AustLit

'This piece of writing might well be called 'Return of Meanjin'' or Meanjin strikes back'. Exactly fifty years have passed since I first struggled to compose something fit for Meanjin, and here 1 am. going at the task again and finding it hardly less trouble. Moreover. nearly twenty years have passed since I decided not to renew my subscription to Meanjin. I had taken early retirement from my position as a teacher of fiction writing in a university. During my sixteen years as a teacher, I had subscribed to Meanjin and every other Australian magazine publishing fiction. I needed to advise the best of my students where they might send the best of their writing. Sometimes my advice proved sound—not a few of my students achieved what I had never achieved and had an unsolicited contribution published in Meanjin. In the early 1990s, however, I not only gave up teaching fiction—I gave up writing and reading the stuff for the time being and followed other interests. Three years ago, I even left Melbourne. where I had lived continuously for sixty years. Of course, I had not forgotten Meanjin but here, in a stone cottage near Little Desert, and with no computer or mobile phone, I would have supposed that Meanjin had forgotten me. Not at all. Near me on the floor is a pile of back copies sent to me yesterday by the editor after I had been persuaded to do this piece of writing. I spent most of today looking  through them, surprised at how interested I was after all these years and pondering the question, why has Meanjin flourished for so long? (Introduction)