New Yorker’s 40 under 40

We have seriously slacked off here. Let’s say this: The big fan 40-under-40 fiction issue arrived in our mailbox in Dubuque FOUR DAYS LATE. On a Friday, when usually the New Yucker arrives on a Monday or Tuesday. I guess they wanted to increase our anticipation.

They failed. The 40 under 40 just aren’t the most impressive writers on the planet, but we know it’s subjective. Did they REALLY need to include both Nicole Krauss and her husband, what’s his name?

Anyway…never mind picking on the literati; how’s the writing in this issue, and in future issues? Good question. We haven’t gotten to it yet. We’re just as lame as this blog. And in fact, it’s probably time to take a long hiatus from this blog, because it’s averaging two hits a day. Yes, two. And we’re too busy to do the job that should be done raking over the New Yucker.

We will probably be back from time to time, but the pressure to do this every week, when we have our own bad novels to splice commas in, is hard. So just don’t expect regular posts. We’d like to come back at some point, but life interferes.

Meanwhile, here’s some more lit gossip. Sports writer, one-time founder of the Black Table, and even sometime young-adult writer Will Leitch has finally gotten married after at least 17 failed attempts (he wrote about his first one). Congratulations to Leitch and the lovely Southern belle he has embraced.

That is all for now, but add comments!

Where’s our New Yorker?!?!?!?

How are we supposed to have at it with the new literary wunderkinds if the postman won’t deliver the latest issue to our mailbox in Dubuque?! We are waiting with fanged breath. Today is Wednesday, and we know it must come by today. We’re crouching in the dandelions just near the curb, my pretties, all coiled up and hissin’.

New Yorker debut fiction issue

Well, it’s time for us to get back from our lazy siesta.  Actually we’ve been busy, but that is no excuse.  There’s so much to analyze in the in the magazine of literary record.

Publisher’s Lunch tells us the following (see below), so as soon as the issue slides into our mailbox in Dubuque, we will have our special reaction.

By the way, isn’t it great that under 40 is the new standard for young writers, not 35 anymore?  We sure hope they aren’t including photos of the writers like they used to.   These are not spring chickens, people.   The photos of contributors should wait until the swimsuit issue.

From Publisher’s Lunch:

The New Yorker has three stories from their new 20 under 40 issue–by Gary Shteyngart, Salvatore Scibona, and Rivka Galchen–available at open online links. And the editors of the magazine discuss their choices here. “What we have tried to do, in selecting the writers featured in this issue, is to offer a focussed look at the talent sprouting and blooming around us. These writers (stories by eight of them appear here; twelve more will follow, one at a time, in the next twelve issues) are hardly the only gifted storytellers of their generation. Some terrific candidates were excluded solely because they didn’t have a new piece of fiction available by our deadline.” But “these twenty men and women dazzlingly represent the multiple strands of inventiveness and vitality that characterize the best fiction being written in this country today.”