortly before we were eyeball to eyeball with the Russians over some missiles in Cuba, I thought it a good idea to put together a symposium on morality and power politics. I wrote a dozen or more people asking them to contribute, including Adlai Stevenson, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr. We got replies ranging from “Good Luck ” to “How Much? ” To the latter I figured we could raise fifty bucks and offered that. “No thanks, ” was the reply. A month or so later he had a piece in Harper’ s on the same topic. Niebuhr, partially paralyzed and nearing the end of his life, sent the incisively humane essay “The Nuclear Dilemma, ” along with a touching note apologizing for the condition of his manuscript because he could only type with one hand and had no secretary. The symposium didn’ t materialize, but I felt rewarded to have Niebuhr’ s work and my encounter with his profound humility and grace.
Editing Chicago Review was a definitive turning point in my life, where I chose literature rather than scholarship as such. It determined the kind of writer and teacher I became and, for better or worse, the kind of career I’ ve had. I suppose all the nearly seventy-five years’ worth of CR editors would derive something similar from the experience. I certainly hope so. It was a unique part of my University of Chicago education, and I salute the University for its continuing commitment. That damned dialectic I mentioned at the start has agitated me ever since. Whatever else it may have done, it has kept my energies vital in the relentless quest for aesthetic understanding.