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A quarterly reader (and writer).

Article Excerpt
The first thing I look for when venturing into one of my quarterly subscriptions--I rotate a dozen or more journals annually and decide to retain or eliminate based on numerous factors, which I need not get into just yet--is the editor's note. Most of the time I don't find one. This is a sly move. Editors must think the art speaks for itself; they needn't stand between the artist and the reader like some clingy real-estate broker. Except when an editor kicks off a spring issue with an obscure poem or an essay on bee habits, I don't know about other subscribers, but my seating is sometimes lost within the first few pages, and often I never really manage to get back in the saddle until I arrive in the book-review section. I, for one, would like to have my hand held for a moment, at least at the outset, to see where the editor is leading me.

Perhaps this is one of those situations where if I don't get it, then I don't belong. I shouldn't be subscribing. For example, before I knew anything about wine, I used to frequent a wine shop on Chicago's North Shore. The owner probably didn't realize it, but I had money to burn back in those days and would have gladly walked out of the store with anything the merchant recommended, no matter the price. As things stood back then--I had a circle of associates whom I needed to impress and presenting fine wine at the business and dinner table seemed the best way to go about doing it--I needed guidance from the shop owner. He never bothered with me, however. He either assumed I knew my wines well enough and thought I was beyond the coddling stage, or he was sending me a subtle message to stay away from his shop and go for the grocery store selections instead.

So, if this is the sort of message editors are trying to send dimwitted readers by not including a note on the opening pages, I can understand their position. The quarterly is not about chumminess, after all. A certain standard of intellectual rigor is at stake with each issue. Maybe this seasonal greeting practice is better left to the monthlies or a corporate newsletter. Omitting the introductory note might also be a way of keeping the Yahoos out. Its absence maintains a high mystique. It creates a kind of Skull and Bones quality where those who should know do know.

But pretend for a moment that the literary quarterly reader represents a certain tourist class, not a member of the mindless hordes we see jumping off the coach and scampering up the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, but someone with a more urbane air--museum, lecture, and concert goers, for instance, the sort whose minds are always hungry for another bite of haute culture. And imagine the editor here as a riverboat tour captain. His crew, a coterie of writers and readers, retirees, librarians, the merely curious, or the intellectual hangers on, have boarded ship. They mingle in the stern with a glass of chardonnay in one hand and a tiny plate of cheese squares in the other. (I'm picturing a sunny Thursday afternoon in May, somewhere in the Midwest, home of the eager and unassuming, on the Fox or the Mississippi.) The crew trust that the captain will navigate the river's bends, snags, and sandbars without ado and at the same time regale them with the storyteller's knack for anecdotal river lore. It's a voice of tender familiarity this tourist class secretly hopes for at launching point, a seafaring authority who can help turn the inevitable shifty current and rocky crag toward gentler shores, toward a place that feels like home.

Yet as soon as the deckhand uncoils the dock line and the paddle-wheel churns downstream, the crew is greeted only by silence. The guests split and fend for themselves along starboard and stern. The trip progresses downriver smoothly enough without the captain's observations. This is not the type of audience that demands a fussing over, after all. But still a fog settles in. Like arriving at a cocktail party without a proper greeting from the host and hostess, without one of them putting a martini in your hand and introducing you to Mr. and Mrs. Miller from across town, the absence of the editor's note in winter, spring, summer, and fall leaves readers awash in a room of unfamiliar voices.

Whether as a loyal subscriber (the word subscriber assumes a charming twist here, the quarterly reader as a kind of invested deputy author, a sub writer) or a newcomer to the journal, I want to know what the view is like from Florida or Missouri. How many manuscripts floated over the transom this past season? How are we all faring with the apparent imminent demise of readers? Any funny anecdotes from editorial headquarters? Any...

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