Thinking of Jim Marinell
More than one person has described the overall impression Jim Marinell made on those with whom he worked on the Schuylkill Valley Journal as one of kindness. Indeed, he was a very sweet man. But all this kindness and sweetness comes from our perspective. That is how Jim seemed to others– to us. To my lasting satisfaction, I knew Jim, but mostly as an editor, and while the intimacies of that relationship are significant, they have their limits. Still, putting on a writer’s vaunted habit of negative capability,” I will venture the opinion that Jim Marinell was an insatiably self-serving man– and I’ll make that seem like a compliment yet.
Jim had appetites– for engagement with others and with life, which he indulged shamelessly. Yet, he was so civilized, so integrated with his social milieu, as to serve us all as a lesson in what enlightened self-interest can be.
When I would bring my under-finished pieces to him, he received them eagerly–kindly, it would seem to me–and with his more subtle hand, he would guide mine in achieving more of the best that was possible. In that way, everything of mine that he accepted for publication was largely or in some way his achievement. And he prompted me to attempt projects which I would never have, left to my own impulses. The first serious short story I ever had published was the result of Jim’s virtue as catalyst. I had not written fiction in any meaningful way before, though I had tried. Thus it may fairly be said that any such I write during the rest of my life will be an humble sort of monument to Jim’s personal drive and enthusiasm. I think he knew that.
And I guess there are others here who are also part of the legacy of Jim Marinell’s manner of expressing his creativity. I guess there are many others scattered about the face of the earth on whom he had a shaping influence.
It is too much to say clay can be grateful, but certainly it must always acknowledge the potter’s hand.