Literary Journal at SDSU Is Facing Extinction

Its bylines have included Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote “Them,” William Kennedy, author of “Ironweed,” Tom Robbins, who wrote “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” and a flock of foreign writers who make up the highly regarded literary journal Fiction International.

Home for Fiction International was San Diego State University.

But Fiction International has joined the homeless, and even its editors say its survival anywhere is threatened.

Larry McCaffery, an SDSU English professor and one of the editors of the 17-year-old avant-garde journal, said Thursday that the demise of Fiction International was spelled out in a recent meeting with the dean of the College of Arts and Letters.

“We’re probably two steps away from being dead,” said Harold Jaffe, McCaffery’s co-editor. Both are full-time, tenured professors.

McCaffery said he and Jaffe were told by Dean Paul Strand that the SDSU Press, publisher of the journal, is “moribund” and fighting for its own survival. Current estimates put its deficit at more than $70,000.

Therefore, Fiction International and all other publications of the Press, including what McCaffery called an “elite” journal of sports literature, are on hold.

Could Be Published Elsewhere

Strand and officials at SDSU Press could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

McCaffery said it is possible that the magazine could end up being published by the University of Illinois, Duke University or Johns Hopkins University, schools that have expressed an interest in the troubled journal. He hopes that he and Jaffe can remain with the operation regardless of where it is printed.

He said SDSU has entertained notions of selling the sporadically published periodical, and that makes him feel like the parent of a child of whom he no longer has custody.

“We’d at least like to be consulted about where it’s moved, but at this point,” he said, “who knows what will happen. Its future is very much in doubt.”

Cynics might wonder what a prestigious literary journal was doing in a marriage with SDSU in the first place.

“It’s exactly that suspicion--that San Diego and SDSU are shallow--that the school has been dealing with for at least 10 years,” McCaffery said. “I don’t think that SDSU wants to be seen in that light, and I’d be very disappointed if that is, in fact, the way we are seen.

“If SDSU wants to be seen in any other light--and I would hope that it would--it somehow has to find the support able to move it beyond this image of a shallow, backwater institution.”

Fiction International began in the early 1970s at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York as the brainchild of English Professor Joe David Bellamy, who, in McCaffery’s words, saw it “as a labor of love.” In 1983, Bellamy sold the magazine to SDSU Press for about $12,000, McCaffery said.

Became Co-Editors

McCaffery and Jaffe became co-editors, and the journal launched what McCaffery called an era of “non-traditional, radical, politically engaged fiction that became our focus.”

In the eight issues published in six years at SDSU, McCaffery said he was proudest of the one that focused almost entirely on Central America, featuring the prose and poetry of “some of the finest writers” in every war-torn country of the region.

The work did not go unnoticed.

In 1986, an international panel of editors and writers listed Fiction International as one of the five best literary journals in the United States. It was cited with such journals as the Paris Review, TriQuarterly and Partisan Review.

Problems From Outset

But, from the outset at SDSU, Fiction International had problems, which McCaffery said were intertwined with those of the Press.

He said that in 1983 the Press was operated by Roger Cunniff, a full-time history professor who worked “at least 40 to 60 hours a week” at the Press, in addition to teaching classes.

“Roger had a vision of SDSU Press expanding into a real university press,” McCaffery said. “He saw the acquisition of Fiction International as a steppingstone to convincing university and state officials that the Press ought to be funded in the way that most presses are.”

McCaffery said that, due largely to the reputation of Fiction International in academic circles, SDSU was recently awarded a master of fine arts degree in creative writing, the first such program offered through the California State University system. (The University of California system already offered master’s degrees in creative writing.)

Acquisition Cited

“When state university administrators were asked at their meeting in Long Beach why they gave permission to fund the degree after denying it for such a long time, they cited the acquisition of Fiction International,” Jaffe said.

Despite the reputation of Fiction International, and the degree program, the Press continued to have problems, meaning its deficit grew. Publication of the magazine became sporadic and undependable, McCaffery said, so much so that applications for grants became impossible.

“The one time we applied for an NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) grant, we got it,” Jaffe said. “And it brought us $10,000. Well, it only costs about $7,000 (a year) to fund the magazine. But, in order to apply, you have to have been published at least three times in two years. We haven’t even been able to average that.”

The irregularity of publication has left subscribers and contributors in the lurch. McCaffery said the backlog of unused manuscripts dates back three years.

Panel Formed

He said that, in 1987, SDSU empowered a six-member panel, consisting of three experts from outside institutions, to evaluate the Press and make binding recommendations. The study lasted six months. Recommendations included an annual subsidy of $150,000 that would fund three full-time positions and solidify the management of the Press for years to come.

“They also said if the university was not prepared to fund the Press that they should just scuttle it,” Jaffe said.

McCaffery said the university chose to ignore the recommendations, and now the Press is imperiled.