I confess that I still delight in piling the incoming submissions high on my office table and regarding the stack — and then each envelope — as holding the possibility of the new. Is this the voice, the sound, the unexpected spark-making combination that will start something going? Reading and sifting allows me to see myself as an agent in the literary culture — which I have to believe impinges at least somewhat on our common lives. It helps me sustain some bit of that just-around-the-corner feeling that makes the historical moment feel like a work in progress.

Why does Sven come off as some billionaire on an island counting his stacks of money? Delude yourself all you like, Sven. If being the editor of some magazine was the req, then just imagine Keith Blanchard roaring his damn Porsche around the publishers. I haven’t heard such horrible logic since my macho li’l bro told me he was going to culinary school because he liked being next to the honeys.