Introduction to Focus: Anthologies and Literary Landscapes

introduction to focus: Anthologies and Literary Landscapes Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Focus Editor It is no secret that anthologies are not highly regarded in the publishing world. One ofmy favorite statements on this subject comes from Jason Epstein, who was editorial director of Random House for forty years and received the National Book Award for Distinguished Service to American Letters. In Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, andFuture (2001), Epstein notes, "topical anthologies, unlike hospital wards and reading rooms, are oflittle value in themselves. They serve no literary purpose, usually find few readers and quickly go out of print." Epstein's comments betray a certain lack of vision shared by many—both inside and outside the publishing world—regarding the "literary purpose" of anthologies. A more progressive and optimistic view of anthologies locates their value in the topologies of the literary world that they create. Unlike the natural world, which has an objective (or at least intersubjective ) geography, the geography of the literary world is always already subjective: apurely human creation that anthologies serve to map. Anthologies chart courses through the literary world and are one ofthe primary ways through which we learn to navigate it. Anthology editors create discrete mappings or orderings ofa textual worldthat is so complex and dense that even the most encyclopedic mind can grasp only a fraction of it. Mainstream anthologies are those that take us to places that we feel we have already traveled. Such anthologies are strongly connected with canonical, disciplinary, pedagogical, and economic interests. They produce and reproduce spaces such as "American literature" and the "American short story" to the extent that these spaces feel as though they are natural features of the literary world. The fact that anthologies can make us feel as though there is a defined space called "American literature" or "American poetry" is a strong indicator oftheirpower. Anthologies are the productofmarket forces and ideologies and play a crucial role in canon formation anddisciplinary identity. Atopical anthology literally creates a place orregion—a topos—that can be easily visited or identified. Anthologies also serve canonical and disciplinary ends by having aformativerole in both: arguably, just as the American literature canon is shaped and disciplined through anthologies, disciplines themselves such as cultural studies and disability studies are established through anthologies. Anthologies chart courses through the literary world and are one oftheprimary ways through which we learn to navigate it. However, just as the natural world is continuously changing, so, too, is the literary world.Anthologies provide us with a snapshot of a place or region that will change overtime. Like the Heraclitean river that one cannot step into twice, the literary world is an ever-changing entity. Anthologies provide a momentary vision of a continuously changing literary landscape. The anthologies reviewed in this issue are exciting because they contribute to an understanding ofliterature as a plurality; as multifarious; as changing and evolving. Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Lauri Ramey's Every GoodbyeAin't Gone is an ideological intervention into the African American literary canon. By providing a wider and more varied landscape for African American poetic innovation, Nielsen and Ramey break down the commonplaces of African American experimental poetry anthologization. Melvin Jules Bukiet and David G. Roskies's Scribblers on the Roof serves to widen this canon by anthologizing a new generation of writers such as Pearl Abraham, Dara Horn, and Jon Papernick. Bukiet and Roskies's anthology effectively situates these more recent writers in a literary landscape with their more canonical peers, such as Cynthia Ozick, Lore Segal, and Max Apple. The remaining anthologies reviewed in this issue, PPIFF: AnAnthology, ParaSpheres, New Sudden Fiction, and Flash Fiction Forward, exercise the progressive, world-making potential of anthologies. Each is a topical anthology that is valuable for the space in the literary world that it creates, or recreates, as in the case offlash fiction anthologies. The literary purpose ofthese flash fiction anthologies is the establishment of new regions that challenge the conventions ofthe short story and raise important questions about the nature and function of narrative. Paul Auster's comments in his preface to The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry (1982) aptly describe the value of all of the anthologies...