Yorick Magazine

When Yorick Magazine eventually flies down full steam along the tracks, the people will know it began on the scummy floor of a bathroom in Tuckerton, New Jersey. It was November 2011, and I received a call late one night, around 1:30 am or so. I was a night owl, so I felt the call was a wondrous occasion. I picked up and hear a drunken voice.

“Alex, I want to start a magazine. Can you be the editor-in-chief?”

I wasn’t exactly stunned. The voice was Cody Steinhauer’s, a man whose similarity to Hunter S. Thompson is surreal and uncanny. We’d always shared fiction and poetry, and though this was a step towards a direction I’d favored highly, it didn’t surprise me one bit that he’d make this proposition at 1:30 in the morning. It was perfect.

“Absolutely. Can we call it Yorick or something?”

I’d always had a sick fascination with the jester Yorick of Hamlet fame. Finding a skull of a former playmate. Yikes! Yorick always reminded me of Poe’s deformed and titular jester, Hopfrog, as well, invoking a sinister storyteller with a taste for drama and aesthetics (recall the burning “ourang outangs.”) So I pursued the name almost instantaneously.

“Yeah, sure.”

A few minutes later, we finished the call, and dreams of a new, online magazine promptly began. Cody later explained where he made the call, and I told him I would have done the same. We all have drunken bathroom floor dreams–I’ve had plenty. It’s just a matter of pursuing them that separates substance from untamed ambition.

So welcome to the website/blog/abomination of Yorick Magazine. For our guidelines, click on the ‘Submission’ tab above. For whale meat, look elsewhere. We’re not that kind of people.

- Alex Grover, Editor-in-Chief