My CQ

"CQ" is journalism argot for "correct quote." It's used by a reporter to tell an editor that, yes, that's what the person being quoted actually said -- usually to cite some cracked grammar or a malapropism that is necessary not to fix because it figures somehow into the story you're writing.

But, before my journalism career began, it meant something else to me. My parents urged me to "get involved" in something during my Chapel Hill days, and, even in the mid-1970s, it was good career advice for an undergraduate. I took it, but probably not in the direction they intended.

I volunteered as a front-end reader for the Carolina Quarterly, a highly respected literary magazine then and now. I forget what they actually called my position, but I basically was assigned to read and review unsolicited submissions for the magazine. It was a non-paying, low-end job, but I was more than happy to take it.

You wrote your comments in longhand on the back of the manila envelope the story or article (CQ did not accept poetry submissions in those days) came in -- placed in your cubbyhole at the main office by the editor, who then reviewed your reviews. If you showed ability, you got better submissions to read. You did your job well but maybe lacked the discerning eye, you stayed with the not-so-hot stuff. You goofed off or screwed up, you were replaced. That's what I took from my initial interview, anyway. I was accepted on a trial basis.

Things at first seemed to be going well: I was praised for my work ethic but also given several pointers along the way. One fine autumn day, a submission came in my box from a professor of literature at nearby UNC-Greensboro. This piece did the-then unpopular thing of putting science together with literature (as well as fiction with non-fiction). The scientific discipline involved was botany. I'd already had one botany course and was preparing to take another, more advanced, course in the spring. I gave the piece a glowing review: this guy could write really well, and he could tackle difficult topics at the same time.

Some CQ staffers were enthusiastic, others less so. This story broke new ground, and it may have made some looking for academic careers uneasy (I'm guessing here). I felt it was my job (unconscious gall being my specialty) to champion the piece, and I kept asking about it. My "asking about it" included the Christmas party, where we were all informed another publication had accepted the piece already. I wasn't sure everyone's expressed disappointment was completely genuine, but maybe that was just mine clouding my own interpersonal judgment.

At any rate, my stock began to fall at the CQ. There were surely many perfectly legitimate reasons for the phone call to my dorm room in January that informed me of my departure from the staff, but the article I may have too-strenuously championed was an unmentioned one that I concluded then was the misstep that started my descent. It's what I used to salve my banged-up ego, anyway.

I was informed that my name would not be listed in the spring issue of CQ, and that meant it would not be listed on any of my future resumes, either. If I had considered going to graduate school before, I did not after. And though I had never been fired from anything before that, it was the first of many such experiences I underwent on the career path I did finally choose.

Shortly after I hung up the phone that January in 1977, I made up my mind I was a born maverick, and a maverick I would stay. Oddly, I feel I've benefited from that decision, though it may seem to have cost me dearly in most people's eyes.

"Linnaeus Forgets" by Fred Chappell was published that spring in the American Review -- a journal with a much higher profile than the Carolina Quarterly. Dr. Chappell went on to a brilliant career as an essayist, critic, novelist and poet -- and as perhaps a maverick who knew how to play that game much better than I ever did.

In any case, my views on academe and what I call The Club need to be seen, at least partly, in that light. Do I have a jaundiced eye? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I do know: I recognized, even as an undergraduate, really good writing when I saw it. Of that, I was sure.

I still am.