When I was in high school in a little town in the mountains of Kentucky in the late 1950’s, I worked afternoons and holidays at East Kentucky News, a wholesaler who distributed magazines, comic books, and paperbacks to newsstands, drugstores, and small grocery stores in the Eastern Kentucky area—Pikeville, Paintsville, Louisa, Prestonsburg, etc. My life as a serious reader had already begun when I started work there, so it was a pleasure to browse the shelves for Mentor books and Signet Classics.
Our biggest selling magazine was TV Guide, which we bound in bundles by the hundreds. However, for the whole of the Eastern Kentucky area, we distributed only five copies of each issue of The Atlantic Monthly. I realize that those serious readers in the mountain communities who read The Atlantic Monthly probably received their copies by U.S. Post, but still the gap between those five Atlantic copies and those hundreds of TV Guides was not lost on me. I knew that The Atlantic was directed to an audience smart enough to appreciate the articles and stories it published. When I went to college at Morehead State University, “Where the Mountains Meet the Bluegrass,” and took a short story class with that most excellent of all Eastern Kentucky writers, James Still, I was not surprised that many of his stories had appeared in The Atlantic Monthly.
This past week, as I read the seven stories in the Atlantic Fiction 2010 Supplement, I was more than a little disappointed to discover that the magazine that had been publishing quality fiction for so many years had now given in to the demands of marketing and was publishing the kind of stories that used to be relegated to the big circulation slicks. They are all easy reads, even pleasurable reads--just not challenging literary experiences. It is hard for me to believe that if The Atlantic receives approximately 5,000 stories a year, they could only come up with these seven quite ordinary ones.
One of the problems of publishing all the year’s fiction in one supplement issue instead of monthly is the demand to make the stories in that one issue diverse and appealing to a large audience. Facing this demand, what are editors to do?
Well, they have to provide a mix of established writers (to give some class), new writers (to encourage new talent), and at least one third-world writer (for political correctness).
Jerome Charyn has published enough books to hold up a wall, and T. C. Boyle, although younger, is stacking his books up fast and furiously. Stuart Nadler is a recent graduate of (you guessed it), the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, while Amanda Briggs is at work on a collection of short stories, Ryan Mecklenburg is at work on a novel, and Katie Williams’ first novel will be out in June. E. C. Osondu is a Nigerian who got his MFA from Syracuse and is currently teaching in Rhode Island.
Here are a few comments on the seven stories. Caution! These are spoiler comments. If you want the experience of reading the stories the first time in a pristine linear fashion, stop now and come back later. For me, the significant reading of a short story is always the second reading, when I know everything that has happened and can focus on what is more important—what it means and how it works.
Jerome Charyn, “Lorelei”—An experienced writer who knows the conventions of fiction well, Charyn builds this predictable little story around the myth of the Lorelei, those beautiful Rhine maidens who, like the sirens of Greek legend, lured sailors to their death. The protagonist, somewhat of a shape shifter with several different names, is a middle-aged Don Juan grifter who preys, albeit somewhat honorably, on aging widows. When he tires of this life and returns to an apartment building of his youth near Yankee Stadium, he discovers that Naomi, a woman he was smitten by when they were both very young, still lives there, although in a wheelchair, with her too solicitous father. Charyn liberally makes use of allusions to fairy tales and comic books, describing the father as Smiling Jack, the protagonist’s favorite character in the funny papers, and Naomi as a little duchess sitting on an aluminum throne. As expected from the title, Naomi is the Lorelei who threatens to lure him back to her and her father’s lair, where “They would swallow him alive.” So, of course, he runs for his life. It’s an ordinary, conventional, well-made story that only seems exotic and interesting on the surface.
E. C. Osondu, “A Simple Case”—The protagonist Paiko is arrested on a raid on a brothel while he is waiting for his girlfriend Sweet to finish having sex with her last client. When the police Sergeant gets a call about a robbery, he throws Paiko in with a bunch of misc. miscreants and “arrests” them as the robbers. The story focuses on Paiko’s encounter with the other prisoners in the cell, primarily the President of the cell, known as the Jungle Republic. To determine whether he should be admitted into this community of thieves, he tells a story about a dispute with a woman over a handbag he tried to sell her at his market stall. The President who says Paiko is a good storyteller, uses his influence to get him released. When he returns to the brothel, he finds his girlfriend has gone to Italy. So he gets a new girl. That’s it! That’s the story. A competently, but flatly-told tale of local color in a Lagos jail, complete with third world corrupt officials, powerful criminals, and cheating prostitutes.
Ryan Mecklenburg’s “Hopefulness” centers on a man whose wife has left him for a neighbor. The first-person protagonist is a block captain of the Neighborhood Watch, a job he can devote all his time to since, conveniently, a couple of years ago he won five million dollars in a lottery pool at work. The heart of the story is the central metaphor of the house where the “other man” lived, which is now in foreclosure. Piece by piece, the neighbors steal the furniture and vandals wreck the house, all of which the protagonist fails to report because of his anger at the man who ran off with his wife. It’s a readable story with an obvious thematic linkage around a central metaphor—a technique often found in short stories since Bartleby’s wall and Roderick Usher’s House.
Stuart Nadler's “Visiting” is about a divorced man who takes his son to meet his dying father in another state. Most of the story is typical tense dialogue between the father and son during the car ride, but the thematic payoff comes when the father refuses to go to the door to see his father and sends his son instead. The father has never forgiven the old man for dragging a fork across his arm when he was eighteen, leaving a scar. In the final scene as the father and son sit in a restaurant, the son says he saw numbers on his grandfather’s arm in the same place as the father’s fork scars. The whole story depends on this final recognition, such as it is, reinforcing the protagonist’s knowledge that “he was still not as tall as his father. He never had been.” As father and son stories go, this one lacks thematic significance, for it is not clear how we are to understand meaningful differences between the three generations; moreover, the final recognition, such as it is, does not seem earned by the narrative.
Katie Williams, “Bone Hinge”—O.K., you gotta have at least one kind of outré story for spice. This one is about two Siamese twins joined at the back, which makes for exploring lots of metaphors of duality and schisms. However, let’s not fool ourselves, the central ploy here is the sexual suggestiveness of the fact that one of the girls is in love with a young man that she wishes to run away with and marry—which of course means that she must drag her sister along to unwilling participate in her every encounter. The story is told by the unattached sister, that is, the one without a boyfriend, and it is her “meanness” and cynicism that energizes this bit of exploitation.
And finally, there’s T. C. Boyle, (There is always T.C. Boyle, it seems, who is surely trying, hopelessly, to rack up more publishing credits than Joyce Carol Oates, who also has a piece in this Atlantic Supplement). “The Silence” is a stretch, as is often the case with Boyle. It’s about this guy on a silence retreat in the Arizona desert with his emaciated young wife and several other pooh-bahs and pundits, living in a yurt, avoiding scorpions, living on hummus and pita bread. The story opens and ends with a dragonfly, a water bug that is not supposed to be out here in the desert, in between which the wife is bitten by a rattlesnake and must die because, well, hell, you know, they are on a retreat and they can’t talk and the car is on blocks and there’s nobody else around and well, hell, you know, that’s karma, or something. Boyle is a sleight-of-hand artist, with lots of stuff up his sleeve, whose hand at the end of it is quicker than the eye. You either shake your head in disgust and walk out of the theatre or else you just say, ah, shit, and give in to him.
Tell me, Atlantic, and tell me true. Out of some 5,000 stories you received this year, are these the best you could come up with?
Showing posts with label Atlantic Monthly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atlantic Monthly. Show all posts
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Short Story Month 2010: Atlantic Monthly Fiction Supplement
The concept of The Atlantic Monthly began in April, 1857, when Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a few others met at the Parker House Hotel in Boston to create a “journal of literature, politics, science, and the arts.” The first issue, with James Russell Lowell as editor, came out in November, 1857.
James Lewis Pattee in his still useful 1923 history The Development of the American Short Story says, “The new magazine from the first was able to select the best that America could produce, and from the first it kept its pages free from the sentimental and the conventional. It was the type of periodical which Poe all his life had dreamed of founding and which every other American man of letters had dreamed of from the days of Bryant and Irving and Dana.” Pattee argues that Lowell, although not a fiction writer himself, “did more than any other person to raise the new short-story form to a place of dignity and to give it reality and substance.” During the three and a half years of his editorship, he accepted over eighty short stories by some fifty different writers.
He must have rolled cantankerously over in his grave when in the May 2004 issue, the current editors of The Atlantic announced, “We will no longer offer a short story in every issue of the magazine,” adding, doubtfully, “but we remain committed to the form.” That commitment was a curiously conceived “extra annual Atlantic fiction issue,” which was available on newsstands and to subscribers only online.
That’s when I sent Atlantic the following letter:
"I just wanted to express my sadness at The Atlantic’s decision to no longer publish a short story in each issue. I have been teaching and writing about short fiction for the past forty years, always recommending to my students that they subscribe to The Atlantic if they wanted to read quality short stories.
"I know there is no need to remind you that the short story is an important literary form, that The Atlantic has always had a great tradition in making stories available, that your decision is one more step in the decline of reader interest in quality fiction in America. I know that The Atlantic’s recent win of the American Society of Magazine Editors Award for fiction makes no difference to an editorial board that obviously prefers politics to literature.
"I will not be renewing my subscription. I will watch for your special issue available only on newsstands and on the Internet, but we know that lame effort will not last, and we know that eventually you will publish no more short stories. And that will be the end of one the last great sources of literature in a world already bombarded by political opinion and mere information."
And, as it turns out, that special newsstand- and online-only fiction issue was a bad idea. I could never find the damned thing at Barnes and Noble and reading it online was a pain in the arse. I ordered it once directly from Atlantic, and it took two months to get it. Definitely a bad idea. I wonder how many others suspended their subscription.
James Bennet began his Editor’s Note in the April, 2010 issue as follows: “I have some good news. Next month, The Atlantic will once again send fiction home to our subscribers, in a supplement that will accompany our May issue. On the newsstand, the supplement will be bound into the May magazine.”
Whereas the May, 2004 Editor’s note was filled with talk about the “challenge of real estate—space in the magazine—at a time when in-depth narrative reporting from around the country and the world has become more important than ever,” the April 2010 Editor’s Note assured that the short story has always been ”integral” to The Atlantic since that first 1857 issue
Claiming that no one was happy with the previous five-year compromise, Bennett further suggested, “We think—we hope!—we are seeing renewed interest in the short story.”
Well, Mr. Bennet, we think---we hope—the same. I have renewed my subscription to The Atlantic and was happy to receive the Fiction 2010 supplement tucked in with the May issue, although I did get it several weeks late. What’s up with that?
In a May 2009 Editor’s Note entitled “Fiction Matters,” The Atlantic praised the work of editor C. Michael Curtis who came to the job in the early 1960s, crediting him with the excellence of the fiction published in the journal, noting (“by conservative estimate”) that half a million stories were submitted to the magazine since that time.
The Atlantic considered some 5,000 stories for publication in 2009, (a humbling bit of data) as Curtis “looked for stories with narrative ambition, complex characters, and imaginative use of language, the familiar staples of good storytelling.” “I prefer,” Curtis is quoted as saying, on the whole, stories that present readers with situations requiring resolution, inviting moral choices, finding ambiguity in life experiences we are tempted to simplify.”
The Fiction 2010 supplement includes seven short stories, three essays, and a handful of poems, all of which I have read with interest.
The three essays are perfunctory, ordinary, and obligatory. Richard Bausch’s “How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons” argues, with absolutely no demur from me, that aspiring fiction writers should spend their time reading good fiction writers rather than “How to” writing manuals. Well, sure, yes, indeed, of course, you betcha, etc. etc. Here is Bausch’s advice: “Put the manuals and the how-to books away. Read the writers themselves, whose work and example are all you really need if you want to write.” Well, sure, yes, indeed, of course, you betcha, etc., etc.” He ends with a paraphrase of the famous William Carlos Williams line: “Literature has no practical function, but ever day people die for lack of what is found there.” Well, sure, yes indeed, of course, you betcha. [The Williams line is: "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." From "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"]
The interview with Paul Theroux entitled “Fiction in the Age of Books” has even less substance, included mainly, it would seem, for the value of Theroux’s name. One of the probing questions put to Theroux: “Does the migration to e-readers increase access to good stories or diminish it?” His astounding reply: “Greatly increases access.”
Joyce Carol Oates’ piece, “I Am Sorry to Inform You,” probably an excerpt from her forthcoming book The Siege: A Widow’s Story, recalls her “early days of widowhood” after the death in 2008 of her husband Raymond Smith, to whom she’d been married for 48 years.
I plan to discuss the fiction in the special Atlantic supplement later this week. If you are a subscriber, you should have yours by now. If you are near a newsstand, you should find a copy with the May issue. Let me know what you think about it.
James Lewis Pattee in his still useful 1923 history The Development of the American Short Story says, “The new magazine from the first was able to select the best that America could produce, and from the first it kept its pages free from the sentimental and the conventional. It was the type of periodical which Poe all his life had dreamed of founding and which every other American man of letters had dreamed of from the days of Bryant and Irving and Dana.” Pattee argues that Lowell, although not a fiction writer himself, “did more than any other person to raise the new short-story form to a place of dignity and to give it reality and substance.” During the three and a half years of his editorship, he accepted over eighty short stories by some fifty different writers.
He must have rolled cantankerously over in his grave when in the May 2004 issue, the current editors of The Atlantic announced, “We will no longer offer a short story in every issue of the magazine,” adding, doubtfully, “but we remain committed to the form.” That commitment was a curiously conceived “extra annual Atlantic fiction issue,” which was available on newsstands and to subscribers only online.
That’s when I sent Atlantic the following letter:
"I just wanted to express my sadness at The Atlantic’s decision to no longer publish a short story in each issue. I have been teaching and writing about short fiction for the past forty years, always recommending to my students that they subscribe to The Atlantic if they wanted to read quality short stories.
"I know there is no need to remind you that the short story is an important literary form, that The Atlantic has always had a great tradition in making stories available, that your decision is one more step in the decline of reader interest in quality fiction in America. I know that The Atlantic’s recent win of the American Society of Magazine Editors Award for fiction makes no difference to an editorial board that obviously prefers politics to literature.
"I will not be renewing my subscription. I will watch for your special issue available only on newsstands and on the Internet, but we know that lame effort will not last, and we know that eventually you will publish no more short stories. And that will be the end of one the last great sources of literature in a world already bombarded by political opinion and mere information."
And, as it turns out, that special newsstand- and online-only fiction issue was a bad idea. I could never find the damned thing at Barnes and Noble and reading it online was a pain in the arse. I ordered it once directly from Atlantic, and it took two months to get it. Definitely a bad idea. I wonder how many others suspended their subscription.
James Bennet began his Editor’s Note in the April, 2010 issue as follows: “I have some good news. Next month, The Atlantic will once again send fiction home to our subscribers, in a supplement that will accompany our May issue. On the newsstand, the supplement will be bound into the May magazine.”
Whereas the May, 2004 Editor’s note was filled with talk about the “challenge of real estate—space in the magazine—at a time when in-depth narrative reporting from around the country and the world has become more important than ever,” the April 2010 Editor’s Note assured that the short story has always been ”integral” to The Atlantic since that first 1857 issue
Claiming that no one was happy with the previous five-year compromise, Bennett further suggested, “We think—we hope!—we are seeing renewed interest in the short story.”
Well, Mr. Bennet, we think---we hope—the same. I have renewed my subscription to The Atlantic and was happy to receive the Fiction 2010 supplement tucked in with the May issue, although I did get it several weeks late. What’s up with that?
In a May 2009 Editor’s Note entitled “Fiction Matters,” The Atlantic praised the work of editor C. Michael Curtis who came to the job in the early 1960s, crediting him with the excellence of the fiction published in the journal, noting (“by conservative estimate”) that half a million stories were submitted to the magazine since that time.
The Atlantic considered some 5,000 stories for publication in 2009, (a humbling bit of data) as Curtis “looked for stories with narrative ambition, complex characters, and imaginative use of language, the familiar staples of good storytelling.” “I prefer,” Curtis is quoted as saying, on the whole, stories that present readers with situations requiring resolution, inviting moral choices, finding ambiguity in life experiences we are tempted to simplify.”
The Fiction 2010 supplement includes seven short stories, three essays, and a handful of poems, all of which I have read with interest.
The three essays are perfunctory, ordinary, and obligatory. Richard Bausch’s “How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons” argues, with absolutely no demur from me, that aspiring fiction writers should spend their time reading good fiction writers rather than “How to” writing manuals. Well, sure, yes, indeed, of course, you betcha, etc. etc. Here is Bausch’s advice: “Put the manuals and the how-to books away. Read the writers themselves, whose work and example are all you really need if you want to write.” Well, sure, yes, indeed, of course, you betcha, etc., etc.” He ends with a paraphrase of the famous William Carlos Williams line: “Literature has no practical function, but ever day people die for lack of what is found there.” Well, sure, yes indeed, of course, you betcha. [The Williams line is: "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." From "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"]
The interview with Paul Theroux entitled “Fiction in the Age of Books” has even less substance, included mainly, it would seem, for the value of Theroux’s name. One of the probing questions put to Theroux: “Does the migration to e-readers increase access to good stories or diminish it?” His astounding reply: “Greatly increases access.”
Joyce Carol Oates’ piece, “I Am Sorry to Inform You,” probably an excerpt from her forthcoming book The Siege: A Widow’s Story, recalls her “early days of widowhood” after the death in 2008 of her husband Raymond Smith, to whom she’d been married for 48 years.
I plan to discuss the fiction in the special Atlantic supplement later this week. If you are a subscriber, you should have yours by now. If you are near a newsstand, you should find a copy with the May issue. Let me know what you think about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)