Benjamin Chambers writes:
Tracy Daugherty (who published the story, “Low Rider,” in The New Yorker in 1987), has just come out with Hiding Man, the first biography of long-time TNY contributor Donald Barthelme. Good reviews so far (here’s another), in particular for putting Barthelme’s work in context and establishing that his dense, allusive stories were anything but random.

Benjamin Chambers writes:
Normally, when people complain about fiction in The New Yorker being “depressing,” I jump to the magazine’s defense. “You need to read more than one issue,” I say, or—even less convincingly for my debaters—”Nonsense! It frequently publishes light fiction outside of ‘Shouts & Murmurs.’ Like, er, Woody Allen or, um, Donald Barthelme …” If I try a different tack, and argue that fiction has many pleasures to offer besides good cheer, I end up in a worse muddle. I know this to be true, but I can’t prove it to readers deaf to these charms. Still, I try: I won’t hear my beloved New Yorker maligned.
But sometimes I think that great institution doesn’t care. It’s like that moment in the movies when the hero’s scrappy, pint-sized sidekick stands at his back, fearful but resolved, before the crowd of muscle-bound heavies armed with pool cues and broken beer bottles, and then the hero somehow wanders elsewhere, oblivious to his sidekick’s peril.
Case in point: “The Elephant,” by Aravind Adiga, from the January 26, 2009 issue, centered around Chenayya, a man roughly 30, who delivers furniture via bicycle for a pittance and a squalid life he cannot seem to better. The story’s firmly in the reveal-social-injustice school; the point is the injustice of Chenayya’s poverty, which is clear from the outset. The problem with this sort of story is that there’s no reason why it should be any particular length, once the basics are established: there’s no dramatic reason to continue cataloging the character’s abasement or shortcomings, which makes one question the whole enterprise. (Place where I checked out: when Chenayya, frustrated and angry with all that he cannot have, throws cow dung at a prostitute and then jams his dung-covered fingers in her mouth.)
The following week, in the February 2nd issue, George Saunders weighed in with “Al Roosten.” Though “Al” is much funnier than “The Elephant,” the laughter palls quickly, once it becomes clear that the main character’s pathetic, and Saunders has been laughing at him and made you do the same.
Both stories have the same narrative arc—best drawn as a flat line—and are intended only to evoke the hopelessness of their main characters’ situations. Worse, they’re both aggressively medicinal, in an eat-your-literature-it’s-good-for-you sort of way.
Sorry, but I’ll stick with dessert for now, and wait, rosy with optimism, for the next issue.

Benjamin writes:
“Sylvia Townsend Warner” is one of those triple-barreled, aristocratic names reminiscent of an era: it’s the name of an imperious (and rich) great-aunt, loyal to her own relations, who takes care never to mix with yours. It’s also the name of an author who published 164 pieces in multiple genres in The New Yorker between 1936-1977. Forty-one years of publication in TNY is a formidable track record for anyone, and at least 150 of Warner’s contributions to the magazine were fiction, so I determined to look her up. I’m glad I did.
The problem with such a prolific writer, of course, is where to start. Looking over her work in the index to the The Complete New Yorker, however, I noticed that her work appeared in an unusual number of departments: Fiction, Poetry, Comment, The Air, Family Life, and Easel. Curious to see what she contributed that would qualify for “The Air,” “Family Life,” and—was she, I wondered, a painter, too?— “Easel”, I found the following:
“Too Cool the Air“, from September 16, 1939, is one of those airy portraits TNY used to specialize in. Narrated in first-person by an unidentified narrator, it’s impossible to say for certain if it’s fiction or creative non-fiction, though it’s likely the former. The narrator relates a chance meeting, after a lacuna of 10 years, with “a crony of my Aunt Angel’s,” the chatty Miss Filleul, who, it transpires, is most probably a “brazen and accomplished thief.”
Fast-forward three years to July 11, 1942, and we find “The Family Revived,” a lightly humorous piece (again with a first-person narrator indistinguishable from a witnessing reporter) about a Mrs. Bogle, who has gathered a group of people in her Dorsetshire cottage for a “Sunday Salvage Afternoon.” It’s wartime, of course, so the guests have gathered to slice the metal butts off old cartridge cases and the like. Mrs. Bogle, a woman full of “predatory good intentions,” sees the war as an opportunity to revive her vision of home life in the old days, when the family would gather around the fire. Her enthusiastic plan is torpedoed, however, by reasonable objections, her husband’s brute practicality, and the embarrassed resistance of her guests. Complicated, for so short a piece, it’s difficult at this distance to be certain one has caught all the ironies.
“Too Cool the Air” and “The Family Revived,” though pleasing, are dated trifles, easily forgotten. The same cannot be said of the gem of the lot, “Elphenor and Weasel,” from the December 16, 1974 issue, which also features Woody Allen’s classic, not-to-be missed story, “The Whore of Mensa.” (Presumably, it’s the word “Weasel” that accounts for Warner’s story being classified in the CNY index under “Easel”.)
Tartly written, “Elphenor and Weasel” tells the story, surprisingly whimsical (though not, ultimately, happy) of Elphenor, a fairy destined to live among human beings, who bumbles along as a necromancer’s assistant until he meets his green-skinned, frivolous love, Weasel. Together, they enjoy a summer of love and breakfasts, and then, when the necromancer makes plans to sell them, they run off together, alternately working and stealing food until they fetch up in a church in the winter time. They choose the belfry as their sanctuary, but sadly, they misunderstand the purpose of churches, and more particularly the power of bells, and a bell-ringers’ practice proves the end of them.
But oh!, the deft compression with which Warner tells the story. Here’s an example, describing why Elphenor, shipwrecked in England and discovered by the necromancer, seems meant to be the man’s assistant: “To tease public opinion, he had studied English as his second language; he was penniless, purposeless, and breakfastless and the wind had blown his shoes off.” I love everything about that sentence, from the idea that fairies might learn English to “tease public opinion,” to the precise hammer-blows of the words, “penniless, purposeless, and breakfastless”—and then, Warner switches rhythm to say he was also shoeless.
Here’s another, fairly random example. Elphenor hails from Zuy, where English elves and fairies—such as his green-skinned, hill-dwelling lover Weasel—are known only by reputation.

At Zuy, the English Elfindom was spoken of with admiring reprehension: its magnificence, wastefulness, and misrule, its bravado and eccentricity. The eccentricity of being green and living under a hill was not included. A hill, yes. Antiquarians talked of hill dwellings, and found evidence of them in potsherds and beads. But never, at any time, green. The beauties of Zuy, all of them white as bolsters, would have swooned at the hypothesis. Repudiating the memory of his particular bolsters, [Elphenor] looked at Weasel, curled against him like a caterpillar in a rose leaf, green as spring, fresh as spring, and completely contemporary.

But you must read it yourself. And if you’re already a fan of Warner, what other works of hers do you recommend?

Benjamin Chambers writes:
I’ve been on vacation, and so missed the momentous news, yesterday, of John Updike’s passing. His fiction was never my cup of tea, but I mourn his loss just the same. Universally admired for the smooth, sparkling facility of his sentences, he was what most writers wish they could be: able to laugh at himself, but deadly serious about his work; supernaturally and steadily productive in multiple genres; critically admired and at the same time a household name; a thoughtful and perceptive critic who read widely; and (though he has never been given much credit for this by readers of his fiction) omnivorous in his interests.
If that list is a bit jumbled, it merely reflects the breadth of Updike’s wide range. And for those with fixed ideas of Updike, based perhaps on his recent stories, I urge them to go back and read “Friends from Philadelphia,” the first story he published in The New Yorker, back in 1954. I read it for the first time last year; though I didn’t comment on this at the time, I was pleasantly surprised by its multiple subtexts, and a piquancy that age has not dimmed.
Years ago, a friend of mine, a New Yorker, passed on a quote she swore was from Updike, something to do with “… the secret sense that anyone not from New York had to be, in some sense, kidding.” Nonetheless, that was how I felt when I heard the news about his death: that someone, somewhere, has got to be kidding. I feel it still.

Benjamin Chambers writes:
2008 was the first full year of The New Yorker fiction podcast, and I gotta say, it was a very fine year. Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman’s unhurried confidence sets a nice tone, and the authors nearly always choose interesting work and read it well (not the way actors would, but sensitively nonetheless). They also tend to have interesting things to say about the work, or their reasons for choosing it, that help you see it in new ways. It’s sort of like sitting in on the bull session in the bar after a graduate writing workshop.
Anyway, here are my picks for the best of the bunch:
Best at Getting Me Interested in a Classic Author I’d Never Read: E. L. Doctorow reading and discussing John O’Hara’s 1943 story “Graven Image,” which had the singular effect of making me want to read more O’Hara, whose Appointment in Samarra once failed to entice.
Best Reading of a Classic Short Story First Published in 1948: I can’t decide. I’m sorry; I know you look to Emdashes for firm opinions, but I just can’t do it. It’s a toss-up between Mary Gaitskill tackling Nabokov’s terse story “Symbols and Signs,” and A. M. Homes narrating Shirley Jackson’s creepy chestnut, “The Lottery” (which you can see on film here). What are the odds that two authors featured on the podcast in the same year would both choose stories from 1948? Who cares? Just don’t make me choose.
Best Story by a Contemporary Writer I’d Never Heard of: Stephanie Vaughn’s “Dog Heaven,” read exceedingly well by Tobias Wolff. The upshot? I’ve just picked up a collection of Vaughn’s stories from the library.
Most Interesting Commentary on a Story I Wasn’t Crazy About: Once again, a toss-up. I enjoyed hearing Roddy Doyle talk in his warm Irish accent about having TNY writer Maeve Brennan live with his family in the 1970s; but I also enjoyed hearing Jeffrey Eugenides, after reading Harold Brodkey’s 1994 “Spring Fugue,” chat with Treisman about Brodkey’s lack of appeal to some readers, in spite of his obvious talent.
Podcast I Liked Best In Spite of Myself: T. Coragahessan Boyle reading Tobias Wolff’s 1995 story “Bullet in the Brain.” I admire Wolff’s stories, but this one isn’t his strongest. Nonetheless, it reads well aloud, and it was a smart choice by Boyle, whose discussion of the piece is quite winning, though I’m surprised that he never once mentions the story’s obvious model, Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
Best Fiction Podcast of the Year: I’ve already talked my fool head off in several posts about how much I liked Louise Erdrich’s reading of Lorrie Moore’s 1993 story “Dance in America.” Surely, ’nuff said. But if you listen to only one fiction podcast from last year…
For Completists: Here’s the entire list of TNY podcasts, going back to 2007. (There’s some good’uns from 2007, too.)
If You’re Eager for More: Go right head and check out the January 2009 podcast, in which Thomas McGuane reads Jame Salter’s kick-ass 2002 story “Last Night.” Not to be missed. Just be sure you’re ready for a fright.

Benjamin Chambers writes:
In an article in the Canadian newspaper The National Post, Philip Marchand writes,

Whatever happened to the reputation of Morley Callaghan, who was once every bit as much an icon of Canadian literature as Margaret Atwood? For a while he practically owned The New Yorker, in the manner of Alice Munro. In 1965 Edmund Wilson—at that time the most prestigious literary critic in the English-speaking world—compared him to Chekhov and Turgenev. Yet today he is rarely taught in Canadian literature courses, and his works seldom opened. Are we so sure what happened to Callaghan won’t happen to Atwood?

If you’re scratching your head and muttering, “Morley Callaghan?”, you’re not alone. A quick check of the Complete New Yorker showed me that Callaghan published 20 stories in TNY between 1928 and 1938. That surprised me, since Wilson lauded him in 1965.
I wondered why Callaghan’s stories stopped appearing in the magazine so suddenly, but Wikipedia says that he wrote almost no fiction between 1937 and 1950, which partially explains why he didn’t show up there again. (Wikipedia also informed me that Callaghan knocked down Hemingway in a boxing match refereed by F. Scott Fitzgerald…)
In any case, it’s obvious Callaghan was both a prolific writer and a well-regarded one, so I look forward to reading his New Yorker stories.
Of course, it’s not always clear, years later, why an author of the past used to take home all the laurels. Taste, like tempus, fugit.