Thursday, May 15: Femme Fatale
IT’S ALIVE! WELL, KIND OF…
by Deborah Elliott-Upton
A television commercial being shown often depicts what one assumes to be a mad scientist and his assistant who are creating their own credit card. (I will not say they are creating their own monster, but perhaps the ad agency should have thought of the analogy themselves.) When the scientist screams, “It’s alive!” the assistant says something like, “Well, not really.” Stephen King has said more or less the same about American short stories in the introduction of the 2007 issue of The Best American Short Stories.
Although the amount of short stories being written and submitted are flourishing, the magazines offering publishing homes are shrinking. Talent is not the problem. As always, it’s a “follow the money” to find the answer.
At magazine racks’ eye level we find the magazines that obviously sell the best: those with celebrities going into rehab every other week gracing their covers, those with scantily-dressed women that may or may not be covered in plastic wrappings and those who tell us how to wear our hair, outfit our homes and fill our time if we had time between work, child-rearing and/or marital happiness and keeping a household afloat. I notice magazines sporting luscious desserts are usually flanked on the same cover touting the newest in dieting, which seems strange. None of these top shelf magazines includes a short story on their pages.
King says to even find magazines carrying short stories he had to practically grovel on the floor to the lowest racks of the magazine stands. The six magazines he’s chosen comes to a total of over eighty dollars. Personally, I’ve faced the same experience in the country’s heartland, so this is by no means one of those “it costs more in bigger cities” expenses like a good meal or room for the night. Nope, magazine prices – even those not coming directly to your home and incurring postage price hikes – cost more than ever.
The series editor of The Best American Short Stories was said to have read thousands of short stories before sending 120 onto King for final selection. To me, this meant thousands of short stories were published during the year. Doesn’t this mean the short story market is alive and well? Or at least in there kicking and fighting to stay alive?
Yes and no. Yes, the markets are there and people must be buying some of them to keep even an on-the-floor space on the magazine racks, but is it enough? Magazines that once were advertisement-free are now using space once reserved for additional stories are trying to keep afloat by selling that space instead. Magazine subscriptions prices are up, but what prices aren’t? When someone pointed out a gallon of milk is higher than a gallon of gasoline, I was surprised. We are all surprised every time we visit the gas pumps, why not the grocery store aisles that depend on gasoline-driven trucks that deliver the milk, eggs and other goods. Both publishers and postal trucks require the same gasoline as before the prices increased. We should be surprised magazine subscription rates have risen less often than postage costs.
What we can do is take a stand and do it in front of the magazine stands across America. Be more selective in your reading and buy quality magazines that include fiction. Do you really need to know more about the Terrible Trio’s antics that are not to be named on this web site or is this a “magazine” you can do without at least occasionally? Do we really need a croissant with that Cafe Mocha Grande every day? (not according to our scales) Do we really need to purchase one more lottery ticket when the odds are astronomical against winning? The real question we should be asking ourselves with every purchase is “What do we need to make us a stronger, more knowledgeable person?” Shall we spend our hard-earned dollars on another package of cookies or something to stimulate our brain?”
We need to instill the importance of reading in this country and not lag behind other nations in language skills.
I don’t understand when people chose to read fewer short stories when time is at a premium with our busier-than-ever schedules. I don’t understand people who get their news strictly from a cable comedy show. I don’t understand people who say, “I don’t read,” and seem proud of the fact.
In my opinion, we need to support the short story markets or they will disappear altogether. Disappearing forever – I think that would translate as dead.
I get frustrated when I see people replace reading with television and movies. When the only exposure to literature comes from a movie adaptation of the book, I feel like the progress in education has stopped and started to revert back towards cavemen drawing on the walls.
What is wrong with taking your time and reading a story? I enjoy visualizing the story in my mind as I read each page. I don’t mind watching a movie based on the story, but I don’t want my only exposure to it to be spoon fed to me from an edited for time interpretation. Where is the joy in that?
But that really leads back to the problem; lack of time. Not sure if it is as much a lack of time as just being impatient and needing instant gratification. Patience is a virtue. I see these signs everywhere, but since they are not displayed as a video they probably go unnoticed.
Magazines are filled with short articles on how to quickly fix your wardrobe, sex life, marriage, work environment, and on and on. Twenty two pages of quizzes that explain to you who you are and why you do what you do. If I can be summed up quickly in a monthly magazine quiz, shoot me please.
Sorry for the brief rant, but you moved and inspired me. Isn’t that the sign of a great writer?
Great post!!
What is fascinating to me (and terrifying) is that, despite being in an age where we have more time saving devices than any period in history, we all have less time than ever before.
Or so we think.
We’re being programmed to do as much as possible, as many things as possible, without regard to the quality of those “things.”
There’s nothing wrong with watching television or film so long as you do it as you do any other activity – in moderation. There is quite a bit of excellent, quality writing being done in television (yes, I’m biased), and though there is almost none currently happening in studio films, you can still find it at the indy showcases. Watching THE WIRE (RIP) isn’t a waste of time. Watching DEAL OR NO DEAL is.
But yes, nothing, NOTHING should replace reading. Be it short stories or those great whacks of novels, nothing gives us so much for so little. To go back to Hollywood again (my only frame of reference), I have a whole rant that the reason the “great” directors of today are nothing compared to the greats of just a generation ago, is because the new ones don’t read.
They’ve been raised on video – VHS, then DVDs – being force fed the images from stories as opposed to having to create them in their own minds.
Give twenty people the same book and though the overall reaction and understanding of the story may be the same, you will have have twenty different image creations for each scene. See King’s #8 rabbit for an example.
The directors who were raised on literature had a huge advantage on the video store clerk generation, and it shows. God, does it show.
I love this post, Deborah. And I love your challenge to readers to turn away from the impulse-racked gossip mags, and try publications offering a workout for the brain. And the soul. What people don’t get is that once you’ve used up that hour wading through the manure of PEOPLE or EW, you feel like you just left a bad Chinese restaurant. You’re not that satisfied, and you’re already getting hungry again.
But spend an hour with EQMM or ATLANTIC MONTHLY, and you come away incredibly satisfied, feeling energized and enriched. And full.
The one thing I am most proud of as a parent, is that my kids love books. They were given them from birth, and when a new one comes home it is a big event in our house. While other kids draw Hannah Montana during “art time” at school, my daughter is writing books about family adventures.
I have a hilarious tale about literacy and Hollywood executives, but I’ll save it for another time. I’m going to go read now.
I did my part. I pitched a little fit (okay, maybe it was more of a verbal challenged dripping with insinuation) when I went to the local B&N and looked through all the mags and couldn’t find Alfred Hitchcock. I was on a mission to buy to read a certain contributor on this blog that wears a cowboy hat…..I couldn’t find one in all rows and rows of mags. I went to one desk and asked if I overlooked and found they didn’t get them.
I asked why. The (very young) clerk replied probably no demand. I informed I’m demanding. He had the nerve to laugh. Long story short, I was directed to someone who was supposed to be in charge and while I was promised the matter would be looked in to, I left empty handed.
Enjoyed your post as usual. BTW, since music is mentioned often, Leonard Cohen is breathily singing in my ear as I crunch away at the monies and world of grants. Some of the music he’s written go hand in hand with………..accounting………or being accountable?
The local independently owned newsstand in my town stocks EQMM. Nobody, including B&N and the independent bookstore, stock AHMM. (One place did but they went out of business…hmm)
By the way, speaking of inflation, a decade ago some writer said, approximately: “What costs exactly the same as it did 40 years ago? A word in Ellery Queen. They haven’t raised their rates.” Don’t know how true that is…
Wow, Deborah. Your column aroused no small emotions. Research has shown that reading activates a part of the brain not used in other forms of entertainment.
I was sliding into agreement with Kerry as I started reading Guyot’s comment, and I was surprised. I confess I watch less television than the average person, mainly news, PBS Mystery, CSI, NCIS maybe, and anything on the history channel.
I may have built up a false impression of television, often wondering why the producers didn’t bother buying, or at least reading, the hundreds of brilliant short stories out there, rather than falling back on formulae once the first season had ended.
Of course there was Twin Peaks: David Lynch’s great characterization, the dark story line, the moody music of Badalamenti. But, it seems writers never dreamt it would have a second season and hadn’t thought the story through, which collapsed under its own implausibility. What a terrible waste of brilliance.
At first I rejected Guyot’s premise that TV was having more creative writing than movies, but then I thought of the desperation behind movies based on, of all things, video games.
Those weren’t the only offenders; all through the 2nd National Treasure film, part of my brain was running a monologue: “On, come on… the Presidents have a secret book? Oh, sure, he’s just going to walk the President though a tunnel? Then leave him at the side of the road? Why doesn’t the President just say they’ve gone for a walk together?” Even the camera work at Rushmore couldn’t hold a candle to Hitchcock’s.
Bruce Greenwood (the President) starred in a television series called Nowhere Man, far more brilliant than that silly movie. Sadly, the network killed the series before it could have a second season. Another waste of imagination.
Man in a cowboy hat… Is that a Texas thang?
A sand grain of good news in a sea of yuck… both the local Border’s here (St. Louis) regularly stock EQMM, and usually AHMM.
The B&N’s do not, but we don’t shop there anyway.
Long live the indy!!! And congrats to the nice woman I met at Edgar Week who had just purchased Murder By the Book in Houston – to keep open the doors of one of our country’s finest indy bookstores.
We’re pretty lucky here — both Books-A-Million and Borders regularly stock AH and EQ and The Strand, though it’s sort of hit-or-miss at B&N. Unfortunately, none of the local independents do.
I’m with you, Deborah — I’ll never understand folks who don’t read.
Great post as usual.
Vicky Cowal, an American ex-patriot, has lived and worked in Mexico City for more then thirty years. Her list of skills and activities never ends, but reading and writing lie somewhere near the top. I met her though an American journalist I met because I was trying to contact a suicidal friend and he (the journalist) answered the phone. (I know this sounds like a novel plot.) Vicky was working for the journalist at the time, and she invited us to to a dinner party at her house. That was 18 years ago, and we continue to correspond.
At the time Vicky was running a cooking school out of her apartment, planning a cookbook of Mexican cuisine, writing a restaurant-review column for the only English newspaper in Mexico City, and sponsoring interns from the School of Journalism at UCLA. Several times she invited me to accompany her on “jobs” to review restaurants in Mexico City for her column. We paid for our own meals most of the time, because if they knew what we were up to, they became absolutely sycophantic.
Now to the point. Vicky started a “writer’s club” of 8 or so friends who also liked to write. We’d meet at her house for a couple of hours in the afternoon to present things we had written in the interim, and criticize each others work. Two women were working on books, and they would read their most recent chapters. Virginia, an American woman, presented the same chapter of her romance novel over and over, each time revised, but the changes seemed indiscernible to me. It was so corny, I could never think of anything constructive to say except to suggest she start over. Consuelo (a woman’s name in Spanish, even though it ends with ‘o’) was writing a biography in Spanish of her family’s beginnings in South America. She was well educated and I learned a lot by listening to her read in her native language. Vicky, of course, presented her restaurant reviews, and I always read a couple of my latest audiobook reviews. One group member was an obese American dentist who wrote poetry, usually done the night before the meeting. His poems were not to be remembered, but his appetite was. Vicky always put out two plates of cookies, one for us and one for Everett. He gave me a ride home one afternoon, and I noticed that he was so sugar-deprived, he kept M&Ms in the ashtray to munch on at stoplights.
A new young woman showed up one day, and of course, we knew little about her. She asked a question to all of us near the end of the meeting, which revealed something about her she probably wouldn’t have admitted. She asked, “How does one pick out books to read?”
I gasped internally. I couldn’t believe a young adult in a writers’ group would ask such a question, but she did, and it’s both naive and profound. Out of his mouth, still stuffed with cookie, came a pat answer from the dentist, “Read the classics.” Should that be a recommendation to someone we thought was a beginner in literature?
We have all spent a major part of our lives trying to decide what to read. Each book guides to others. CRIMINAL BRIEF has loads of great suggestions. My audiobook reviews attempt to influence customers’ choices. We have customer reviews in Amazon to ponder. A woman in my camera club sent me an email last week recommending THREE CUPS OF TEA.
Stephen King fans can tell from his writing he reads extensively, and not just fiction. In his book ON WRITING he emphasizes how important reading is the the writer. Deborah’s essay provoked passionate responses because her readers are READERS.
Kerry, Guyot, Alisa, Tony… This is the article that keeps on giving.
Didn’t I read that John had published in a number of magazines? What’s your secret, John?
Guess what? I just checked my personal email and had an offer for “online magazines”—-I checked for Alfred and Ellery and they were available!! So now I am a one year subscriber to each so I can read cowboy man and all the rest of your stories!
I have long been a reader. Growing up we had the two SA papers, the two Austin papers delivered daily in addition to the two bi-weekly local papers. I read all the magaines I was allowed to buy, and still can’t resist a Good Housekeeping on occassion even though I think housekeeping is evil evil evil.
Books are a part of my kids lives and now grandkids.
Somebody’s gotta do it.
I forgot to mention the online offer was from B&N—
Our Local Borders and B&N still stock both EQ and AH, but more disturbing to me is the fact that they are not stocking as many genre anthologies as they used to. On the plus side, I discovered several fiction magazines I hadn’t heard of at these stores! (“Dark Wisdom” “Black Gate” and the more recent incarnation of “The Strand” for example.) Maybe online mags. are the future. Who knows?
Thoroughly enjoyed your article. Gal, you covered all sides of it–I’m sure it will make people stop and think a bit. People can’t be blamed for raising their prices when every thing they have to buy has gone up in price, too.
And there are logical reasons. But doesn’t it seem that the primary reason was for greed?
People who are always on the run should enjoy short stories. It’s a pity they don’ take the time.. You didn’t mention Woman’s World in magazines. They publish a romantic fiction and a mystery solve-it-yourself in their weekly issues. These are short shorts, but I always read them first, and they are invariably delightful. Didn’t you have a short story published there? Somebody from PPW did.
I’m glad you mentioned Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitch-cock Magazines. I always enjoyed them. I should, for I had a poem published in AHMM years ago. Thanks for reminding me. I’m going to order subscriptions to both.
When you mentioned how expensive it was to order magazines to study and analyze, I wanted to point out that when you have the time–and whenever do you have all the time you need, or want–you can study the magazines at the library. Make a list of the ones you want to check, and look them over to see if you want to submit. The more you like what style a magazine publishes, the more certain you can be that they’ll like your work.
Thanks for helping me get in to leave a comment. I’ve had a bit of trouble with it, and do appreciate both of you helping.