“From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, nothing ever came out straight”

Immanuel Kant (From Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Idea For A Universal History With A Cosmopolitan Purpose, 1784).

The Rail, as many of us call it, was named by the playwright (and our theater editor) Emily Devoti in the fall of 1998. It was initially created as a weekly pamphlet for L-train riders, a Xeroxed broadsheet folded in half, with slanted opinions printed in four columns on the front and back. During the planning of this new publication, the four original editors, Ted (Theodore) Hamm, Joe Maggio, Christian Viveros-Fauné, and Patrick Walsh (all of whom I met at a local bar, The Brooklyn Ale House), invited me to write art criticism. Eventually they asked me to help shape the editorial content. I was a bit reluctant to contribute so much of my time and energy to an activity that would seem to interfere with my own ambition as an artist. However, they were such passionate and knowledgeable individuals, and the Rail was becoming such a singular critical voice in the arts, politics, and the world around us, that I soon found myself envisioning a “Promised Land” where artists and writers could meet, share ideas and collaborate, as they had so intensely, in this city, in the past.

The Rail therefore served as a conduit for the freedom of action. As one of my favorite philosophers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, once said, “We do not act because we know. We know because we are called upon to act.” We may not be able to define the impetus that compels an individual to rise above his or her limitations and the wear and tear of everyday life, but we founding members all sensed that the Rail was the fire that sparked us. And somehow we knew that we were destined to have a collective voice.

In October 2000, I sold a painting for $2,000 to a friend and made the decision to spend the money, with an additional $500 from a friend of Ted’s, to launch the Rail as a real printed journal. Along with Fernanda Smith, who designed the Rail’s logo, Ted, Patrick and I agreed to carry out my proposal that the new format should be two inches longer than the Village Voice—a physical distinction that would highlight the differences in content. As a Vietnamese proverb says, “When you argue with an intelligent person, you can’t win. But when you argue with a stupid person, you can’t stop”: we came to a mutual agreement that by arguing with real passion, regardless of how divergent our viewpoints may be, if as long as we could transform that energy into tangible action, we would find ourselves in a perpetual state of becoming. Having been brought up in a family where divided politics was always a source of conflict, especially after the Tet Offensive in 1968, I recognized the Rail as a place where these kinds of differences could be brought together onto the printed page.

The only way I could perceive achieving this goal was to conceptualize the Rail not as ephemeral printed matter but as a work of art. In other words, I like to think of it as a social sculpture (a Beuysian concept that was pointed out by one of our writers, the painter Chris Martin as early as the summer of 2000; Joan Waltemath, on the other hand, thought of it as a Family of Minds). This way of thinking implies that one can’t become a perfectly free human being so long as one is a three-dimensional object in space because nature confines one in a thousand ways. In other words, since each individual spirit is imperfect because it is hemmed in by a particular body, the only possible free individual can only ever be realized is when he or she believes in something larger than him or herself. While we were working on putting the first Rail together, I remember reading Isaiah Berlin’s book Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas over in that same weekend. I was very taken with his insights into Herder’s notion of volksgeist­—the “spirit of the people”—which Herder conceived of as “people’s culture.” Except for its political amplifications which can be easily misread (as indeed it has), I came to identify with that belief that everything about an individual is to some extent the creation of others with whom he and she form an organic unity. An individual is made by education, by language, and language was not invented by one individual but by others. This therefore yields an organic process that resists any political or aesthetic dogma. As I wrote in my “Letter to the Artist” in the very first issue—a collective movement, based on a certain larger and governing intellectual premise. This idea has its roots in the rise of American bohemian life in 1930s and ’40s, when artists and writers supported each other in their struggle with and for the world, and to be an intellectual meant to be well-informed of each other’s fields of discipline. Yet, despite the disintegration of bohemia in the McCarthy Era, those individuals held on to their desire to be a part of the dialogue of American life, remaining at principled odds with conformity.

There is a stunning familiarity to this struggle in post-9/11 America. The pressures of conservatism and nationalism have the potential to breed a dispirited isolation among us while undercutting the ideology of liberal optimism. Such slow attrition can erode one’s resolution to stand firm alone and can also affect the individual’s ability to stand with others. This is why the Rail refuses to fall into the predictability of a so-called overarching editorial vision, which reflects just one voice. Unlike many other journals whose sole purpose is to carry out a specific agenda (whether left, right, or anything else with a label attached), the Rail’s editors control the content of their sections as they please. We cover arts and politics but make no demand that a common thread run through each section other than a preference for experimentation over complacency and lucidity over jargon. I like what Jonas Mekas said in his “Anti–100 Years of Cinema Manifesto”: “In the times when everybody wants to succeed and sell, I want to celebrate those who embrace social and daily failure to pursue the invisible, the personal things that bring no money and bread and make no contemporary history, art history or any other history. I am for art which we do for each other, as friends.”

Thus, we have made a commitment to keep the Rail free for our readers and open to the uncensored, diverse voices of creative individuals from every generation. We also feel as fortunate to have our roster of distinguished consulting editors, including as Elizabeth C. Baker, Mary Ann Caws, Douglas Dreishpoon, Raymond Foye, Susan Harris, Joseph Masheck, Alexander Nagel, Joachim Pissarro, Barbara Rose*, Richard Shiff, Katy Siegel, Robert Storr, David Levi Strauss, and Irving Sandler*, who contribute on a regular basis, along with the fact that 40 percent of what gets printed in our journal is by writers in their 20s and 30s.

Although in the twenty-four years of the Rail’s history, there have been many changes in our staff. While many staff members, contributors, and interns have gone back to school or furthered their career paths elsewhere, the Rail's continual process of reinvention has been eminently manageable. We are fortunate to have the wonderful team of section editors, who bring rigor to our journal across a variety of disciplines: our Artseen editors, Benjamin Clifford, Amanda Gluibizzi, Lee Ann Norman, and Jessica Holmes, our inaugural rotating Poetry editor Erica Hunt, our Film editors Laura Jane Valenza and Edward Charles Mendez, Music editor George Grella, Dance editor Gillian Jakab, Theater editor Billy McEntee, Books editors Elizabeth Lothian and Joseph Salvatore, Art Books editor Megan N. Liberty, Fiction editors Maisy Card and Will Chancellor, Field Notes editor Paul Mattick, Architecture editor Nile Greenberg, Irving Sandler Essay Series editor Alexander Nagel, and 1 x 1 editors Louis Block and Jorja Rae Willis.

The seasoned veterans and staff members who work closely with me, including Managing Editor Charles Schultz, his Production Editor Tyhe Cooper, the co-Managing Directors Jorja Rae Willis and Louis Block, Director of Programs Chloe Stagaman, and finally my co-curator Cal McKeever have been steady and attentive to our monthly publication schedule, daily NSE broadcast, and regular exhibitions.

We owe a great deal to those production assistants and interns who station the Rail’s headquarters five days a week, and we feel most fortunate to be blessed with the vision, dedication, and guidance of our board of directors: Tony Bechara, Dr. Elizabeth Broun, Juliette Cezzar, Dan Desmond, Susan Harris, Alex Glauber, Erroll McDonald, and Jeremy Zilar.

We are also extremely grateful for the support of the various government organizations, public and private foundations, and friends see Our Supporters who have consistently invested in our growth from the very beginning; and for the generosity of the countless artists who have donated their works to our annual operations and the ongoing endowment campaign. Hence the Rail is less a corporate entity than a social sculpture-in-the-making, or, better yet, a social sculpture that involves a multitude of hands that cultivate the fertile soil of a “Promised Land.” However vastly different it is now from the days of Walt Whitman, we all know that culture has always been carried out by those who are devoted to the vocation of art.

Despite the common wisdom that “If it’s free, it can’t be that good,” or, “When one pays for something, one appreciates it more,” what we’re doing as a collective is entirely removed from any pragmatic notion of supply and demand. In fact, everything we’re making is absurdly impractical. And contrary to how it may appear—effortlessly in good rags, with tens of thousands of copies on the streets—we do need all of your support, for keeping the Rail free and thriving is our unrelenting and life-long commitment.

Onward, upwards, in gratitude, with love, courage, and cosmic optimism,

Phong H. Bui

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History of the Brooklyn Rail

Originally written by Theodore Hamm

 

When playwright Emily DeVoti named the Brooklyn Rail in the fall of 1998, our intent was to create a broadsheet containing a short series of slanted opinions designed to be read on the L train back and forth to Manhattan. Along with three other original editors (filmmaker Joe Maggio, art critic Christian Viveros-Faune, and writer Patrick Walsh), we started publishing a double-sided, Xeroxed sheet on a weekly basis. Five years hence, I defy anyone to read an entire issue of the current Rail on a single train ride, even an F from Jamaica to Coney Island.

The original goal of the Rail was to provide an open forum for criticism of the arts, politics, and the world around us. Our cast has grown exponentially, as our masthead suggests and the paper’s content reflects. Phong Bui, one of the first to come aboard, has now taken on the role of publisher, and without his energy and talent as an artist and impresario we simply would not have a full publication to speak of. Here on the editorial side, I can say that even as the size of the paper has grown, our mission has remained the same: to provide an open forum for criticism and free expression.

All well and good, you say, but what of the pudding? Well, on the local, national, and international fronts, we’ve printed mini-manifestoes, hard-edged position pieces, and telling interviews. In our art and culture coverage, we’ve run extended critical treatments, in-depth analyses of the offbeat, as well as the occasional hatchet job. In so doing, we are clearly out-of-sync with PR-driven journalism.

But when one is surrounded by minds as lively and insightful as those of our Local editors Williams Cole and Meghan McDermott; or Express editors Christian Parenti and Heather Rogers; or Art editor Daniel Baird; or main Arts editors Emily DeVoti, Alan Lockwood and Ellen Pearlman; or Fiction editor Donald Breckenridge; or Poetry Editor Monica de la Torre, one just doesn’t tell these people to “tone it down.” Nor does one ask them to share a singular artistic, political, or, for that matter, world view.

This makes for a heady mélange of perspectives, which is our ideal, though by no means a universal one. Yet, personally, I find that criticism written in one voice becomes too predictable. The last time I checked, there were also several hundred magazines doing PR. As for any sort of specific agenda, aesthetically or politically, the Rail hasn’t one: the editors control the content of their sections as they please. The Rail covers arts and politics, but makes no demands that the twain must meet.

There are creative tensions that do arise for us, as they naturally should for any project of this size. In terms of models, Phong likes the mid-century Partisan Review, and the New York Review of Books; I prefer the Masses and the London Review of Books. We find common ground on the American Mercury and the early Village Voice, during its literary heyday. Lowbrow material, rest assured, also crosses our respective tables.

In terms of the politics of many of the Rail’s editors, sure, they do tend to lean leftward. Some readers may find this troubling. But we hardly apply a litmus test to prospective writers, as we’ve published work ranging across the political spectrum. We’ve run pieces critiquing major left intellectuals, and have had as many pieces pro-development as con. Of course, very few people knock liberal or conservative publications for not publishing left writers; such rejections, after all, are based on a distaste for “didactic,” “doctrinaire” or “dogmatic” viewpoints.

The Rail’s real commitment is less to a program than to a place, or better yet, to a set of traditions that place represents. We originate from, and declare ourselves to be in some way representative of Brooklyn, so we must pay homage to a more than estimable literary heritage. And often, though not always, that tradition has been sparked by unlikely matches of aesthetics and politics. Walt Whitman was an anti-slavery newspaper editor as he began to chant democratically, and Marianne Moore, modernist that she was, eventually wrote odes to Muhammad Ali.

Though Brooklyn has indeed had its share of heavyweights, I’m by no means suggesting that the Rail is yet entitled to be thrown into the same ring. What I am pointing out is simply that we originate in a borough that has long been a “Crucible” of artistic and political democracy, and that we are obliged to work in that tradition. Jackie Robinson, to be certain, never played for the Yankees.

My reason for saying these things is that our fate is not tied to the market. Our cover price is still nil. We are a nonprofit organization, for the moment funded almost entirely by private donations. Unlike other nonprofit publications, we do not have one particularly well-heeled investor greasing our wheels. This is starting to sound like a pledge break, so I’ll stop.

Caution: here come my bottom lines. In the first, and last analysis, and in this, the last paragraph of this editorial, I suggest that the following remains the ideal to which the Rail aspires—slanted opinions, artfully delivered. Criticism is our way of life.

 

The Brooklyn Rail, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, distributes its journal free of charge, and our devoted staff, editors, and contributors work on an entirely voluntary basis. Any donation made to the Rail is tax-deductible. Please see our website at www.brooklynrail.org for the complete archives.