Monthly Archives: November 2007

“Best American” Short Stories Update

Exciting news! Our handy page of the best stories in The New Yorker (according to Houghton Mifflin, anyway) has been greatly expanded. Today I discovered this rather remarkable website, overseen by one William G. Contento, which lists the contents of a great many fiction anthologies, Houghton Mifflin included.
Most of the years between 1939 and 1976 are now represented. (Either the anthologies did not publish a “Notable” list or Mr. Contento chose not to include them. I suspect the latter—I wouldn’t want to type all that stuff in, either.) This explains why the new batch of lists looks rather skimpy alongside the more recent lists. If you go only by the stories that were actually included in the anthologies, there has been little change since 1939. Four was about the most you could expect in the 1940s, and it’s about the most you can expect now.
The new lists are very interesting, I think. Irwin Shaw comes up a lot. Some names are conspicuously missing, notably J.D. Salinger and Vladimir Nabokov, although it’s possible they were chosen in years that are still missing. John Cheever and John Updike are represented. Matthew Yglesias‘s grandfather makes the list.
The most intriguing name on the list, in my opinion, is Mary Lavin. I had not heard of her until today, but she must have been a very impressive woman indeed, overseeing a farm and raising three daughters on her own during the time her stories were written. A mere glance at the lists will disclose that she was very, very esteemed. Consider this: Over a period of eighteen years, she wrote just fifteen stories for The New Yorker—and yet only Updike, Alice Munro, and Louise Erdrich were able to have more of their New Yorker stories selected, in the years for which we have data.
In any case, decades have elapsed. It’s up to you to decide whether such resonant names as St. Clair McKelway, Hortense Calisher, Lyll Becerra de Jenkins, Carlos Bulosan, and Louis Bromfield have been forgotten justly or criminally. —Martin Schneider

Tina Brown on The New Yorker: “I Would Probably Redesign It Again”

Here’s Brown, interviewed by the Indian Express:

As a long-time editor, how would you say media could gauge the requirements of the time?
I think one of the things that’s really difficult now, and journalists have to keep on is, just when you think you know everything, you don’t know anything at all. There are two kinds of stories. One is a complete news story that you find and break, which is immensely valuable and probably the first thing you should be trying to do. But the other kind of story is also very valuable, where you go back to a story where everybody thinks they know what happened. I mean, I still have not read the definitive piece about Musharraf’s coup, a blow-by-blow tick-tock as we call it of the decision, the hows and whys. I’ll still read this piece at Christmas because it takes time to plan and tease it out of people. I’m a big fan of the depth and the context, which is almost all you can provide in the age of the Internet. Even at the New Yorker in 1997 it became a nightmare trying to protect our news. Then when I went to Talk, one reason why I couldn’t stand it there, it was a monthly. News had so accelerated that it made me nuts that even with a very deep, contextual piece, you began to feel that it had been nibbled at by so many mice.

But you also came in for some criticism at the New Yorker for making it too newsy, too current.
I saw myself as providing two strands of journalism there. I thought it was very important to have a news element to provide what I used to think of as a threshold piece. To bring people into the tent you have to have a piece about whatever it was that week, this piece that couldn’t wait. Then you could go, in the middle of the magazine, to the big tent piece, the piece that had taken 12,000 words and six months to do. I saw it always as a two-horse stream. And I felt committed to the notion that people would have to read it that week. It can still happen, in an upmarket magazine, people say, “oh, it’s a great magazine, I haven’t got to it yet, but it’s terrific, the last three issues are piled up by my bed.” And I would think, that’s not a compliment. That means, I failed.

Ten years later, what would you do at The New Yorker?
I would probably redesign it again. I might make a shorter front of the book section. I’m an admirer of the Spectator magazine in London. It does a very good job of a front that’s interesting, voices that you come to every week.

Thanks to Sans Serif for the link. In other news, David Remnick will be speaking at Princeton on November 20:

In “A Conversation With David Remnick,” he will participate in a discussion with Michael Wood, the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, on topics ranging from Russian politics to the U.S. presidential race to famed journalist A.J. Liebling.

Infamous (Almost) and the Ransom Note Approach

I saw Infamous, the “other” movie about Capote, tonight, and I must say I liked it. I happened to get a gander at the movie poster and got a snootful of faux Irvin font! So close, close, close. It’s clearly not quite Irvin—and equally clearly, intended to evoke same.
T’other day I linked to a 2003 post on Maud Newton’s sharp media blog; if you look at her masthead image, you’ll see some authentic Irvin font peeking back at you. —Martin Schneider

Fondly Remembered Army Man Is Newly Coveted

It is unfortunate that circumstances have forced the Writers Guild of America to go on strike, but one beneficial by-product has been the unforeseeable outpouring of approbation for David Owen’s March 13, 2000, profile of George Meyer. (Witness the requisite evidence that said outpouring has occurred.) And not only that, but this outpouring has spawned a kind of sub-outpouring directed at New Yorker mainstay Ian Frazier, whose September 2004 interview in The Believer is cited in most of the same places. I’m not sure, but I think the comedy blog Dead Frog started it all.
So what’s it all about? Army Man, man.
Long story short, the WGA went on strike in 1988, and George Meyer happened to have a little zine going, called Army Man, and it was really funny. He ended up being a very important writer at The Simpsons. Check out the links above for the mining of strike-relevant meaning, it’s all stimulating stuff.
The two things that stuck in my mind from when I first read that Meyer profile in 2000 were the story about the arm and the sandwich and Meyer’s spiel about Country Crock. I think two salient, entirely intact bits after seven years is pretty darn good, David Owen.
To a semipro scrutinizer of The New Yorker like me, it’s not every day that I stumble upon such a phenomenon: people, unprovably regular people out there, cherishing a New Yorker profile with such ardency. Check out the start of Ed Page’s post over at Maud Newton lo these four years ago:

I’ve read this New Yorker Profile of George Meyer about a gazillion times. I love it so much I cuddle with it at night. When I’m feeling blue, I sing to it. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I lick it.

Now that’s some approbation! As well as a nice rebuke to the whole stupid “New Yorker appeals only to snobbish monocle wearers” contingent. —Martin Schneider

Help Me Out, Alex Ross (Or Anybody Else)

My mom is from Austria. I lived in Vienna for three years after college. I’m more than tolerably familiar with the Wiener Werkstätte, used to go to the MAK all the time, been to Otto Wagner’s famous Kirche am Steinhof several times (I call it the “Narrenkirche”—Narr means “fool,” the church is located in a mental health facility).
All of which helps explain why the cover of Alex Ross’s new book The Rest is Noise was so deeply familiar to me. I grew up with images just like this around the house. I “knew” exactly what work that referenced. I also “knew” that I’d be able to Google the referent in a couple of minutes, at most.


Well, I was wrong about that. I never was able to track down the original, and it wasn’t for lack of effort.
So I am reduced to this: Alex (or anybody else): where have I seen the cover of your book before? First person to supply the answer will receive a handsome selection of stickers featuring utterly obscure Austrian soccer players (I am so not kidding about this). —Martin Schneider

Norman Mailer, 1923-2007

On the New Yorker website, Louis Menand reflects on the late Norman Mailer’s life and career. Mailer himself rarely contributed to The New Yorker, though. Until Tina Brown’s tenure, Mailer had published only two short poems in the magazine, both in 1961. There are just five bylines in all. As one of America’s most important postwar writers and a frequent object of public attention, he was far more often written about; a search on his name in The Complete New Yorker yields more than 100 hits.
Indeed, it would appear that Mailer had little interest in writing for the magazine. Perhaps he considered that a New Yorker byline would be incidental to his various projects—to remake American literature, to upend the battle of the sexes, to provide a channel whereby citizens could regain authenticity. Nevertheless, he’s enough of an icon to have served as the subject of a New Yorker cartoon—eight times. This 1997 Lee Lorenz drawing is apropos.
Mailer’s reputation doesn’t rest primarily on his novels (although I still plan to read The Naked and the Dead). Provocateur, mayoral candidate, co-founder of The Village Voice, journalist of genius, he did not squander his tenure on this planet. —Martin Schneider

In Which I Am Asked Many Questions About The New Yorker

And I answer “Yeah!” I thought there could be no more pleasing process than that of working with a pair of gifted web designers who took every impulsive suggestion and translated it into something beautiful, but now I know it’s probably being asked questions like this.
I am also the author of this week’s A Brief Message—think the MetroCard looks like a smooshed bee? You’re not alone! Add your own suggestions for a better design in the comments over there.

10.8.07 Issue: Suddenly There Came a Tapping

In which the staff of Emdashes reviews the high points and discusses the particulars of the previous week’s issue (or, occasionally, another edition).
Tessa Hadley’s story “Married Love” started out comic and, by the end, worked in helpless regret. This is one of those stories where it’s difficult to tell where the comic leaves off. The story reminded me of the flaky October-June marriage in Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal; these families could be neighbors. The standout article for me was Rebecca Mead’s Reporter at Large, “Our Man in Pyongyang,” about Bobby Egan, a New Jersey restaurateur who is our primary back channel to North Korea.
And if you were considering following Nancy Franklin’s advice and watch Friday Night Lights, by all means do. Standup comedian Patton Oswalt called it “the closest thing…to a Dogme 95 film on television,” the endorsement that induced me to investigate.
The Writers Guild strike has upended both the foreseeable future for so many good shows (and their writers) and the ethics of purchasing a DVD (for which writers earn meager residuals—as of now), but note that Friday Night Lights‘ creators are so confident in its quality that they offer a money-back guarantee. —Martin Schneider

House & Garden, Terribly

As you probably know by now, the 106-year-old House & Garden has folded. Dorothy Parker Society honcho Kevin Fitzpatrick notes this important New Yorker connection:

A magazine that folded today was among the many that published Dorothy Parker’s work. In a story that was broken on Media Bistro’s blog, FishbowlNY, Condé Nast announced today that House and Garden would cease publication in both print and online. Others launched the magazine in 1901; according to the Chronology of New York by James Trager, Condé Nast acquired House and Garden in 1915 when it had a circulation of just 10,000 and almost no advertising.
Parker cut her teeth on Condé Nast publications, working for the company for six years, beginning in 1915… Read on.

(Speaking of Parker, I just learned about this short film based on a Parker short story, Dorothy Parker’s The Sexes.) In honor of House & Garden and all the things and people it inspired, I present the lyrics of “Design For Living,” by the midcentury British wits Flanders & Swann. You’ll probably want to listen while you read, so buy the album or do whatever you do to download songs and raise them as your own.

Flanders: When we started making money,
Swann: When we started making friends,
Both: We found a home as soon as we were able to.
Flanders: We bought this bijou residence for about a thousand more,
Than the house our little house was once the stable to.
Swann: With charm…
Flanders: Colour values…
Swann: Wit…
Flanders: And structural alteration,
Both: Now designed for graceful living,
It has quite a reputation.
We’re terribly House and Garden,
At number seven-B.
We live in a most amusing muse,
Ever so very contemporary.
We’re terribly House and Garden,
The money that one spends.
To make a place that won’t disgrace,
Our House and Garden friends.
We’ve planned an uninhibited interior decor,
Swann: Curtains made of straw…
Flanders: We’ve wallpapered the floor…
Both: We don’t know if we like it, but at least we can be sure,
There’s no place like Home Sweet Home.
It’s fearfully Maison Jardin,
At number seven-B.
We’ve rediscovered the chandelier,
Tres tres very contemporary.
We’re terribly House and Garden,
Now at last we’ve got the chance.
Swann: The garden’s full of furniture…
Flanders: And the house is full of plants!
Both: It doesn’t make for comfort,
But it simply has to be.
‘Cause we’re ever so terribly up-to-date,
Contemp-or-ar-or-y!
Flanders: Have you a home that cries out to your every visitor,
“Here lives someone who is exciting to know”?
No?
Well, why not… collect those little metal bottle-tops, and nail them upside-down to the floor? This will give the sensation… of walking… on little metal bottle-tops turned upside-down.
Why not… get hold of an ordinary Northumbrian spokeshaver’s coracle? Paint it in contrasting stripes of, say, telephone black and white white, and hang it up in the hall for a guitar tidy for parties.
Why not… drop in one evening for a mess of pottage? Our speciality, just aubergine and carnation petals. With a six-shilling bottle of Mielle du Pap, a feast fit for a king.
I’m delirious about our new cooker fitment with the eye-level grille. This means that without my having to bend down, the hot fat can squirt straight into my eyes!
Both: We’re frightfully House and Garden,
At number seven-B,
The walls are patterned with shrunken heads,
Ever so very contemporary.
Swann: Our boudoir on the open plan has been a huge success…
Flanders: Though everywhere’s so open, there’s nowhere safe to dress!
Both: With little screens, and bottle lamps,
And motifs here and there.
Swann: Mobiles in the air…
Flanders: Ivy everywhere!
Both: You mustn’t be surprised to meet a cactus on the stair,
But we call it Home Sweet Home.
We’re terribly House and Garden,
As I think we’ve said before.
But though seven-B is madly gay,
It wouldn’t do for every day,
We actually live in seven-A,
In the house next door!

Thanks to Penny Wyatt for these lyrics!