Sunday Service at the Old Fort Tavern
Not long ago I read a sentence in a short novel that had me reaching for a pencil so I could underline it, return to it, serve it up at the great potluck supper of quotes I’ve been consuming over a lifetime of reading. The book in question is Forty Acres Deep (Sneezing Cow Publishing, 2022) by Michael Perry, an author born and raised in New Auburn, Wisconsin, population 562, which means that I myself, a son of small-town Wisconsin, am already dialed in. “He wondered sometimes if the much-vaunted Midwestern work ethic was simply a means of emotional avoidance,” Perry writes about his farmer-protagonist who is staring down what’s left of his life. It’s a seemingly simple line that cracks open the riddle of untold encounters I had with the old-timers of my childhood, in fields and barns, at the feedstore and county fair.
In my office there hangs a photograph I took on a Sunday morning near the end of my time living in the Midwest that, in my mind, aligns with Perry’s quote. It captures a simple scene of a dirt parking lot in front of the old Fort Tavern, a couple miles up the road from the farm where I grew up. A few cars, a pickup truck—and one old tractor, pulled right up to the side door, beneath the neon beer sign in the window, bleary in black and white. I was driving by, noticed this rural tableau, and was moved to stop and take the photo, underline the quote, let it sink in, take it with me.
So often the images and sentences in this magazine similarly stick with me, and this issue is no exception. Start with that cover photograph of Toni Morrison, a legendary author, yes, and a fierce editor: You can see it, the confidence born of the knowledge that she is engaged in something important. As for quotable quotes, there are many in “Taking a Chance,” Dana A. Williams’s fascinating account of Morrison’s experience editing collections by three Black women poets in the 1970s. One of my favorite lines is the closing of an editorial letter from Morrison: “Love, girl and fuck the sand dunes.” (You’ll need to read the feature for context.) Morrison was already on my Mount Rushmore of American authors, but after this peek at her time as a book editor, she may need a bigger mountain.
Another underline is in “First Fiction 2025.” “Interrogating our desires is a way of intentionally cultivating the vision our art grows out of, which comes back to asking the age-old question of how we want to live,” says debut novelist Jemimah Wei. These days that question doesn’t feel as abstract as it once did, as my answer continues to be shaped by the images and the words of writers who move me.
