I subscribe to three literary magazines: TriQuarterly, Plougshares, and Granta. All three are book-length, perfect-bound collections that come out three or four times a year. But I rarely read anything in TriQuarterly; I usually read just one or two stories per issue of Ploughshares, and I often read Granta cover-to-cover.
I have great respect for all three magazines and religiously save the back issues. (I became acquainted with Ploughshares back in the heyday of small press publishing in the mid-1970s and have every single issue of it). What makes Granta stand out as readable and enjoyable?
TriQuarterly follows the usual literary magazine style -- the editors select prose and poetry that meets the criteria of their subjective judgement. If your taste happens to be in tune with theirs, the magazine gives you not just occasional short pieces by well-known authors, but samples of the best work of lesser known and new writers that you are likely to enjoy. On the minus side, when such a publication has a stable staff, their subjective taste is likely to stay the same for long periods of time, meaning that one issue becomes virtually indistinguishable from another. There's nothing special about the order of the selections, and they have nothing in common. When I pick up an issue, my inclination is to check the table of contents to see if I've heard of any of the contributors, and to read first the works of the big-names. And having read one item, there's nothing to motivate me to read another. Hence while I subscribe, in part, to learn about new writers, I almost never read their works there.
Ploughshares tries to break away from the trap of sameness of taste and style and judgement by having a different guest editor for each issue. On the rare occasions when the guest editor is an author whose works I'm familiar with and enjoy (like Tim O'Brien), it's the editor's perspective that catches my interest. The selection tells me something about that author/editor, and writers included in that issue take on a special aura as having been singled out and recommended by him or her.
Granta has a different theme for each issue, and reads like a quirky and sometimes comprehensive book on the subject. Some subjects are a bit off-the-wall, as if chosen just for the fun of it and interpreted in wild and unexpected ways -- like #44 (summer 1993) The Last Place on Earth (about the final moments of our lives), #68 (winter 1999) Love Stories ("a temporary and permanent state of affairs; between strangers, within families; the lack, the loss and the need of it."), and #41 (autumn 1992) Biography ("what are they and why do we like reading them?"). Others are deliberately constructed to help introduce the reader to new writers, like #43 (spring 1993) Best of Young British Novelists and #54 (summer 1996) The Best of Young American Novelists. Often I've started reading a newly published novel, had a feeling of deja vu, and realized that I'd read an excerpt years before in Granta. But, for me, the best issues are the ones where the theme is a country or a city, like #70 (summer 2000) Australia: the New New World, #64 (winter 1998) Russia: the Wild East, #59 (Autumn 1997) France: the Outsider, and #65 (spring 1999) London: the Lives of the City.
I may not read an issue when it first comes out. I might not pick it up until years later, but once I start reading (and I inevitably start with the editor's essay explaining the theme), I usually can't stop and read everything, cover-to-cover, in order. The selection is invariably eclectic, broad, refreshing, and entertaining. The essays complement the fiction and vice versa, creating a whole that often changes your view of the subject -- whether it's Russia today or the nature of biography. You read about (and enjoy reading about) subjects that you never would have sought out on your own, and you discover interesting and important trends that news magazines simply miss. For instance, in the recent Australia issue, I savored tales of misunderstanding, hardship, and prejudice; learned about the status of aborigines and Irish immigrants; and enjoyed a first-hand account about growing up in Tasmania and fleeing to England.
Especially in the issues devoted to a single country or city, I enjoy the freshness of the writing and appreciate the way the pieces complement one another to provide a memorable image of that part of the world and how it has changed and what matters to ordinary people there, and what trends are important there today -- all the telltale little symptoms that don't get reported on by the media, and that can wake you up to how much the world can change in a short time, and how much the concerns and aspirations of people of all walks of life throughout the world resemble one another from one generation to the next.
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Other book reviews by Richard Seltzer
Published by B&R Samizdat Express, PO Box 320-161, West Roxbury, MA 02132-002. 617-469-2269 seltzer@samizdat.com
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