In 1985, I became editor of Review and held the post for twenty years. How I lasted so long as editor remains a mystery to me. But one reason was obvious from the moment I took charge: no one else actually wanted it. Some history may explain this.
Review came into existence when Latin American prose fiction became an important presence in U.S. literary culture, beginning in the nineteen sixties. The 1970 publication of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude was the lightning bolt that made the entire English-speaking world sit up and take notice. A single individual, now largely forgotten, was responsible for the initial burst of translations of Spanish American authors like the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and the poet Nicanor Parra, both of whom appeared for decades at the Center for Inter-American Relations, absorbed by the umbrella organization, the Americas Society, in 1985, at 680 Park Avenue. That entrepreneur was the Venezuelan intellectual José Guillermo Castillo, an affable man of impeccable taste who seemed to know everyone in the Latin American cultural cosmos.
Supporting Castillo’s efforts, the Center for Inter-American Relations began publishing Review in 1968. It was a modest publication, an annual compendium of reviews of Latin American books published in the United States. The bibliographic nature of Review also yielded two free-standing bibliographies: Suzanne Jill Levine’s Latin American Fiction and Poetry in Translation (1970) and Marjorie Engber’s Caribbean Fiction and Poetry (1971). These bibliographic efforts also produced a collective realization: there was so much interest in Latin American writing that producing an annual bibliography would mean producing something like an annual encyclopedia.
José Guillermo Castillo retired from the Center’s literature program in 1972 and was replaced in 1973 by Ronald Christ, a Borges scholar, who was also editor of the journal, assisted by consultant Emir Rodríguez Monegal and associate editor Rosario Santos, a full-time employee of the Center. The dowdy bibliographic compilation metamorphosed into a stylish literary journal that came out three times a year with focuses on specific authors—Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz, among many others. This focus concept characterized the magazine throughout the nineteen seventies. In 1978, Rosario Santos became the director of the Center’s Literature Program, with Ronald Christ now serving as consultant. In 1980, Luis Harss, the literary journalist who first used the term “Boom” to describe the explosion into prominence of the Spanish American novelFootnote1, took over as editor. His tenure lasted until 1984.
The dilemma that plagued Review’s first three editors was how to define the magazine. Born as a service publication, it became a journal of literary criticism in the 1970s, and by the 1980s was beginning to look more and more like an academic journal. The president of the Center for Inter-American Relations, Russell E. Marks, and the Managing Director, Leslie M. Van Derzee, thought we might take a cue from the Americas Society art gallery, which showcased new and traditional art forms. They decided, in short, that Review had to change direction. This was the situation in 1985 when I became editor. Lori M. Carlson became Managing Editor, assisted by Daniel Shapiro, who could not foresee at that moment that he was embarking on a career entailing many twists and turns, one that would make him into a professional editor, a literary entrepreneur, and a cultural diplomat of sorts. He would ultimately be Review’s salvation. So, we were a new cast of characters, one eager to put behind it the unhappy conflicts of the past. There had been sporadic dissension and turbulence involving editors, readers, and contributors since 1973, and there was considerable bad blood, the inevitable result when culture and politics clash. If the magazine was to survive, it would have to achieve political neutrality and take on a new look.
The new look came from Rudolph de Harak and Associates (later Poulin + Morris) and the new outlook came from the new editorial staff. Review would appear twice a year. It would no longer publish academic-style articles but instead introduce new authors or unknown works by established authors. It would also work more closely with the Visual Arts Program, whose importance was rapidly growing, as well as the Literature Program, which continued to bring writers, both individuals and groups, to the Center. The ever-faithful editorial board, people like Ida E. Rubin, Gregory Rabassa, Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, and Alexander Coleman, guaranteed continuity despite all the changes.
So how was I chosen for the editorship? Sometime in late 1984 there was an informal meeting of three people concerned about Review’s future: John Alexander Coleman, Alastair Reid, and me. We met in the elegant library of the Americas Society—where my daughter would be married in 2003. We were nominally there to peruse manuscripts and to try to set themes for future issues.
Suddenly, Alastair Reid, senior to John and me in so many ways, sitting at the head of the table, looked up and said, “What we need is one person to be in charge of editing the magazine.” He looked at John; they both looked at me. And I became the editor. I’d published in Review, but I’d never edited a magazine. My wife Barbara, an editor at New York Magazine at the time, had been doing copyediting work for the magazine, so I knew I could rely on her judgment in many areas, but I also knew I was standing at the bottom of a steep learning curve. I was paid a nominal honorarium, but I could be fired at a moment’s notice by the board of directors of the Americas Society, which could also simply terminate the magazine, since our funding depended on the largesse of patrons like Amalia Fortabat.
There were many reefs and shoals to be navigated: the Americas Society had its own art gallery as well as a music program. For decades it had also been a gathering place for visiting Latin American authors, but the Americas Society saw its principle mission as public policy with regard to Latin America. Culture, while important, had a secondary role. This meant, inevitably, we had to be sensitive to the cultural and political concerns of all those involved with the Americas Society. Also, the magazine, following President Marks’s mandate, had to coordinate its efforts with the other cultural sections of the Americas Society—art, music, and, at the time, Canada, which had offices in the 680 Park Avenue building. As you might imagine, my leeway as editor was miniscule: I was the servant of several competitive masters.
While we would redefine Review’s aims and goals, my first task was to clean up the mountain of manuscripts—solicited and unsolicited—left over from the previous editorships. Then convene a meeting of the advisory board, always the mainstay of the magazine, always loyal to its goal of presenting Latin American culture to an English-speaking audience. Thanks to the editorial board, I could not go too far wrong. And it was thanks to them the magazine’s standard of excellence stayed high.
My job was to consult and coordinate with the various agencies within the Americas Society, notably the Literature and Visual Arts programs. This often meant transforming lectures into concise articles. Translation was another dimension of my work: if we found a text we thought would interest our readers—García Márquez’s speech on the occasion of his friend Alvaro Mutis’s seventieth birthday for example—we would seize it immediately. Early work by established authors, excerpts from new work by emerging authors—all of that would have to be translated and edited. We all earned our meager keep, coordinating the efforts of the Literature Program—inviting writers, setting up panels, keeping the academic community informed. We were a small but tightly knit team: Managing Editor Lori Carlson was also Literature Director until 1989, when she left. Daniel Shapiro replaced her and, in 2006, became Editor of Review.
We always had to be ready to improvise if a unique opportunity arose. For instance, in 1999 we were offered the opportunity to host a dialogue between Mario Vargas Llosa and his old friend José Miguel Oviedo, then a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. This conversation would be a milestone in our history because it was carried out completely in Spanish. Clearly, our constituency was not simply English speakers interested in Latin America but New York’s vast Hispanic community. The Vargas Llosa-Oviedo conversation, among many others drawn from Literature programs, ultimately saw publication in Review.
All good—and exhausting—things must come to an end. I realized with the coming of the new century that it was time to hand off the editorship. Latin American literature had transcended the Boom, and new generations of writers and artists were making a name for themselves. When I relinquished my post in 2004, I knew I was leaving it in good hands. Daniel Shapiro knew the magazine’s history because he’d lived it, and the editorial board remained constant. Ultimately, seven years after the financial debacle of 2008, the Americas Society decided to sever its ties with Review. Fortunately, The City College of New York, CUNY saw that divestment as an opportunity. Along with academic publisher Routledge/Taylor & Francis, they absorbed Review and brought in Shapiro to continue as Editor and to guide the magazine into the future. So, Review has had many identities and, like any individual or institution, many ups and downs in its history. But it has survived and remained faithful to its core mission: to bring the best of Latin American culture to as wide an audience as it can.
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Notes on contributors
Alfred J. Mac Adam
Alfred J. Mac Adam, longtime professor of Spanish at Barnard College and editor of Review from 1984 to 2004, is the author of Textual Confrontations: Comparative Readings in Latin American Literature (1987) and other books. He has translated a wide range of Latin American authors, including Carlos Fuentes, José Donoso, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Alejo Carpentier, as well as Fernando Pessoa. In the following preface, Mac Adam reflects on the history of the magazine as it moves through the twenty-first century.
Notes
1 Harss first used the term in the Argentine weekly Primera Plana.