Editor's Column: Primal Needs, Primary Concerns

Abstract

T? I ' IRST, SOME demystification is in order. The questions put to-Mme once word came out that I had been named to succeed Domna Stanton as the editor of PMLA make it apparent that strange no tions about this position are afloat. Of the many who spoke to me at the MLA convention in Washington, DC, regarding my appointment, all but one asked, "When do you move to New York?" This query was often tailed by "And what will your salary be?" Then an intense conversation would ensue, in which I would be urged to use my new and unassailable powers as editor to remake PMLA in the image of the Ideal Periodical fondly held in my suppliant's imagination.1 If those are the common assumptions, these are the blunt facts: there is no salary attached to the editorship; there is no rent-free New York pied-a-terre waiting to accommodate the editor's relocation to the base of operations. I earn my living by teaching at the University of Califor nia, in far-off Los Angeles, a long commuter hop from Manhattan. As for having the autonomy of a baroque Sun King or a postmodern Huey Long, those are fantasies others may entertain, not I. Indeed, an agree ment to assume the duties of the PMLA editorship could be read in one of two ways: as the act of a fool or of an idealist (who in some circles is also accounted a fool). Either way, there is a major lapse in logic if this acceptance is interpreted as a shrewdly calculated move of self-interest. The notion of a PMLA editor whose cheeks are flushed with power is a misconception I find fascinating, as I try to comprehend how it ever got lodged in the minds of the MLA membership. If the maxim that best suits the occasion is "Man proposes, God disposes," it is the MLA Exec utive Council that acts as God, ruling on whatever proposals an editor might lay at its feet. One final fact for your edification. I am the third in the brief line of PMLA editors defined in the modern sense, following John Kronik, who held the post for seven years, and Domna Stanton, who recently