It is not uncommon for someone to ask me if it is difficult to “make a journal like Prometeo.”
The question is simple and involves similar answer: yes, it is difficult.
A quarterly like ours is deliberately eclectic, ranging over many fields of knowledge. I did not use this verb at random: in fact, rather than a defined route – a virtue of other titles, more ideological than us – it is a navigation with wide paths. It also depends very much on the proposals that are made.
Prometeo is an authorial journal, meaning that the authors, their ideas, their expertise and the way they express them, are really decisive elements.
Even in the most doctoral cases, it is always about human material, to be handled with care.
And with the awareness that, precisely humanly, there can be defaillances. For example, the processing of the September issue, which falls in July and August, is the most strenous.
If someone does not deliver, it is certain to happen at the end of July, beyond any more than concessive deadlines, for the simple reason that in common perception the real end of the social year falls in early August, when deadlines have thickened and one has failed to fulfill everything.
Another feature of summer writing is that it is shorter. With Prometeo writers, usually, the problem is getting the texts to fit into layouts. But not in the summer. After all, it is a well-known phenomenon in book publishing as well: writers almost always write in other seasons, with no anticyclones and no mosquitoes.
To return to the difficulties of conception and selection in a magazine such as Prometeo, I must point out that sometimes we allow ourselves “the suggestions of the weather,” that is, the irruption of some anniversary. There are those that are triumphant and universal, but also those that are more searching and subtle.
In this September issue, we have chosen one that is certainly indicative of cultural quality but which unveils a scenario that is not at all subtle, indeed deflagrating. As Andrea Masala tells us, sixty years ago, in 1964, a book came out in America that was destined to engrave itself in the collective imagination of several generations, particularly the one commonly referred to as “of ‘68.” Herbert Marcuse, a German philosopher and sociologist naturalized American and one of the most prominent exponents of the Frankfurt School, had written it, weaving a radical critique of consumer society.
Happy were the days when an essay could change the world.
And still it makes quite an impression to land a few pages later in a great multi-handed service that tries to grasp the nature and reasons for this uncertain present of ours where, to be succinct, fake news, credulity, illusions, as well as widespread stupidity reign.
I don’t know about you. I console myself by looking once more at the wonderful Istanbul cats that Stephen Alcorn, our cover artist, has drawn for us. It is a world exclusive, of which we are deeply proud.
One last piece of news: starting at the end of September, we will be doing presentations of Prometeo in different Italian realities ((how nice it would be if they called us abroad, too!).
On the website www.prometeoliberato.com we will put alerts to know more precisely the place and date. The goal, as always, is to amplify the notoriety of our paper and, why not, to gain new readers as well. Meanwhile, also on page 171, on the back cover, all the info to subscribe.
See you soon!
Gabriella Piroli