On any given day, Asia Writes, an “up-to-date resource for writers in the Asia Pacific region or of Asian origin”, receives hundreds of calls for submissions from literary journals, both print and online. These they tweet or post for their “followers” — not members of some terribly secretive and archaic cult, but aspiring writers living in the region and beyond. The network may not yet be immense (about 3,000 plus on Twitter and Facebook) but it’s rapidly growing, accurately reflecting how propagative the journal scene is. You only have to browse the ‘Opportunities’ section of the Asia Writes Web site, which provides listings and links, to see how ‘small magazine’ publishing is flourishing. There’s a heady profusion of them worldwide — a Google search for ‘literary journal’ runs into millions — and in India too things seem to be warming up nicely.
Once Upon a Time…
Literary magazines, or ‘small magazines’ (not meant as a pejorative but as a means to distinguish them from big-business, commercial magazines), have been in circulation in the UK, where they first appeared, since the 1800s. The Edinburgh Review, for example, was founded as early as 1802 (its Web site offers a downloadable PDF file of the very first issue), followed by the Westminster Review in 1824 and, more famously, the right-leaning Spectator in 1828.
In the United States, among the oldest and most prominent literary magazines are the North American Review (founded in 1803) and the Yale Review (1819). The latter, published by Yale University, included contributors such as Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Eugene O’Neill, H.G. Wells and John Maynard Keynes.
The movement gathered strength in the 20th century: Poetry Magazine, published in Chicago from 1912, has grown to be one of the world’s most well-regarded journals (it featured one of T.S. Eliot’s earliest, and most famous, poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock); and even those who have only a passing interest in the literary world would be familiar with the London-based Times Literary Supplement that first appeared in 1902.
With the rise of the independent press in the mid-20th century, the number of small magazines rapidly increased. Small magazines also executed substantial literary influence; The Kenyon Review, for instance, published in Ohio, USA since 1933, is considered to have embraced and shaped New Criticism that dominated Anglo-American literary criticism at the time. This period also saw, in 1951 in London, the founding of Nimbus, “A Magazine of Literature, the Arts, and New Ideas”, widely regarded as an important cultivator of English modernism, while across the channel, The Paris Review was started in 1953 for, as advisory editor William Styron wrote in the founding issue, “the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe grinders. So long as they’re good.”
The idea, of course, was to provide space for the marginalised, the new, the uncommon. And that could well be the agenda of all small magazines, no matter where in the world they are published: To promote literature — in a broad, all-encompassing sense of the word — through poetry, short fiction, essays, book reviews, literary criticism and biographical profiles and interviews of authors.
The Hungry Generation
In India, the small magazine gained strength in the culturally rich atmosphere of the 1950s and 60s in a movement to publish literature in regional languages.
In Bengal, there was an invigorating, small magazine culture, beginning with Kallol, published in 1923 by a group of young writers including Premendra Mitra, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and Buddhadeb Basu. It was followed by journals such as Kabita and Parichay. Yet, the truly exciting period was the early 1960s, the time of the Hungry Generation, a literary movement launched by Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury, Samir Roychoudhury and Debi Roy. This group challenged accepted norms of expression, opting for experimental content and forms. The movement had wide-reaching consequences, influencing Hindi, Marathi, Assamese and Urdu literatures. The 1970s saw the “Kaurab cult” with the publishing of the cultural magazine Kaurab. A number of cult figures, such as Swadesh Sen, Kamal Chakraborty, Barin Ghosal, Debajyoti Dutta, Pranabkumar Chattopadhyay, Shankar Lahiri, Shankar Chakraborty and Aryanil Mukhopadhyay (the current editor), are associated with it.
After experimental, modernist poet Bal Sitaram Mardhekar burst into the Marathi poetry scene in the mid-1940s, a number of “laghu aniyat kaleek” or small non-periodical magazines — both ephemeral and long-lasting — sprang up in the next three decades. These included Shabda (published by reputed writers Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and Ramesh Samarth), Vacha, Aso, Bharud, Lru and Rucha, which featured the non-conformist, anti-establishment and radical writings of well-known Marathi poets, including Namdeo Dhasal, Vasant Abaji Dahake, Vasant Dattatreya Gurjar, Vilas Sarang, Tulsi Parab and Manohar Oak. The Marathi little magazine movement lost momentum in the 1970s and 1980s, but a resurgence in the 1990s saw the founding of journals Abhidhanantar, Sausthav and Shabdavedh. According to the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Marathi Literature, “The focus of these magazines is their insistence on locating contemporary Marathi poetry in the context of the tremendous social changes that have taken place due to globalisation and the policies of the Indian Government like liberalisation and privatisation.”
Little magazines continue to play an important role today in preserving indigenous literature and providing a platform for regional writers.
What’s the Problem?
Why I quit smoking That clichéd stuff about labours of love? At times the two don’t go together, labour and love. There are nights when I scowl into the computer screen wondering why I do this. I hate it. It’s driving me mad. I need a cigarette. Then dawn breaks. The poetry page is done; it looks beautiful. And I’m in love again. Online literary journal editors are horrendously fickle.
(This story appears in the 08 April, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
This is a great article. I have recently heard that America has more literary magazines than any country in the world. That seemed surprising, but maybe it's true. Anyway, if you're interested in reading reviews of contemporary lit mags, our site reviews hundreds of journals. http://www.TheReviewReview.net Cheers, Becky Editor,The Review Review
on Apr 6, 2011