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is closing again
Lit title's editor: I'll find a way to keep it alive
For the Oxford American, salvation wasn't all it was made out to be.
After being rescued from the brink of oblivion a year ago, the journal of Southern writing and culture once again finds itself in an existential crisis, forced to find new backing or shut down permanently. Editor Marc Smirnoff vows that it will be the former.
But if it was a surprise when the Oxford American pulled off last time, this time it would be more like a miracle.
Although extremely well regarded as a magazine of words and ideas, the Oxford American, like virtually all literary magazines, is a proven money-loser, and the number of potential benefactors with the wherewithal and the desire to support such a venture is getting smaller.
At Home Media, the Little Rock, Ark.-based publisher that bought the Oxford American last summer, did so in the belief that the magazine could be made to support itself. When it failed to meet advertising targets, At Home suspended publication.
The Oxford American began life in 1992 in Oxford, Miss., the longtime hometown of William Faulkner.
Smirnoff, the title's founder, is an opinionated Californian who learned about literature by working in bookstores, never having graduated from college. He chose Oxford as his adoptive home when his car broke down there on a cross-country drive, or so the story goes.
Among the contents of the magazine's first issue were poems by John Updike and Charles Bukowski about bowel movements. They were among the first of many well-known writers and poets to be listed as contributors.
In 1994, Smirnoff secured the backing of John Grisham, writer of numerous best-selling legal thrillers. Grisham was born in Arkansas and practiced law in Mississippi.
Under his patronage, the Oxford American enjoyed a long run of fiscal security. That came to an end in 2001, however, when the author, tired of pouring money into the magazine, told Smirnoff that it would have to become self-sustaining.
Smirnoff agreed, but events worked against him. Any hopes that the Oxford American could pay its own way were put to rest after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 cast a pall over the media economy. The following January, the magazine suspended publication.
After being bought by At Home in August of last year, the Oxford American relocated to Little Rock and published five more issues.
July 17, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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