Benjamin Chambers writes:
The folks over at The Millions have got a great post showing the stats on fiction in The New Yorker for the past six years: male/female ratio, frequency with which authors appear, etc.
While TNY undeniably relies heavily on some of the same authors over and over, I can attest to the fact, after reading every story the magazine published last year, that it often publishes authors of whom I’ve either never heard, or have never read—and many of them are not exactly household names. That got me wondering whether I was just out of the loop, or if others had had the same experience.
So, here’s a quiz. Check out this list of all the stories the magazine published in 2008, and ask yourself how many authors on the list you’d heard of before they appeared in the magazine. I’m reasonably well-read, but of 40 authors, I’d never heard of eight: John Burnside, Rivka Galchen, Yiyun Li, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, J. M. G. Le Clezio, and Wells Tower. That’s not a bad percentage of new-to-me authors.
In the spirit of being ruthlessly honest, I will also add in authors I’ve heard of but have never gotten around to reading (though in some cases I’m embarrassed to admit it), such as Joshua Ferris, Tessa Hadley, Ha Jin, Hari Kunzru, Janet Frame, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Roberto Bolaño, Daniel Alarcon, and Edwige Danticat.
That’s another nine authors, which means I’d never read 17 out of 40 authors the magazine published last year. I may be an uncultured boor, but thanks to The New Yorker, I’m significantly more cultured than I was as of 2007.
Write in and tell us how you did on the quiz … and in case you’re curious about the magazine’s editorial policies, check out this recent Q&A with TNY fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.