John Oakes, the publisher of OR Books, announced that he's teaming up with novelist Dale Peck to relaunch the Evergreen Review, an influential literary magazine that Oakes describes as "a plugged-in toaster thrown into the placid pool of culture." Evergreen will reappear as a line of books republishing the best of past Evergreen authors (the debut books are by Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett and Kenzaburō Ōe) and also as a relaunched magazine that will be "free of charge in an online-only format," featuring "fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from an international array of new and established writers."

It's hard to overstate how important the Evergreen Review was to literature in the 1950s and 1960s. It pushed at the edges of what was considered acceptable, and it announced a dynamic new literary aesthetic that grew to dominate the latter half of the 20th century. You can find some samples of stories from Evergreen contributors like JG Ballard, Gary Indiana, and Vladimir Nabokov on their site.

Of course, it's easy for something like this to fall into a nostalgia act; lord knows we don't need another organization to trumpet how awesome and incredible the 1960s were. (Speaking as someone who grew up in the shadow of the Baby Boomers, that generation has already exhausted their supply of self-aggrandizement.) But if this new incarnation of Evergreen can become something forward-facing and thoroughly modern, it will honor the spirit of the original. Based on OR Books's stellar track record as a publisher, I'd guess Evergreen has a good shot at finding something new to say.