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.

Completing PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories: 2009

Well, my “road trip” with family has now ended—after 34 days and 15 states on the road in a big RV with in-laws and an aging dog. I did not have time to do blog entries on the road, but did finish reading the PEN/O. Henry Prize stories: 2009. The more stories I read, the less impressed with them I was. I began to wonder if the editor and the publishers were more interested in creating a politically correct mix of cultural and ethnic stories than in choosing the “best stories of the year.”

I am, of course, interested in the trials and values of cultures other than my own. But if my primary literary interest were in cultural “information,” I could get that from a variety of other sources. Surely, we come to good fiction for more than that. Manuel Munoz’s “Tell Him About Brother John” creates an interesting character and an engaging voice, but it seems primary about the cultural difference between “here” and “Over There.” Viet Dinh’s “Substitutes” consists primarily of interesting information about how those who stayed after the fall of Saigon, especially children, have fared under the Communists. Paul Yoon’s “And We Will Be There” seems to fall into the same trap of other stories of Chinese and Japanese characters in this collection—presenting characters as simple, childlike figures. I wish someone would explain to me why authors so often present Asian people in this way.

Another issue I would like to raise in this post is how stories “illustrate” certain ideas. Judy Troy’s “The Order of Things” seems so purposely calculated to illustrate the St. Thomas quote--“The important thing is not to think much but to love much”—that the initial interest I had in the two characters is obliterated when, at the end, I realized that they are only two dimensional illustrative figures. Nadine Gordimer’s “The Beneficiary,” on the other hand, is so complexly woven around the complex ideas of “acting” and “being” that when I get to the end and read the punch line—“Nothing to do with DNA”—I don’t feel that the characters are reduced to mere illustrations. I am engaged by the complexity of Charlotte’s position between her actor father and the man who has acted as her father.

I liked Paul Theroux’s “Twenty-Four Stories,” for each one of them was so filled with thematic or dramatic potential that they illustrated the central short story characteristic of “much in little.” But then I have always liked Theroux’s work.

I have never cared much for Marisa Silver’s work, however. One of the most important aspects of the short story to which I am always sensitive is whether the author seems to really care for his or her characters. The brilliance of Chekhov, for example, is that he never condescended to the people in his stories, regardless of their background or weaknesses. Silver, in my opinion, does not seem to care for her characters, merely using them for her own narrow purposes.

I enjoyed “Darkness,” even though I thought the question/answer technique was aggravating. I liked it for the same reasons I have always liked fantasy fiction. It illustrates an interesting idea, while allowing a little escape from everyday realism.

Finally, there is Junot Diaz’s “Wildwood,” which is actually the second chapter of his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for 2008. The central character and point of view is Oscar’s sister, who is locked in a battle of wills with her dominating mother. Laura Furman, the editor of the collection, obviously likes stories of mother/daughter conflicts, as this is not the only one in the book.

I liked the chapter. I cannot really call it a short story, even though The New Yorker paid Diaz a lot of money for it as a short story. Perhaps I should say that while it is not a very good short story, it may indeed be a pretty good chapter of a longer work. I am currently reading The Brief Wondrous Life and find myself caught up in the life of Oscar—an overweight DR nerd and social misfit. I must confess, I was not a great fan of Diaz’s first book, the highly praised collection of stories entitled Drown. The book created a great cultural buzz when it was published several years ago, and everyone eagerly awaited Diaz’s first novel, which was a long time coming. According to the critics, it was worth the wait. I don’t know yet. As I read it, I like the voices I hear, but it has all the characteristics of the novel as a form with which I get impatient—it is just filled with “stuff.”

I did my duty and read all the stories in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories: 2009 collection. But I was disappointed. Surely of the hundreds of stories published in English each year, there are better ones than these. I am hoping for better when Best American Short Stories comes out in early October.

I promise to be more regular on this blog now that my summer road trip is over. Thanks to all those who read it.I hope it is both interesting and helpful.