Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 31

2021 Literary Magazine Rankings

Below are links to the 2021 Perpetual Folly Literary Magazine Rankings for Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Scroll down for a discussion of the rationale and methodology behind the lists.

If you find the lists useful, please consider purchasing one or more of my books.

2021 Literary Magazine Ranking—Fiction

2021 Literary Magazine Ranking—Nonfiction

2021 Literary Magazine Ranking—Poetry

Rationale. I am pleased to offer the annual Perpetual Folly Pushcart Prize Literary Magazine Rankings for 2021. Some people find the rankings useful when deciding where to submit their creative writing for consideration and publication. That’s certainly how the list came into being in the first place. About fifteen years ago—honestly, I’ve lost track—I was writing a lot of short stories and had no idea where to send them. The idea of a tiering system, in which writers would send to the top magazines first and then work their way down a list, made a lot of sense to me, but what were the top magazines? I looked for lists, but I didn’t find anything that worked for my purposes. So I made my own.

Methodology. In creating the rankings, I settled on the annual Pushcart Prize anthology as a proxy for quality, and I reasoned that the number of awards over some period of time would be more accurate than looking at just a single year. I settled on ten years as the period I would use and began the arduous task of gathering data from the ten volumes for those years, plugging that data into a formula I created to award points to a magazine for winning a “prize” and a smaller number of points for a “special mention.” Some readers complained that this formula put newer magazines at a disadvantage, a complaint that I took to heart in adopting a new formula several years ago that put more weight on prizes and special mentions during the last five years.

I’m the first to admit that there are flaws in this approach. One such flaw is that there seems to be a bias among the Pushcart Prize editors against online magazines. This has clearly been the case, but it’s a bias that seems to be eroding. Each year there are more online magazines that make the list.

Another flaw is that the formula doesn’t take into account a good many other factors, like response time to submissions, payment to contributors, circulation, etc. All true. These are things a writer should look into, and there are services like Duotrope.com that provide that information. On the other hand, the rankings as they exist are as objective as I can make them, in the sense that my own judgments aren’t involved. For me, the rankings are simply about data. To the extent there is subjectivity involved, it’s all in the hands of the Pushcart Prize editors.

Observations and Notes: In creating the lists this year, a number of things jumped out at me that may serve to answer questions that arise. In no particular order, here they are:

Both Tin House and Glimmer Train earned points in this year’s rankings, even though both magazines ceased publication last year. This is because the 2021 Pushcart Prize volume recognizes work that was published in 2019, and the rankings also reflect this. Tin House and Glimmer Train published their final issues in that year, and so work published in those issues was eligible to be considered.Those magazines aren’t the only “closed” magazines on the lists. I don’t remove such magazines from the rankings because I see a value in keeping an eye on how other magazines stack up against them. Also, sometimes magazines come back to life, as Story did in 2019, winning its first points in many years and reappearing in the rankings. So, if I know a magazine has closed, I will mark it with the symbol ©. If the magazine appears to only be on hiatus, I don’t mark it as being closed, especially if its website is still active. If a website is broken or has disappeared or I just don’t know what the status of the magazine is, I might place a question mark next to it on the list: (?).The Pushcart Prize editors sometimes make mistakes. For example, one of this year’s prize winners appeared to be nonfiction because it was clearly prose, but it wasn’t labeled as being fiction. But reading the piece suggested to me that it was actually a short story, not an essay, so I contacted the author who confirmed that it was, in fact, not nonfiction. So I included the points earned by the magazine that published the story in the fiction list.The rankings include small presses in addition to literary magazines. This is because small presses also are eligible to nominate pieces from the books they publish and sometimes those pieces are selected for recognition. They aren’t magazines, but I include them in the list anyway.There are a lot of newcomers to the lists this year, especially in poetry, where prizes were awarded to eleven magazines that hadn’t been on the list before and special mentions went to twelve new-to-the-list magazines.

Feedback welcome. As always, if there are dead or incorrect links, or if magazines have ceased publication (remember, those marked with © are closed), please let me know and I’ll make corrections.

Finally, if you find these lists useful, consider purchasing one or more of my books—from the publishers or your bookseller of choice. Thank you.

2021 Literary Magazine Ranking–Fiction

Below is the 2021 Literary Magazine Ranking for Fiction. For a discussion of the rationale and methodology for the ranking, please go here.

If you find the list useful, please consider purchasing one or more of my books.

2021Magazine2020 Rank2021 Score1Paris Review255.52One Story4512Ploughshares1514Conjunctions3495Gettysburg Review643.56Threepenny Review5377Zoetrope: All Story735.57Southern Review933.59Tin House © 93310Noon123111Ecotone Magazine113012Kenyon Review828.513Narrative1826.514American Short Fiction232514Georgia Review162514Missouri Review142517Glimmer Train ©1324.518New England Review202419Virginia Quarterly Review1523.520A Public Space172321Granta392121Sun222121ZYZZYVA262124Bellevue Literary Review202025Agni2418.525Iowa Review1818.527McSweeney’s3217.527Oxford American2517.529Image261630Sewanee Review3515.531Wigleaf291432Hudson Review2813.532Pleiades3113.534Epoch2912.534Idaho Review4212.536Colorado Review341237New Orleans Review3511.538Boulevard321038New Letters371040Crazyhorse379.541Electric Literature46941Pinch40943Chicago Quarterly428.544Bennington Review77844Cincinnati Review48844Copper Nickel75844Southampton Review42844Yale Review77849Common, The427.549Harvard Review487.549n+1517.549Witness467.553Catapult54653Prairie Schooner41653Raritan54656Five Points485.556Mississippi Review515.558Egress ©60558Notre Dame Review60558Paper Darts60558Prime Number Magazine60558Sarabande Books60558Southern Indiana Review60558Stillhouse Press60558Story558West Branch58558Hysterical Rag568Epiphany724.568Little Star714.568Michigan Quarterly Review604.571Alaska Quarterly Review54471Antioch Review60471J Journal58471Santa Monica Review51471Southwest Review72476Bomb603.576New Madrid543.578Arts & Letters77378New Ohio Review82378Ninth Letter82378One Teen Story72382Consequence Magazine822.582Florida Review772.582Hopkins Review772.582Ruminate822.582Salmagundi602.582Third Coast752.588American Scholar119288Black Warrior Review90288Blackbird103288Grist90288Gulf Coast82288Healing Muse90288StoryQuarterly90288Willow Springs90288Zone 390297Akashic Books1031.597Berkeley Fiction Review901.597Brooklyn Rail901.597Chattahoochee Review1191.597Chicago Review1191.597Cimarron Review821.597Collagist1031.597Confrontation1031.597Fiction International1031.597Graywolf Press1031.597Green Mountains Review901.597Indiana Review1031.597Kweli1031.597Mid American Review901.597Minnesota Review1031.597Per Contra901.597River Styx901.597Salt Hill1031.597Upstreet821.5116African American Review1191116Another Chicago Magazine1116Baffler, The1191116Barrelhouse1191116Bat City1191116Black Clock © 1191116Black Lawrence Press1191116Blue Fountain (?)1191116Broadkill River Press1191116Chautauqua1191116Crab Orchard Review1116December1191116East (?)1191116Exile1116failbetter.com1191116Fifth Wednesday ©1031116Fjords1191116Gascony Writers Anthology (?)1191116Gigantic (?)1191116Glossolalia1191116Hunger Mountain1191116Juked1031116Leaf Litter1191116Literal Latte1191116Literary Review1191116Litmag1191116Meridian1116Midwestern Gothic1191116Moon City1191116Mud City/Chapter House1191116Mythium © 1031116New Delta Review1191116Nimrod1116Obsidian1191116Pembroke Magazine1191116Potomac Review1191116Press 531191116Prism1116Provincetown Arts1191116Pulp Literature1191116Quiddity1191116Redivider1031116Reservoir Journal1191116Sixfold1191116Spectacle1191116Vassar Review1191116Water-Stone Review901116Western Humanities Review1191116Worcester Review1116Yemassee1191116Jewish Fiction1116Rumpus1116Outlook Springs1116Shade Mountain Press1116About Place Journal1171Anomalous1750.5171Asian American Literary Review1750.5171At Length1750.5171Austin State University Press1750.5171Baltimore Review1750.5171Beloit Fiction1750.5171BkMk Press1190.5171Brick1190.5171Catamaran1190.5171Cleaver1750.5171Crab Creek Review1750.5171Cutbank1750.5171Dalkey Archive Press1750.5171Dogwood1750.5171Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review1190.5171Elm Leaves/ELJ1190.5171Enizagram1750.5171Fiction1190.5171Five Chapters © 1750.5171Four Way Books1190.5171Fourteen Hills1190.5171John Daniel & Co.1750.5171Joyland1750.5171Little Fiction1750.5171Lumina1750.5171Malahat Review1750.5171Massachusetts Review1030.5171Memorious1750.5171Natural Bridge1750.5171New York Tyrant1750.5171Normal School1750.5171North Carolina Literary Review1750.5171Outpost 191750.5171Pear Noir © 1750.5171Pegasus Books1750.5171Post Road1190.5171Puerto del Sol1750.5171Seneca Review1750.5171Shenandoah1030.5171Sonora Review1750.5171Sweet1190.5171Texas Review1750.5171Texas Review Press1750.5171Transition1190.5171TriQuarterly1190.5171Tweed’s (?)1190.5171World Literature Today1190.5

New Literary Magazine Rankings Coming Soon

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It won’t be long now! As many people know, I prepare an annual ranking of literary magazines based on the Pushcart Prizes over a rolling ten-year period. The new volume (Pushcart Prizes 2021) should be arriving in my mailbox this week, so by the end of the week, I should have an updated list for use in the coming year.

The rankings are based on a formula that takes into account all of the Pushcart Prizes and special mentions that literary magazines and small presses have received in the past ten years, which means the list gets updated with new information each December. (More weight is given to prizes received in the last five years, which is a benefit to newer magazines.)

I first created the lists–separated by fiction, poetry, and nonfiction–about fifteen years ago when I was attempting to guide my own magazine submissions in a tiering process. I wanted to start with the “best” magazines and work my way down. After much thought, I concluded that the Pushcart Prize was the best proxy available for what was the “best”. Others may disagree, but my view on this hasn’t changed.

Be sure to check back later this week to see the new rankings! (In the meantime, the 2020 rankings are here.)

2020 Reading–November

My November reading report is a little late because of some technical issues with the website, but we appear to be back up and running, so let me tell you about the books I read last month:

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Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers by Joseph Mills is a collection of poems from Press 53 about wine. At a recent Press 53 online event, I heard Mills read from the book, which I had already purchased. As it turns out, I also had a copy of an earlier edition of the book, which has now been revised and expanded. The poems are mostly fun, looking at the experience of drinking wine but also the nuances of tasting wine, storing it, growing it, etc.

[image error]Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle

Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle was, I’m reluctant to admit, a disappointment. I like the conceit well enough, and the sentences are fine, and the characters interesting, but something was lost in the execution. There are four points of view here: an elderly couple at the end of their lives who have moved south to be near their children and a single mother and her young son. Of the four, the young mother is the source of the most drama, as she has secrets and is extremely distracted, always at risk of losing it. Her son, born with a cleft palate, has his problems, too, some of which are the result of his mother’s neurotic behavior and some deriving from his deformity, which he often hides with a false moustache. The older couple are more problematic, although they have large and intriguing backstories (which might be my real problem with the book as their pasts never come alive for me). They both have interesting flaws, and both are plagued by the tragedies that befell their parents. Now, they’re contemplating checking out early, or at least Frank, the husband, is. He’s got dementia, apparently, and he thinks he might want to die before it gets too bad. His wife, Lil, a life-long smoker, has emphysema, and she’s well aware of her husband’s flaws and also his thoughts of leaving, but she’s clinging to life. The two pairs of narrators come together because the mother and son live in the house where Frank lived as a boy, and he’s intent on rediscovering his past—reading the hieroglyphics, so to speak—and thinks visiting the house will help. Despite a brief moment where the characters come together in a climactic scene, I found it all a bit unsatisfying.

[image error]The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin is an odd tale that, on balance, I didn’t care for much. It begins with four Jewish siblings visiting a fortune teller in New York City. They keep secret what she tells them, but it involves their date of death. Then, some years later, their father dies. The two older kids are in college, the two younger ones in high school, and right after Klara graduates from high school she and the youngest, Simon, head out for San Francisco. Klara thinks she’s doing Simon a favor because she realizes he’s gay, and at the time it was the only place to be. The rest of the book explores if, when, and how the fortune teller’s predictions about their deaths come true. I found the book even less credible than some sci-fi and fantasy novels I’ve read, not because of the fortune-telling but because of the characters’ reactions to it. While it’s true that people don’t always behave logically, these people have responses that just don’t ring true.

[image error]Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik

Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik was my book club’s selection for November. It’s about Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, men born on the same day in 1809, both of whom were known for their grand rhetoric and ideas. Lincoln’s words are known to us mostly through his speeches, especially a handful of famous ones like the Gettysburg Address. Darwin’s language we know from his books, especially On the Origin of Species, but also later works, as Gopnik relates. The men seemed to share some other beliefs, including agnosticism and they were both opposed to slavery. Other than that, the linkages seem tenuous. The title of the book derives from the controversy over the words spoken at Lincoln’s deathbed: “Now he belongs to the ages” or “Now he belongs to the angels.” Pretty dry reading, although I learned some things, especially about Darwin.

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Snowdog by Kim Chinquee is a short collection of flash autofiction featuring the author—both in her own name and another name, plus a boyfriend (or two?), a son and daughter-in-law, and countless dogs belonging to all the human characters. The narrators always seem torn between their relationships and other obligations, but the dogs provide a steady presence.

[image error]If I Had Two Wings by Randall Kenan

If I had Two Wings by Randall Kenan is a collection of short stories published not long before Kenan’s death earlier this year. My review of the book is slated to appear in Southern Review of Books. It’s a terrific collection of stories about the people of Tims Creek, York County, North Carolina, the territory Kenan has explored before. I totally loved the first story, about a plumber who comes to New York City with his wife for her Baptist convention. While she’s in meetings, he wanders the city and is so happy and excited by it all—the energy, the diversity, the pep in everyone’s step—that the reader expects him to be brought low by some calamity. Instead, he has an amusing encounter with Billy Idol. One story features a character named Randall Kenan. When an author does that, it always raises the question for me of how much of the story is truth and how much is fiction. Given the ghosts that the fictional Randall encounters on his property, I guess the story isn’t altogether true.

[image error]Seventh Flag by Sid Balman Jr.

Seventh Flag by Sid Balman, Jr. is a family saga set in Texas that tells the story of three generations. Balman asked me to blurb the sequel, coming out next year, so I figured I should read the first installment before I tried to dig into the new book. Family sagas are challenging because there isn’t always a clear arc. Here, most of the drama is confined to the contemporary generation, with the information about their parents and grandparents being mostly backstory. Interesting backstory, with some incidents that might have made novels unto themselves, but not contributing to the book’s climax. Nonetheless, I was very engaged in the details of the family’s life. The story is really about two families: the Laws, who are big landowners, and the Zarkans, descendants of the camel drivers who came from Syria in the mid-19th Century when the US government decided camels made more sense for the Army in the arid Southwest than horses. Each generation of the two families connect, until they actually inter-marry in the current generation, which is where the real fireworks are. So now I’m ready to dig into the new book to see what happens next.

Website Upgrade Coming

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Strictly speaking, my website problems have nothing to do with gremlins, viruses (not even COVID-19), or malware. The problem is inertia. I’ve known for quite a while that I needed to do something to upgrade the programming software for the website, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. And I was too lazy (which is what I meant by “inertia”) to ask someone what to do.

Finally, though, I contacted GoDaddy (the service that hosts my site) and learned that the platform I contracted for ten years ago is obsolete. I had a long talk with one of their Hosting Agents–I’ve always found GoDaddy’s customer service to be excellent and friendly–and arranged for the upgrade I need in order to get the most recent version of PHP. When that’s done, GoDaddy will migrate my site to the new platform and I should be good to go.

That should be done in a week or so, just in time for me to freshen up the look of the site and to begin some new features in the new year. Stay tuned!

2020 Reading–October

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How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi is an exploration of antiracism. It’s not good enough to be not-racist anymore, Kendi, argues, one must actively oppose racism and the policies that create or contribute to injustice. The book describes Kendi’s progression from being an angry black kid, to a teen who blamed blacks for many of their own problems, to being a racist himself. He also discusses the problem of color racism among black people (dark vs. light) as well as intersectionality and his own growing awareness of gender issues that exacerbate racism. The book is smart and important, even if there are some logical inconsistencies. (While abandoning the idea that black people can do more to help themselves, he acknowledges that immigrant blacks are doing better because of the immigrant mentality that success means striving; if that’s true, doesn’t that apply to anyone?) At the very least, it’s a thought-provoking book that comes to us at the right moment.

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The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea is quite a book! Don Tomas Urrea is the patron of huge family ranch, but he is out of favor with the government, so he moves his operations to a different ranch in Sonora, taking with him all the ranch hands and various other hangers-on, including Huila, a medicine woman who looks after everyone. Huila is also looking after Teresita, the illegitimate daughter of Tomas, and an aspiring healer herself. In fact, after Teresita is attacked (presumably raped) by a cowboy, the girl dies and comes back. She then attracts a huge following among the people who believe she had divine powers and begin to call her a saint. Tomas is weary of the thousands of pilgrims who come to see her, and it’s also troubling that she has begun to attract the attention of the government and the church, who consider her a threat. The conflict comes to a head and provides for a very exciting climax to the book. The author did the excellent narration on the audio version which I listened to while also consulting a print copy.

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Resurrecting the Bones by Jacinta White is a collection of poems detailing White’s visit to black churches and cemeteries throughout the south. Her father had been a pastor, and it was her uncle who suggested that they visit churches where her father and grandfather had served. So they decided to use the first Sunday of each month. The project expanded and spread and resulted in this volume of poems, although not all the poems are related to the project, which is about preserving the past but also moving forward.

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Chinese Whiskers by Pallavi Aiyar is not listed as a young adult novel, but that’s how it reads. In fact, I think it would be suitable for middle-grade readers. I read it because a colleague lent it to me knowing that I am interested in China, but I would never have opened this book otherwise. The book centers on two cats adopted by foreigners living in Beijing hutong (old narrow alleys) neighborhood, of which there are few left. The cats talk to each other and can understand what the humans say, but the humans can’t understand them. The plot involves a nefarious cat food manufacturer producing tainted food that is making cats sick and the two cats help shut the bad guys down. The author also includes some current events in Beijing for context, including the 2003 SARS virus outbreak and the preparations for the Beijing Olympics (although the games didn’t occur until 2008). One thing that was interesting was the use of a fair amount of Chinese (rendered in pinyin), despite the fact that presumably the entire book is taking place in Chinese. It’s a logical inconsistency that you see in a lot of books, where writers give the flavor of a foreign culture by throwing in words from the local language. I didn’t need the glossary in the back, but I’m sure some readers find it helpful. Unless you’re a cat fanatic or a twelve-year-old, I don’t recommend this novel.

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Love’s Garden by Nandini Bhattacharya is a sprawling family saga told against a background of the growing independence movement in colonial India and the ultimate separation of India and Pakistan. The plot is complicated: A young woman is on her way to enter marriage with a relatively well-off man, but she is devastated because her maid fails to join her (it only becomes clear much later why this is so devastating). She is, then, unhappy in her marriage and when she gives birth to a daughter, Prem, she is not a loving mother, and the girl is mostly raised by her nursemaid. Prem becomes close to a servant’s daughter and when that girl is married off, Prem has an affair with her teacher. But the teacher is sent off to war and likely to his death, so Prem is married off to a very wealthy anglophile, Sir Mitter, thereby becoming Lady Mitter. They aren’t exactly loving, but Prem becomes a society woman in Calcutta and the marriage is strained when Sir Mitter’s English mistress arrives and dumps her son, Mitter’s child, into Prem’s care. Prem then has her own child, and then the child of her former friend also comes into the household. All the children and various other characters create complications, and the story stretches into the present. I probably would not have read this novel or even have come to know about it except that I was asked to engage in a collaborative interview with the author, which we have now done and that will appear . . . somewhere.

2020 Reading–September

[image error]Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood is a historical novel about a woman involved in a double murder. She is spared hanging because of her age, but is imprisoned for life, although some think she is insane and should be treated. Apart from the day-to-day lives of Grace (who works in the warden’s home as a servant and goes back and forth from her cell to the house under armed guard) and the psychiatrist who is studying her (who is a resident of a shabby boarding house and also corresponds with his whiny mother about money and marriage), the narrative unfolds as Grace tells her story to the doctor. She came to Canada from Ireland with her abusive father (the mother dying during the crossing and being buried at sea) and worked in various servant positions from a very young age before coming into service for a gentleman and his housekeeper, the victims she is said to have killed. How reliable is she? That’s not clear, but she builds a persuasive case that the laborer on the farm did the killing and also that the housekeeper was something of a madwoman herself.

[image error]Intimations by Zadie Smith

Intimations by Zadie Smith is a short collection of essays written during the pandemic, which, in case you haven’t noticed, isn’t over, so I’m not sure why it was necessary to publish this so soon. Except that proceeds from the book are being donated to the Equal Justice Initiative and The COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund for New York, and those are important and urgent causes, so as a fund-raising effort it’s not a bad idea. So, kudos to Smith, who is a terrific writer. I recently read her novel Swing Time, which I enjoyed very much even though it was kind of a jumbled mess. The essays in the current book are largely about changes wrought by Covid-19, but also about issues of privilege in race and class. It’s short and a quick read, so I do recommend it.

[image error]Moment to Moment by David Budbill

Moment to Moment by David Budbill is a collection
of poems inspired by ancient Chinese writers. He sometimes calls himself
Judevine Mountain, after the T’ang Dynasty poet Cold Mountain (Han Shan), and
lives an isolated life on a Vermont mountainside. I’m not sure the work is
great poetry, although Budbill during his life received numerous awards.

[image error]The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman

The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman is subtitled “8
Ways to Bring Fiction to Life”. Despite
the clever title, this book isn’t solely about plot, because everything in
fiction is related. Plot, or story, derives from characterization, so the book
spends three chapters on character alone. A lot of genre writers would do well
to study those chapters to find more depth for their characters. The rest of
the book describes tips for building suspense, understanding conflict (without
which plots are weak tea), etc. It’s a pretty good summary of how to “bring
fiction to life.” The book has had me thinking about characterization as I move
into the final stages of writing my latest novel. In fact, before I begin
another pass through my manuscript, I’m going to try to get to know my
characters better. I may not use the techniques suggested by the book, though.
Instead, I’m going to have the characters write me letters, in their own
voices, telling me about themselves.

2020 Reading–August

[image error]Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood is a historical
novel about a woman involved in a double murder. She is spared hanging because
of her age, but is imprisoned for life, although some think she is insane and
should be treated. Apart from the day-to-day lives of Grace (who works in the
warden’s home as a servant and goes back and forth from her cell to the house
under armed guard) and the psychiatrist who is studying her (who is a resident
of a shabby boarding house and also corresponds with his whiny mother about
money and marriage), the narrative unfolds as Grace tells her story to the
doctor. She came to Canada from Ireland with her abusive father (the mother
dying during the crossing and being buried at sea) and worked in various
servant positions from a very young age before coming into service for a
gentleman and his housekeeper, the victims she is said to have killed. How
reliable is she? That’s not clear, but she builds a persuasive case that the
laborer on the farm did the killing and also that the housekeeper was something
of a madwoman herself.

[image error]How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson

How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson isn’t
quite what I thought it would be. Instead, it’s a history of Individualism and
the Cowboy Mentality—both somewhat mythical—that still divides the country. I
would have suggested a different title, because that war is still being fought,
but these are significant issues and I learned a great deal from the book about
the attitudes that shape the battle. I’m not sure the author gets at the cause
of the divide, though. The cowboy myth is an outgrowth of the cult of
individualism, which was always based on a lie, but where did that start? She
ties it to the oligarchy that developed in the south, built on the foundation
of slavery, which makes sense, and the conquest of the West was in part an
attempt to extend that domination over more land and more people. The book is
very readable, but I would love to have it brought forward to the present
attitudes of the Tea Party, Libertarians, and Trump’s GOP. I’m told that’s the
subject of her next book.

[image error]Other People’s Pets by R.L. Maizes

Other People’s Pets by R.L. Maizes is a novel about La
La, a veterinary student who is the daughter of a burglar (and, nominally, a
locksmith). When her father is arrested after his latest job, La La drops out
of vet school and starts robbing houses, a skill her father taught her, in
order to raise money to pay his legal fees. As the book progresses, we learn
more about her childhood in which she robbed homes with her father after her
mother abandoned them, and how he took the rap for her when she carelessly let
slip to some shady friends what they’d done. What also makes her unique is that
she’s an animal empath. She doesn’t seem to know what human animals are
feeling, but she does sense the discomfort of pets, which is what steered her
toward veterinary medicine. She even rationalizes her robbery because she
treats the pets in the homes she robs. But the robberies create a rift between
her and her fiancé, and life gets complicated when she tries to find her
mother. The book is beautifully plotted and clever.

[image error]The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds

The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds is a collection of
poetry first published in 1987. I’ve also read another collection by Olds, Stag’s Leap, that I loved, but this one
put me off for some reason. The whole last section of the book is about her
children, and those poems did little for me, and I failed to connect with a
great many other poems in the book also. Some were just borderline offensive
(“The Pope’s Penis” for one, “Outside the Operating Room of the Sex-Change
Doctor” for another), and others, such as the many poems about her parents and
their problems felt either too personal or not personal enough.

[image error]Machiavelli by Patrick Boucheron

Machiavelli: The Art of Teaching
People What to Fear
by Patrick Boucheron (translated from French by Willard Wood) is a collection
of essays about Machiavelli that the author did (and read) on French public
radio. Machiavelli is an interesting figure from the early 16th
Century who is often misunderstood, and I’m not sure this slim book really
clarified him for me. Most of us learn that his book, The Prince, was a guide for authoritarians, but others argue that
it was more satirical and descriptive than prescriptive. But he wrote other
works as well. Boucheron refers to the interesting Stephen Greenblatt book, The Swerve, about the importance to the
early Renaissance of the rediscovery of an ancient book by Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, which I read
recently, but not to Leonardo da Vinci, who was prominent at the time also.

[image error]The Book of Jeremiah by Julie Zuckerman

The Book of Jeremiah by Julie Zuckerman is a novel in
stories about a man who goes from being a mischievous prankster as a child
(releasing a bunch of frogs at his mother’s carefully planned Passover seder is
one example) to respected professor of international political economy. The
stories are not arranged in chronological order, which I actually liked, so the
story about his childhood pranks, which begins the book, is followed by one
about his retirement, and then we go back to fill in the blanks. The writing is
crisp and Jeremiah is sometimes amusing, sometimes infuriating, like a male,
Jewish Olive Kitteridge. Particularly funny is one story where Molly, his wife,
tasks their son Stuart, with calming their father down before the wedding of
Hannah, the daughter. Stuart gets the great idea of feeding him pot brownies
and it does the trick. It’s a terrific book that enjoyed reading very much.

Making Assumptions

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A long time ago, I read the fiction in The New Yorker as soon as my copy arrived. Then, I posted my reaction to it on my blog as soon as I could, whether I had anything useful to say about it or not. I had some followers who regularly commented on my posts, agreeing with me sometimes, disagreeing with me sometimes. Occasionally people would ask me questions about the story, or high school students would ask for help with a paper. (Um, no.) It was fun. There’s one particular writer whose stories appeared often in that magazine’s pages, and while I like this writer’s novels, the short stories almost always left me cold, and I said as much on my blog. The writer’s fan club—with an active online discussion forum—hated me for that. I also got some nasty comments from other people, too, who accused me of stupidity or worse if they disagreed with my interpretation or negative reaction to a story.

That eventually caused me to stop the practice. Well, that and the fact that the weekly fiction often annoyed me because it seemed every other week the magazine ran a novel excerpt instead of a short story. That just reeked to me, especially when they didn’t disclose the fact that it was an excerpt. I wondered, and still wonder, what kind of deal the publishers have with the magazine to place those excerpts.

I don’t think I’m going to resume my weekly commentary, but I have been giving a lot of thought to a recent piece of fiction in The New Yorker. To be honest, it’s the first full issue of the magazine I’ve read in ages because the digital issue I was getting on my Kindle was just too easy to ignore. Now, having resubscribed to the print magazine, I’m determined to avoid the creation of unread stacks.

So, I gave the August 3 & 10 issue, the first in my new subscription to arrive, a thorough read, including the fiction.

The piece that has prompted me to comment now is “Heirlooms” by Bryan Washington. Nothing I’m going to say here really has anything to do with Washington’s piece, which I found to be very good, once I got my bearings. Or, at least, I don’t blame Washington for the problems I have with what The New Yorker has published and I certainly don’t blame him for the baggage I brought to my reading of the work.

I began reading and right away was intrigued by one character’s Japanese name, Mitsuko, because as a longtime resident of Asia anything that has an Asian angle will be of interest to me. The narrator is unnamed, at first, but it is revealed very early that Mitsuko’s son Mike, the narrator’s lover, has run off to Japan to see his dying father, Mitsuko’s ex-husband, leaving the narrator and the mother alone in Mike’s Houston apartment (which, in my mind, I kept placing in San Francisco, but that’s my fault, not the fiction’s, and not unrelated to the problem of associations I discuss below).

At this point in the narrative, I’ve made some assumptions. First, I figured the narrator was a woman, Mike’s girlfriend. And I also assumed that the narrator was white, because . . . I guess because I’m white and I saw no evidence to the contrary, as the narrator wasn’t described in any way.

I was wrong on both counts, and this is the point of this
post.

If I had been a regular reader of The New Yorker in recent years, I might have recognized the name of the author. After I was deep into reading the piece, but before I really knew what was going on in it, I checked out the online version of the magazine because there is usually a short interview with the author by one of the editors that readers of the print edition don’t see. Here I saw a picture of the author and learned that he’s black. And he confirms that the narrator is a gay black man, which I now infer Washington, the author, to be also. If I had known these details about him when I began reading, I might not have made the assumptions I did as I read. (Although why should the author’s race or gender have anything to do with it? It’s fiction! This is a different, but related, problem.)

One of the things I have learned in my own creative writing is that readers do make assumptions about characters based on their own identities and what they know about the author. The writer can best serve the reader’s experience by providing the clues they might need if their assumptions are likely to be wrong. I now try to find ways early on to signal gender and race, and also sexual orientation if relevant, and I suggest to students that they do the same. This is especially important in a short story, where you don’t have the time or space to be leisurely in your revelations. Don’t make the reader assume.

Unless I missed them, there were no clues in Washington’s piece until well into it that the narrator, whose name we eventually learn is Ben (Benson, as the interview with the author reveals) and therefore a male, and that he’s black, and that he and Mike are a couple. Quite different from how I was reading the piece at first.

In my view, this is a flaw in a work that is meant to stand alone, but I don’t blame Washington, because the piece, as it turns out, is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, Memorial. (See my frustration, noted above, with the frequency The New Yorker does this.) The editors have likely selected a portion of the book that seems to hang together more or less like a short story (it doesn’t, in my opinion). But the selection they’ve chosen doesn’t necessarily do the work I’m guessing Washington does in the novel to introduce these characters in a way that defeats any assumptions the reader might bring to it. Mitsuko is easy because of her name. But does he let us know right away that Ben is black? Or are we left to assume that he’s black because the author is black? I don’t know. It will be interesting to see the book when it comes out.

The issue, of course, is not unique to Washington or writers of color. In fact, I’d argue that it’s a bigger problem in works by white writers. Next time you read something by a white writer, pay attention to how the writer signals to the reader information about the characters such as race and gender. White writers tend to forget to do this, assuming that their mostly white readers will assign their race to their characters unless otherwise specified. And look for other ways white writers tend to stumble over racial issues in their writing. For some other thoughts on this, take a look at 7 Casually Racist Things That White Authors Do.

If you’ve read “Heirlooms,” I’d be interested in your
reaction.

Everywhere Stories: On the Air!

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Okay, not on the air, exactly, but on Zoom and Facebook Live. From 2014-2018, I edited and Press 53 published a three-volume series of anthologies, each volume of which contained 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. It was fun to curate and edit, and the feedback from readers has been very positive. Because the authors are scattered around the country and the world, it was difficult to arrange in-person events to support the book. But Zoom is a perfect vehicle for that, and Press 53 is planning a series of readings featuring as many of the contributors as we can schedule.

What ties the stories together is the understanding of the culture that they portray. Mostly, they aren’t about tourists, but about people who are trying to connect with the countries on a deeper level.

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First up, on Tuesday, August 18 at 7:00 pm EDT, we have Barbara Krasner, Jeff Fleischer, Midge Raymond, and Mark Brazaitis. Each of the four authors will read a little from their stories and then we’ll have time for Q&A.

To participate in the Zoom event, you need to register in advance, using this link: Everywhere Stories on Zoom.

You can also watch on Facebook Live on Press 53’s Facebook Page. No registration is necessary.