Okay, so I was weirdly busted for one of my regular charity gigs today on the way home from the train station. To wit, living in Paris, I never throw New Yorker magazines away. Theyre too rare and valuable, so instead when Im done, I strew them on cafe tables, the idea being that someone else might be happy to find a good read without a big spend. No sooner than Id plopped the latest New Yorker on a cafe table in the Gare Montparnasse today, though, than the waitress called me back. You forgot your magazine, she said in English. No, I was leaving it for someone else to read. Nice idea, she said, But its not going to make anyone who loves fiction happy anymore. Well, er, um, so I asked, and she told me shed once spent a summer working for Pantheon books in New York City and had hoped to stay in the US and become a translator. Its a long story, she said, with a sigh. I dont have time for that right now, but dont you agree that the fiction has become awful? I thought about it for a second, and it did occur to me that its been a long time since Ive finished a New Yorker short story, and this in spite of my deep love of fiction, because so many of them are ugly, alienated or alienating. Dont you miss Alice Munro, William Trevor, Mavis Gallant, Edna OBrien--dont you miss great writing instead of creative-writing course junk? asked the cafe waitress. And well, yes, I do. I love beautifully crafted short fiction, I love a unique voice, I love a story, I love a surprise, I am just a hopeless fiction junkie, short or long. And so thanks to the cafe waitress, I had a little awakening, or the coagulating of something Id been half thinking for a longtime. And because I love the New Yorker, I so hope itll broaden its fiction slot again and privilege not just variety and a not always persuasive idea of modernity but excellence.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 22:34:48 +0000
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