The recent reports of the Virginia Tech shooter’s disturbing creative writing efforts reminded me of my tenure as the editor of the my high school’s literary magazine, The Quill. The experience exposed me and my editorial staff to an array of alarming material, not to mention simply dreadful adolescent prose and poetry. Everyone, it seemed, was seriously misunderstood and underappreciated by their parents, teachers, or boy/girlfriends. Except, that is, those lucky few who believed in — and wrote incessantly about — unicorns. All in all, I’m sure it was fairly common teenage stuff.
About ten per cent of materials submitted to us ended up in the magazine; the remainder wound up in a large portfolio we termed “The ‘No’ File.” The most prolific contributer to our reject pile was a fellow I’ll call JT.
If ever the term “sullen loner” applied to someone, it was JT — a heavyset, acne-ridden lad who favored camouflage and hooded sweatshirts and who kept largely to himself. JT did not appear to be of violent temperament himself, yet his stories were filled with violent fantasies and suicidal ruminations. In the pre-Columbine era, however, JT’s ramblings merely amused us with their wretched and hackneyed prose rather than disturbing us with their content and imagery.
In the current environment, we never would have courted his potential vengeance as we did. However, in the halcyion days of the mid-80’s, we just couldn’t resist. So, shortly after our legitimate editorial task ended and we submitted the proofs of The Quill to the school’s print shop, my co-editors and I began work on an underground version of the magazine that was to be named after our mound of misfit works. Working after hours and with illicitly obtained access to the print shop facilities, we turned out several dozen copies of The “No” File, which we circulated to select friends. JT’s writing comprised a significant percentage of our omnibus of awfulness; his story of a talking razor blade that lived in his desk and eventually seduced him into slicing his wrists was our journal’s centerpiece.
Though we clearly possessed a certain level of mean-spiritedness to issue The “No” File in the first place, we were not sadistic: individual works were published without attribution and we didn’t reveal authors’ identities except to a few close friends.
In retrospect, however, it was probably irresponsible of us to not bring JT’s “issues” to the attention of some authority. I am not aware that JT ever acted on anything like the actions he had committed to paper, but neither can I recall his presence at graduation the following year. I sincerely hope that the whispering razor blade never succeeded in its sinister task.
