tion on the one hand and, on thenother, promotion. But it seems to menthat these are matters that everybodynhas to be constantly learning about. Indon’t pretend to be an expert. Forninstance, when the copyright lawnchanged in 1978, we went to thenLibrary of Congress, and I talked to anlawyer there who actually called menup. I found out what was going on,nhow to make up the copyright forms,nand how to protect our authors andnprotect the magazine. Other magazines,nlike the Yale Review and thenNew Yorker, kept doing what they hadnalways done as if the copyright law hadnnever changed.n”My greatest frustration since I havenbeen editor of the Sewanee Review isnthat we can’t seem to get more subscribers.nWe are between three andnfour thousand; and the only comparablenquarterlies that do better are thenVirginia Quarterly Review and thenHudson Review. The Hudson hasndone well in the recent past. Theynwere at twenty-five hundred at onenpoint and now have about four thousandnsubscribers. The Morgans havenbeen very resourceful at pushing upntheir subscriptions. On the other hand,nthere’s the Partisan Review, whichn doesn’t do much better through thenmail, but has a very good sale on thennewsstands.n”The fact is,” Core continues, “wenare now living in an age of the specializednmagazine. I talked to one guy whonhas done all this body work — not onnme, but on my automobile and mynchildren’s automobiles. He does antiquencars on the side. I talked aboutndoing a piece about him, and he toldnme there are three antique automobilenmagazines. And there are all thesenother magazines about gourmet cookingnand everything else. The literarynquarterly is taking it on the chin. Thenheyday of the quarterlies was probablynthe late 50’s. And there’s really nothingnanybody can do culturally to createnissues and make them important fornthe informed general reader. Thenthing that keeps staring me in the facenis that the informed general reader isngoing to be as dead as the dodo in thennear future.”nWe are soon talking about the individualnquarterlies, those he admiresnand those he does not and, as well,nfeatures of this quarterly or anothernthat he can praise or criticize. Fornexample, he singles out the “Bookmarks”nsection of the Georgia’ Reviewnas “a good idea,” adding that “thenproblem is they are not reviewingnenough books.” He argues that thenGeorgia Review has done well in recentnyears, in part “because they havenheld down the subscription rate. It’s anbig fat magazine selling for a modestnamount of money.”nHe adds: “The Southern Review isncomparable, but the Southern, it seemsnto me, is becoming more and morenacademic. Unless Dave Smith turns itnaround, it may not be a literary quarterlynanymore.n”The ones who do what, say, PeternStitt is doing at the Gettysburg Review,nrunning only essay-reviews, are makingnanother kind of mistake. I think younneed as much review coverage as youncan possibly get.”nAbout the others — to use Mailer’snphrase, the other talent in the room:n”My judgment is that the AmericannScholar is a wonderfully edited quarterlynand that Joseph Epstein — who isna very good short-story writer and onenof our best essayists, not only a personalnbut a critical essayist as well — does anfirst-rate job. Everybody in the countrynwho edits a quarterly is envious of hisnsituation. He has forty or fifty thousandnpeople, the membership of Phi BetanKappa, taking the American Scholar. Indoubt, frankly, that he has many morencareful readers than the rest of thenquarterlies; but he’s got an ideal situationnand he’s done a superb job.n”I think we might devote a littlenconsideration to the demise of the YalenReview. The Yale Review proved thatnit was not essential to literary life in thisncountry under the editorship of KainErikson, who could not bear to bring itnout on time. As a result it was six tonnine months late, and he finally had tongive up altogether putting the seasonnon the cover of the magazine. So younhad to look inside and in tiny type itnwould say something like ‘Vol. 79, No.n2, for Spring 1989, published Januaryn1990.’ I’m afraid that Professor Eriksonnis largely responsible for the factnthat the magazine has been threatenednwith closure, not because he didn’t dona fairly decent job of editing it, butnbecause it was not out on time. Peoplenjust forgot about it.n”That’s one side of it. And on thennnother hand you have got a president atnYale who is an attorney who has decidednthat instead of putting up the necessarynmoney for the Yale Review —nwhich is not much money for anninstitution that has a $3.5 billion endowment—nhe will, instead, fund anlecture series or bring in a visitingnwriter or something of that kind. Henand his advisors simply didn’t knownwhat a quarterly does for a university.n”It’s astonishing, really, that a littlenschool like Sewanee has supported anmagazine for almost one hundrednyears. Except for the very first fewnyears when the magazine was fundednprivately (although by people whonwere with the university after all), thencollege has always supported it and putna lot of money into it.”n* * *nThe problems of the Yale Reviewnlead, by a simple and direct segue, tonwhat Core calls “a very complicatednmatter,” the recent history of the KenyonnReview.n”T.R. Hummer edited the Kenyonnfor about a year after having beennmanaging editor of the New EnglandnReview-Bread Loaf Quarterly. Thennhe decided he could go back to thenNER and left them, at the Kenyon,nhigh and dry.”nFollowing the departure of Hummer,nDavid Lynn was a kind of temporaryneditor.n”He was never given a chance tongrow into the job,” Core adds. “Just tonhold it together until they could findnsomebody. Then—believe it ornnot — I was told that the three finalncandidates were all from Manhattan. Indon’t know who the committee membersnvoted for, whether it was Koch ornDinkins, but the fact is that there werenplenty of people elsewhere in thencountry who would have been at leastnas good and maybe better.n”So now the editor they chose,nMarilyn Hacker, says that she cannotnbear to leave Manhattan until her childnfinishes school in the Bronx. Which tonme is comparable to saying that you arenenjoying having your house napalmednand so you will stay in it until it burnsnto the ground. The problem is, I don’tnthink she can edit a magazine longndistance from Manhattan. And her firstnissue certainly indicates that. In herninitial editorial she is talking mainlynabout censorship and the NEA andnMARCH 1991/51n