The Descant office is always filled with many different, wonderful people who are dedicated to keeping the magazine going. But who are all of these fantastic people? Wouldn’t you like to know more?
Today, we bring you some insight into James Hatch, the Production Editor for our upcoming summer issue, D149: Summer and Smoke, which is set to launch on July 14. Click here for a sneak preview of the issue — and read on to get to know James …
DESCANT: What brought you to Descant? What is your role at the magazine?
James: After completing my Master’s degree in English literature, I was looking to transmute my academic background into a publishing-oriented foreground. For obvious reasons, a literary journal struck me as the ideal venue to do just that. My role at Descant is chiefly editorial: copy editing, proofreading, corresponding with authors about proposed changes to their work etc. — basically compiling and polishing all of the submissions. I’m also responsible for organizing and promoting our launch event in July.
D: When you’re not helping out on new issues of Descant, how do you fill your time? Tell us a little about yourself.
J: When I’m not at Descant, I can usually be found at Roy Thomson Hall —where I work part time as an usher — or sauntering through vineyards and valleys with my partner in Niagara. I also volunteer as an editorial assistant at Musicworks Magazine.
D: Tell us about your creative life. Any current or forthcoming projects?
J: I have a few projects on the go, including a long symphonic work of fiction that traces the latitudes and limitations of sublimity in art. I’m also working on a critical essay on George Orwell entitled “Orwell and the Need of Fatality: Incest in Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
D: Could you share with us a little about your creative process?
J: As soon as I finish writing anything — which is rare — I’m immediately unhappy with it. I’m suspicious of how anyone can be wholly satisfied by “finishing” something so infinitely and ontologically permutable.
D: What would be your ideal theme for a future issue of Descant?
J: I would be interested to see an issue devoted to spiritualism, particularly in keeping with the American tradition. At Descant, we’ve recently begun work on a forthcoming “Ghosts” issue, but I think something more in the spirit of James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover would be really compelling and generate a lot of interesting submissions.
D: What kind of submissions would you like to see more of coming in to the journal?
J: I’ve long been intrigued by the possibilities of a sort of ‘literary diary’ genre of writing, in which the author uses a book or a story or a poem as a sort of foil for their own experience. I wasn’t entirely sure what that would look like until I read Alberto Manguel’s essay “Reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain,” which I feel serves as an exemplary model. Literature, after all, doesn’t constitute its own circumscribed reality; rather, it bleeds into our own, elucidating and disfiguring the way we perceive and interact with world around us. I’d like to see more works written in that spirit.
D: What are you reading/ watching/ listening to at the moment? Tell us about it.
J: These days I’ve been dabbling in my usual summer fare. I’ve recently picked up Nabakov’s Speak, Memory for the second time; it’s a superlative memoir and a great book in which to lose one’s self. Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives and James Salter’s Dusk have also found their way back to me in the last few weeks. As for music, I’ve grown very fond of Ravel through my job at Roy Thomson Hall and, for some inexplicable reason, I’ve also recently renewed my love of Pearl Jam.
D: Which blogs or websites are you faithful to these days? What’s the appeal?
J: Unfortunately, I’m very estranged from the blogosphere and the only websites to which I’m faithful are my email accounts. I do, however, frequently visit a beautiful and informative raw veganism blog entitled “Barefoot and Frolicking,” which has a unique appeal to me.
