The struggles of the little magazines.

THE DEMISE of the main print magazine of creative writing in Queensland, Imago, has gone unremarked. After some thirteen years, this is a setback to the local literary community, especially just when there are signs that it is developing a stronger sense of itself. The demise prompts some general questions about the place of little magazines in Australian culture today.

Literary magazines have traditionally played an important role, providing outlets for writers and channelling readers into audiences with common interests if divergent tastes. Today an increasing number of interest groups has emerged to claim the function of connecting writers and readers. Indeed, a whole new managerial industry of facilitators has taken it upon itself to decide what is good for readers, so much so that the autonomy of readers is being lost in the battle over them waged by these vested interests. Donald Horne recently commented that the idea of a so-called "arts industry", as applied particularly to writers, has been misguided.

Currently a costly government program is campaigning for Australians "to rediscover the pleasure of reading". This is yet another facilitating intervention, always involving self-interest, under the guise of telling readers what is good for them and thereby benefiting the community.

In this climate the dissemination of literature threatens to overshadow the literature itself. Publishing, publicity, prizes, festivals, bodies dispensing grants and advice, arts planners can all do good but they can also create a hype and an industry that swamps the primary producers and consumers, writers and readers, encouraging cults of celebrity, the new and the fashionable. Writers feel stressed, readers feel hectored. There is a diffusion, a scramble, a lack of focus, as a glance at the reviewing columns indicates. As Malcolm Bradbury commented: "Our most successful books are books of lists, telling us what is in and what is out, though books are usually out before they even come in."

Just as c-books failed to replace printed books, e-magazines are no replacement for printed ones, certainly in regard to building up readership, though they may have a place.

Little literary magazines--they are all little in Australia, including the most successful--have always been a steadying and stimulating influence. Today they are battling as never before. What place is there for them in the contemporary scene, especially the non-metropolitan ones outside Sydney-Melbourne?

To complicate matters, Brisbane, unlike the other capital cities, does not have a rich history of literary magazines, possibly because leading literary spirits have previously moved south, closer to publishing outlets.