Fortifying Fruit for Sunstruck Vegetables

By: By Jamie Brisick | Illustrations by Sophia August | March 22, 2010 | In Print

Five Dials is a digital literary magazine that does what so many lesser-known lit journals don’t: It invigorates, draws belly laughs, reminds us of the vast wonders of the world both inner and outer, and occasionally causes us to question our sunstruck, hedonistic L.A. lifestyles. Published by Penguin Books imprint Hamish Hamilton and edited by Craig Taylor, along with HH publishing director Simon Prosser, it has featured stories about interns, trees, obscenity, Paris, translation, and U.S. Election Day 2008 (where “Eleven Writers Tell Us Exactly What Happened ... Days Before It Happened”). It’s free, comes as a PDF, and, in this writer’s opinion, is some of the most fortifying downloadable content out there. The following interview took place via e-mail, as Taylor made his way from snow-covered Montreal to snow-covered London.

As an adoring Five Dials fan from the first issue onward, could you tell me how it all came about?
It’s hard to think back that far. I’ve always been interested in magazines and zines. I put out one in Canada years ago and then published a few when I came to London. I met Simon around 2002-2003, thanks to a common friend, and heard about his plans to start a magazine, which I don’t think ever got off the ground. We’d occasionally bump into each other and talk about projects. In 2007, we had lunch together, and in 2008, I started working for Hamish Hamilton one day a week after Simon found a way to shore up some money. The aim was to put out a magazine, and, after some discussion and the recruitment of a designer I knew from previous projects, that’s exactly what we did. The start-up costs were minimal.

Why digital?
It’s cheap. It saves us from having to hire a circulation department, or an advertising department, or worry about printing costs. It’s an admission that times are changing and that perhaps people who like reading black type on a white background will be able to find a decent magazine online.

I don’t think of the magazine as completely digital. We encourage people to engage with Five Dials in the manner that makes them the most comfortable. Some like printing up the pages and reading them as they would The New Yorker; some read it onscreen or on a fancy e-reader. I would rather Five Dials was known for its inclusive nature than solely for being a digital magazine. If the Internet breaks down, we’ll find an old photocopier.

John Updike, Philip Roth, Jonathan Franzen, George Saunders, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer — how do you wrangle such top-notch writers?
Connections; long, oleaginous, sycophantic, toadying e-mails; bribery; East End gangster techniques; good thank-you packages; David Remnick phone impersonations; assurances that no one outside Yorkshire will read the article. You know, the usual.

There is a distinct look/feel to Five Dials. How would you describe it?
Lush austerity. A celebration of elegant type and good illustration. It’s basically a reaction to all the overproduced, uncertain, graspy, visually diluted magazines I see on newsstands and, increasingly, on the Web. I wanted something very flexible, simple and strong. Luckily our designer, Dean Allen, is fusty in all the right ways. He cares deeply about type. I love his template.

I thoroughly enjoy your Editor’s Letters. Could you tell me a bit about yourself, and Simon as well?
I grew up on the west coast of Canada, on Vancouver Island, four hours from Tofino, surf capital of Vancouver Island, and lived in Toronto before moving to London in 2000. I live in north London, as does Simon, though we’re in different neighborhoods. I believe his neighborhood is considered cooler. My hobbies include long walks on the beach and writing nonfiction books. I also write plays of varying length. My favorite writers can be divided into two camps: the great American nonfiction writers of the 20th century, usually from New York: Joseph Mitchell, Gay Talese, A.J. Liebling, and Studs Terkel (though he’s more Chicago), and the masters of very solid, nearly spiritual, 20th century fiction: Marilynne Robinson, Alice Munro, Miriam Toews. I also, obviously, like Eggers, Zadie Smith, Updike, Rawi Hage and everyone else on the HH list. It’s a very easy list to like. As for personal lives, Simon just had a child this year. I did not.

I read somewhere that Five Dials is edited at the London Library. I can’t tell you how romantic and old-worldly this sounds. How exactly does this work?
Like I said, it’s a flexible enterprise. The last issue was partly edited on the kitchen table of a house in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal owned by the woman who plays violin for the Arcade Fire. Seriously, we can edit the thing anywhere — and we often do, which is the strength of having such a lean magazine. I’ll do my editing and commissioning from wherever I am (I’m writing this Q&A in the small guest bedroom of one of the professors of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre school; long story) and Simon and the rest of the HH staff will do their editing from 80 The Strand in London, though Simon has been known to pepper us with ideas from his roving iPhone. We send the finished pages to external copy editors spread around London, and the finished pages go to designer Dean at his house in rural France. When he’s done walking his dogs, he actually gets down to work and typesets the thing.

Is it true that the recent Paris issue was edited aboard the Eurostar after an all-nighter in the 5th arrondissement?
We edited it mostly beforehand, but some of the crucial additions and subtractions were taken care of on the Eurostar as the English countryside sped by. Our designer and copy editor argued over comma placement in a small café on the Left Bank. C’est la. The all-nighter came a little later, as all-nighters usually do.

Some literary journals feel stuffy, top-heavy, pretentiously avant-garde. The Dials strikes a happy balance of fun, humor and gravitas. How the hell do you blokes pull this off? If there were a Five Dials mission statement, how would it go?
Be inclusive. Embrace both ends of the spectrum. Remember Alain de Botton can co-exist with Bobby Gillespie. Remember some people are interested in both Sartre and NWA. Work on new ways to pay writers as the paradigm shifts. Don’t be surprised as other established magazines crumble under their own weight around you. Make jokes. Make the magazine you’d want to read.

Best/worst things about editing a literary journal?
Best: publishing writers we believe in, reinvigorating the magazine form, receiving great submissions.

Worst: when aggressive French children’s television presenters try to beat up Five Dials contributors in French bars (See: mention of the all-nighter above).

Issues you’re most proud of?
I’m personally proud of the Obscenity issue. We were the last magazine to ever interview John Mortimer, and there was some great reportage that went into the cluster of stories about the changing face of obscenity. John Sutherland contributed a lovely essay drawing on his years of experience. But hell, I think the best issues are yet to come: Heroes, Broken Britain, New Zealand.

How does one subscribe?
It’s free. All you have to do is go to fivedials.com/fivedials and click on the link to our mailing list. We won’t sell your e-mail address to Rupert Murdoch.

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