Interview with Thomas Alan Ward, former editor of Optimism Monthly by Dan Kenny, from the Prague based magazine [unpronounceable symbol],
FEBRUARY 1996

What are your opinions of the ups and downs of Optimism so far?

Well, the purpose of Optimism Monthly was to help overcome the tremendous cynicism that arose after the initial buzz about the Paris of the 20s wore off, and people realized that there weren't genius writers all over the place.  It got to the point that anyone who took writing seriously was afraid to admit they were a "writer" in public.  Because if they did, people would scoffed in their faces.  Optimism's purpose is to show that there is writing talent in this town, and to give these writers a forum to view each other's progress as writers.*  And so, Optimism is trying to overcome that cynicism. 

It takes years and years to become a good writer, much less to get published and make a name for one's self.  Until then, it's nice to have a place that gives you the experience of polishing a piece of writing to the point where you feel good enough for it to be read by a few hundred people.  I feel we've made progress in that direction, but we still have obstacles to overcome:  there're people who haven't read it since the first or second issue and continue to criticize it without having seen the tremendous improvements.  We're now on issue eighteen and it looks and reads completely differently from the early issues.  Still there are people who are too terminally hip to even read it and give it an honest opinion.

To Optimism's credit, no matter what one thinks about it, it is one of the longest running English-language publications in Prague so far.  Why do you think other magazines such as Prognosis, Velvet, and most recently Pozor, went under?

That's a shame about Pozor.  I don't know exactly why they went under, but why we've managed to stay afloat is by focussing and streamlining.  Each issue is short, 16 to 20 pages, and inexpensive.  You get a sampling of the new writing this month and can read it all in and hour or two and feel like you've gotten your 39 crowns' worth. They're also nice objects, with large full color covers-paintings or art photographs.  People actually read the whole issue. I've had people come say to me that they caught onto the connecting theme and subtext to each issue.  For me personally some of the more normal literary journals are so thick and expensive I'd rather spend that time and money on a novel.  Or a short story collection by a writer I already know I like.

One of the other magazines, at least, was half Czech/half English, so that for most people half of what they paid for they couldn't read.  Some of the larger magazines tried to cover too broad a base-they tried to please everyone.  On top of that, they were always throwing parties and seemed to want to come across as the "big man" around town and over-extended themselves. (I did enjoy some of those parties, however.) Optimism Monthly is basically two of us, plus two part time copyeditors and a production guy, and we keep it simple.  Our audience may be fairly small but we serve a niche.  We try to stay loyal to regular contributors and always have new writers in each issue. We've already published over one-hundred writers, quite a few of them for the first time.

What are some of the criticisms you've encountered so far? I get the impression from your statement about being the "unashamed editor of this-a-here m'zine" in the back of the latest issue that you've gotten quite a lot of flack . . .

Recently I haven't gotten any personal flack-at least not to my face-but I haven't put anything of my own in, save one very short poem, since issue twelve.  Normally I would agree that an editor shouldn't publish his own work, however, I am a writer in the town here and there really aren't that many outlets for work and works-in-progress here in Prague, and the people here are the ones I feel will appreciate my writing.  When I consider publishing something of my own, I tend to judge it much harder than anything else I might consider.  And I don't publish any of my own work that I haven't shown to some writer friends and asked if they would publish it if they were the editor.  And finally I run it by Tim (publisher of Optimism) to see what he thinks. 

That said, I still make mistakes.  So I guess I put that blurb in the contributors' notes as sort of a challenge to cover my bases.  I am not afraid of criticism, and as I've learned from doing Optimism, criticism only serves to make you stronger and view your work more objectively.

How does the literary niche that Optimism serves differ from English-language publications such as the Prague Revue or Trafika?

The main difference is that Optimism is chiefly for writers living and writing in Prague or writers in other countries who find themselves somehow outside the mainstream.  A huge percent of the Prague Revue comes from writers in the States, professors, MFA students, etc.  Trafika had mostly more established writers-Joyce Carol Oates was in their first issue.  There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that many of the writers I know of in Prague came here to try and do something different, to find something original.  And being away from the US is helping them do that.  Trafika and the Prague Review are good, solid, professional journals, but I feel they're replicating hundreds of other similar journals in the States.  They look the same and read a lot alike.

One way of finding something new is to put all of that out of sight-not that everything in Optimism is original or cutting edge, but we are very open to that element.  Since we are not funded by grants or universitites, we are free to publish anything we feel like publishing that is well-written.  Every issue takes risks.  You never know what you'll find each time you pick up an Optimism, they're all different.

Personally, I am not convinced that a mere geographical shift from the US to Prague is enough to warrant a significant "difference."  I am, in fact, interested in the possibilites of a new literary "voice" emerging from the expat. community, but frankly, as of present, I don't see it happening.  For example, what does a poem, let's say, about a love affair that crippled me in LA, have to do with Prague here and now?  Much of the writing seems to me-I could be totally wrong-to be indirectly dealing with issues from the US.  Do you agree or disagree?

In the current issue there is definitely that element in some of the poems, though in a lot of what I publish what most interests me are new voices.  For example Jenny Smith's Egon for Eight Voices or Theodore Schwinke's poems about God and animals; Julie Chibarro's voice is delightful and unlike anything I've ever read.  Anthony Tognazzini has written cubist fairytales!  Before I did this magazine I never saw anything like the things that are being written here.  Perhaps I just was never exposed to it, but there are headways being made into new ground, though they may be subtle and may still need maturing.

Regarding writing about issues from the US here in Prague, it's common for people to say that they never saw their country, their society, or their life as objectively as they did until they had been in another country for a long period of time-though that could be any country, not just the Czech Republic.  As far as contributions being specific to Prague, if you've taken the risk of leaving your country and living in a foreign country without a safety net (whether it's illegally or without monetary support from home like a lot of writers here), then you may be more likely to take risks in your writing.  In Prague, I think that is compounded by the feeling that "anything goes."  It's changing now, but for a few years there, an American passport was almost a ticket to getaway with anything.

Also in Prague, there's the big language difference and it's easier not to be affected by so much media and advertising and ear-chewing.  And when you're teaching English-if that's what you do-you are more free to set your own schedule, to work as much or as little as you need.  These two things allow you more brain space for more creative time. On top of that, there's the beauty of the city which gives you a sense of history, a connectedness to the chain of being that you don't get when you are surrounded by plain box buildings, like in LA, that weren't there fifty years ago and won't be there fifty years in the future.  Here your sense of individual importance is decreased.  When you walk over cobblestones every day that have been trod on for hundreds of years by kings and peasants and stomped on by the boots of all the armies that have invaded-for me, at least-it's hard to wallow in self pity. Getting back to your comment about a hypothetical poem on a love affair in LA, because of things like this, just by being in Prague you see the matter differetnly:  i.e. writing something on LA from within LA is not the same as writing about it from the distanced perspective of Prague, or anywhere else for that matter.  It's not the subject matter, but how it's told and the angle from which it's told-environment, social and physical, will affect that.

Allen Ginsberg said, in an interview when he was here a couple of years back, something the affect that if, in a place like Prague, you could get a combination of the Wild American Mind, with the Eastern European sensitivity, you would really have something valuable and new.  I say why not give it a try.  As far as writing about Prague directly it's a Catch 22:  if you don't write about Prague, people criticize you, and if you do, people will call you pretentious.  It's this type of cynicism that Optimism is trying to overcome.

A final question:  from what you've described above, it sounds like you have a pretty cushy life here.  How do you think the Czechs might view a Prague expat writer, sharing the same space as them?

That makes it sound like someone who is teaching English and writing isn't working much.  Between my own writing (which is work, even if I'm not getting paid for it), editing magazine, and my teaching, I am working many more hours a day than I did in college or at my teaching job in New York.  I suppose, on the surface, it may look like I am not working very much-I mean because I do my writing in the morning, I often don't leave my flat until after lunch-therefore Czechs, say someone in my building, might think I'm sleeping until noon and would probably look down on it.  Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of expats here who do sleep past noon, teach in the evening and write well into the night. Whatever works for them. 

For me this place is about finding out who I truly am and living it to the fullest.  Becoming 100% me.  Sort of a Whitmanesque celebration of the individual self.  However, there is a tremendous risk to living like this:  if you put several years (I've been here four years now) into nothing but writing and have nothing to fall back on, and you're a talentless flop, you're in a pretty bad situation.  When I had discussions like this with my Czech girlfriend, it was difficult to explain, but once she understood, she said it seemed admirable but maybe a little "stupid."  But that's what people have thought of artists ever since art moved to the fringes of society and became critical of that society.  It takes faith and conviction and support.  There are pretty tightly knit groups friends here that support each other.  We need each other to keep it up.

Furthermore, some Czechs I've spoken to who are now entrepreneurs and businessmen, look back slightly wistfully to when they could go to work at their guaranteed job and take a three hour break for beer at lunch. Though they wouldn't go back, they do admit that my life sounds interesting, but would be too frightening for them.  They feel the need for a little more certainty.  I haven't come across any real jealousy or animosity to the way I live, and I spend numerous hours each week with Czechs in their homes talking.