Meta

Somehow the issue of my resignation from Northwestern has come up three times in the last week, in three different ways, and I’ve found myself flashing back to the experience of sitting with two of my dean’s flunkies, trying to explain to the pair what a stupid mistake they were making in not ending the idiot-dean’s censorship.

“Because,” I tried to explain without having it sound like a threat—truly, though I did not know the two of them, I meant it not as a threat but as a sharp collegial warning, an earnest advance apology—"when you have a major work coming out that is all about championing academic freedom, you can’t just quietly brook censorship.”

Flash forward ten years, and I was still mired in disappointment (and that tablespoon of regret) at having accidentally caused the end of Atrium. For the magazine was such a gem. The combination of the high design (especially the brilliantly subversive covers) with small textual charmers. Even if we only managed to put out one a year, they all felt urgent somehow.

So of course, when Heterodox Academy hired me last June to do a quarterly periodical for them and asked me what I thought it should look and feel like, I brought copies of Atrium to New York to show them.  (I’ll admit I did not bring the issue that caused the idiot-dean’s censorship. It was called “Bad Girls,” don’t you know.) They got it, and I had to act quickly, because they wanted one out before the end of the year.

As we went to press with the first one—on the theme of “The Nerve”—I kept wondering to myself if this was really happening, a recreation of the fantastic form of Atrium, but now as a periodical explicitly about fighting censorship. About the fish that swims against the school. Should I laugh, I wondered? Or just be grateful.

I don’t pick the themes alone—we do it as a team, with pleasure, the way we used to do in my program at Northwestern—but it is interesting how each inquisitive theme feels a little bit like shooting a pea through a straw at the neck of the idiot-dean: The Nerve; Discipline; Power; Class.

I had wondered if I was going to enjoy editing academics trying to write like mainstreamers. As it turns out, I love it. A surprising number are really quite good at it, and for those who aren’t, it feels a mitzvah to be able to take the fine idea or story they have and shit-polish away, as one of my in-house colleagues calls it as she watches me do it.

The staff graphic designer they hired (Janelle Delia) is astoundingly good at her task. I can say to her, “What if you used an image of x?” and she’ll either find exactly what I didn’t realize I was imagining, or she’ll go orthogonal and come back with something perfectly startling. The online version is pretty, but the print editions take my breath away. (Here; here.)

I love all my children, as they say, but a few are my darlings. In “The Nerve” those were Peggy Mason’s (perfectly paired with a self-portrait by Riva Lehrer, above) and Nate Tenhundfeld’s and Geoffrey Miller’s (Prometheus…genius).

In “Discipline,” they are Kathryn Lynch’s (she brings the perfect touch), Paul Vasey’s (the section breaks in the print edition are lipstick smears), and an essay I solicited from my spouse and his academic writing partner after a contributor backed out and I needed a quick fill-in. The last (shown below) is paired with a painting we commissioned by a South Side artist, which is exactly right, as the article refers to the ivory tower of Hyde Park.

The back of the second issue's cover is an Easter egg that, so far, no one seems to have found. (It was also the first time I ever had to fact-check a recipe.) The dek for that one – "boil until sauce thickens" – came naturally.

Each time I get away with publishing a piece that feels like it will get me in trouble, I get to remember I now work at a place that exists for the sake of troublemakers. Which all feels very meta: an HO-scale model train set carried home on the El; Chihuly glass; turducken.

And do you know what? When I go the printer to approve the proofs, I literally sign off on them. Like the kiss on the baby’s  forehead just before dreamy sleep. The printing press goes whirr, whirr, whirr. I like to watch.