LITERATURE: Contemporary Fiction

Scott at Slushpile has a very interesting post entitled Literary Invulnerability regarding our more common than admitted sometimes disenchantment with the story selection of literary journals.  I myself have been a lot more vocal about it, although I was thrilled with the Best American Short Stories 2005 issue and did a review of all twenty stories.  But overall, I find myself generally disappointed with the journals.  Not that their choices were consistently poor, but more that they were consistently not "wow." 

I’ve worried that it was just sour grapes, after all, I’ve been rejected by the best of them.  Lately I’ve actually let a couple of my subscriptions lapse, just as I was trying to in fact select more to enjoy.  I had decided that while my main reason to read them is to enjoy, I also choose to learn writing skills from my reading.  In readng particular journals, I found a particular style or pattern perhaps that didn’t get through to me, which is well within editorial rights, but it showed me that if I didn’t share that enjoyment of that style, it was unlikely that I would write that way, and of course, that my stories would ever be accepted by those journals. 

Well Scott seems to have his own doubts:

"Yet, I could not find one single reason why any of these three stories was fit for wasting the journal’s paper. Trees died for these entirely uninspiring and unremarkable stories. Money that could have bought a Big Mac value meal was wasted on these cold and unappealing stories."

Further, he graciously questions his own doubts:

"But maybe I was lacking my normal vim and vigor. Or maybe I was just being more honest with myself. Maybe, I’m the problem with these stories."

And here is where Scott won my heart, and definitely got my attention:

"There are times when I become so numb to literature that I worry even Cormac McCarthy or William Faulkner would be incapable of penetrating my shell."

What Scott is somewhat developing as a theory is the time of reading that affects how one receives story.  I know and would agree that sometimes I’m just overdosed and something really has to be phenomenal to get my juices flowing.  But then, I’ve read novel after novel and can wax eloquent when something–often every other page–just throws me into a passion of appreciation. 

I wonder and do worry about my tendency to be closeminded sometimes.  Therefore, it is likely that while I will still be posting my dissatisfaction in a low level prissy rant upon occasion, I will try to temper it with time and analysis to discover my true reasons for the letdown and post accordingly.  In other words, be as specific about what bugs me as I am about what turns me on.