HR 34 Editorial

The economy is on everyone’s mind these days, but it’s helpful to remember that this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. I used to joke that every time I got a degree I found the country plunged into recession. It made finding work a little bit harder and meant that I had to do more things I didn’t like. But adversity is nothing new to people in the arts, and I sometimes think recessions are less painful for us, inured as we are by years of scrimping to the pain that those in more lucrative industries feel.

One bright spot on this otherwise gloomy horizon, however, is the announcement of an interesting new position at the Southern Review. Effectively a two-year postgraduate fellowship, the Southern Review Resident Scholar is a combined editorial and teaching position modeled, according to editor Jeanne Leiby, on “the job I wanted when I graduated from school.” It’s a fabulous opportunity and one that I, too, would have given my eye teeth for at a certain point in my career, and the only tragedy will be the disproportionate number of overqualified applicants. Still, it’s cheering to think that someone is creating professional opportunities for people who love writing, especially at a time of economic contraction.

We at Harvard Review certainly love writing, and we are absolutely delighted by the variety of talent represented in this issue. We begin by introducing two new editors: Major Jackson (poetry) and Nam Le (fiction), both accomplished writers in their own right. Our fiction this time includes a powerful story by Adam Braver about the autopsy performed on JFK, a modern fable by Karen E. Bender, and Kevin Moffett’s gentle tale of the elderly lady and the Civil War re-enactor. In addition, we are pleased to present Michael Cohen’s “A Retiree Reads Proust and Montaigne”—for me, a model of what literary criticism can be—plus linguistically inventive poetry by Becky Thompson, Garrett Hongo’s expansive, lyrical verse, and an essay on growing up in the Texas Panhandle by first-time author Jacqueline Gill. I also want to thank our tireless visual arts editor, Judith Larsen, for coming up with another set of great ideas: in this issue, paintings by Philip Guston, as well as a series of tape drawings by Christine Hiebert composed especially for Harvard Review.