For those who stay abreast of such matters, the last few months of the
Atlantic’s forays into fiction have been positively nail-biting. In November, the magazine announced it would be offering a subscription of two stories a month exclusively on the
Kindle. As if to quell a possible uprising of the deviceless, they turned around and released the yearly print fiction issue to the entire subscriber base. This June, they’ll convene two panels on the topic of Fiction in the Age of E-books at Toronto’s Luminato Festival—presumably, one hopes, to settle the matter.
How far we’ve come since 2005’s dark days, when
Atlantic editors winnowed fiction down to a yearly newsstand-only digest! The now-quaint rationale was, “
Reporting consumes a lot of space.” But in fiscal year 2009, when book review sections shriveled and houses purged editors and authors alike, dreamy fabulists, note: the
Atlantic moved forward to find space for fiction again. And we should watch what they do closely. Because, in the past five years, while other news mags stumbled to find a way to get readers to consume
their space—the Atlantic’s so-sensible-it’s-revolutionary strategy has made them a model for how print and online can survive side-by-side.
You may by now have noticed I have a little
Atlantic problem. By this I don’t mean I have a problem with the
Atlantic. (Though I often have a problem with the
Atlantic.) My problem is more along the lines of the
New Yorker enthusiast who wallpapers his bathroom with covers, or the public radio supporter who accepts the free tote though clearly informed this has diminished her pledge. Like these other fans, my outlet of choice has passed beyond pastime: it has become manifest as some previously inexpressible part of myself, one best revealed through a convenient duck hat or fashionable messenger bag—though part of the
Atlantic’s appeal is that instead of redesigning its tote bags, it convenes a panel discussion.
How well I remember each small but strategic move! First, there was 2006’s “tech” column, in which James Fallows gamely chin-stroked over such wonders as Microsoft OneNote (“
What makes some software ‘interesting,’ as opposed to merely usable?”). Next came “Print” and “Send to a friend” options. (Standard now, of course. But they were
on it.) They linked subscriber accounts to an online profile, and, when blogging began its rise, immediately hired five famous bloggers—and
let them blog.)
Harper’s continues to plague us with subscriber-only PDFs—annoying in hard copy, unusable by device—and the
New Yorker’s doorstop of a CD-ROM has become a series of clunky scans one must select page-by-page to print. (If one can read the hazy type at all.) Meanwhile, the
Atlantic has had its
Twain and
Nabokov up and accessible to all for years.
Now, while the
New York Times futzes around with photo galleries and “followers” and
Slate piles still more boxes into its ancient maroon masthead, the
Atlantic (excuse me—
AtlanticWire) is on its umpteenth web redesign, a go-to online entity that has, if anything, cannibalized the magazine. While bloggers
Megan McArdle and
Ta-Nehisi Coates crank out high-concept cover pieces,
P.J. O’Rourke and critic
Mark Steyn, the golden mean of the magazine’s original libertarian readership, have been gently phased out. Welcome to newer hires
Sandra Tsing Loh and
Caitlin Flanagan—the original Tipsy Belden and Nancy Shrew—who duel it out almost every issue, the better to draw women everywhere by offending all of them.
Immediately hiring bloggers when blogging began its rise seems like an obvious way to stay above water – but it was so obvious almost no one else did it. (See
Conde Nast’s Flip.) Until recently, numerous publications that will remain nameless still preferred to push their reporters into blogging rather than hiring reporters who already blog. But the
Atlantic has never been saddled with delusions of grandeur. Even their poetry—it’s “poetry”!—rhymes.
Now that e-publishing has hit even the books world with the online equivalent of a sucker punch, I am poised to absorb what the
Atlantic sees to come.
The cover of
Fiction 2010 offers, to say the least, a provocative vision. To our left glides a gentleman in pegged red pants holding an honest-to-God—positively florid—paper-and-ink book. To our right saunters a young lady fixed on the lambent square of her Kindle. They are shortly to meet cute—heads bent, dogs lightly leashed—near a mailbox at the corner of Publishing 3.0. The attractive pair is surrounded by blooms, sunlight, even a deli’s beckoning door. Their future is plentiful and bright—and there is not an iPad in sight.
If you are swayed by certain unimpeachable sources, this vision is akin to blasphemy. The
New Yorker’s
Ken Auletta recently depicted that same future as
a battle epic and brutal, the upstart iPad flashing its pretty UI and 60,000 titles against a staid Kindle, its inkless jabs a pathetic defense. Acknowledging that Amazon got a jump by getting Kindles into readers’ hands first, Auletta reasons that device-based argument is nonetheless is limited: “The analogy of the music business goes only so far. What iTunes did was to replace the CD as the basic unit of commerce; rather than being forced to buy an entire album to get the song you really wanted, you could buy just the single track. But no one, with the possible exception of students, will want to buy a single chapter of most books.”
That’s two assumptions, both incorrect. (This is why you don’t listen to writers whose publications slap up stories in teeny Times Roman.) 1) That all readers read alike, and 2) that whatever device prevails will accommodate books—not that books will change to accommodate the
device.
Because, while a chemistry textbook or history of Rome must eventually be delivered somehow in entire, readers of fiction have been buying “tracks” of books for centuries. They’re called short stories – coincidentally, exactly the item the
Atlantic is currently offering in an exclusive curated series on the Kindle. It’s just a start, but it’s a nod to an important distinction between fiction and other kinds of writing that must hew more closely to their form of delivery. Even poor poetry is hampered by its linebreaks, but fiction is the original mutable source, one that encourages authors to flex their muscles and tackle it in different media, now deliverable anywhere in any form. Forget your weekly
Dickens. Fiction in variant array has bloomed on the internet from the beginning, from
Darcy Steinke’s blind/spot to
Rick Moody’s Twitter story to
Japan’s booming mobile-fiction market.
Of course, your average person sometimes likes to just sit in the bathroom and read a real-life book, too. (Kindles don’t play well with the Charmin.) When it came to news, the
Atlantic was the first to realize that, though online news would change to accommodate its new host into blog, comment, tweet, and update, that didn’t mean throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This means, when offering fiction, it’s wise to partner with someone who can deliver it in a dog-earable form, too—like, I don’t know, Amazon. “Neither Amazon, Apple, nor Google has experience in recruiting, nurturing, editing, and marketing writers,” Auletta argues. I’m not sure if Auletta has been on Amazon since 1997, but it actually owns every title, reviewer, reader, crank and author online. His claim makes sense only if you define Amazon’s actions against those traditional publishers—and I think even then most authors would tell you their publishers don’t really recruit, nurture, edit or market their writers, either.
I don’t know how the
Atlantic, Apple, Amazon, or Auletta’s collected works will fare in the coming years (though they will certainly be called on first in class). But it seems important to check the hype when a newbie goes up against the mightiest bookstore in the land
and a publication that’s remained robust in print, set the pace online, all while trying to see how fiction can fit in the mix.
Steve Jobs is banking on my wanting to read on a prettier screen. But fictive folks read in different
ways, and I don’t mean being able to turn my screen around and have the type adjust 180 degrees. An iPad is pretty, but it only has 60,000 titles, I can’t take it into my bathroom, and it doesn’t seem to be delivering the
Curtis Sittenfeld’s latest. So it’s not that Amazon and the
Atlantic got there first. They have always been here—figuring out how to deliver their authors to readers in every conceivable form. Looking at the cover of Fiction 2010 again, I might go so far as to say the real reason they’re the future of fiction and the iPad isn’t is that, unlike Apple, they both have a dog in this fight.
Bonus Links: On The Atlantic's Redesign,
My Political Blog Hangover and the Virtues of Finitude
How else to feed her ceaseless compulsion to write — grab a headline, bang at those keys, send it out the door.
This is an interesting new slant on the classic literary dichotomy, is it not? How acceptable is it to work with real life?
As upsetting as it is for people close to the student who died to read 'Landfill', shouldn't we welcome this article as a response and critique of the growing frat culture? It could be seen as Oates flagging up the dangers of frat houses and serve as a warning to parents and prospective pledges alike.
That's the problem, though. I find it awfully tiresome that Oates would devote herself to warning people of the dangers of frat houses. What's next? A book about not taking candy from strangers? This story told as a cautionary tale brings nothing new to the table. The world is full of cautionary tales on this subject. That the story is exploitative only makes matters worse.
Agreed the story may not necessarily bring new things to the table as such, but they way it is written is a new dimension in 'frat lit', as it were.
Tom Woolfe's 'I Am Charlotte Simmons'; it attempted a portrait of frat culture and twenty first century campus life but it utterly spun it out to an overtold tale. Oates' style actually captures the breezy, come-and-go ethic of a frat house. Those 'snatches' of dialogue and testimony are excellent literary methods of showing the dangers of frat houses, whilst also bringing the entire habitat mentality, to the reader.
To me, that ability and talent legitimise and distinguish her yes, cliche, source of inspiration.
I see your point. Oates certainly has her detractors, but it's hard to ignore her impressive and wide-ranging storytelling ability.
I suppose my argument is that if 'frat lit' is narrowly focused on the shocking tales of excess and depravity of priviledged young men, then I'm not that interested in reading about it unless somebody can move beyond the agressor vs. victim dynamic to something a little more complex.
Oates rips her story from the headlines, but – without having read much about the actual events it is based on – I'd argue that she has simplified matters by making Hector Jr. be hellbent on being a victim and by making the aggressors faceless and one note. This oversimplification is likely part of what got her into trouble in the first place.
Actually, to just twist this debate a little, I'm curious: Does frat-lit and academic lit serve as a platform from which to explore modern life in metaphor?
(Currently reading 'Prep')
Mwah Mwah Mwel
Sure frat lit and campus novels could serve as metaphor for modern life, but I can't recall having seen it done convincingly. Which isn't to say that I don't enjoy these books. They're often quite entertaining. Lucky Jim anyone?
But in a world where the medium is the message, Landfill works in part because its prose is so good. You care for the Hector Jr. character and even more for his parents. I also admire Joyce Carol Oates ability to shift points of view — generally a no-no with short stories. Ripped from the headlines or not, Landfill is a worthy read.