Issue 120 of Image journal includes my last contribution as editor-in-chief of the magazine.1 I’m happy to have this essay, “Haunted Humanism: Monsters and Mystery in Contemporary Fiction,” as my adieu to that role. I finally got to write about one of my very favorite novelists (Marie NDiaye) while also engaging in some light polemic2 about why religious people ought to read fiction, or perhaps how they ought (not) do so. The editorial twins the two things that drew me to Image: humanism and mystery.3
Receiving this issue has made me a little wistful and reflective. It represents the end of a season for me—as editor in chief of Image (2019-2024), and before that, editor in chief of Comment (2014-2018). A decade in the middle of my life in which I wore an editor’s cap. A decade in which I learned a lot.
When the folks at Image reached out to me to consider the position, I was both surprised and flattered. The timing was ripe. After 5 years editing Comment, a journal of public theology focused on cultural commentary, I found myself less and less enthused by the sort of “op-ed” space Comment occupies, especially in the Trump years when fault lines emerged that were unexpected and exhausting. As I’ve articulated elsewhere, I was ready to leave the space of such arguments.4
The query from Image tapped into something that was already swirling as a sense of calling for me. My philosophical interest in the arts was reflected in both my teaching and books, and I’d been engaging film, poetry, literature, and music in essays and criticism. I had also begun to pivot toward a mode of writing that aspired to literary evocation and not merely didactic explanation. I knew that immersion in the Image community would be an opportunity to rub shoulders with writers I adored and, perhaps, absorb something from them. Looking back, I now think of my five years at Image as a kind of MFA-by-proxy or -proximity. This was in no small part because of the gift of being edited for years by executive editor Mary Kenagy Mitchell.
Crucial to my entertaining the post at Image was an organizational commitment to a new team-based approach to the journal. Rather than being a one-man-show, as it had been, curation of the journal would be managed by a team of section editors whose expert eyes & ears would shape the pages. I was honored that such an esteemed group was willing to serve Image in this way (and that they were willing to continue to do so for all five years—a gift of continuity). Working with Shane McCrae (poetry), Melissa Pritchard (fiction), Lauren Winner (nonfiction), Nick Ripatrazone (culture) and Aaron Rosen (visual art) was both a privilege and an education. That editorial team—along with a wonderful array of advisory editors—is the legacy I’m most proud to leave at Image.
When I took on the role at Image, I half-joked to some friends that, in my middle age, I wanted to risk trying something I could fail at. Perhaps I didn’t fail, exactly, but I definitely learned something about my limits and my gifts. For reasons I won’t go into, the organizational environment around Image was often fraught and challenging. This threw me into administrative responsibilities (both management and fundraising) that I never would have signed up for in late 2018. I did not thrive in these roles, and I would be the first to admit I’m not a leader of this sort. (God bless the people who are; may their tribe increase.)
But I do hope we did some restorative work internal to the organization. Alongside publisher Sara Arrigoni, we always said our goal was to finally have Image’s vision of “incarnational humanism” actually be reflected internally in our organizational life. I think we made a start on that, and I hope the ethos will grow into Image’s future.
I remain incredibly proud of the creative work we sent into the world in each issue of Image. All those issues pictured above are tangible artifacts of a communal labor of love that I grateful to have been part of. The work was part of my own aesthetic education. I was introduced to too many artists and poets and writers to name (but if I risked a few, I’d note visual artists like Askia Bilal and Eric Aho and Billie Mandle; poets like Phil Metres and Victoria Chang; poet-essayists like Joyelle McSweeney and Fady Joudah; writers like Andrew Krivak and Sarah Stone—gosh, now where do I stop?!).
I also experienced some of the intellectual highlights of my career thanks to Image. It’s hard for me to express, for example, how life-changing my conversation with Garth Greenwell was (thanks to our friend, Lisa Ann Cockrel, then Image’s director of programming, now an acquisitions editor for Eerdmans). Having the opportunity to sit down with Rowan Williams and Shane McCrae was both daunting and a delight. Interviewing Chris Beha at the Catholic Imagination Conference, with folks like Ron Hansen and Phil Klay in the room, was exhilarating and encouraging.
I’ll miss opportunities like this, but I also feel good about stepping away. For over a decade, my editorial responsibilities absorbed all of my margin (too often stealing time from my wife and family, too, especially in some of the dark days of trying to keep Image alive—times I don’t miss at all).
I think of my decade as an editor in chief as a season of being a curator, which is its own creative endeavor. Ultimately, I think the editor in chief of a magazine is a curator of attention. The Table of Contents of each issue is a way of saying: Here are artists and writers that deserve your attention. Resist the siren song of noise; make time for these creators.
I think there is also something diaconal about such a role: to be a good editor, you have to learn to take delight in the work of others. Most of the pages are voices other than yours. That’s a good, humbling exercise. But it is also a joy, because I think an editor-in-chief is also a celebrator-in-chief. So often when an issue of Image was mailed, I wished each one could include a little note in which I could gush, Don’t miss this!
So I’m at once grateful and glad to be done. My creative energies are now channeled into projects close to my own heart, both writing and teaching.5 And maybe, just maybe, even a little time on the margins—to play and rest, to dream and muse, to garden and bake, to read what I want and let my imagination roam in places where I have no duties or obligations, happy to just be a reader again.
Like many others, after news of Image’s impending closure in January, I’m glad to learn that Image has since found a lifeline and will continue for the foreseeable future. However, since a number of people have asked, let me confirm that I will not be serving as editor in chief in the future. My resignation was a separate decision. But like the rest of the Image community, I am cheering on its future. The world of letters needs and deserves the unique contribution of Image.
In the spirit of George Bluth’s “light treason.”
A colleague sent me this link to a sermon by my friend and favorite preacher, Jack Roeda, who, in the opening, reads from a key section of my essay. Now I want to always write for the way my words sound in Jack’s voice.
Anne Snyder, my successor (and the one person I suggested when I submitted my resignation), has taken Comment into new places and heights.
Stay tuned to this space for some exciting news about my next book.