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I was cruising around on Substack, and I came across a new alt-lit webzine that I hadn’t seen before.
There are a lot of these on Substack. I think of Republic of Letters and The Metropolitan Review as being the first to appear.
Maybe ROL or TMR will eventually become the standard bearers in culture writing. They will replace the (often unreadable) The New York Review of Books and the (notoriously biased) Sunday NY Times Arts section.
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I looked to see what interesting twist this new alt-lit webzine might provide. But it appeared to be a fairly routine lit-mag. Poems, stories, reviews. I checked to see if I recognized any of the contributors. I did not. Probably, they are young people just starting out.
The fact that this webzine is starting now, and not several years ago when Substack was new, might hurt their chances of success. They might be a little late to the party.
But if there’s a spark there, if the founders have enough talent or personal charisma to create a buzz and some excitement around their project, they have a chance.
Timing is important, but it’s never the wrong time if genuine talent is involved.
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I think of that wave of literary webzines that appeared in the 2000s: Hobart, HMTLGIANT, The Rumpus, Muumuu House, Tyrant Books.
People were skeptical of these webzines at first, being totally online. But they looked cool, they were fun to read, and as it turned out, a lot of interesting writers came out of them: Tao Lin, Blake Butler, Jordan Castro, Stephen Elliott being some obvious examples.
Oftentimes, these people created the platforms themselves, as well as contributed to them. That’s really all it takes. Just one person. With ability. And energy. And a cultural moment that is eager for something new.
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