August 19th, 2010 / 2:46 pm
Mean

Questions about the VQR thing

The death-by-suicide of Kevin Morissey is sad. It is also complex, and I’m not sure there is a lot to pin on VQR or Ted Genoways. But reading the Hook article about it is halting more for the operational procedures of VQR than for the details about Morissey’s death, which is speculation and arguably the sort of connect-the-dot journalism that creates its own dots.

This isn’t a disclaimer I make to extend any credit to Genoways. If I could punch one person in the nose, it’d be him. The fact that his management is more interesting than suicide really just shows how bizarre VQR’s business is.

The article is worth a read, but here’s the outline: UVA hired Genoways to run VQR and get paid $170k/yr; Genoways hires Morissey as his right hand ($70k); they do a good job and win prestigious awards in 2006; the VQR annual budget gets expanded by $117k to $600k; Genoways heightens their exposure; the staff is very friendly and dines together and hangs out; Morissey has depression issues; Genoways writes letters and uhh makes $2k donations to the U of GA Press and gets poetry books published for himself and some friends (including UVA’s president’s son and two VQR board members); Genoways gets a $35k Guggenheim and works less at the office; this 24-yr-old woman named Alana Levinson-LaBrosse makes a $1.5M donation to the school and gets a top-of-the-masthead job (unvetted) at VQR; which is “good” because the magazine has been bleeding through not just its own budget but an $800k surplus supply leftover from the previous editor and their circulation is only uhh 7,000 (so L-L’s money might be a plus); in a meeting which Genoways does not attend someone maybe says something that offended L-L; so Genoways sends an email kicking Morissey out of the office for a week  but not sufficiently explaining why (Genoways, it should be noted, had been traveling a lot with L-L and her desk was in his office); Genoways is reprimanded for this and the school brings in a mediator; this isn’t the first time Genoways has been a cock — in 2005 there was a veteran employee of 32 years who was going to sue the school because of his treatment but they settled instead on a 1yr severance; Morissey fears that the resolution would bring Genoways’s significant wrath upon him; Genoways is indeed vengeful and, by sending emails, causes PTSD in one employee who takes a medical leave and; one hour after Morissey receives an email from Genoways, he writes his suicide note.

OK, one thing that might not be clear from that summary is 1) how the office is a really cool environment except for the fact that 2) Genoways is often cruel and has poor management skills.

But that’s neither here nor there. What I want to know is:

$600,000 operation budget? So why does VQR suck? I mean, it’s a quarterly, how much can that cost? How much work is it? With $600k, shouldn’t it be a lot more famous? But who’s heard of the VQR? No one! So what justifies that motherfucker’s $170,000 salary? Is all that money the inspiration for that Mother Jones dross, about how bad MFA programs and literary journals are?

I don’t know. I don’t think I do righteous indignation well. Maybe Justin T can break this down better than me — or you, dear reader. Are you a friend of Ted’s?

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292 Comments

  1. Shane

      Adam, Thanks for this, though you might want to switch the photo. Innocent party there as of now. You can replace it with one of Genoways-think-he’s-tough-headshots.

      And VQR does suck.

  2. Roxane Gay

      Ha. I was just writing a post on this.

  3. Shane

      O & and Genoways is at Bread Loaf right now, correct? Anybody stalking around here @ BL? Pin a tail on that donkey.

  4. Kyle Minor

      For all the piling on VQR, I don’t think it’s fair to say no one’s heard of them or that they’re not doing anything cool. They are. For one thing, they’re one of the last magazines in the world willing to pay for long narrative journalism pieces of the sort the New Yorker used to run all the time. That’s a public service, I’d say. For another thing, they do publish some very good stories and book excerpts, not only from the likes of Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, but also by young writers such as Tom Bissell and Dean Bakopoulos and Ben Percy. They give these writers a significant platform. VQR is on almost every bookstore newsstand in the country. It’s thick and pretty and interesting, and that is why it wins those awards. I don’t know what happened in that office, but I do know that it is worth saving a magazine that is trying to do the things that magazine is trying to do. There aren’t many other magazines left who care enough to try so hard. We need experimental journals and we need idiosyncratic journals, but we need journals that aspire to cultural relevance the way VQR does. That is something that is worth encouraging, not dismissing. I hope that whomever ends up with the magazine will continue to pursue this worthwhile vision, whether it is Genoways or Jacquith or somebody else. And I also wish peace for the Morrissey family and for a resolution to the matter that deals with the subjects at hand on their merits, rather than a solution based on political expediency on the part of the University of Virginia. Given all the bad press, I fear the university will just find it easiest to shut things down. That would be a second tragedy. Isn’t one enough?

  5. Roxane Gay

      I’ll just put my post here as a comment.

      Over the past week, I’ve wondered why more literary-related people aren’t discussing what’s going on at VQR. I don’t really expect this to be covered in the mainstream news but the literary community seems to be keeping quiet on the complex matter of a disgruntled staff, a powerful editor at a well-regarded magazine with an outrageous budget and what was really taking place behind the scenes. Last night in the comments of another post, I speculated that people don’t know how to talk about what might be going on at VQR because it’s a delicate thing when someone takes their own life. In some ways, talking about the “scandal” feels like it might be in poor taste.

      That said, the strife at VQR is newsworthy and serves as a an unfortunate opening into a conversation about how some of the bigger, university-affiliated magazines are run. I don’t know much about VQR though I have read several issues over the years. It’s a good magazine though not my favorite. Ever since Genoways’s comments in Mother Jones, I have held some distaste for him so when I’ve read various accounts of how he has conducted himself in the aftermath of Morrissey’s death, I haven’t been surprised. I don’t know that there’s anything he could do that wouldn’t make him look bad but dear Lord, the man isn’t helping himself. He makes himself look like even more of a prick than I previously assumed him to be. However he may conduct himself personally though, he certainly made bold changes at VQR and elevated the magazine’s stature. To what end? T here are allegations of nepotism, flagrant spending, workplace bullying and more. There has been very little discussion, in all of this, about the magazine itself, about the writing they published. I’ve read issues of VQR and I preferred the content before Genoways took over. The money he’s spending doesn’t seem to be ending up on the page either in terms of the quality of writing, design, or production.

      I am kind of obsessed with all the disclosed information about the finances of the magazine. The web editor made $80,000/yr and the managing editor made $70,000/yr and Genoways makes $170,000 all to run a quarterly magazine. Those of us who edit magazines where the entire budget doesn’t exceed four figures find these numbers staggering.Writers are paid for advances and expenses? Writers are paid? It’s dizzying, all the money VQR seems to spend. Everyone involved in the production of a magazine deserves to be compensated so I don’t really begrudge the managing and web editor salaries, but Genoways’s salary feels ridiculous. I can’t wrap my mind around a $600,000 budge that results in a magazine that I don’t find terribly exciting–competent, yes but not innovative. The “assistant” thing is also attention grabbing. The bullying thing is shameful. I find the whole thing so ugly.

  6. Roxane Gay

      See, I don’t find the magazine to be that pretty. I guess I consider the magazine in the context of the budget. I think Jacquith would do some really interesting things with the magazine. I don’t know him but he sent me a very thoughtful correspondence once and he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. I don’t think people are piling on so much as they are saying, WTF is going on over there.

  7. Adam Robinson

      Oh, thank you.

  8. Adam Robinson

      I appreciate your reasonable response. However, I think you’re overstating the importance of VQR as much as I’m belittling it.

  9. Adam Robinson

      Aw nuts you shoulda done the post. I think we’re basically feeling the same thing. I’d love to know what you could do with $600,000. I doubt it would be pay yourself more than 25% of the budget.

  10. Kyle Minor

      I guess importance is a highly relative descriptor, so I don’t know how to answer. But who else is even attempting the things VQR is attempting? The Paris Review and Tin House occasionally. Harper’s and the New Yorker (but they’re commercial magazines.) The New York Review of Books (but they don’t publish fiction or poetry.) I think it is admirable that the magazine is reaching for what it is reaching for, and I think long-term that it is good for literature to have a magazine that is doing these things.

  11. Roxane Gay

      My goodness, with $600,000, I could do some awesome things. I’d pay myself somethign reasonable and get a great computer for doing layout. I’m just imagining all the cool design things I would be able to do. So many small presses and “little magazines” could do great things with a a significant budget. It depresses me to see how it is used at VQR.

  12. Kyle Minor

      I wish all good literary journals had a budget of $600,000, a well-paid staff, the ability to pay their contributors well and send them on assignments, a comfortable work environment with a well-stocked refrigerator, and a readership of 100,000 or more per issue.

  13. Roxane Gay

      Frankly, I’d be okay with 1/10th or 1/20th of that budget.

  14. Adam Robinson

      Does VQR have a readership of 100,000 or more? I didn’t see that in the article. It just said they have a circulation of 7,000.

  15. Roxane Gay

      Their readership is probably less than $10,000. You are correct about their circulation.

  16. Kyle Minor

      I don’t think any remotely literary magazine has a circulation that high except maybe the New Yorker (but I don’t know their numbers for sure, either.)

  17. Kyle Minor

      Roxane, if you had a $100,000 budget, what kinds of more ambitious things would you attempt with PANK? How much money would it take to do with the magazine the things you’d like to do? Is there any way you could foresee finding that kind of money?

  18. Mike Meginnis

      Yeah, the budget is insanelysupercrazy, and I doubt if I read VQR it would be my fave mag, but I’ve read some of their journalism and it was damn good stuff, and I’m glad I read it. Honestly if I were them I would focus on that with a small side of fiction/poetry.

      Anyway I hope things work out okay for them. And that the salaries get a lot more reasonable, fast.

  19. Kyle Minor

      By the way, given our recent discussion about how the Internet is or isn’t integrated into the magazine’s idea of itself, I think it’s reasonable to say that if a high-profile literary journal like VQR which was regularly publishing nonfiction pieces that are timely and appeal to the general reader in the way VQR is already doing, that magazine could reasonably expect via a very intelligently crafted Internet presence to achieve a quarterly readership of 100,000 or more. As to the question of how to monetize that, I have no idea. But Salon is still in business, to give a non-unrelated example. There are people who know how to do these kinds of things. It would be wonderful if they could be matched to a visionary editor who was willing to play ball, content-wise. The ancillary benefit, as we see with the New Yorker, is that the fiction writers and poets attached to the magazine also have access to that broader general readership. Which is, again, good for literature. Whether or not you like the work that these magazines choose is a different consideration. My suspicion is that the intelligent general reader is more open to a wider variety of literary forms than many experts would say the general reader would be. And that if a magazine already has a large readership and it exposes that readership to an excellent and innovative fiction writer, that readership (or a significant portion of it) will be likely to embrace that writer. I think that this is an aspect of VQR’s mission that is particularly appealing. I fear that although it might have been growing in this direction, it will no longer, and the analysts (we’re some of them, the Internet being how it is) will wrongly bury the aspirational mission with whatever shortcomings caused this incident, and the very-good-for-literature model that VQR was starting to pioneer will not soon be replicated as it might be if VQR was given time to grow its success more broadly, as it seems to have been gearing up to do.

  20. Matt Salesses

      Roxane, post yours, too. I’d like to see it.

      I thought that article was interesting for much the same reasons Adam did, though I like VQR and think that people have generally heard of it.

  21. Lincoln

      There is a lot to talk about here, but I must say that I highly disagree that “no one” has heard of the VQR. It is one of the most famous literary magazines out there. Whether it merits a 600K budget is another question, but it certainly isn’t some totally obscure magazine.

  22. Roxane Gay

      Kyle, I’d like us to go quarterly, print more copies of the magazine, pay online and print contributors, bring a dedicated designer on board, create a more robust website that would allow us to better incorporate multimedia projects, ramp up to publishing six books a year, subsidize travel expenses so we could attend more events than just AWP, and hire a part time managing editor to handle things like distribution, publicity, etc. I’d like to develop an iPhone/iPad app. I’d also like to do more creative things with the actual production of the magazine. I look at Hobart books, for example. I love the Adam Novy book designed like a bible so it would be great to do stuff like that. Basically I want to amplify what we’re doing pretty well on a shoestring without having to nickel and dime everything. Having to stress about money all the time detracts from the fun of editing.

      I think we could do wonders with a $45,000/yr budget. I’m not greedy. The only way I can foresee finding that kind of money is to invest more of my own money in the magazine.

  23. Matt Salesses

      Oh, I see below.

  24. Adam Robinson

      I just did an informal poll of everyone in my office. No one has heard of them.

  25. carl williams

      I suspect the same would be true if I walked out into the street and began asking people in DC. It’s obscure in relation to the New Yorker or Harpers, etc. For a “literary” magazine it might be up there with Plougshares, but that would be another name that would draw blank stares outside my building (except, maybe, from folks trying to look learned).

  26. Mike Meginnis

      You didn’t ask me, but I feel like answering, ballpark:

      15k for my time (or in UV’s case, for me + Tracy to split).
      5k to compensate one or two part-time helpers.
      15k to print a beautiful fucking magazine in big numbers.
      15k for writers.
      50k to promote, promote, promote. Much of this money would gradually be funneled into the other categories in about equal proportion as advertising + promotions reached state of diminishing returns.

      If I had another bucket of money to do a press the proportions would be similar. If not I would spend less on promotion, pay writers less for the magazine but more for the press.

  27. Roxane Gay

      This is what kills me about printing. You need way more than 15K to print big and beautiful in large quantities. I just the other day got a quote for PANK 5, 240 pages, 2 color, that was $11,000 for 750. copies I nearly passed out.

  28. King Kong Bundy

      Well then hell, there it is.

  29. Matt Salesses

      The average university-sponsored lit mag has a budget of around, I think it was, $15,000.

  30. Matt Cozart

      i think lincoln’s right–judging by the fact that it’s in probably every barnes and noble, you could say it’s at least moderately famous. it’s one of those things that i’ve never read, but am very aware of.

  31. Matt Salesses

      Roxane, who does PANK use? You’re getting ripped off.

  32. Lincoln

      The New Yorker definitely has a circulation well over 100,000 (indeed over 1 million I believe.)

      As far as literary magazines, yeah I don’t think anyone has that much. Granta and The Sun might be closest at about 50,000-60,000. The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Oxford American, Tin House, The Boston Review and maybe one or two more have circulations between 10,000 and 40,000 I believe. I might be missing one or two more.

      7,000 is pretty respectable as a lit mag circulation though. Most of even the well known ones only print between 1,000 and 2,000.

      Again, not commenting on whether that’s enough to merit a 600K budget though.

  33. Roxane Gay

      Matt, that’s not who we’re going with. We use McNaughton Gunn. We paid @ $5700 + shipping and overages last year. BUT that’s for a 4 color cover, 2 color interior, 70 lb matte and 8″x8″. Our printing is our biggest expense because we don’t print in a traditional size with a traditional paper and a B & W interior.

  34. Bruiser Brody

      KKB, I’d beat you in a wrestlin’ match, just as long as it’s not in Puerto Rico.

  35. Lincoln

      Well, I don’t know what to tell you but they are pretty well known as far as lit mags go and the circulation you quoted puts them up there above all except the biggest lit mags (McSweeneys, Granta, Paris Review, etc.)

      VQR has focused on journalism and creative nonfiction though, so probably isn’t as well known amongst people more interested in experimental fiction or poetry.

  36. Lincoln

      Ploughshares seems like a good comparison.

  37. Matt Salesses

      Oh, okay. 11,000! I wonder how much cost is added by the dimensions.

  38. Lincoln

      Ugh, it definitely pains me to think of how much I believe we could do with 100K at Gigantic (or hell even 20K). Of course, long form journalism isn’t a concern of mine though and money goes a lot further publishing fiction than funding journalism.

  39. Roxane Gay

      The dimensions are about 25% of the cost and the use of a 2-color interior is about 25% of the cost. We like doing them though, just to be a little different.

  40. Adam Robinson

      OF COURSE I KNOW PPL HAVE HEARD OF VQR.

      Damn.

      But with $600,000, my fucking point is that people in my office should have heard of them, as they’ve heard of the not-unrelated Salon.

  41. Mike Meginnis

      Good point. Well, I would take that out of promotion. Although, I dunno — the focus on color as a way to be beautiful strikes me, from the shopping around I’ve done, as one of the big causes of expenses. I don’t really care for color very much personally. Feel like I’m in the minority there.

  42. Roxane Gay

      Oddly enough I’ve never seen VQR in B & N.

  43. Adam Robinson

      That’s cuz they’re already sold out.

  44. David

      We may all be aware of it, but we also post on literary blogs. I guarantee that none of my coworkers, non-writer friends, etc have ever heard of it.

      Yeah it’s in Barnes and Noble, but so are thousands of other books and magazines that most people will never pick up.

  45. Roxane Gay

      That’s how I feel. I don’t know anyone other than my co-editor who has heard of this magazine.

  46. Kyle Minor

      You know, Aaron Burch does most of that Hobart stuff for less money than anyone would imagine. Those beautiful Mary Miller books that look like the covers were hand-colored? That’s because Aaron printed black-and-white covers and hand-colored them!

  47. K. Lincoln

      Echoed, concerning the long-form journalism. I know that isn’t the meat of HTMLGiant, but there’s something to be said for VQR solely on the basis of their published reporting. Never been much impressed by the fiction of theirs I’ve seen, but one good aspect is better than none.

  48. Kyle Minor

      I would agree, though, that the beautiful design (the white space has a lot to do with it, too) is one of PANK’s distinctive pluses.

  49. Shane

      Ploughshares does seem like a good comparison…in terms of nepotism. I’m pretty sure every “guest” editor publishes only their friends, ala Genoways and UGA.

  50. Lincoln

      I don’t know what office you work in, but most people probably haven’t heard of Granta or McSweeney’s either.

      I have to confess I have no idea what the operating budget of those two magazines or any comparable magazine is though.

  51. Mike Meginnis

      Jesus. I want to high five him for that, if he’s still got his hands.

  52. B. R. Smith

      Roxane,

      If you haven’t already, you might check out these folks: http://www.datareprowest.com/

      They do books/journals exclusively.

      At the magazine I used to work for we used them in print runs of about 1000 (3 color, 6X9, I forget the stock, but it was robust) for an incredibly reasonable price. It meant that we had a lot of stock left over, but the savings were huge. Been using them for years, and their consistency as far as time/quality of product is incredible. My apologies if this strikes as shilling or anything . . . Just an FYI for folks running smaller presses. Might be competitive at the price/scale you’re mentioning . . .

  53. Kyle Minor

      Granta and McSweeney’s are two good examples of places that started with money but found ways to monetize and therefore perpetuate the operation, in both cases largely through partnerships with mainstream publishers (McSweeney’s has that thing with Grove, for example, and Granta for a long time was published in the States as a Penguin paperback original.) I don’t doubt that they have bled money anyway, but that stuff does help. I guess a present-day analogue would probably be some kind of new media partnership.

      Some people already do think about how the medium might be exploited in ways that bring attention to the literary conversation but are themselves extra-literary. For example, I remember that when HTMLGiant started, there was a lot of porn meta-tagging, etc. Old curmudgeonly conservative that I am in relation to many here (ha!), I’m not making an approving value judgment. But it worked, didn’t it? High hit counts right away, mad Google love, and sure enough I found the site a week after it was launched.

  54. Kyle Minor

      He’s pretty much the original publishing genius (him or Roger Straus.)

  55. Joseph RIippi
  56. Joseph RIippi

      I only know it from the racks at mag shops. Have bought a lot of lit mags at St Marks in my time–never a VQR. Always got the impression it was work turned down by Harpers or the New Yorker.

  57. Kyle Minor

      How much of Elle’s circulation is the French edition?

  58. Kyle Minor

      Wow — I just checked the link. That’s the American circulation of Elle. I wish I could publish fiction there.

  59. Lincoln

      Yes, I agree with all the above, but like you said earlier I just don’t think it makes much sense to say no one has heard of the magazine or they’ve done nothing interesting.

      Perhaps here is the point where I say I grew up in Charlottesville, where UVA is, and so I may have heard more about the magazine that others. Certainly the perception down there is that the magazine was totally turned around and changed form a basically unknown magazine to one of the more talked about and award winning magazines in the literary world. And it has won a lot of awards and you do hear it talked about.

      Certainly I think that I could make a magazine more famous with 600K, but that might just be ego talking. Once you get out of the lit world and into the world of trying to get people who aren’t lit nerds to read a magazine its a different conversation. I’d love to know the operating budgets of The Believer, Granta, The Oxford American, Tin House, McSweeney’s and whoever else might be in this kind of general realm. I really have no idea. They probably vary wildly.

  60. Kyle Minor

      That’s kind of how the Yale Review feels, too. But sometimes better work gets turned down than published at some of those top-tier places, so that’s not necessarily a minus.

  61. Kyle Minor

      I think Roxane’s point that the most likely way to up the finances would be to find a way to fund them herself, which speaks to the larger point that most of the really high-profile places that survive had a wealthy early funder or funders. Some examples: The Paris Review (CIA, Aga Khan, Plimpton, many more), McSwys/Believer (Eggers), Tin House (McCormack), Oxford American (Grisham). For all the criticism of Genoways bringing in a young philanthropist/philanthropist’s daughter, no one has stopped to think how this probably was a necessary step for the magazine’s survival in its present form, particularly considering that the UVa prez’s office was about to reduce or yank funding. If I were in his position, I might have done the same thing.

  62. Adam Robinson

      My informal poll actually shows that 4 people have heard of McSweeney’s.

  63. Kyle Minor

      Do you do the presidential primary polling for Maryland this scientifically, too?

  64. Renee

      VQR doesn’t have to suck, and that’s what sucks more. I have been poring over the John Bruce coverage of this, which is much more meta than the specifics of VQR. I think what he’s getting at is not why VQR sucks but why the literary establishment sucks: http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/

      That same establishment has been trying to ignore this whole thing, but I don’t think they can do that anymore.

  65. Lincoln

      Funny enough, when I’ve mentioned McSweeney’s Quarterly to people, even creative writing students, they’ve often thought it was only a humor website and had no idea there was a print mag.

      Anyway, I’d expect more people to know McSweeney’s given its popular humor website, a popular press and the fact that it has existed for over a decade. The Genoways era only started a few years ago at VQR.

      I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Ted’s editorial tactics, whether or not he deserves as much credit as he got for VQR’s success, and I’ve disagreed with plenty of things he has said publicly such as that Mother Jones article. But during the past four years the VQR really has turned around from total obscurity into one of the more prominent literary magazines on the scene.

  66. Renee

      “this isn’t the first time Genoways has been a cock”

      So true.

  67. Roxane Gay

      Kyle that’s exactly my point. Most of the big magazines had some kind of benefactor. I woudln’t mind being a benefactor and now that i have a real job, the possibilities improve. I only wish I had bigger coffers to draw from.

  68. Joseph RIippi

      True.

  69. Kyle Minor

      Do you think there is a monolithic “literary establishment” that collectively decides to ignore things? I think, just like here, there are a lot of people who make their own individual choices in light of their preexisting wants, needs, desires, predispositions, fears, personal inclinations to stir or not stir the pot, etc. I think us and them talk never accounts for the complexity of human subcultural expressions, whether they are powerful ones or not.

  70. Roxane Gay

      The thing is VQR doesn’t suck. As I’ve said, it’s not my favorite magazine, and I don’t think the current quality reflects well on that outrageous budget but to dismiss the magazine entirely is no better than to lavish unnecessary praise on it.

  71. Lincoln

      Harper’s is a “glitzy loser” that has abandoned literature?

      Not sure what to make of this blog….

  72. Kyle Minor

      For real. Harper’s is fighting the good fight, and against all odds.

  73. Ryan Call

      by ‘meta’ do you mean ‘shitty’?

  74. Blake Butler

      this thread is fucked up

  75. darby

      agree

  76. Roxane Gay

      How is that?

  77. nenone

      first way to end discussion and debate: start namecalling anyone whose ideas might be threatening, in the hope that others will not investigate or think about these ideas

      some people are uncomfortable about where this conversation can go

  78. Blake Butler

      dude killed himself and people turn to talking about magazine circulation

  79. amy

      I think if you did some investigating you would discover that the VQR’s circulation is now WELL below the 7,000 figure that’s been reported…

  80. Kyle Minor

      I think that’s an oversimplistic way to characterize the conversation. The initial post was about the operational procedures of VQR and it makes a bunch of value judgments about the magazine, its business organization, and its place in literature. People are responding to the conversation. I don’t think that having the conversation is inherently disrespectful to the person who died, nor do I think the fact that someone died in a tragic way obviates anyone else’s ability to talk about anything they were part of when they were alive. The logical end of that response is we don’t get to talk about anything anymore, and any of us can end any conversation about anything by simply ending our lives. That doesn’t make anything better, nor is it an inherently honorable response, I don’t think. Obviously the man who died did care deeply about the magazine he served. I think that this conversation honors that care because it is invested in the same matters. I don’t agree with everything everyone is saying here, but I don’t know how shutting down the conversation is the way to go (and I don’t think it’s the way HTMLGiant usually works, either. That’s one reason I like it here.)

  81. Blake Butler

      i’m not trying to shut anything down. i just find the tendency of writers to turn many conversations into stats/submission/rejection, ideas on paper, kind of, well, like i said, fucked up.

  82. Blake Butler

      im not aiming that at anyone in particular. it just gave me a weird feeling.

  83. Roxane Gay

      I disagree that that’s what’s happening. The death is tragic and what allegedly contributed to it is ugly and I think people are being very mindful of the tragedy. That doesn’t mean the issues pertaining to VQR aren’t relevant or worthy of discussion.

  84. Kyle Minor

      As far as the stats/submission/rejection response, I agree. I also wonder if that isn’t what’s driving some of the animus I’m seeing against VQR: They didn’t take that writer’s stuff, so automatically that means they’re only publishing friends. I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think it’s fair, either.

  85. darby

      i think my problem is, obsessing over operating budgets of other magazines by itself is kind of icky to me. i think money, in any art context, is icky. when juxtaposed with morrisey’s suicide, it becomes just that much more disgusting.

  86. Blake Butler

      right. i’m not calling anyone a name for talking #s or whatever, i dont care, but i just think there are bigger feelings here than who is buying the magazine.

  87. Ryan Call

      i think i tend to agree with darby and blake here; i think its an interesting discussion, but one id rather wait to have. certainly doesnt keep others from having the discussion, of course, and i do think the comments have been respectful and smart. ive just been upset about this whole thing and i havent been able to move beyond a simple sadness in response to the situation and its coverage. all my words on the subject; carryon and be safe.

  88. Blake Butler

      sorry.

  89. Shane

      Adam, Thanks for this, though you might want to switch the photo. Innocent party there as of now. You can replace it with one of Genoways-think-he’s-tough-headshots.

      And VQR does suck.

  90. Roxane Gay

      Ha. I was just writing a post on this.

  91. Shane

      O & and Genoways is at Bread Loaf right now, correct? Anybody stalking around here @ BL? Pin a tail on that donkey.

  92. Kyle Minor

      For all the piling on VQR, I don’t think it’s fair to say no one’s heard of them or that they’re not doing anything cool. They are. For one thing, they’re one of the last magazines in the world willing to pay for long narrative journalism pieces of the sort the New Yorker used to run all the time. That’s a public service, I’d say. For another thing, they do publish some very good stories and book excerpts, not only from the likes of Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, but also by young writers such as Tom Bissell and Dean Bakopoulos and Ben Percy. They give these writers a significant platform. VQR is on almost every bookstore newsstand in the country. It’s thick and pretty and interesting, and that is why it wins those awards. I don’t know what happened in that office, but I do know that it is worth saving a magazine that is trying to do the things that magazine is trying to do. There aren’t many other magazines left who care enough to try so hard. We need experimental journals and we need idiosyncratic journals, but we need journals that aspire to cultural relevance the way VQR does. That is something that is worth encouraging, not dismissing. I hope that whomever ends up with the magazine will continue to pursue this worthwhile vision, whether it is Genoways or Jacquith or somebody else. And I also wish peace for the Morrissey family and for a resolution to the matter that deals with the subjects at hand on their merits, rather than a solution based on political expediency on the part of the University of Virginia. Given all the bad press, I fear the university will just find it easiest to shut things down. That would be a second tragedy. Isn’t one enough?

  93. Roxane Gay

      I’ll just put my post here as a comment.

      Over the past week, I’ve wondered why more literary-related people aren’t discussing what’s going on at VQR. I don’t really expect this to be covered in the mainstream news but the literary community seems to be keeping quiet on the complex matter of a disgruntled staff, a powerful editor at a well-regarded magazine with an outrageous budget and what was really taking place behind the scenes. Last night in the comments of another post, I speculated that people don’t know how to talk about what might be going on at VQR because it’s a delicate thing when someone takes their own life. In some ways, talking about the “scandal” feels like it might be in poor taste.

      That said, the strife at VQR is newsworthy and serves as a an unfortunate opening into a conversation about how some of the bigger, university-affiliated magazines are run. I don’t know much about VQR though I have read several issues over the years. It’s a good magazine though not my favorite. Ever since Genoways’s comments in Mother Jones, I have held some distaste for him so when I’ve read various accounts of how he has conducted himself in the aftermath of Morrissey’s death, I haven’t been surprised. I don’t know that there’s anything he could do that wouldn’t make him look bad but dear Lord, the man isn’t helping himself. He makes himself look like even more of a prick than I previously assumed him to be. However he may conduct himself personally though, he certainly made bold changes at VQR and elevated the magazine’s stature. To what end? T here are allegations of nepotism, flagrant spending, workplace bullying and more. There has been very little discussion, in all of this, about the magazine itself, about the writing they published. I’ve read issues of VQR and I preferred the content before Genoways took over. The money he’s spending doesn’t seem to be ending up on the page either in terms of the quality of writing, design, or production.

      I am kind of obsessed with all the disclosed information about the finances of the magazine. The web editor made $80,000/yr and the managing editor made $70,000/yr and Genoways makes $170,000 all to run a quarterly magazine. Those of us who edit magazines where the entire budget doesn’t exceed four figures find these numbers staggering.Writers are paid for advances and expenses? Writers are paid? It’s dizzying, all the money VQR seems to spend. Everyone involved in the production of a magazine deserves to be compensated so I don’t really begrudge the managing and web editor salaries, but Genoways’s salary feels ridiculous. I can’t wrap my mind around a $600,000 budge that results in a magazine that I don’t find terribly exciting–competent, yes but not innovative. The “assistant” thing is also attention grabbing. The bullying thing is shameful. I find the whole thing so ugly.

  94. Roxane Gay

      See, I don’t find the magazine to be that pretty. I guess I consider the magazine in the context of the budget. I think Jacquith would do some really interesting things with the magazine. I don’t know him but he sent me a very thoughtful correspondence once and he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. I don’t think people are piling on so much as they are saying, WTF is going on over there.

  95. Adam Robinson

      Oh, thank you.

  96. Adam Robinson

      I appreciate your reasonable response. However, I think you’re overstating the importance of VQR as much as I’m belittling it.

  97. Adam Robinson

      Aw nuts you shoulda done the post. I think we’re basically feeling the same thing. I’d love to know what you could do with $600,000. I doubt it would be pay yourself more than 25% of the budget.

  98. Kyle Minor

      I guess importance is a highly relative descriptor, so I don’t know how to answer. But who else is even attempting the things VQR is attempting? The Paris Review and Tin House occasionally. Harper’s and the New Yorker (but they’re commercial magazines.) The New York Review of Books (but they don’t publish fiction or poetry.) I think it is admirable that the magazine is reaching for what it is reaching for, and I think long-term that it is good for literature to have a magazine that is doing these things.

  99. Roxane Gay

      My goodness, with $600,000, I could do some awesome things. I’d pay myself somethign reasonable and get a great computer for doing layout. I’m just imagining all the cool design things I would be able to do. So many small presses and “little magazines” could do great things with a a significant budget. It depresses me to see how it is used at VQR.

  100. Kyle Minor

      I wish all good literary journals had a budget of $600,000, a well-paid staff, the ability to pay their contributors well and send them on assignments, a comfortable work environment with a well-stocked refrigerator, and a readership of 100,000 or more per issue.

  101. Roxane Gay

      Frankly, I’d be okay with 1/10th or 1/20th of that budget.

  102. Adam Robinson

      Does VQR have a readership of 100,000 or more? I didn’t see that in the article. It just said they have a circulation of 7,000.

  103. Roxane Gay

      Their readership is probably less than $10,000. You are correct about their circulation.

  104. Kyle Minor

      I don’t think any remotely literary magazine has a circulation that high except maybe the New Yorker (but I don’t know their numbers for sure, either.)

  105. Kyle Minor

      Roxane, if you had a $100,000 budget, what kinds of more ambitious things would you attempt with PANK? How much money would it take to do with the magazine the things you’d like to do? Is there any way you could foresee finding that kind of money?

  106. Mike Meginnis

      Yeah, the budget is insanelysupercrazy, and I doubt if I read VQR it would be my fave mag, but I’ve read some of their journalism and it was damn good stuff, and I’m glad I read it. Honestly if I were them I would focus on that with a small side of fiction/poetry.

      Anyway I hope things work out okay for them. And that the salaries get a lot more reasonable, fast.

  107. Kyle Minor

      By the way, given our recent discussion about how the Internet is or isn’t integrated into the magazine’s idea of itself, I think it’s reasonable to say that if a high-profile literary journal like VQR which was regularly publishing nonfiction pieces that are timely and appeal to the general reader in the way VQR is already doing, that magazine could reasonably expect via a very intelligently crafted Internet presence to achieve a quarterly readership of 100,000 or more. As to the question of how to monetize that, I have no idea. But Salon is still in business, to give a non-unrelated example. There are people who know how to do these kinds of things. It would be wonderful if they could be matched to a visionary editor who was willing to play ball, content-wise. The ancillary benefit, as we see with the New Yorker, is that the fiction writers and poets attached to the magazine also have access to that broader general readership. Which is, again, good for literature. Whether or not you like the work that these magazines choose is a different consideration. My suspicion is that the intelligent general reader is more open to a wider variety of literary forms than many experts would say the general reader would be. And that if a magazine already has a large readership and it exposes that readership to an excellent and innovative fiction writer, that readership (or a significant portion of it) will be likely to embrace that writer. I think that this is an aspect of VQR’s mission that is particularly appealing. I fear that although it might have been growing in this direction, it will no longer, and the analysts (we’re some of them, the Internet being how it is) will wrongly bury the aspirational mission with whatever shortcomings caused this incident, and the very-good-for-literature model that VQR was starting to pioneer will not soon be replicated as it might be if VQR was given time to grow its success more broadly, as it seems to have been gearing up to do.

  108. Matt Salesses

      Roxane, post yours, too. I’d like to see it.

      I thought that article was interesting for much the same reasons Adam did, though I like VQR and think that people have generally heard of it.

  109. Lincoln

      There is a lot to talk about here, but I must say that I highly disagree that “no one” has heard of the VQR. It is one of the most famous literary magazines out there. Whether it merits a 600K budget is another question, but it certainly isn’t some totally obscure magazine.

  110. Roxane Gay

      Kyle, I’d like us to go quarterly, print more copies of the magazine, pay online and print contributors, bring a dedicated designer on board, create a more robust website that would allow us to better incorporate multimedia projects, ramp up to publishing six books a year, subsidize travel expenses so we could attend more events than just AWP, and hire a part time managing editor to handle things like distribution, publicity, etc. I’d like to develop an iPhone/iPad app. I’d also like to do more creative things with the actual production of the magazine. I look at Hobart books, for example. I love the Adam Novy book designed like a bible so it would be great to do stuff like that. Basically I want to amplify what we’re doing pretty well on a shoestring without having to nickel and dime everything. Having to stress about money all the time detracts from the fun of editing.

      I think we could do wonders with a $45,000/yr budget. I’m not greedy. The only way I can foresee finding that kind of money is to invest more of my own money in the magazine.

  111. Matt Salesses

      Oh, I see below.

  112. Adam Robinson

      I just did an informal poll of everyone in my office. No one has heard of them.

  113. carl williams

      I suspect the same would be true if I walked out into the street and began asking people in DC. It’s obscure in relation to the New Yorker or Harpers, etc. For a “literary” magazine it might be up there with Plougshares, but that would be another name that would draw blank stares outside my building (except, maybe, from folks trying to look learned).

  114. Mike Meginnis

      You didn’t ask me, but I feel like answering, ballpark:

      15k for my time (or in UV’s case, for me + Tracy to split).
      5k to compensate one or two part-time helpers.
      15k to print a beautiful fucking magazine in big numbers.
      15k for writers.
      50k to promote, promote, promote. Much of this money would gradually be funneled into the other categories in about equal proportion as advertising + promotions reached state of diminishing returns.

      If I had another bucket of money to do a press the proportions would be similar. If not I would spend less on promotion, pay writers less for the magazine but more for the press.

  115. Roxane Gay

      This is what kills me about printing. You need way more than 15K to print big and beautiful in large quantities. I just the other day got a quote for PANK 5, 240 pages, 2 color, that was $11,000 for 750. copies I nearly passed out.

  116. King Kong Bundy

      Well then hell, there it is.

  117. Matt Salesses

      The average university-sponsored lit mag has a budget of around, I think it was, $15,000.

  118. Matt Cozart

      i think lincoln’s right–judging by the fact that it’s in probably every barnes and noble, you could say it’s at least moderately famous. it’s one of those things that i’ve never read, but am very aware of.

  119. Matt Salesses

      Roxane, who does PANK use? You’re getting ripped off.

  120. Lincoln

      The New Yorker definitely has a circulation well over 100,000 (indeed over 1 million I believe.)

      As far as literary magazines, yeah I don’t think anyone has that much. Granta and The Sun might be closest at about 50,000-60,000. The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Oxford American, Tin House, The Boston Review and maybe one or two more have circulations between 10,000 and 40,000 I believe. I might be missing one or two more.

      7,000 is pretty respectable as a lit mag circulation though. Most of even the well known ones only print between 1,000 and 2,000.

      Again, not commenting on whether that’s enough to merit a 600K budget though.

  121. Roxane Gay

      Matt, that’s not who we’re going with. We use McNaughton Gunn. We paid @ $5700 + shipping and overages last year. BUT that’s for a 4 color cover, 2 color interior, 70 lb matte and 8″x8″. Our printing is our biggest expense because we don’t print in a traditional size with a traditional paper and a B & W interior.

  122. Bruiser Brody

      KKB, I’d beat you in a wrestlin’ match, just as long as it’s not in Puerto Rico.

  123. Lincoln

      Well, I don’t know what to tell you but they are pretty well known as far as lit mags go and the circulation you quoted puts them up there above all except the biggest lit mags (McSweeneys, Granta, Paris Review, etc.)

      VQR has focused on journalism and creative nonfiction though, so probably isn’t as well known amongst people more interested in experimental fiction or poetry.

  124. Lincoln

      Ploughshares seems like a good comparison.

  125. Matt Salesses

      Oh, okay. 11,000! I wonder how much cost is added by the dimensions.

  126. Lincoln

      Ugh, it definitely pains me to think of how much I believe we could do with 100K at Gigantic (or hell even 20K). Of course, long form journalism isn’t a concern of mine though and money goes a lot further publishing fiction than funding journalism.

  127. Roxane Gay

      The dimensions are about 25% of the cost and the use of a 2-color interior is about 25% of the cost. We like doing them though, just to be a little different.

  128. Adam Robinson

      OF COURSE I KNOW PPL HAVE HEARD OF VQR.

      Damn.

      But with $600,000, my fucking point is that people in my office should have heard of them, as they’ve heard of the not-unrelated Salon.

  129. Mike Meginnis

      Good point. Well, I would take that out of promotion. Although, I dunno — the focus on color as a way to be beautiful strikes me, from the shopping around I’ve done, as one of the big causes of expenses. I don’t really care for color very much personally. Feel like I’m in the minority there.

  130. Roxane Gay

      Oddly enough I’ve never seen VQR in B & N.

  131. Adam Robinson

      That’s cuz they’re already sold out.

  132. David

      We may all be aware of it, but we also post on literary blogs. I guarantee that none of my coworkers, non-writer friends, etc have ever heard of it.

      Yeah it’s in Barnes and Noble, but so are thousands of other books and magazines that most people will never pick up.

  133. Roxane Gay

      That’s how I feel. I don’t know anyone other than my co-editor who has heard of this magazine.

  134. Kyle Minor

      You know, Aaron Burch does most of that Hobart stuff for less money than anyone would imagine. Those beautiful Mary Miller books that look like the covers were hand-colored? That’s because Aaron printed black-and-white covers and hand-colored them!

  135. K. Lincoln

      Echoed, concerning the long-form journalism. I know that isn’t the meat of HTMLGiant, but there’s something to be said for VQR solely on the basis of their published reporting. Never been much impressed by the fiction of theirs I’ve seen, but one good aspect is better than none.

  136. Kyle Minor

      I would agree, though, that the beautiful design (the white space has a lot to do with it, too) is one of PANK’s distinctive pluses.

  137. Shane

      Ploughshares does seem like a good comparison…in terms of nepotism. I’m pretty sure every “guest” editor publishes only their friends, ala Genoways and UGA.

  138. Lincoln

      I don’t know what office you work in, but most people probably haven’t heard of Granta or McSweeney’s either.

      I have to confess I have no idea what the operating budget of those two magazines or any comparable magazine is though.

  139. Mike Meginnis

      Jesus. I want to high five him for that, if he’s still got his hands.

  140. B. R. Smith

      Roxane,

      If you haven’t already, you might check out these folks: http://www.datareprowest.com/

      They do books/journals exclusively.

      At the magazine I used to work for we used them in print runs of about 1000 (3 color, 6X9, I forget the stock, but it was robust) for an incredibly reasonable price. It meant that we had a lot of stock left over, but the savings were huge. Been using them for years, and their consistency as far as time/quality of product is incredible. My apologies if this strikes as shilling or anything . . . Just an FYI for folks running smaller presses. Might be competitive at the price/scale you’re mentioning . . .

  141. Kyle Minor

      Granta and McSweeney’s are two good examples of places that started with money but found ways to monetize and therefore perpetuate the operation, in both cases largely through partnerships with mainstream publishers (McSweeney’s has that thing with Grove, for example, and Granta for a long time was published in the States as a Penguin paperback original.) I don’t doubt that they have bled money anyway, but that stuff does help. I guess a present-day analogue would probably be some kind of new media partnership.

      Some people already do think about how the medium might be exploited in ways that bring attention to the literary conversation but are themselves extra-literary. For example, I remember that when HTMLGiant started, there was a lot of porn meta-tagging, etc. Old curmudgeonly conservative that I am in relation to many here (ha!), I’m not making an approving value judgment. But it worked, didn’t it? High hit counts right away, mad Google love, and sure enough I found the site a week after it was launched.

  142. Kyle Minor

      He’s pretty much the original publishing genius (him or Roger Straus.)

  143. Joseph RIippi
  144. Joseph RIippi

      I only know it from the racks at mag shops. Have bought a lot of lit mags at St Marks in my time–never a VQR. Always got the impression it was work turned down by Harpers or the New Yorker.

  145. Kyle Minor

      How much of Elle’s circulation is the French edition?

  146. Kyle Minor

      Wow — I just checked the link. That’s the American circulation of Elle. I wish I could publish fiction there.

  147. Lincoln

      Yes, I agree with all the above, but like you said earlier I just don’t think it makes much sense to say no one has heard of the magazine or they’ve done nothing interesting.

      Perhaps here is the point where I say I grew up in Charlottesville, where UVA is, and so I may have heard more about the magazine that others. Certainly the perception down there is that the magazine was totally turned around and changed form a basically unknown magazine to one of the more talked about and award winning magazines in the literary world. And it has won a lot of awards and you do hear it talked about.

      Certainly I think that I could make a magazine more famous with 600K, but that might just be ego talking. Once you get out of the lit world and into the world of trying to get people who aren’t lit nerds to read a magazine its a different conversation. I’d love to know the operating budgets of The Believer, Granta, The Oxford American, Tin House, McSweeney’s and whoever else might be in this kind of general realm. I really have no idea. They probably vary wildly.

  148. Kyle Minor

      That’s kind of how the Yale Review feels, too. But sometimes better work gets turned down than published at some of those top-tier places, so that’s not necessarily a minus.

  149. Kyle Minor

      I think Roxane’s point that the most likely way to up the finances would be to find a way to fund them herself, which speaks to the larger point that most of the really high-profile places that survive had a wealthy early funder or funders. Some examples: The Paris Review (CIA, Aga Khan, Plimpton, many more), McSwys/Believer (Eggers), Tin House (McCormack), Oxford American (Grisham). For all the criticism of Genoways bringing in a young philanthropist/philanthropist’s daughter, no one has stopped to think how this probably was a necessary step for the magazine’s survival in its present form, particularly considering that the UVa prez’s office was about to reduce or yank funding. If I were in his position, I might have done the same thing.

  150. Adam Robinson

      My informal poll actually shows that 4 people have heard of McSweeney’s.

  151. Kyle Minor

      Do you do the presidential primary polling for Maryland this scientifically, too?

  152. Renee

      VQR doesn’t have to suck, and that’s what sucks more. I have been poring over the John Bruce coverage of this, which is much more meta than the specifics of VQR. I think what he’s getting at is not why VQR sucks but why the literary establishment sucks: http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/

      That same establishment has been trying to ignore this whole thing, but I don’t think they can do that anymore.

  153. Lincoln

      Funny enough, when I’ve mentioned McSweeney’s Quarterly to people, even creative writing students, they’ve often thought it was only a humor website and had no idea there was a print mag.

      Anyway, I’d expect more people to know McSweeney’s given its popular humor website, a popular press and the fact that it has existed for over a decade. The Genoways era only started a few years ago at VQR.

      I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Ted’s editorial tactics, whether or not he deserves as much credit as he got for VQR’s success, and I’ve disagreed with plenty of things he has said publicly such as that Mother Jones article. But during the past four years the VQR really has turned around from total obscurity into one of the more prominent literary magazines on the scene.

  154. Renee

      “this isn’t the first time Genoways has been a cock”

      So true.

  155. Roxane Gay

      Kyle that’s exactly my point. Most of the big magazines had some kind of benefactor. I woudln’t mind being a benefactor and now that i have a real job, the possibilities improve. I only wish I had bigger coffers to draw from.

  156. Joseph RIippi

      True.

  157. Kyle Minor

      Do you think there is a monolithic “literary establishment” that collectively decides to ignore things? I think, just like here, there are a lot of people who make their own individual choices in light of their preexisting wants, needs, desires, predispositions, fears, personal inclinations to stir or not stir the pot, etc. I think us and them talk never accounts for the complexity of human subcultural expressions, whether they are powerful ones or not.

  158. Roxane Gay

      The thing is VQR doesn’t suck. As I’ve said, it’s not my favorite magazine, and I don’t think the current quality reflects well on that outrageous budget but to dismiss the magazine entirely is no better than to lavish unnecessary praise on it.

  159. Lincoln

      Harper’s is a “glitzy loser” that has abandoned literature?

      Not sure what to make of this blog….

  160. Kyle Minor

      For real. Harper’s is fighting the good fight, and against all odds.

  161. Ryan Call

      by ‘meta’ do you mean ‘shitty’?

  162. Blake Butler

      this thread is fucked up

  163. darby

      agree

  164. Justin Taylor

      Well, since you took the trouble to ask.

      I think that the idea of “driving someone to suicide” is so rarely manifested in the real world as to essentially be a fiction, especially when we are talking about two grown men who were not romantically involved. I object strongly to the casual use of the term “bullying,” which strikes me as a blanket “charge” covering a whole range of behaviors which might or might not be the conscious and directed actions of the so-called bully. If you want to really get in deep on this issue, you should read Emily Bazelon’s absolutely excellent investigation into the suicide of Phoebe Prince, though once again it’s important to remember that all the players in that tragedy were minors. It’s the best thing Slate’s put out in I don’t know how long, and a case in point for the value of the kind of longform journalism that, as Lincoln rightly points out above in several places, VQR is one of the last places to fund and publish. The only other ones that come right to my mind are Harper’s, the New Yorker, the Times magazine, the Nation investigative fund, and (unlikely as it might be) Rolling Stone.

      In this country, adults living outside of the correctional or mental-health systems are assumed to be possessed of free will, and therefore responsible for their own associations and actions. And I understand that depression is an illness–medical or chemical at least as much as spiritual–so I’m not trying to slander the man; only to say that he seems, by all accounts, to have succumbed after a long and difficult struggle. To suggest that one man’s self-motivated, self-directed act of negation can be laid squarely at the feet of another man seems to me to be a kind of obscenity. It’s disrespectful to the fullness and complication of the deceased person’s life, as well as that of his illness.

      As to the other issue under discussion here, about budget, I have to play capitalist-in-residence for a second, which is always funny to me because I’m the resident socialist everywhere else I go outside of this blog. But anyway I guess it’s here that Adam will get the indignation he was looking for. 600k is an astronomical sum in lit-world, and in most of our personal lives (mine, certainly) but in the world of University, Corporate and Commercial investment and institution-building, it’s less than piss in the snow. We can argue all night about why it ought not be, but the world is what it is, and cutting our own tiny legs out from under ourselves hardly seems like the right place to begin righting the world. Personally, I would sooner see a dozen more schools/publishers/institutions/philanthropists bankroll journals like VQR than I would spend a minute of my time arguing that VQR should make do with less.

      To the extent that VQR sees themselves as capable of making inroads into the world of top-tier publishing and award-winning journalism (see my list of magazines doing roughly equivalent work above), I think they should be commended and encouraged. Commenters have speculated above about how they would do better with the same money if somebody offered it to them in the same breath as they’ve argued that nobody should have that kind of money–for a personal salary or for a house budget. Let me make a suggestion: that money goes to people who have the hubris to ask for it, and who can convince the person/institution they’re asking it from that they ought to be the ones who get it. If you do not believe that that kind of money should be allocated at all, then don’t waste your time making the case that it should be allocated to you. It won’t be. And if you do believe that you can out-VQR VQR, then more power to you, and I have another suggestion: write the grant.

      Cheers, guys.

  165. Roxane Gay

      How is that?

  166. nenone

      first way to end discussion and debate: start namecalling anyone whose ideas might be threatening, in the hope that others will not investigate or think about these ideas

      some people are uncomfortable about where this conversation can go

  167. Blake Butler

      dude killed himself and people turn to talking about magazine circulation

  168. amy

      I think if you did some investigating you would discover that the VQR’s circulation is now WELL below the 7,000 figure that’s been reported…

  169. Kyle Minor

      I think that’s an oversimplistic way to characterize the conversation. The initial post was about the operational procedures of VQR and it makes a bunch of value judgments about the magazine, its business organization, and its place in literature. People are responding to the conversation. I don’t think that having the conversation is inherently disrespectful to the person who died, nor do I think the fact that someone died in a tragic way obviates anyone else’s ability to talk about anything they were part of when they were alive. The logical end of that response is we don’t get to talk about anything anymore, and any of us can end any conversation about anything by simply ending our lives. That doesn’t make anything better, nor is it an inherently honorable response, I don’t think. Obviously the man who died did care deeply about the magazine he served. I think that this conversation honors that care because it is invested in the same matters. I don’t agree with everything everyone is saying here, but I don’t know how shutting down the conversation is the way to go (and I don’t think it’s the way HTMLGiant usually works, either. That’s one reason I like it here.)

  170. Blake Butler

      i’m not trying to shut anything down. i just find the tendency of writers to turn many conversations into stats/submission/rejection, ideas on paper, kind of, well, like i said, fucked up.

  171. Blake Butler

      im not aiming that at anyone in particular. it just gave me a weird feeling.

  172. Roxane Gay

      I disagree that that’s what’s happening. The death is tragic and what allegedly contributed to it is ugly and I think people are being very mindful of the tragedy. That doesn’t mean the issues pertaining to VQR aren’t relevant or worthy of discussion.

  173. Kyle Minor

      As far as the stats/submission/rejection response, I agree. I also wonder if that isn’t what’s driving some of the animus I’m seeing against VQR: They didn’t take that writer’s stuff, so automatically that means they’re only publishing friends. I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think it’s fair, either.

  174. darby

      i think my problem is, obsessing over operating budgets of other magazines by itself is kind of icky to me. i think money, in any art context, is icky. when juxtaposed with morrisey’s suicide, it becomes just that much more disgusting.

  175. Blake Butler

      right. i’m not calling anyone a name for talking #s or whatever, i dont care, but i just think there are bigger feelings here than who is buying the magazine.

  176. Roxane Gay

      You make good points but I don’t think 600,000 is just a drop in the bucket at most universities, especially these days. Also, I don’t think anyone said they can do better with such a budget, just that they can do great. There’s a difference.

  177. Ryan Call

      i think i tend to agree with darby and blake here; i think its an interesting discussion, but one id rather wait to have. certainly doesnt keep others from having the discussion, of course, and i do think the comments have been respectful and smart. ive just been upset about this whole thing and i havent been able to move beyond a simple sadness in response to the situation and its coverage. all my words on the subject; carryon and be safe.

  178. Blake Butler

      sorry.

  179. Justin Taylor

      Well, since you took the trouble to ask.

      I think that the idea of “driving someone to suicide” is so rarely manifested in the real world as to essentially be a fiction, especially when we are talking about two grown men who were not romantically involved. I object strongly to the casual use of the term “bullying,” which strikes me as a blanket “charge” covering a whole range of behaviors which might or might not be the conscious and directed actions of the so-called bully. If you want to really get in deep on this issue, you should read Emily Bazelon’s absolutely excellent investigation into the suicide of Phoebe Prince, though once again it’s important to remember that all the players in that tragedy were minors. It’s the best thing Slate’s put out in I don’t know how long, and a case in point for the value of the kind of longform journalism that, as Lincoln rightly points out above in several places, VQR is one of the last places to fund and publish. The only other ones that come right to my mind are Harper’s, the New Yorker, the Times magazine, the Nation investigative fund, and (unlikely as it might be) Rolling Stone.

      In this country, adults living outside of the correctional or mental-health systems are assumed to be possessed of free will, and therefore responsible for their own associations and actions. And I understand that depression is an illness–medical or chemical at least as much as spiritual–so I’m not trying to slander the man; only to say that he seems, by all accounts, to have succumbed after a long and difficult struggle. To suggest that one man’s self-motivated, self-directed act of negation can be laid squarely at the feet of another man seems to me to be a kind of obscenity. It’s disrespectful to the fullness and complication of the deceased person’s life, as well as that of his illness.

      As to the other issue under discussion here, about budget, I have to play capitalist-in-residence for a second, which is always funny to me because I’m the resident socialist everywhere else I go outside of this blog. But anyway I guess it’s here that Adam will get the indignation he was looking for. 600k is an astronomical sum in lit-world, and in most of our personal lives (mine, certainly) but in the world of University, Corporate and Commercial investment and institution-building, it’s less than piss in the snow. We can argue all night about why it ought not be, but the world is what it is, and cutting our own tiny legs out from under ourselves hardly seems like the right place to begin righting the world. Personally, I would sooner see a dozen more schools/publishers/institutions/philanthropists bankroll journals like VQR than I would spend a minute of my time arguing that VQR should make do with less.

      To the extent that VQR sees themselves as capable of making inroads into the world of top-tier publishing and award-winning journalism (see my list of magazines doing roughly equivalent work above), I think they should be commended and encouraged. Commenters have speculated above about how they would do better with the same money if somebody offered it to them in the same breath as they’ve argued that nobody should have that kind of money–for a personal salary or for a house budget. Let me make a suggestion: that money goes to people who have the hubris to ask for it, and who can convince the person/institution they’re asking it from that they ought to be the ones who get it. If you do not believe that that kind of money should be allocated at all, then don’t waste your time making the case that it should be allocated to you. It won’t be. And if you do believe that you can out-VQR VQR, then more power to you, and I have another suggestion: write the grant.

      Cheers, guys.

  180. Roxane Gay

      You make good points but I don’t think 600,000 is just a drop in the bucket at most universities, especially these days. Also, I don’t think anyone said they can do better with such a budget, just that they can do great. There’s a difference.

  181. DN

      I certainly think that’s the tenor. More than the tenor.

  182. DN

      I certainly think that’s the tenor. More than the tenor.

  183. DN

      Sorry, that’s rather flippant of me. I just mean to say the collision of ‘I am not impressed with what they do with $600k’ and ‘here is what I would do’ (even in question form) entails the idea of ‘better’. The first on its own has that suggestion.

  184. DN

      Sorry, that’s rather flippant of me. I just mean to say the collision of ‘I am not impressed with what they do with $600k’ and ‘here is what I would do’ (even in question form) entails the idea of ‘better’. The first on its own has that suggestion.

  185. DN

      Hm. Also, HTMLGIANT webby design staff: please separate your ‘add a new comment’ section from the above comments a bit more, please. This is a site full of web-literate people, and people are constantly doing what I just did (making a new comment in lieu of making a reply to a previous comment).

  186. DN

      Hm. Also, HTMLGIANT webby design staff: please separate your ‘add a new comment’ section from the above comments a bit more, please. This is a site full of web-literate people, and people are constantly doing what I just did (making a new comment in lieu of making a reply to a previous comment).

  187. Shane

      I think so, Ryan. Seems like a salty guy (and more than a bit of a hypocrite, based on his publication list).

  188. Bruiser Brody

      it’s a chance they’ll have to take

  189. Michael

      Wow. I go to one week of faculty training, and look at all the good stuff I fall behind on…

      @Justin: Completely agree. Well said about “driving someone to suicide” and all of us dropping judgment.

      @Kyle: If VQR needed to bring in a 24 year old primarily because of a million dollar donation, and then she is given some sort of clandestine role running the magazine, then there’s a problem. If the name wasn’t VQR, a magazine like that should not survive or be trusted. That’s, to me, an ethical breech, which is particularly important when VQR has shifted to focusing on political, social, and economic issues as their primary focus.

      And we’re in agreement: VQR’s new editorial shift, at least in terms of what type of essays are being written, stories being reported, is important and valuable to all of us.

      @e’erybody: UVA has been very generous with their time and support of VQR in terms of the budget. Which is why seeing a windfall of 800K dwindled down to 300K is such a disturbing trend, a clear lack of leadership and focus from whoever is in charge of the magazine.

      And, broader, this type of mismanagement – circulated in places like The Chronicle, which is widely read and cited by administrators, chairs and deans – can endanger other university based literary journals. This absolutely can have a ripple effect on all of us.

  190. amy

      VQR has 2,400 subscribers and 941 newsstand copies, Wood said. The magazine’s budget is roughly $600,000 each year.

  191. Renee

      I see it as a good thing. As in, if the pressure’s on (and all this rampant cronyism starts getting investigated), maybe the university based literary journals will start publishing fiction and poetry that readers like to read.

      Or maybe not, because the MFA programs will all be affected too.

  192. L.

      This guy is worst LROD reject. Also stop posting under a fake girl name

  193. Adam R

      Thanks.

  194. Shane

      I think so, Ryan. Seems like a salty guy (and more than a bit of a hypocrite, based on his publication list).

  195. Bruiser Brody

      it’s a chance they’ll have to take

  196. Janaka

      Ok, I read the whole Hook article, and I read all of this post–but I’ll come clean and say I haven’t read all 44 comments in the thread…

      I do want to chime in and say that while we’re no VQR I was… shocked is too mild a word… to discover what their operating budget is. I had no idea there was that kind of money floating around still in academic journals. I had no idea that kind of money was to be made as an editor for a quarterly with a circulation of 7,000!

      To give you my perspective: Black Ocean (which is not on the notable level of VQR, but is operating in the BLACK and not the RED, and has done decent for its 5 years in operation) operates on literally about 2-4% of VQR’s budget. We put out three books a year plus one annual journal = 4x a year. To the point of “they’re one of the last magazines in the world willing to pay for long narrative journalism pieces of the sort the New Yorker used to run all the time,” I’d say they’re one of the last magazines ABLE to pay for that. I would pay for dope stories all the time if I had a $600K budget!

      For fun (like what you’d do if you won the lottery): If I was making $170K a year I would go into war zones MYSELF and blog from some spiderhole while I rubbed elbows with freedom fighters in third world countries. But really, I’d settle for $70K. I’d take the remaining $100K I shaved off my salary and publish our annual journal on full-color, edible paper that would be distributed for free to starving college students. Then I would set aside $100K to publish 50 books of poetry by really transcendent poets, and not some people who had done favors for me. I’d set aside $100K for operating expenses and marketing that involved amazing parties and open bars at every reading, and then I’d take the remaining $300K to hire six of the most dedicated and talented staff members I could get.

      I think it’s awesome that their budget was that big. It’s inspiring actually. What’s depressing is how much of it seems to have been wasted on the self-serving, and the already privileged & wealthy.

  197. Richard

      Wow, that’s much smaller.

      As for not talking about the suicide, I guess for me, I wouldn’t know where to start. There is a lot of detail in that article, but how do I know what is the truth? It’s a lot of speculation and rumor. Beyond saying that it’s tragic and sad that he killed himself, and that it sounds like there was a stressful if not questionable environment at VQR, all we could do is speculate about what really caused the suicide, talk about our own relationships with people that killed themselves (or tried), and generally get bummed out. All suicides are sad, they seem a waste of a human life, but if you’ve ever been there, on the edge of it all, with a razor blade in your hand or a gun in your mouth, at the time, it all seems so overwhelming, and impossible to survive. Which is horrible, because I think that most of us feel like that isn’t true. We think “Please don’t kill yourself, we’ll figure out how to make things better, what can I do to help?

      And I think we all know as well, that if somebody wants to kill themselves, and isn’t just looking for attention, even crying out for attention (or simply a cutter), there is really nothing you can do to stop them. If they want it bad enough, they’ll get it. Aside from committing them to a hospital, which is also no guarantee.

  198. Richard

      Awesome post. Amen. Love the edible book idea too!

  199. Lincoln

      I think we should be thankful that UVA does (or did) believe in the value of this stuff enough to heavily fund a literary journal. The discussion of what one would do with the money gets a little weird. For one thing, we could kind of play this game with anything. The money spent on one Kanye West video could probably fund a dozen cooler experimental bands for years. For another, I don’t think we can so quickly compare different forms of literature here.

      There was a point in The Hook article where they contrasted how VQR paid 6,000 dollars up front to a journalist to fly to afghanistan and investigate a story with how the previous VQR editor used to pay only 15 dollars a page for poetry and fiction. You just can’t compare payment for a two page poem to payment for an investigative story into a dangerous war zone.

  200. mimi

      I think discussion-games like this can be fun. Sometimes my husband and I play “Let’s pretend we’re getting divorced and divide up all the furniture.” It’s actually pretty amusing.

      Right on about the Kanye video – there are so many examples of this type of thing…

      And I like Janaka’s comment too.

  201. Matthew Simmons

      I really only have things to say about the first thing you brought up here, Justin. Bullying is terrible. But it takes more than bullying for a man to commit suicide.

      Heck, it takes more than depression. The ability to not simply contemplate of self-murder—which, in low, quiet moments, is something any number of us have, because of its perverse comfort, toyed with—is many, many miles away from the ability to carry out same. The switch that flips is terrifying because it is, in the end, unknowable.

      The desire to find a reason, and to place blame, is understandable. But the impulse to suicide is not. Genoways may be a dick, but he is not to blame. And I find the implication that he is more than a little troubling.

  202. MP

      Indeed. I know something about the Afghanistan reporting (and have read the extraordinary piece it produced), and that $6000 was to cover 6 weeks of unembedded reporting and travel expenses all over the country (on top of the writer’s fee), through Pashtun tribal areas. It’s a groundbreaking piece, and the writer probably ended up with less than a $1000. So before people complain about the costs, they should understand exactly what was being done. It’s also key to note that VQR has often supplemented ambitious reporting trips with grants from places like The Pulitzer Center and The Nation Institute. It may only have a <10,000 circ, but under Genoways it has always punched far above its weight.

  203. Roxane Gay

      Richard that’s how I feel about the suicide too. I don’t even know what to say other than to feel so sad that Morrissey felt like death was the only way to deal with his problems.

  204. Renee

      Are you implying that rampant cronyism is unique to VQR and not all university based literary journals?

      I think it would be postive if they start to publish material that readers like to read. But like I said, any real action here will really affect MFA programs.

  205. Roxane Gay

      Renee I think you have a chip on your shoulder. The world is rife with cronyism. Literary journals have not cornered that market. I don’t know where your rage comes from but if literary journals aren’t accepting your writing, you might look at your writing before you look to cronyism.

  206. Lincoln

      Well there is no harm in it, it just sometimes quickly becomes an i’d buy two jars of apple sauce instead of a gallon or orange juice game.

      Also, it seems like much of this money went to paying employees living wages (not commenting on Ted’s salary, which seems excessively high) and paying contributors for their work. These should be considered noble things, even if we, likely younger, editors would instead spread that money as thin and not pay ourselves or employees or writers and instead to produce as much content as possible.

  207. King Kong Bundy

      Dude looks like a bully, as well as a night watchman at an Alabama Walmart.

  208. Monch

      I was about to reply to Blake’s lamentation about the callousness of this discussion with the very rejoinder that Justin preemptively discredited, so I will direct my comment at the latter, with some proxy to the former. I don’t think the way the discussion about this has manifested should be shunned. Apparently, Genoways is a star editor, a talented force that lifted a lit mag from despair during an era when performing as such is a fantasy. Suspiciously, Genoways has ruled with an iron fist, treated employees poorly, done, in general, things that don’t paint the picture of saint. I feel like the discussion has appropriately called into question the stature of Ted Genoways, with most original comments bringing up this inquiry in some way while replies, making up a lot of this discussion, somewhat swerving off course into personal fantasies about what it would be like to have a lot of money. Genoways doesn’t seem to be summarily accused of forcing Morrissey to suicide, even in the original Hook article. The original article does a good job of painting broadly—Genoways’s success is a well-known fact, given his means, not some increase in fortune that only propels in proportion to Morrissey’s decrease in well-being, a revelation that is made only with Morrissey’s suicide occurring. (Unfortunately, Genoways’s success might not even be common knowledge, as the comments have pointed out, due to the lack of ubiquity of VQR’s name.)

      Genoways’s success is important to the conversation on Morrissey because of its threat of vanquishing any further comment on the suicide. If suicide is as commutative across other such instances as you say it is, unhindered by any kind of immediate context that might keep it from being waved into the company of other such acts culminating a long and silent struggle, then I don’t think Morrissey’s memory really stands a chance. Is it really disrespectful to ask? is Morrissey’s suicide a tragedy, or is it an injustice? It could be that some of us feel that Genoways will continue to have success now that he’s gotten rid of a nuisance, or something other crushingly cynical. Perhaps that’s not as callous to contemplate as it would be if Genoways, it could turn out, is totally self-destructive, burning everything he’s built at the VQR. Then, discussing marginalization would seem really silly and pointless; Morrissey’s suicide would take on a more melancholy expression. With how much success the VQR has experienced, though, I can’t help but feel like marginalization is part of the equation. But that’s just how I feel—not as objectively as the article or perhaps some of the posters on this site. That’s why I’m kind of glad the conversation has gone the way it has, since I was curious to see if anyone might feel the same way.

  209. MFBomb

      maybe the university based literary journals will start publishing fiction and poetry that readers like to read.

      ____________

      Oh, please. Do people who actually post this stuff read MFA-based journals? Most of the stories published in these journals are aesthetically conservative and accessible to the “average reader.”

  210. Adam Robinson

      I agree with you and Justin both. But because I suspect no one will read my actual post about this anymore, I want to make clear that I never placed blame on Genoways for the suicide. In fact, I said the journalist’s investigation seemed to beg the question. I said:

      “But reading the Hook article about it is halting more for the operational procedures of VQR than for the details about Morissey’s death, which is speculation and arguably the sort of connect-the-dot journalism that creates its own dots.”

  211. Renee

      Roxane,

      I know you and that guy who lashed out at me are friends, and if this world is rife with as much cronyism as you say that means I will be treated unfairly here and don’t have any chance here, but still:

      1) the world is rife with crime, hatred, ignorance, murder, backbiting, depression, deep fried fat. Should we discuss them because they are rife? Or not? Should we desire for less of them? Or not?

      2) if there is a problem with literary journals, shouldn’t we talk about it? Or not? Isn’t that what this thread is about?

      3) when it comes to what might be wrong with literary journals, do minority views count? If so, for how much? Are they allowed to be politely expressed without resorting to personal attacks and attempts to end a discussion?

      4) when did I ever say that literary journals are not accepting my writing? When did I ever say I was even submitting to literary journals? Or even say I was a writer?

      5) i don’t see where my post displayed any rage. Where is the rage? what did i do? And also, since this discussion is all about literature: i always assumed that great writers had all kinds of rage. how come now it’s not allowed?

  212. Roxane Gay

      Renee, you are mistaken. People who are virtually acquainted with each other are not always friends. This is not to say I would have a problem with being his friend but we barely know each other. I don’t know most of the commenters here. Get your facts straight.

      As for all the other stuff, your opinion is just as welcome here as any other but you have to be prepared for people to respond to your opinions, sometimes in ways you don’t care for.

  213. Steven Augustine

      Guy expresses a not-particularly-corrosive opinion, gets the double-team psyche-based ad-hom for his trouble. Why not simply disagree with his opinion and show how it’s “wrong”? It takes more thought but it’s a better read for the spectators.

  214. Blake Butler

      this thread makes me want to blow up america

  215. Steven Augustine

      you have to wait until america finishes blowing up the world

  216. B. R. Smith

      idk, that sounds expensive. i wonder if you could it on less than 6k?

  217. Mike Meginnis

      I really do think there’s a moral or at least a practical angle when it comes to the waste here, and when it comes to the refusal of many lit operations to actually ever think about how to become financially sustainable. We spend a lot of our time playing fantasy games about how writers’ lives could be fixed if only everyone were legally required to buy two books a month directly from presses when the presses often can’t be bothered to send out the books people pay for. This is the opposite of how you make something sustainable — it’s bad business. So is spending six hundred thousand dollars on a magazine with that kind of circulation.

      We can laud the journalism all we want, and I do think highly of it, but when you’re spending that much money to create a product that great and that important it would behoove you to think of a way to structure the machine so that it can run for decades and so anyone is fucking reading it.

      We sometimes fetishize losing money on projects because it makes us pure or because we should value literature, but that attitude doesn’t help writers write and it doesn’t help readers read — it just sucks up potentially useful energy and wastes it. I think Adam is right to want to recoup his losses on Publishing Genius, and I think he’s right to aim to be bigger than Random House.

      Not commenting on the suicide or anything related to it because what the fuck do I know. It’s awful. But it’s not me.

  218. Matthew Simmons

      I wasn’t referring to your post with my comment, Adam. I appreciate that you put that up front.

      My issue, I guess, is with the implications in the Hook article and a couple of other places.

  219. Michael

      Wow. I go to one week of faculty training, and look at all the good stuff I fall behind on…

      @Justin: Completely agree. Well said about “driving someone to suicide” and all of us dropping judgment.

      @Kyle: If VQR needed to bring in a 24 year old primarily because of a million dollar donation, and then she is given some sort of clandestine role running the magazine, then there’s a problem. If the name wasn’t VQR, a magazine like that should not survive or be trusted. That’s, to me, an ethical breech, which is particularly important when VQR has shifted to focusing on political, social, and economic issues as their primary focus.

      And we’re in agreement: VQR’s new editorial shift, at least in terms of what type of essays are being written, stories being reported, is important and valuable to all of us.

      @e’erybody: UVA has been very generous with their time and support of VQR in terms of the budget. Which is why seeing a windfall of 800K dwindled down to 300K is such a disturbing trend, a clear lack of leadership and focus from whoever is in charge of the magazine.

      And, broader, this type of mismanagement – circulated in places like The Chronicle, which is widely read and cited by administrators, chairs and deans – can endanger other university based literary journals. This absolutely can have a ripple effect on all of us.

  220. amy

      VQR has 2,400 subscribers and 941 newsstand copies, Wood said. The magazine’s budget is roughly $600,000 each year.

  221. Joy Lanzendorfer

      That guy looks mean.

  222. Renee

      I see it as a good thing. As in, if the pressure’s on (and all this rampant cronyism starts getting investigated), maybe the university based literary journals will start publishing fiction and poetry that readers like to read.

      Or maybe not, because the MFA programs will all be affected too.

  223. L.

      This guy is worst LROD reject. Also stop posting under a fake girl name

  224. Adam Robinson

      Thanks.

  225. alex

      haha, agreed. i once worked for a [small publisher] guy who could pass for his twin. dude was also a major bully.

  226. Steven Augustine

      you’d just have to plug all the high-pressure bullshit pipes and count to 20.

  227. Steven Augustine

      you’d just have to plug all the high-pressure bullshit pipes and count to 20.

  228. Janaka

      Ok, I read the whole Hook article, and I read all of this post–but I’ll come clean and say I haven’t read all 44 comments in the thread…

      I do want to chime in and say that while we’re no VQR I was… shocked is too mild a word… to discover what their operating budget is. I had no idea there was that kind of money floating around still in academic journals. I had no idea that kind of money was to be made as an editor for a quarterly with a circulation of 7,000!

      To give you my perspective: Black Ocean (which is not on the notable level of VQR, but is operating in the BLACK and not the RED, and has done decent for its 5 years in operation) operates on literally about 2-4% of VQR’s budget. We put out three books a year plus one annual journal = 4x a year. To the point of “they’re one of the last magazines in the world willing to pay for long narrative journalism pieces of the sort the New Yorker used to run all the time,” I’d say they’re one of the last magazines ABLE to pay for that. I would pay for dope stories all the time if I had a $600K budget!

      For fun (like what you’d do if you won the lottery): If I was making $170K a year I would go into war zones MYSELF and blog from some spiderhole while I rubbed elbows with freedom fighters in third world countries. But really, I’d settle for $70K. I’d take the remaining $100K I shaved off my salary and publish our annual journal on full-color, edible paper that would be distributed for free to starving college students. Then I would set aside $100K to publish 50 books of poetry by really transcendent poets, and not some people who had done favors for me. I’d set aside $100K for operating expenses and marketing that involved amazing parties and open bars at every reading, and then I’d take the remaining $300K to hire six of the most dedicated and talented staff members I could get.

      I think it’s awesome that their budget was that big. It’s inspiring actually. What’s depressing is how much of it seems to have been wasted on the self-serving, and the already privileged & wealthy.

  229. Richard

      Wow, that’s much smaller.

      As for not talking about the suicide, I guess for me, I wouldn’t know where to start. There is a lot of detail in that article, but how do I know what is the truth? It’s a lot of speculation and rumor. Beyond saying that it’s tragic and sad that he killed himself, and that it sounds like there was a stressful if not questionable environment at VQR, all we could do is speculate about what really caused the suicide, talk about our own relationships with people that killed themselves (or tried), and generally get bummed out. All suicides are sad, they seem a waste of a human life, but if you’ve ever been there, on the edge of it all, with a razor blade in your hand or a gun in your mouth, at the time, it all seems so overwhelming, and impossible to survive. Which is horrible, because I think that most of us feel like that isn’t true. We think “Please don’t kill yourself, we’ll figure out how to make things better, what can I do to help?

      And I think we all know as well, that if somebody wants to kill themselves, and isn’t just looking for attention, even crying out for attention (or simply a cutter), there is really nothing you can do to stop them. If they want it bad enough, they’ll get it. Aside from committing them to a hospital, which is also no guarantee.

  230. Richard

      Awesome post. Amen. Love the edible book idea too!

  231. Lincoln

      I think we should be thankful that UVA does (or did) believe in the value of this stuff enough to heavily fund a literary journal. The discussion of what one would do with the money gets a little weird. For one thing, we could kind of play this game with anything. The money spent on one Kanye West video could probably fund a dozen cooler experimental bands for years. For another, I don’t think we can so quickly compare different forms of literature here.

      There was a point in The Hook article where they contrasted how VQR paid 6,000 dollars up front to a journalist to fly to afghanistan and investigate a story with how the previous VQR editor used to pay only 15 dollars a page for poetry and fiction. You just can’t compare payment for a two page poem to payment for an investigative story into a dangerous war zone.

  232. mimi

      I think discussion-games like this can be fun. Sometimes my husband and I play “Let’s pretend we’re getting divorced and divide up all the furniture.” It’s actually pretty amusing.

      Right on about the Kanye video – there are so many examples of this type of thing…

      And I like Janaka’s comment too.

  233. Matthew Simmons

      I really only have things to say about the first thing you brought up here, Justin. Bullying is terrible. But it takes more than bullying for a man to commit suicide.

      Heck, it takes more than depression. The ability to not simply contemplate of self-murder—which, in low, quiet moments, is something any number of us have, because of its perverse comfort, toyed with—is many, many miles away from the ability to carry out same. The switch that flips is terrifying because it is, in the end, unknowable.

      The desire to find a reason, and to place blame, is understandable. But the impulse to suicide is not. Genoways may be a dick, but he is not to blame. And I find the implication that he is more than a little troubling.

  234. MP

      Indeed. I know something about the Afghanistan reporting (and have read the extraordinary piece it produced), and that $6000 was to cover 6 weeks of unembedded reporting and travel expenses all over the country (on top of the writer’s fee), through Pashtun tribal areas. It’s a groundbreaking piece, and the writer probably ended up with less than a $1000. So before people complain about the costs, they should understand exactly what was being done. It’s also key to note that VQR has often supplemented ambitious reporting trips with grants from places like The Pulitzer Center and The Nation Institute. It may only have a <10,000 circ, but under Genoways it has always punched far above its weight.

  235. Roxane Gay

      Richard that’s how I feel about the suicide too. I don’t even know what to say other than to feel so sad that Morrissey felt like death was the only way to deal with his problems.

  236. Renee

      Are you implying that rampant cronyism is unique to VQR and not all university based literary journals?

      I think it would be postive if they start to publish material that readers like to read. But like I said, any real action here will really affect MFA programs.

  237. Roxane Gay

      Renee I think you have a chip on your shoulder. The world is rife with cronyism. Literary journals have not cornered that market. I don’t know where your rage comes from but if literary journals aren’t accepting your writing, you might look at your writing before you look to cronyism.

  238. Lincoln

      Well there is no harm in it, it just sometimes quickly becomes an i’d buy two jars of apple sauce instead of a gallon or orange juice game.

      Also, it seems like much of this money went to paying employees living wages (not commenting on Ted’s salary, which seems excessively high) and paying contributors for their work. These should be considered noble things, even if we, likely younger, editors would instead spread that money as thin and not pay ourselves or employees or writers and instead to produce as much content as possible.

  239. King Kong Bundy

      Dude looks like a bully, as well as a night watchman at an Alabama Walmart.

  240. Monch

      I was about to reply to Blake’s lamentation about the callousness of this discussion with the very rejoinder that Justin preemptively discredited, so I will direct my comment at the latter, with some proxy to the former. I don’t think the way the discussion about this has manifested should be shunned. Apparently, Genoways is a star editor, a talented force that lifted a lit mag from despair during an era when performing as such is a fantasy. Suspiciously, Genoways has ruled with an iron fist, treated employees poorly, done, in general, things that don’t paint the picture of saint. I feel like the discussion has appropriately called into question the stature of Ted Genoways, with most original comments bringing up this inquiry in some way while replies, making up a lot of this discussion, somewhat swerving off course into personal fantasies about what it would be like to have a lot of money. Genoways doesn’t seem to be summarily accused of forcing Morrissey to suicide, even in the original Hook article. The original article does a good job of painting broadly—Genoways’s success is a well-known fact, given his means, not some increase in fortune that only propels in proportion to Morrissey’s decrease in well-being, a revelation that is made only with Morrissey’s suicide occurring. (Unfortunately, Genoways’s success might not even be common knowledge, as the comments have pointed out, due to the lack of ubiquity of VQR’s name.)

      Genoways’s success is important to the conversation on Morrissey because of its threat of vanquishing any further comment on the suicide. If suicide is as commutative across other such instances as you say it is, unhindered by any kind of immediate context that might keep it from being waved into the company of other such acts culminating a long and silent struggle, then I don’t think Morrissey’s memory really stands a chance. Is it really disrespectful to ask? is Morrissey’s suicide a tragedy, or is it an injustice? It could be that some of us feel that Genoways will continue to have success now that he’s gotten rid of a nuisance, or something other crushingly cynical. Perhaps that’s not as callous to contemplate as it would be if Genoways, it could turn out, is totally self-destructive, burning everything he’s built at the VQR. Then, discussing marginalization would seem really silly and pointless; Morrissey’s suicide would take on a more melancholy expression. With how much success the VQR has experienced, though, I can’t help but feel like marginalization is part of the equation. But that’s just how I feel—not as objectively as the article or perhaps some of the posters on this site. That’s why I’m kind of glad the conversation has gone the way it has, since I was curious to see if anyone might feel the same way.

  241. Guest

      maybe the university based literary journals will start publishing fiction and poetry that readers like to read.

      ____________

      Oh, please. Do people who actually post this stuff read MFA-based journals? Most of the stories published in these journals are aesthetically conservative and accessible to the “average reader.”

  242. Adam Robinson

      I agree with you and Justin both. But because I suspect no one will read my actual post about this anymore, I want to make clear that I never placed blame on Genoways for the suicide. In fact, I said the journalist’s investigation seemed to beg the question. I said:

      “But reading the Hook article about it is halting more for the operational procedures of VQR than for the details about Morissey’s death, which is speculation and arguably the sort of connect-the-dot journalism that creates its own dots.”

  243. Renee

      Roxane,

      I know you and that guy who lashed out at me are friends, and if this world is rife with as much cronyism as you say that means I will be treated unfairly here and don’t have any chance here, but still:

      1) the world is rife with crime, hatred, ignorance, murder, backbiting, depression, deep fried fat. Should we discuss them because they are rife? Or not? Should we desire for less of them? Or not?

      2) if there is a problem with literary journals, shouldn’t we talk about it? Or not? Isn’t that what this thread is about?

      3) when it comes to what might be wrong with literary journals, do minority views count? If so, for how much? Are they allowed to be politely expressed without resorting to personal attacks and attempts to end a discussion?

      4) when did I ever say that literary journals are not accepting my writing? When did I ever say I was even submitting to literary journals? Or even say I was a writer?

      5) i don’t see where my post displayed any rage. Where is the rage? what did i do? And also, since this discussion is all about literature: i always assumed that great writers had all kinds of rage. how come now it’s not allowed?

  244. Roxane Gay

      Renee, you are mistaken. People who are virtually acquainted with each other are not always friends. This is not to say I would have a problem with being his friend but we barely know each other. I don’t know most of the commenters here. Get your facts straight.

      As for all the other stuff, your opinion is just as welcome here as any other but you have to be prepared for people to respond to your opinions, sometimes in ways you don’t care for.

  245. Steven Augustine

      Guy expresses a not-particularly-corrosive opinion, gets the double-team psyche-based ad-hom for his trouble. Why not simply disagree with his opinion and show how it’s “wrong”? It takes more thought but it’s a better read for the spectators.

  246. Blake Butler

      this thread makes me want to blow up america

  247. Steven Augustine

      you have to wait until america finishes blowing up the world

  248. B. R. Smith

      idk, that sounds expensive. i wonder if you could it on less than 6k?

  249. Mike Meginnis

      I really do think there’s a moral or at least a practical angle when it comes to the waste here, and when it comes to the refusal of many lit operations to actually ever think about how to become financially sustainable. We spend a lot of our time playing fantasy games about how writers’ lives could be fixed if only everyone were legally required to buy two books a month directly from presses when the presses often can’t be bothered to send out the books people pay for. This is the opposite of how you make something sustainable — it’s bad business. So is spending six hundred thousand dollars on a magazine with that kind of circulation.

      We can laud the journalism all we want, and I do think highly of it, but when you’re spending that much money to create a product that great and that important it would behoove you to think of a way to structure the machine so that it can run for decades and so anyone is fucking reading it.

      We sometimes fetishize losing money on projects because it makes us pure or because we should value literature, but that attitude doesn’t help writers write and it doesn’t help readers read — it just sucks up potentially useful energy and wastes it. I think Adam is right to want to recoup his losses on Publishing Genius, and I think he’s right to aim to be bigger than Random House.

      Not commenting on the suicide or anything related to it because what the fuck do I know. It’s awful. But it’s not me.

  250. Matthew Simmons

      I wasn’t referring to your post with my comment, Adam. I appreciate that you put that up front.

      My issue, I guess, is with the implications in the Hook article and a couple of other places.

  251. Joy Lanzendorfer

      That guy looks mean.

  252. alex

      haha, agreed. i once worked for a [small publisher] guy who could pass for his twin. dude was also a major bully.

  253. Steven Augustine

      you’d just have to plug all the high-pressure bullshit pipes and count to 20.

  254. Steven Augustine

      you’d just have to plug all the high-pressure bullshit pipes and count to 20.

  255. Max

      Roxane –

      I ask because I really don’t know: do you expect you could do half of that with a budget of $100,000? Mike (see below) outlined a web-less/iPhone-less budget. What’s realistic for your magazine?

  256. Max

      I hear you, Lincoln.

      Without having personally seen the VQR’s balance sheet, I know they kept a lot of writers in the field in faraway places for extended periods of time.

      Consistently publishing articles that are–let’s just say–“totally a bummer” probably costs more and garners a smaller return. It would be a wildly inaccurate comparison, but I wonder how the VQR budget compares per-quarter or per-article-page to something like The Nation.

  257. Roxane Gay

      Max, I’m not sure I understand your question, but we could do everything but pay ourselves with even like $20,000, so with $100,000 I imagine we could do things I’m not even creative enough to think of. If I ever had that kind of money I would think about endowment before I thought about anything else so that cool projects could be sustained.

  258. Max Fenton

      Roxane –

      I ask because I really don’t know: do you expect you could do half of that with a budget of $100,000? Mike (see below) outlined a web-less/iPhone-less budget. What’s realistic for your magazine?

  259. Max Fenton

      I hear you, Lincoln.

      Without having personally seen the VQR’s balance sheet, I know they kept a lot of writers in the field in faraway places for extended periods of time.

      Consistently publishing articles that are–let’s just say–“totally a bummer” probably costs more and garners a smaller return. It would be a wildly inaccurate comparison, but I wonder how the VQR budget compares per-quarter or per-article-page to something like The Nation.

  260. Roxane Gay

      Max, I’m not sure I understand your question, but we could do everything but pay ourselves with even like $20,000, so with $100,000 I imagine we could do things I’m not even creative enough to think of. If I ever had that kind of money I would think about endowment before I thought about anything else so that cool projects could be sustained.

  261. Max

      Roxane, that’s cool.

      I just meant: could you really get the things you described (dedicated designer, website/iPhone app, advancing travel expenses, paying writers…) for $100,000.

      This isn’t my field. I’m curious.

  262. mimi

      that circulation list (link) is actually rather fascinating

  263. DN

      But note that he didn’t say ‘accessible’–he said ‘like to read’.

  264. DN

      But note that he didn’t say ‘accessible’–he said ‘like to read’.

  265. Max Fenton

      Roxane, that’s cool.

      I just meant: could you really get the things you described (dedicated designer, website/iPhone app, advancing travel expenses, paying writers…) for $100,000.

      This isn’t my field. I’m curious.

  266. mimi

      that circulation list (link) is actually rather fascinating

  267. Oak Genes

      Definitely ‘shitty.’ His other posts all rehash the same argument (seriously, this is an accurate outline): Person X is in the news for some mistake or wrongdoing; I have discovered using The Google that Person X is an Ivy Leaguer; therefore the Ivy League is crap, and/or I alone knew all along that Person X was bad, based on his being an Ivy Leaguer.

      Throw in some religiously-based anti-evolution ideas, a few veiled neo-Prohibitionist sentiments, and a lot of comments on what a good writer John is, and you’ve got it.

  268. Julie

      my estimation of Blake Butler just went up 10-fold.

  269. Oak Genes

      Definitely ‘shitty.’ His other posts all rehash the same argument (seriously, this is an accurate outline): Person X is in the news for some mistake or wrongdoing; I have discovered using The Google that Person X is an Ivy Leaguer; therefore the Ivy League is crap, and/or I alone knew all along that Person X was bad, based on his being an Ivy Leaguer.

      Throw in some religiously-based anti-evolution ideas, a few veiled neo-Prohibitionist sentiments, and a lot of comments on what a good writer John is, and you’ve got it.

  270. Julie

      my estimation of Blake Butler just went up 10-fold.

  271. Janey Smith

      Everyday is like Sunday.

  272. Janey Smith

      Everyday is like Sunday.

  273. Richard

      …and strangely enough, I love the Smiths. But I have issues. :-)

  274. Richard

      …and strangely enough, I love the Smiths. But I have issues. :-)

  275. i loled in real life

      All I know is that when I see his submissions in our inbox, I cringe.

  276. i loled in real life

      All I know is that when I see his submissions in our inbox, I cringe.

  277. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I think there needs to be a way we talk about systemic and institutional power that is more complex than us/them and accounts for the ways individuals have agency and operate according to their “preexisting wants, needs, desires, predispositions, fears, personal inclinations to stir or not stir the pot, etc.” within those systems. We can acknowledge the existence of a “literary establishment” (or establishments) without it being monolithic.

  278. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I think you are right that people seem to have been silent as compared w/ other “scandals.” I posted something brief at Big Other from a disability rights perspective, because I was disturbed by the ways Genoways talked abt Morrisey’s mental illness in his public statement, and abt the ways people were talking abt it in some of the discussion threads in the press pieces abt the incident, and received not one comment.

  279. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      …I think the workplace bullying stuff and the interpersonal stuff and the suicide stuff do matter as public conversations, not to speculate one people’s culpability, because I see why that’s super dangerous and unethical, but communities and collectives should think abt how we make our spaces safe for people with mental illness, and I think the ways people privatize violence and never comment on it public or communal spaces is part of what allows it to happen. IF there is any truth to what has been speculated, I think the rest of us should think abt whether there are implications for how the rest of create safer environments in the institutions where we live, work, etc. I think issues like workplace violence should be thought about as collective and communal problems.

  280. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I agree with all of this as this regards the individuals and their situation, but I also think there are ways in which our rush to dismiss any conversation abt the suicide part of this sort-of exposes a reluctance to talk abt any implications it may have for the rest of us — most of the spaces we all operate in are incredibly unsafe for people with mental illness, and I think many of the struggles folks with mental illness encounter need to be seen as social and cultural problems, not individual ones.

  281. d

      I just printed 1,000 copies of my journal for around $3,300. It’s two books (one 5.5 x 4.25, the other is 2.75 x 4.25) in screen-printed envelopes. Black and white. Design was $200. Website redesign will be around $200 as well. The distributor fronted the money, and I’ll pay them back for it via paid university speaking gig(s) in the Spring.

      No writers were paid, but I think I will pay writers next time.

      I think one can produce an amazing magazine for $5,000 a year.

  282. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I think there needs to be a way we talk about systemic and institutional power that is more complex than us/them and accounts for the ways individuals have agency and operate according to their “preexisting wants, needs, desires, predispositions, fears, personal inclinations to stir or not stir the pot, etc.” within those systems. We can acknowledge the existence of a “literary establishment” (or establishments) without it being monolithic.

  283. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I think you are right that people seem to have been silent as compared w/ other “scandals.” I posted something brief at Big Other from a disability rights perspective, because I was disturbed by the ways Genoways talked abt Morrisey’s mental illness in his public statement, and abt the ways people were talking abt it in some of the discussion threads in the press pieces abt the incident, and received not one comment.

  284. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      …I think the workplace bullying stuff and the interpersonal stuff and the suicide stuff do matter as public conversations, not to speculate one people’s culpability, because I see why that’s super dangerous and unethical, but communities and collectives should think abt how we make our spaces safe for people with mental illness, and I think the ways people privatize violence and never comment on it public or communal spaces is part of what allows it to happen. IF there is any truth to what has been speculated, I think the rest of us should think abt whether there are implications for how the rest of create safer environments in the institutions where we live, work, etc. I think issues like workplace violence should be thought about as collective and communal problems.

  285. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I agree with all of this as this regards the individuals and their situation, but I also think there are ways in which our rush to dismiss any conversation abt the suicide part of this sort-of exposes a reluctance to talk abt any implications it may have for the rest of us — most of the spaces we all operate in are incredibly unsafe for people with mental illness, and I think many of the struggles folks with mental illness encounter need to be seen as social and cultural problems, not individual ones.

  286. d

      I just printed 1,000 copies of my journal for around $3,300. It’s two books (one 5.5 x 4.25, the other is 2.75 x 4.25) in screen-printed envelopes. Black and white. Design was $200. Website redesign will be around $200 as well. The distributor fronted the money, and I’ll pay them back for it via paid university speaking gig(s) in the Spring.

      No writers were paid, but I think I will pay writers next time.

      I think one can produce an amazing magazine for $5,000 a year.

  287. An Incomplete Narrative (Or, Mutiny On The Bounty)

      […] you haven’t, The Hook’s original story is here. Also, lots of interesting comments at HTML Giant, too. Tip o’ the cap to TMR pal Tayari Jones for the link to Tom’s […]

  288. Dan Chaon

      “That guy looks mean?” Oh Joy….sigh.

      I think this thread might be dead, but I’m late to the party. I haven’t been paying attention until recently.

      I published a story in VQR a few years ago. I thought Ted was a great editor, and when I met him and the staff later, they all seemed like smart, reasonable people. None of them turned into a werewolf in my presence. I am happy to confess my ignorance of VQR’s finances, Genoways relationship with his staff, and Kevin Morrissey’s reasons for committing suicide.

      I don’t know anything about any of those things. And neither do most of the people commenting about them here.

      But Americans still have a deep love for their public lynchings. The level of bloodsport gloating in so many public forums is really alarming to me. This one is not the worst–the responses to Tom Bissell’s Observer article in defense of Genoways were especially hair-raising–but I have to admit that I’m kind of sickened by the joyful nastiness.

      A guy is dead. Another guy, who may or may not have been a “bully,” has had his career ruined. And a really good magazine–I’d say that Adam’s opening about VQR “sucking” set the tone here–is probably down the drain. I would have thought that HTMLGiant’s denizens would actually be happy about a lit magazine that wanted to pay writers real money and try to get a larger readership.

      As I say, I don’t know what happened at VQR and it’s actually probably none of my business. But it’s scary to watch the mob mentality at work, even among smart people. If I were y’all, I’d keep my head low to the ground….you never know how you and your life might be portrayed, once the Internets gets ahold of it.

  289. Dan Chaon

      “That guy looks mean?” Oh Joy….sigh.

      I think this thread might be dead, but I’m late to the party. I haven’t been paying attention until recently.

      I published a story in VQR a few years ago. I thought Ted was a great editor, and when I met him and the staff later, they all seemed like smart, reasonable people. None of them turned into a werewolf in my presence. I am happy to confess my ignorance of VQR’s finances, Genoways relationship with his staff, and Kevin Morrissey’s reasons for committing suicide.

      I don’t know anything about any of those things. And neither do most of the people commenting about them here.

      But Americans still have a deep love for their public lynchings. The level of bloodsport gloating in so many public forums is really alarming to me. This one is not the worst–the responses to Tom Bissell’s Observer article in defense of Genoways were especially hair-raising–but I have to admit that I’m kind of sickened by the joyful nastiness.

      A guy is dead. Another guy, who may or may not have been a “bully,” has had his career ruined. And a really good magazine–I’d say that Adam’s opening about VQR “sucking” set the tone here–is probably down the drain. I would have thought that HTMLGiant’s denizens would actually be happy about a lit magazine that wanted to pay writers real money and try to get a larger readership.

      As I say, I don’t know what happened at VQR and it’s actually probably none of my business. But it’s scary to watch the mob mentality at work, even among smart people. If I were y’all, I’d keep my head low to the ground….you never know how you and your life might be portrayed, once the Internets gets ahold of it.

  290. its actually lolled

      “All I know is that when I see his submissions in our inbox, I cringe.”

      That’s public admission of being an amateur.

  291. its actually lolled

      “All I know is that when I see his submissions in our inbox, I cringe.”

      That’s public admission of being an amateur.

  292. Roundup | HTMLGIANT

      […] finally, something I was right about. Remember back when we were talking about the suicide of Kevin Morrissey at the VQR? In a comment on that post, I argued that the charges of “workplace bullying” leveled […]