An interview with Carol Novack, editor and publisher of Mad Hatters’ Review

Carol Novack, Editor and Publisher of Mad Hatters’ Review, will be the next featured writer for Just Buffalo’s COMMUNIQUE series on Thursday, April 3. The reading takes place at Rust Belt Books, starting at 7pm, and is free to the public.

In addition to publishing her fiction and poems in numerous publications, Novack invests most of her energy these days into Mad Hatters, an online journal dedicated to “Edgy and Enlightened Literature, Art and Music in the Age of Dementia” that incorporates multi-media with the wide variety of texts available, and recently I interviewed her by email to provide an introduction to this strangely diverse journal for those readers unfamiliar with it.

How did your writing life and previous careers lead up to starting the Review? I wrote poetry and prose during my childhood and adolescence, and while I was in Australia. I was the art editor of my high school’s literary magazine and editor-in-chief of my university’s literary magazine. I co-edited a magazine while I was in Australia and had a job as a copy-editor for a glossy. So I guess you could say I like editing magazines! Mad Hatters’ Review incorporates my angst about the perpetual horrific state of current affairs, the injustice system, class system, uber capitalism, atrocious values, etc. I was a public interest criminal defense and constitutional lawyer for nearly two decades and a bit of an activist (always starting some group or other) during my lawyering years during the 1980s and 90s and throughout my two years in a Masters program in social work, in which I majored in community organizing. Then I’ve always bucked systems, so of course, I wanted to create a journal that would be a radical departure from most American journals, and one that would avail itself of the dynamic, aesthetic tools the Internet offers.

How much does your sizable editorial brain-trust of writers and artists determine the shape of MHR issue by issue? As for literary editors, or what I call my editorial posse, quite a lot. Apart from the very few writings from authors I’ve directly solicited, the group meets in an online office to review submissions as they arrive. The authors’ names are omitted for review purposes. Generally, I try to get a majority or consensus pro or contra acceptances. When we’re wildly in disagreement, I’ll exercise my droit de signora, either way. As for art, we have a wonderful art director and equally gifted associate art editors, plus many volunteers. Apart from our official art gallery, which I usually control, I leave the visuals to Tantra. I am unfortunately in charge of the Music Department (no one else wants to do it), so I do my best to assign accepted writings to the staff musicians, according to their stylistic sensibilities.

Your online mission statement states the cause of MHR as providing an outlet to address “psychosocial issues” that confront us today. Could you explain what some of these may be and how MHR, as a collective whole, engages the reader in such issues? Actually, our mission statement is broader than that…not all of the writings we publish are overtly psychosocial or ideologically focused. We love skilled writers who are liberated enough to exhibit a delight in language through lyricism, rhythm, sound…. Of course, many of these writers flock to MHR because we do care about the horrendous issues that confront all of us beings beyond the little cocoons of our writing dens. I don’t think a serious writer can divorce him or herself from the external world, as the outside affects the inside, at least unconsciously.

A seemingly light and absurd, yet intensely dark narrative about violence and familial sickness in the USA may be found in our current issue: the audio presentation “Yet Another True Story,” by Michael K. Meyers. Also in Issue 10 is a continuation of the satirical and wonderfully rhythmic “future catastrophe” collages by Davis Schneiderman and Don Meyer. I could go on. There are so many writers expressing the pain and violence, war, alienation, poverty of mind and heart, pollution of the Earth. One can find works in all of our issues that skillfully express our collective sociopolitical heartburn. My latest column satirizes the criminal justice system. I also offer a political comic strip that addresses infringements on First Amendment rights, anti-Arab racism, anti-patriotic patriotism, religious fanaticism, and the criminal injustice system.

How do these works engage our readers? I can only say that MHR continues to attract more and more people, on a global scale. Thoughtful people want to read thoughtful, insightful, beautifully wrought, compelling writings, writings that reach the collective conscious and unconscious. If they want to read the usual fare of mundane divorce, drug overdose, coming of age stories and poems, there are plenty of magazines, on and off the Internet available.

And is there any chance we will see the Mad Hatters aesthetic enter the print domain? In order to create a print version, I’d have to omit the essential features that make MHR unique. MHR is, of course, a multimedia journal that makes use of the tools the Internet provides. Print magazines are limited in terms of what they can present. Even if I could afford to create a print version with color artworks, graphics, etc. (not likely), I’d also have to include a DVD to house the music, recitations, mini-movies and art slideshow, and then, how on earth would I be able to coordinate the listening/hearing experience with the visuals and accompanying text? MHR offers readers a full experience: text with custom-made art and music or recitations. There are a few (a very few, I think) journals that include DVDs, but I doubt that the works presented on the DVDs are integrated with the works that appear in the journals.

I’ve thought of going to Lulu to create print-on-demand anthologies, but that would require hours of choosing what I’d want to include. If I wanted to include all of the artwork with the writings, the cost would be quite high and few people would purchase the book. And again, no music. Therefore, the integrated multi-media experience would be lost, and many trees would meet their demise.

—forrest roth