A Century of Fiction in the New Yorker: 1925-2025

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As new and enjoying this magnificent book of some all time favourite authors and stories.,

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A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker lives up to its expected high standards. Found many new stories by familiar authors as well works by new authors continuing to enrich and expand the potential of the genre. A Must Have on your book shelf!

Very glad I purchased this. It looks beautiful on my writing desk. It’s a hefty tome but that just means finding a quiet spot to read a story a day. Will certainly treasure this for many years.

A CENTURY OF FICTION IN THE NEW YORKER, 1925-2025 is one more demonstration of the vital role the venerable magazine has played in this country’s history. Throughout the magazine’s run, editors have displayed a penchant for stories that waste no time in grabbing a reader’s attention. You could compile a collection of opening paragraphs that would be instructive for students of writing. Here, for example, is the first paragraph of Muriel Spark’s “The House of the Famous Poet,” published in a1966 issue: ”In the summer of 1944, when it was nothing for trains from the provinces to be five or six hours late, I travelled to London on the night train from Edinburgh, which, at York, was already three hours late. There were ten people in the compartment, only two of whom I remember well, and for good reason.” After “and for goos reason,” I’ was ready to read on. Everything in me was saying, “And?” (You also get in this paragraph the magazine’s famous concern for commas.) Another of the qualities editors have evidently looked for through the years is sharpness of detail: From Saul Bellow’s 1955 “A Father To Be”: “These were two very tall men, shapeless in their winter clothes, as if their coats concealed suits of mail.” Here’s a prize dinner-table detail plucked from Ann Beattie’s complex 1979 story “The Burning House”: “Taylor cuts a small piece of meat. He cuts it small so that he can talk while chewing.” Early on in Ben Marcus’s 2015 “Cold Little Bird,” we get this: “He was a reserved boy who generally took a scientific interest in the tantrums and emotional extravagances of other children, marveling at them as though they were some strange form of street theatre.” With that, we immediately have a pretty firm grasp of a character. Then there is John Berger’s 2002 “The Courtesy,” in which I would argue that the abundance of detail becomes almost thematic, as if it is what the story is ultimately about. I have on occasion heard writers complain about what they regard as The New Yorker’s editorial biases. I suspect that there may be some sour grapes at work in this on the part of writers whose material has been rejected by the magazine. The New Yorker has been my first-choice potential market for any poem or short story I write, without my ever succeeding in having anything accepted. Nonetheless I continue to admire the magazine, and my admiration is only confirmed by this anthology, which gives us 1,011 pages of for the most part some of the strongest fiction produced over the past century. It’s a collection of richly varied voices in which there clearly is no typical story. I would have omitted Dorthy Parker’s 1955 story “I Live On Your Visits,” which makes her seem like a simplistic amateur among so many pros. Also, I gave up on George Saunders’ 2011 “Tenth of December” after two befuddling pages and flipped ahead to the next story. Other than those and a few other exceptions, I was engaged and rewarded by story after story. It was a pleasure to experience again previously read favorites such as John Cheever’s durable 1954 “The Five-Forty-Eight” and Lorrie Moore’s devastating 1997 “People Like That Are The Only People Here” and to come across new-to-me stories such as Muriel Spark’s brief, indelible 1966 “The House of the Famous Poet” and Steven Millhauser’s preposterously ambitious 2011 “A Voice in the Night.” The book was edited by the magazine’s current fiction editor, who provides a brief introduction. I suspect that this will take its place as the definitive anthology of short fiction in our time. When I sold a house and moved to a senior living center this past year, I of necessity sold through auction hous library I had been building for more than half a century. Included in the collection was a cherished copy of the August 31, 1946 issue of THE NEW YORKER, the first issue of the magazine to devote its entire editorial content to a single work — John Hersey’s classic HIROSHIMA. The copy included Hersey’s inscription, in which he hoped that the weapons used at Hiroshima would never be used again. If we can say that by promoting thoughtfulness and understanding literature and the arts are weapons of peace, we can also say that one of the leading wielders of these weapons of peace has long been this indispensable magazine.

Great book. Gave as a gift.