Editor's Note, Fall 98

     I went to New York in late May to a celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Hudson Review. Now 50 years is not actually such a long time for a litmag to endure; by my count there are some 15 in this country that have lasted at least that long. But The Hudson has been edited all these years by the same man, Frederick Morgan, although, there again, he is not alone in such durability: Theodore and Renée Weiss have put out The Quarterly Review of Literature since 1943, and William Phillips has been at the top of the Partisan Review masthead since 1936! (See, for evidence of his sustained trenchancy, his remarks on the neo-non-Marxists in this Spring's issue.) I went to pay homage to the journal that first caught my eye. My freshman English instructor wrote umbrella reviews of recent novels for The Hudson, and I thought that was cool. It so happened that I had also gone to The Hudson's 20th anniversary, at the 92nd St. Y. All I remember about that party is that I somewhat sincerely apologized to a writer I had never met before, but whose recent book I had savagely reviewed. (He's never forgiven me, neither for the review, nor for the apology.)

     At the 50th, I found myself sitting down for supper at a small table in the back with classicist/novelist/poet/editor/etc David Slavitt, whom I had known because he'd been a reviewer at Newsweek a few years before I got there. He was wearing two name tags, one bearing his own name (he has also written under the name of Henry Sutton) and one inscribed "Delmore Schwartz." (I didn't ask.) We were joined by Katharine Washburn, editor of Norton's new 1,200-page World Poetry (which includes one of Slavitt's translations), and by the distinguished poet/editor/translator/etc Louis Simpson. We listened dutifully to readings by eight poets - The Hudson in its dotage has become the house organ of the New Formalists, poets who believe in meter, narrative, and much else retro. Simpson was among the eight, as were two poets I've published, John Haines and Robert McDowell.

     After Mr. Morgan thanked everyone for giving him such pleasure over the years, the buffet began and we started dishing. Simpson said the real reason Ginsberg was kicked out of Prague was that he was running around a hotel corridor naked with a broomstick up his ass. Simpson dissed Auden and his epigones (Ashbury). Washburn allowed that she had come to the conclusion that MacNeice was the better poet. Slavitt quoted a line in which Spender had used two adverbs!! Washburn quoted a friend's parody of that very line. It was heady stuff, at least for a boy from the West Coast, and nobody mentioned money. Simpson heaped praise on Sister Carrie and The Shadow Line, which none of the rest of us had ever heard of - we all wrote it down and I've now read it: it's always fun to be turned onto something new by Conrad, but it's only a good, not a great, novella. At a table next to us, a poet/novelist named Frank Reeve, whose peasant blouse à la Tolstoy I had commented upon while we were both waiting in line for our first drink, was signing the celebratory toasts to the poet Laura Stevenson.

     I recognized only one other editor in the crowd, critic/curmudgeon/etc Hilton Kramer of The New Criterion. Only one ZYZZYVA subscriber, poet Lucy Day, recognized me. And I saw no black faces, except among the catering staff, and only one Asian, who turned out to be the wife of a contributor. I didn't mean to turn into a multi-cultist, but a woman I asked about the representation of women said she had been published by the Review and didn't feel particularly left out. She referred me to Francine Prose's piece in the June Harper's, which did a Gorilla-Girls count of women included in literary magazines, anthologies, and prize lists. Actually, there are a lot of women who edit litmags, and, it turns out, Mr. Morgan has now turned over The Hudson to his partner Paula Deitz.

     As I left the party, I finally realized that the man in the peasant blouse, who said he had a poet-friend in San Francisco he would send my way, bore a striking resemblance to the courageous Christopher Reeve. I asked a fellow observer if Frank Reeve were the older brother. No, I was told, the father. I now suppose I had gone to the celebration in hopes that some of that good-genes longevity might rub off on me, some of that gravitas. There is no greater gift from the gods than being allowed to do something you love to do, over and over again for a very long time. I would be happy to go to The Paris Review's 50th, for example, coming up in '03. Plimpton is still at it; in fact, I just saw his silvery mane bobbing about in The Last Days of Disco. As I said, if only some of that gravitas would rub off on me - the only feature I've ever been in was The Werewolf of Washington (1973, PG).