Granta - The Magazine of New Writing 62, Summer 1998 [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION A word which should frighten more people, certainly more editors, than it does is: relaunch. Together with 'relabel', 'repackage' and 'rebrand', it smacks of marketing tradecraft, diligent attention to focus groups, flip-charts and that ritual called 'the presentation' which is conducted by young men from advertising agencies, who, tieless, crop-headed and sermonizing, might easily be priests. They speak the vocabulary sacred to modern capitalism—'brand identity', 'core values', 'market share'— and lo, if you accept their sacraments, 'the product' is born again: which is to say that it looks dramatically different to convey a change of substance, though substantially it may remain the same. Sometimes this process seems to work—see the British Labour Party's electoral victory in 1997, though there it was also allied to a fundamental political shift—but often it fails to rectify the desperation which first summoned it. Old wine in new bottles, mutton dressed as lamb: these are ancient epigrams which indicate long-term public resistance to the vanities and fancies of corporations, and editors. So: Granta has not been relaunched. It simply looks a little different. Granta's old design served it well for nearly twenty years; the changes to its minimalism are mainly to make the magazine's intention clearer (minimalism can sometimes be opaque). The typeface for titles and text is Sabon rather than Times; there is also the sparse use of a sans-serif face, Bell Gothic, and a few adjustments to the cover, where the rubric 'The Magazine of New Writing' has been moved from the back to the front. I have to admit that I'm often troubled by this definition. 'New Writing' suggests, at least in Britain, state subsidy and difficult, possibly unpleasurable, literary experimentation, writing mainly of concern to the person who has written it. Also, it omits new photography, which Granta also publishes. Also, as any marketeer would say, it is a producerist rather than a consumerist tag (why not 'The Magazine of New Reading'?). Also, there is the dangerous possibility of misidentification with New Labour. But there is no way out. New writing is what Granta exists to publish, in the belief that writing, especially if it is fresh and original, still offers the most interesting, and the most telling, reflection of ourselves and the world. Two parlous states receive intimate examination in this issue: the first is marriage, the second Indonesia. IJ