Subject
Mr. Smirnoff, His Magazine, and VN
From
Date
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From today's NYT. For the entire article, go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/national/14OXFO.html
Here are some of the highlights, including a paragraph on Mr. Smirnoff's
love for Nabokov and Kubrick's "Lolita":
OXFORD, Miss., May 10 Marc Smirnoff has been kicked out of parties,
cussed out behind his back and branded a carpetbagger on the walls of
restaurant bathrooms all over this town of 12,000.
That may have been inevitable from the moment Mr. Smirnoff, an
incongruously combative Californian, arrived in this hyperliterary town a
living shrine to Faulkner and the written word without so much as a high
school diploma, and set himself up as the arbiter of good writing, music
and art from the South.
Now, with the magazine he founded, The Oxford American, on the verge of
dying after 10 years and 42 issues, Mr. Smirnoff, 39, may finally be
forced to pack his bags and take his tart tongue back where he came from.
Clearly, some people here would be grateful.
That Mr. Smirnoff ever got here was a fluke, or maybe fate. He grew up in
Marin County, Calif., never finishing high school, and educated himself in
a string of bookstore jobs. In 1987 he set out to see the country in a
beat-up BMW. The car died in Oxford, and Mr. Smirnoff, broke, ensconced
himself in a job at Square Books.
There, while sipping white Russians, ogling Ole Miss sorority women and
minding the bookstore's stacks, he says, he dreamt up the idea for a new
magazine for and from the South one that would fill a gaping void left by
glossy lifestyle publications like Southern Living.
To be sure, Mr. Smirnoff is not your average Mississippian, even for a
transplant, and he sticks out even in a place where fiction reading is a
close second to football in the firmament of pastimes. He prefers Nabokov
to Faulkner and dotes on Stanley Kubrick's film version of "Lolita." To
Mr. Smirnoff, The Oxford American is his young love, and it pains him to
wrestle with the idea that it will die at the age of 10.
He is still holding out hope, as are his writers, some of whom are praying
that the University of Mississippi or some other white knight will step in
to underwrite the magazine before it is too late.
"We won't believe we're dead," Mr. Smirnoff said, "until we are."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/national/14OXFO.html
Here are some of the highlights, including a paragraph on Mr. Smirnoff's
love for Nabokov and Kubrick's "Lolita":
OXFORD, Miss., May 10 Marc Smirnoff has been kicked out of parties,
cussed out behind his back and branded a carpetbagger on the walls of
restaurant bathrooms all over this town of 12,000.
That may have been inevitable from the moment Mr. Smirnoff, an
incongruously combative Californian, arrived in this hyperliterary town a
living shrine to Faulkner and the written word without so much as a high
school diploma, and set himself up as the arbiter of good writing, music
and art from the South.
Now, with the magazine he founded, The Oxford American, on the verge of
dying after 10 years and 42 issues, Mr. Smirnoff, 39, may finally be
forced to pack his bags and take his tart tongue back where he came from.
Clearly, some people here would be grateful.
That Mr. Smirnoff ever got here was a fluke, or maybe fate. He grew up in
Marin County, Calif., never finishing high school, and educated himself in
a string of bookstore jobs. In 1987 he set out to see the country in a
beat-up BMW. The car died in Oxford, and Mr. Smirnoff, broke, ensconced
himself in a job at Square Books.
There, while sipping white Russians, ogling Ole Miss sorority women and
minding the bookstore's stacks, he says, he dreamt up the idea for a new
magazine for and from the South one that would fill a gaping void left by
glossy lifestyle publications like Southern Living.
To be sure, Mr. Smirnoff is not your average Mississippian, even for a
transplant, and he sticks out even in a place where fiction reading is a
close second to football in the firmament of pastimes. He prefers Nabokov
to Faulkner and dotes on Stanley Kubrick's film version of "Lolita." To
Mr. Smirnoff, The Oxford American is his young love, and it pains him to
wrestle with the idea that it will die at the age of 10.
He is still holding out hope, as are his writers, some of whom are praying
that the University of Mississippi or some other white knight will step in
to underwrite the magazine before it is too late.
"We won't believe we're dead," Mr. Smirnoff said, "until we are."