Out of the Midwest: Lofty Literary Goals

Regional publishing has long been the quiet conscience of American letters, and Minneapolis is one of its several unlikely centers.

The city is home to three high-quality small literary presses--Graywolf, Milkweed and Coffee House--and two strong academic publishers, as well as the groundbreaking Loft Literary Center, the nation’s largest nonprofit organization devoted exclusively to writing, reading and the book-making arts.

In fact, the Loft’s latest project may create a national presence for the Minneapolis literary scene. Later this month, it will begin nationwide distribution of Speakeasy, an ambitious new bimonthly “literary culture magazine.” The premiere issue, which goes on sale Aug. 26, is a handsome, full-color production. And, clearly, the Loft is not alone in its belief that the project may appeal to a substantial audience, since the first is filled with advertisements from across the commercial and literary publishing spectrum.

The premiere issue’s content is serious and quirky in interesting ways. There is a series of thoughtful--if somewhat earnest--essays in which writers ruminate on their place in the world. There is a first-rate excerpt--”Serving the Moloch of Mediocrity”--from Nick Tosches’ forthcoming novel “In the Hand of Dante.”

Oxford University scholar and literary biographer Hermione Lee assesses the impending republication of “On Being Ill,” one of Virginia Woolf’s “most daring, strange and original essays.” First published by T.S. Eliot in the New Criterion in 1926, Woolf typeset a new pamphlet edition of just 250 signed copies on handmade paper for her own Hogarth Press in July 1930. It was rediscovered in the rare book room of the Smith College Library by Jan Freeman, whose one-woman Paris Press publishes just two books a year out of Ashfield, Mass. Lee’s analysis serves as the introduction to the new critical edition of Woolf’s essay that Paris will publish late in the fall.

“On Being Ill,” Lee writes, “treats not only illness, but language, religion, sympathy, solitude and reading. Close to its surface are thoughts on madness, suicide, and the afterlife. For good measure, it throws in dentists, American literature, electricity, an organ grinder and a giant tortoise, the cinema, the coming ice age, worms, snakes and mice, Chinese readers of Shakespeare, housemaids’ brooms swimming down the River Solent, and the entire story of the third Marchioness of Waterford.”

Speakeasy’s first issue also includes a full complement of crisply written reviews of new novels and short fiction, including a wrap-up of upcoming first novels by David L. Ulin, editor of “Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology,” due out in October. Speakeasy’s editor, Bart Schneider, weighs in with a review of Jonathan Williams’ new collection of photographic portraits, “A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude.”

All in all, Speakeasy’s first issue is precisely what a quality regional literary review ought to be--aesthetically idealistic, socially conscious but undogmatic, parochially inflected but in no way provincial.

Schneider, who finds his first issue “a little stiffer than I’d like,” is nonetheless confident in its direction. “I wanted to see how far across the whole territory of serious literature we could go, and I think we’ve made a good start,” he said. “When the Loft Center hired me a year or so ago to do this, I began to think about how you could create a niche that would satisfactorily accommodate both writers and readers. Most magazines for writers tend to be too nuts-and-bolts-y. They don’t convey a broad sense of the place occupied by writers and literature in the culture. Magazines for readers, on the other hand, tend to be slick. Though many--like Book--do a nice job, they tend to be personality driven--they’ve all got John Updike on their covers and take a celebrity approach to reading.”

Schneider said his notion that readers might be hungry for something different took shape during the years he worked in one of Minneapolis’ “great independent bookstores, the Hungry Mind. I’d watch people come in and spend all afternoon in the store. They’d wander from one section to another and seldom hung around the bestsellers. My thought was to help create a magazine that would be like that experience of browsing a great bookstore.”

Schneider’s sensibility also was honed by the 15 years he spent editing the Hungry Mind Review--now published as Ruminator Review--an innovative little magazine known for its novel approach to involving writers with social issues.

He was recruited by the Loft Center shortly after it moved into an expansive new complex called Open Book in downtown Minneapolis. There, the 2,500-member center offers classes for writers, brings in writers from the country to mentor local colleagues and conducts an active program of readings and discussions. The center also houses the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, which operates a gallery and conducts workshops in fine hand-binding and letterpress printing. The magazine national distribution will be aided by a partnership with the for-profit Utne Reader, the leading compendium of writing from the alternative press, which also is based in the Twin Cities.

Schneider was first drawn to the Twin Cities by another of its signature cultural institutions, regional theater. “I was initially a playwright in San Francisco, where I was educated,” he said, “and I moved here to work with the Playwright Center, another nonprofit here. Shortly thereafter, I realized I’d hit the wall at 31 and wasn’t made to live the theatrical life. I realized I was really a literary person.”

That was in 1986, and, since then, Schneider has published two novels--both set in San Francisco. The first, “Secret Love,” uses the Free Speech Movement as its backdrop, and the other, “Blue Bossa,” is loosely based on incidents in the life of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker set against Patty Hearst’s kidnapping.

Like Speakeasy, it is ambitious writing made possible, in Schneider’s view, by Minneapolis’ physical remove from the major centers of literary commerce.

“Maybe it’s a little easier for us to maintain the ideal literature,” he mused, “because we’re so far out of the loop.”

Work in Progress

Gina Nahai is the author of three novels, “Cry of the Peacock,” “Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith” and “Sunday’s Silence”:

“I’m at work on my next novel, though I don’t yet have a title and it’s driving me nuts. This book is the story of an Iranian woman in L.A., the single mother of an 8-year-old son who is going progressively deaf.

“It’s really a story about irreversible loss, the sort you can’t ever overcome no matter what you try. It also is about how she, the mother, comes to terms with this loss for both of them.

“And, because it is one of my novels, it’s also about her heritage. There is a custody fight, since the protagonist’s own mother is trying to take the son because she believes in dealing with this tragedy differently. Part of the book is about the Old World stories the boy’s mother is telling her son before he goes completely deaf. They are something she desperately wants him to have, wants him to hear.

“I have a good first draft, but it’s hard to tell when I’ll be done. I always think I’ll be done next week, and I’m never done. I think it’s going to be another year. But there is still the title. Every time I come up with one and tell somebody, they say they hate it, and there it goes. Every time I think of one before I go to sleep, I wake up in the morning and hate it--and there it goes.”