What the hell is the Virginia Quarterly Review?

I must admit I hadn’t heard of the journal either, until recently. But the quarterly literary magazine has actually been around since 1925, and has featured the writing of some of my favorite authors, such as H.L. Mencken, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Mann, William Carlos Williams, and Thomas Wolfe (whose novels You Can’t Go Home Again and Look Homeward, Angel are highly recommended).

Does this have anything to do with travel, or am I just taking this opportunity to impose my literary preferences on others? Well, yes and yes. The VQR’s newest issue is devoted entirely to essays about South America, and lovers of that continent and travel literature will find much of interest. You’ll find the interesting story of the blind mayor of Cali, Colombia, an essay on the effects of drilling for oil in the Amazon jungle, and a fascinating article about Suriname and its troubled soccer program. For those who enjoy incisive, long-form pieces about destinations close to home and abroad, the VQR is undoubtedly the place to go.

Also check out Slate’s explanation of why the VQR still matters here.

Posted by | Comments (5)  | December 22, 2007
Category: Travel News


5 Responses to “What the hell is the Virginia Quarterly Review?”

  1. Jacob (Fusiler) Says:

    The link to the Slate article sealed the deal for me. Thank you for sharing.

    I particularly like this line (a quote from the Article): “Ironing out too many of those eccentricities leads to a certain monotone,” Genoways says, and this, too, is part of what makes the magazine distinctive (if also uneven).

    Thanks for sharing. Do you think Thomas Wolfe would’ve finished writing it if he would’ve known that his most famously quoted line was “You can’t go home again,”? 😉

  2. Waldo Jaquith Says:

    I can’t decide if it’s good or bad that this blog entry’s title is so commonly used by bloggers writing about us. 🙂

    For the benefit of your readers, I must point out that our latest issue is hitting mailboxes today and Monday, so anybody subscribing now will start with our Winter 2008 issue, and not the Fall 2008 (South America) issue. FWIW, the entire contents of the South America issue are available online for free, because we’re dumb^H^H^H^H awesome like that. But if anybody simply must own the Fall 2008 issue, they can buy it for $11. The winter issue has four feature articles by war zone travel writers, two from Afghanistan and two from Ramadi. It probably won’t tickle the same travel bone as the South America issue (Suriname, great place to visit…Kabul, not so much), unfortunately.

  3. Aaron H Says:

    Jacob–
    You make a good point… That book reads like one long, beautiful poem, and it’s a shame that the title is all that most people know of it.

  4. Aaron H Says:

    Ha! I hadn’t seen the title of that blog post before… honest! Well, hopefully people are just beginning to learn about it for themselves. It’s a great publication.

  5. Aaron H Says:

    Ha! I hadn’t seen the title of that blog post before… honest! Well, hopefully people are just beginning to learn about it for themselves. It’s a great publication.