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.