I spent October laid up with a serious illness. 2005 has been that kind of year: many of the people closest to me have been stricken—with operations, with severe viruses, with freak allergies.
As I have always been blessed with good health, my experience with the flipside of the coin was fraught with anxiety, but also with a dose of reflection. It may sound odd to say this, but in retrospect I’m grateful I was so ill. Mostly my illness helped me simplify my vision of what counts, to approach a healthy sense of priorities. As I healed, I felt stripped clean, grateful just to be alive.
I was faced with, for a writer and editor, the ultimate reality-check: Writing is, in the end, a luxury. I have gained something akin to perspective.
In November I returned to my teaching load; I returned to some semblance of normality; I returned to my own writing; I returned to reading Pedestal submissions (more on that in a moment). I surfaced with a new vision of my life and of art.
It was a speedy return: on November 9th I was invited to be the guest speaker for the Maryland Writer’s Association in Annapolis, Maryland, which was ironically held in my parents’ former high school—what is now the Maryland Center for the Arts. I was still weak, barely able to stand for the hour that I had that evening. Before my infirmity I planned on speaking in calm tones about structure and reading from my new book of short stories, Drivers. Instead, fired by my emergence from convalescence, I called for a revolution in short fiction. I spoke of immersion in character, of authenticity, of fictional truth, and especially of accepting the innate value of the short story in a market driven by novels.
I was a man on a mission.
Let me get on my high horse for a moment: authors who publish with university and independent presses (the vast majority of writers) are, unfortunately, faced with an environment of increased phoniness and closed-mindedness. Take the short story collection. The typical line from literary agents and editors is that the short story collection doesn’t sell. How did this come to be? Where Americans (Hawthorne and Poe) essentially invented the short story, we as a country somehow have come to reject the innate marketability of the form—and in bottom-line America, if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t count. When was the last time a short story collection graced the New York Times bestseller list? When was the last time a short story collection was energized with a “buzz" in the spirit of the latest “it" novel? When was the last time a short story collection was considered a “must-read"?
As an author and editor who focuses on the short story, I take offense to this literary environment. I take offense to The Atlantic Monthly ceasing publication of fiction in 2005. I take offense to the sheer silence that surrounds short fiction these days outside of the AWP conference and MFA programs.
The “top-tier" elements of the literary world seem more and more shut-off to new literary ideas and new approaches. This is the winner-take-all mentality. Newspapers that used to run pages of book reviews have eliminated the section entirely, or they have reduced their reviews solely to those books published by the big commercial houses. In the Washington DC area, where I live, the Washington Post very seldom publishes reviews of short story collections, much less of short story collections by authors other than Annie Proulx or Alice Munro or of the collected works of the recently departed. In major newspapers like the Post independent and university presses don’t even get the short shrift; they get zero shrift.
What I have been reflecting upon of recent though is generosity. What strikes me more and more is the notion that up-and-coming writers should find ways to support each other’s work. Grassroots. Community. Authors who publish books with university and independent presses should stop the petty bickering and begin working together. This is not easy, but it’s time for some hard truths. The mid-list author is dead and he/she ain’t coming back. What has taken his place? The independent press (micro presses)—where advances are skimpier than the latest Victoria Secret Christmas thongs, where publishers and editors and authors all work day jobs, where promotion budgets include—if you’re lucky—a stack of postcards and review copies sent to a handful of literary magazines.
This is the reality, folks.
What’s left?
What one of my creative writing mentors said to me over a decade ago: if authors don’t support literary magazines and small presses, who will? Who else is there? The reality is that authors these days do much of their own publicity, at least on some level. While I find distasteful a certain brand of authorial self-promotion and glossy salesyness, it is likewise true that authors (even those who publish with the commercial houses) have been put in the position to have to wear all the hats that traditional publishers used to wear for them. Readers should always keep in mind that independent authors will try to sell you their book through readings, email, websites, and blogs because if they don’t their book will literally molder away in cardboard boxes on the shelf of some warehouse. Welcome to the twenty-first century.
But onwards to 2006: please make it part of your goal in 2006 and beyond to support small presses, local authors, non-profit magazines. Who else is there to do the supporting?
As a final note, I’d like to say a few words about the short fiction you will read in this fifth anniversary issue of Pedestal Magazine. A few authors have emailed me over the past couple of months asking if there is, in terms of fiction, a “Pedestal aesthetic." I would like to respond to that here with one word: no.
Obviously every editor will have his or her proclivities, tendencies, and likes/dislikes. However, I think the role of any editor is to maintain his or her integrity by publishing the best, most intriguing, freshest work submitted. Period. So, as the fiction editor for Pedestal, I revel in eclecticism. Proof positive: this issue. For instance, I can’t imagine two more different stories than “The Funeral People" by Angela Carlton and “Naaja," or “She Runs" and “Off the Road," or “Lazarus" and “Visitors." Yet, the six stories in this issue are all terrific and startling and fresh and intriguing in their own diverse ways.
So…enjoy the luxuries. Season’s greetings. Don’t drink and drive. Buckle up. And all those holiday bromides. And don’t forget what President George Bush wrote (yes, really) several weeks ago to the parents of an American soldier who lost his life in Iraq, “God less you." I say, “God less you too, Mr. President." Less and less and less.
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