I was doing some research into literary journals and found this hilarious and sweet “remembrance” by George Saunders about getting published early in his career in Quarterly West:
“Publication in Quarterly West was a huge and defining moment for me because it meant that, to somebody out there, I was making sense. I was not making sense to my boss, or to the co-worker who came in every day at precisely 5 p.m., when I was trying to get in my half hour of writing before the bus came, to tell me, again and again, in agonizing detail, the life story of Louis L'Amour, and I was starting to not even make sense to myself. And then, from Utah, a place where I had once been back when I did make sense to myself a hitchhiking young moron a` la Kerouac came this reassuring and sane voice, speaking to me as if I had not only made sense, but a unique kind of sense, the kind of sense they were looking for, a kind of sense they hadn't heard before but liked.”
Read the whole (short) piece here.
And if you’re in the DC area, be sure to buy your tickets now for Saunders’ appearance—with Susan Orlean—in the PEN/Faulkner Reading Series on February 1, 2010.