Essential Interview

I have an article in the newest issue of Poets & Writers. It’s about the publishing industry’s recent interest in doing business in China and in bringing Chinese writers to the rest of the world.Not unlike European explorers five hundred years ago, the U.S. publishing industry is looking for a route to China. And, like those explorers, each company seems to be setting a different course. HarperCollins recently partnered with a Chinese publisher and plans to release new and classic Chinese books in English translation in the United States, the U.K., and China. Penguin has also secured a local publishing partner and is already offering Chinese readers ten of its Penguin Classics in Mandarin – and it has an open-ended plan to bring out more. At the same time, Penguin has stepped up its efforts to release more Chinese literature in translation in Western markets. Macmillan, meanwhile, has started a new publishing division, Picador Asia, based in Hong Kong.

I know this is old news, but I thought I’d give my brief thoughts on the stories from the New Yorker debut fiction issue. I wasn’t bowled over any of the stories, but I was most impressed by Umwem Alpem’s “Ex-Mas Feast,” not so much for writerly virtuosity as for the glimpse of the exotic the story provides. Perhaps because so many short stories seem to be set in the suburbs, I am always drawn to stories set in faraway places. I was somewhat less impressed by Karen Russell’s “Haunting Olivia,” which I thought would have been a more successful story if it had been half as long. I did, however, enjoy how Russell injected a bit of the surreal into her story. I was also dutifully shocked upon discovering that she is only 23 years old, even though I should know that the New Yorker loves to find these fiction savants. Least interesting of all to me was Justin Tussing’s “The Laser Age,” which, at first glance, I thought was going to be a story of the twisted not to distant future, but instead was just another mismatched boy-meets-girl tale.