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Literary Review
The best of 2001
GOOD writing accommodates as many styles as good architecture. It is typically true of magazine writing, where there should be a variety of styles, range and perceptions to make it eclectic. Prose fiction is the child of the journalism and the combination of poetry makes these pieces excellent. The Best American Magazine Writing, a selection of masterpiece from among a plethora of journals, in an annual competition organised by the American Society of Magazine Editors, offers very highly readable pieces. Every piece that is included in the volume is of archival value in preserving the best of magazine writing for posterity and worthy of emulation in our country, as we have a large volume of magazine writing in English. It is a compendium of the best researched and the most insightful and investigative writing in the most prestigious American magazines: the magazines include the National Geographic Adventure, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Time, Harper's Magazine, Vanity Fair, Gourmet, The American Scholar, Zoetrope-All Story, GQ, and Rolling Stone. The selection is based on readability, relevance and stylistic excellence and the subjects include categories such as reporting, feature writing, profiles, essays, reviews and criticism. Apart from these, there are also journalistic and expository pieces of public interest with exceptional clarity and insight with the potential to influence public policy.
The Ellie National Magazine Awards are highly coveted and are equivalent to the Pulitzer Prizes for the newspaper industry. The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), a professional organisation founded in 1963 and now with a membership of 900 presents them; it is a body of senior editors of consumer magazines and business publications in the United States. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism from among hundreds of entries, administers the awards. The current volume, second in the series, contains 19 articles which are selected from 1586 print and online magazine entries.
The most fascinating piece in the book is "The Headless Hunt", by Gretel Ehrlich. Her journeys in northwest Greenland with the Inuit tribe are a thrilling account. The Inuit still love in the remote Greenland in an "ice age culture that began 4000 years ago", and they hunt with harpoons, wear skins and fur of hunted animals and travel by dog sleds. They cannot think of a world that is not covered with ice. This is a feature on adventure in cold and terrible hunting conditions, written with imagination, originality and style. "The Perfect Fire" by Sean Flynn, in the reporting section, is a moving narrative of the tragedy of the families of six firemen killed in a disastrous fire in a warehouse in Worcester, Massachusetts. It uncovers new information and gives a definitive account of an event of contemporary importance.
Political influence peddling is a universal phenomenon, whether it is in a developed or developing world. The murky side of it is often shrouded in wheeler-dealer practices and even journalism at large is privy to the same. It requires enormous courage to expose political financing and the human costs incurred by unsuspecting ordinary citizens. The award-winning article in Time under the title "Big Money and Politics, How the Little guy gets Crunched, Soaked by the Congress, Throwing the Game", is a demoralising reflection of the political system where one literally gets away with murder. One wishes there were such writers/ journalists as Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele all over the world to stand up and expose a system that really hurts the commoner. The cynicism that many American citizens feel for the political process is also exposed in David Foster Wallace's "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub".
Robert Kurson in "My Favourite Teacher" writes about the complexity of the criminal mind, which sometimes is the other side of role models. Ron Popeil is a well-known television personality. The story of the infomercial maestro unfolds in the "The Pitchman" by Malcolm Gladwell. The story behind the music of the celebrated film "The Sound of Music" is the subject of Anthony Lane's "The Maria Problem". There is an extraordinary search for truth in Rian Malan's "In the Jungle", wherein the origin of American classic pop songs is traced to an obscure Zulu singer in the ghettos of Johannesburg. The Zulu tribesman died a pauper but, thanks to the reporter, after six decades royalties are reaching the late songwriter's destitute family. An instance to be celebrated as it has proven that the pen is mightier than the sword.
One of the most influential and incorruptible people in the wine industry in the world is wine critic Robert Parker; William Langewiesche in "The Million-Dollar Nose" documents his character. Parker, who smells and tastes 10,000 wines a year, is reluctant to appear on television or radio because "he has learnt how bad it can be." The disappearing world of postal mail and hourly deliveries as compared to the digital mail delivery system recollected in nostalgia forms the theme of the essay of Anne Fadiman's "Mail".
William Sydney Porter, who wrote under the pen of O. Henry, is one of the best-known names in the field of short story. He died penniless and lonely in 1910. The Society of Arts and Sciences in America, in association with the publishers Doubleday, established the O. Henry awards for the best American short stories in 1918 to celebrate his legacy and to popularise the short story. Usually the volume contains 20 pieces from among 3,000 original, accomplished and most interesting short stories published annually, but this 81st volume contains only 17. It is because of the publication of longer stories or novellas than those in the previous volumes. The editor justifies it by stating "long stories allow for a fuller exploration of ideas, a fuller plot trajectory and a richer, more novelistic sense of detail".
The panel of distinguished writers enlisted to award the prizes for the current volume consists of Michael Chabon, Mary Gordon, and Mona Simpson. Mary Swan's "The Deep" is an absorbingly haunting account of a pair of mutually dependent mirror-image twin sisters who go overseas during World War I. This has been selected as the best for its originality, clear narrative line and an unexpected but inevitable climax. The second "Big Me" by Dan Chaon is an extraordinary story about a boy in Nebraska who is haunted by the memories of his childhood and of the mystery of his future. Alice Munro's "Floating Bridge" is a compressed novel and her eminence as a storywriter is apparent from the lyrical narrative, characterisation, humanity and compassion. She also receives a Special Award for continuing achievement. There is also a story, "The Girl With Blackened Eye", by Joyce Carol Oates, who had won the Special Award in 1986. "Servants of the Map" is about a cartographer working in the Himalayas during the 1860s. George Saunders's "Pastoralia" is about a man playing caveman in a historical theme park. Pinckney Benedict's "Zog-19: A Scientific Romance" is about an alien taking over the life and loves of a Seneca valley farmer. A similar vision of the future is also portrayed in Murad Kalam's "Bow Down". David Schickler's "The Smoker" is an impossible and hilarious urban romance. William Gay, Dale Peck and T. Coregessan Boyle deal with crimes in their stories. "Female Trouble" by Antonya Nelson is a nostalgic recollection of her graduate school days. The other stories too reflect the vibrancy and dynamism of the short story as a form that constantly offers something new in craft, technique and theme.
K. KUNHIKRISHNAN
The Best American Magazine Writing, 2001, edited by Harold M. Evans, Public Affairs, New York, $15.
The O. Henry Awards 2001 Prize Stories, series editor: Larry Dark, Anchor Books, Division of Random House Inc., $13.
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