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Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #4
Granta 4: Beyond the Crisis
In this issue, arguments for the future of publishing by Brigid Brophy, John Sutherland, David Caute, Blake Morrison, Per Gedin, David Godine and Walter Abish. Also, fiction from Martin Amis, Guy Davenport, Nicole Ward Jouve, Kenneth Bernard and Raymond Carver. Plus, an essay on realism and sexuality by Mario Vargas Llosa.
In this issue:
Guy Davenport: Fifty-Seven Views of Fujiyama
Brigid Brophy: The Economics of Self-Censorship
John Sutherland: The End of A Gentleman’s Profession
David Caute: Sweat Shop Labour
Blake Morrison: Poetry and The Poetry Business
Per Gedin: A Hand-Made Art
Erin Burns: Publishing In America: An Interview with David Godine
Walter Abish: But Why Write? The Writer-To-Be
Lisa Zeidner: Lucy
Nicole Ward Jouve: The Drawer
Martin Amis: Let Me Count the Times
Kenneth Bernard: Sherry Fine: Conceptualist
Raymond Carver: Vitamins
Mario Vargas Llosa: La Orgía Perpetua An Essay on Sexuality and Realism
Patricia Hampl: The Beauty Disease
In this issue:
Guy Davenport: Fifty-Seven Views of Fujiyama
Brigid Brophy: The Economics of Self-Censorship
John Sutherland: The End of A Gentleman’s Profession
David Caute: Sweat Shop Labour
Blake Morrison: Poetry and The Poetry Business
Per Gedin: A Hand-Made Art
Erin Burns: Publishing In America: An Interview with David Godine
Walter Abish: But Why Write? The Writer-To-Be
Lisa Zeidner: Lucy
Nicole Ward Jouve: The Drawer
Martin Amis: Let Me Count the Times
Kenneth Bernard: Sherry Fine: Conceptualist
Raymond Carver: Vitamins
Mario Vargas Llosa: La Orgía Perpetua An Essay on Sexuality and Realism
Patricia Hampl: The Beauty Disease
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
19 people want to read
About the author
Bill Buford
97 books319 followersWilliam Holmes Buford is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism".
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December 6, 2013
Granta 4 is pretty amazing. Guy Davenport's 57 Views of Fujiyama is a collection of poetic accounts of hikes in a variety of places. I was really quite taken with it even if i did just make it sound kind of boring.
I didn't read every article on publishing in Britain in 1981. Because.
The Eric Burns interview with David Godine, small publisher in Boston, MA, was lively. The Walter Abish piece on writing was engaging.
All the stories were enjoyable for different reasons. Lisa Zeidner was delightfully flippant in the face of family tragedy. Nicole Ward Jouve' s The Drawer was a harrowing exploration of the possible results of a lovers' disagreement. Kenneth Bernard was satirical look at performance art, and, is there a Raymond Carver story that doesn't say, "Read More Raymond Carver" ?
I thought I hadn't read any of this issue but, while reading Let Me Count The Ways by Martin Amis, a light tale of a statistician-like businessman who calculates the frequency of his sexual encounters real, imagined, conjugal and solo, I found two words, at different points in the text, that I had underlined. "Uxoriousness" was one. "Mammoreal" was the other. Uxoriousness means "excessively submissive or devoted to one's wife".
Mammoreal is a word I couldn't, and still can't, find. "Mammorial" is in the Urban Dictionary and, I think, because Amis uses this word Mammoreal to describe a dune the businessman imagines himself atop while riding a black stallion, the two words have to do with more or less the same thing.
Mario Vargas Llosa's essay on Madame Bovary has me inspired to read all of Flaubert. I'll try to get to his masterwork, at least, at some point. "The Perpetual Orgy" is criticism written from Vargas Llosa's bare reactions to Flaubert's works. The author quotes Flaubert from books and from correspondences and other works. He sounds like an interesting personality. And of course, Vargas Llosa makes Madame Bovary sound like the absolute steamiest piece of erotica.
And Patricia Hampl's essay on beauty. How did I miss this thoughtful, endearing work? I read Hampl's Spillville several years ago when I recognised her Slavic surname in connection with the title, the place name of where Antonín Dvorak spent his time when in the US. I bought the first 6 issues of Granta when they were reprinted in 1990, just before I went off to teach English in the Czech lands. I must have been looking elsewhere. Though I can't agree with everything Hampl says in "The Beauty Disease", much of what she says is eloquent and rings true.
I didn't read every article on publishing in Britain in 1981. Because.
The Eric Burns interview with David Godine, small publisher in Boston, MA, was lively. The Walter Abish piece on writing was engaging.
All the stories were enjoyable for different reasons. Lisa Zeidner was delightfully flippant in the face of family tragedy. Nicole Ward Jouve' s The Drawer was a harrowing exploration of the possible results of a lovers' disagreement. Kenneth Bernard was satirical look at performance art, and, is there a Raymond Carver story that doesn't say, "Read More Raymond Carver" ?
I thought I hadn't read any of this issue but, while reading Let Me Count The Ways by Martin Amis, a light tale of a statistician-like businessman who calculates the frequency of his sexual encounters real, imagined, conjugal and solo, I found two words, at different points in the text, that I had underlined. "Uxoriousness" was one. "Mammoreal" was the other. Uxoriousness means "excessively submissive or devoted to one's wife".
Mammoreal is a word I couldn't, and still can't, find. "Mammorial" is in the Urban Dictionary and, I think, because Amis uses this word Mammoreal to describe a dune the businessman imagines himself atop while riding a black stallion, the two words have to do with more or less the same thing.
Mario Vargas Llosa's essay on Madame Bovary has me inspired to read all of Flaubert. I'll try to get to his masterwork, at least, at some point. "The Perpetual Orgy" is criticism written from Vargas Llosa's bare reactions to Flaubert's works. The author quotes Flaubert from books and from correspondences and other works. He sounds like an interesting personality. And of course, Vargas Llosa makes Madame Bovary sound like the absolute steamiest piece of erotica.
And Patricia Hampl's essay on beauty. How did I miss this thoughtful, endearing work? I read Hampl's Spillville several years ago when I recognised her Slavic surname in connection with the title, the place name of where Antonín Dvorak spent his time when in the US. I bought the first 6 issues of Granta when they were reprinted in 1990, just before I went off to teach English in the Czech lands. I must have been looking elsewhere. Though I can't agree with everything Hampl says in "The Beauty Disease", much of what she says is eloquent and rings true.
Displaying 1 of 1 review