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Nerve.com
Who were some of the writers you were most excited to call?
Maybe Amy Bloom? Tom Perrotta. I don't know if it worked out, but he thought about it. Mary Gaitskill. that was exciting. Martha McPhee. Robert Olen Butler. That's one of my favorite pieces I ever published. It was about a young boy who knows it's the last day of the world and he wants to see the mysteries of his sweetheart's body before he dies, and he does. And it's all worth it. There were also some very famous writers who wrote under pseudonyms, but I won't say who.
How were the parties, beside the famous HBO one?
Well, for a photo shoot for the December issue of the print magazine, we decided to do an office Christmas party gone wild. Civilians were downing punch and making out with their boyfriends and taking clothing off. At one point, some scrawny guy came to deliver pizza and someone pulled him into the party, put a hat on him and made him Santa. And soon, he was sitting there making out with two girls.
How did you get rid of the delivery boy?
I don't remember. I think it was the best delivery he ever made.
Why did you leave?
I got fired. I was there for around two years. Then the print magazine folded. There was no money for me to be there. I felt okay about it. It was exhausting. I slept at the office some nights. I was never not thinking about how we were going to fill the issue. I'd just had a story run in the Times magazine, so it was a good time. I'd come from old media and was very "I work from nine to five, " and at Nerve I saw how it didn't have to be that way. So it was easier to go freelance.
I find it amazing that almost half of Nerve's readership is women. It must be the first time in history men and women have read the same sex magazine.
To be perfectly honest, there was feminist discussion going around about it, but I was never that interested in the feminist-sex-magazine angle. I just wanted to be somewhere that was doing great writing about anything. I was an English major at college. I was just a voracious reader. I had this body of knowledge about fiction and fiction writers. And there was a sense at the time that the days of great magazine writing had come and gone. But from 1997-2000, Nerve was one of a few places that was publishing great writing and literary work. It makes me feel hopeful that when people say print media is dying that some other form will come along to save the literary essay. But there are very few places besides Nerve that publish fiction now.
Do you miss Nerve?
Well, now I just work alone in my little office, and I do miss being around such talented, creative, open-minded people. You had a sense that anything was possible and that even if something had been done before, it could be done better. I think that came from Genevieve and Rufus. It was a very exciting time. n°
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Nerve consulting editor and Babble editor-in-chief Ada
Calhoun has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor and theater critic at New York magazine, and her softball team's MVP.
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