Art, literature and the pursuit of perfection in Still magazine
Marc Holzenbecher is the publisher and executive editor of Still, the brilliantly eclectic arts and literary magazine based between Berlin and New York. We delivered their current issue to Stack subscribers in June last year, and I met up with Marc in London just before the copies arrived at our warehouse to get the inside story on the making of the issue.
I’d intended to release this episode on the podcast soon after the magazines arrived with our subscribers, but when we met I foolishly suggested that we sit out in the lovely early summer sunshine, and we ended up surrounded by all sorts of annoying background noise. I really wanted to release the episode, though, so I’ve been hanging on to it since then, trying to minimise some of the sirens, children and helicopters and make sure Marc is actually audible throughout.
I’ve hopefully done a good enough job of it, so you should be able to hear Marc talking about the practical difficulties of working on a passion project with a team that is scattered across time zones, and about the thrill of producing something that’s as close to perfect as it can be. I love his comparison with the dedication that goes into creating classical music, and the idea that most people would never notice the subtle differences that a real perfectionist will spend hours agonising over.
If you were a Stack subscriber last summer you should already own a copy of this magazine, but if you weren’t and you’re intrigued by all this talk of a literary passion project, you can buy a copy in the Stack shop to see it for yourself. (And of course you should subscribe to Stack so we can keep you up to date with excellent independent magazines every month.)
