Happy new year!

This illustration by J.C. Leyendecker appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in late 1908. It was one of his earliest New Year's babies; his first -- the first -- was in 1906.
Leyendecker had a gift for creating holiday icons as well as portraying impossibly handsome men for advertisements and magazine covers (one was his life partner, model Charles Beach). At the top of his game, Leyendecker was America's top illustrator, throwing high society parties and renting a studio in Texas Guinan's building, where he had a dumbwaiter that ran to her speakeasy. Young Norman Rockwell so wanted to learn from Leyendecker that he moved to a home near his in a New York suburb. Leyendecker's story, along with a vast showcase of his work, can be found in the book "J.C. Leyendecker: American Imagist," reviewed this Sunday.

Today is Wednesday, and the New Year is knocking at the door. May your 2009 be rosy-cheeked and carrying a big sack of books.

Happy new year from Jacket Copy!

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: American Illustrators Gallery NYC / 2008 © by National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, R.I.

More really, really good short stories

If you live near a bookstore with a good periodicals section, you may have noticed that there are many, many, many literary journals and magazines. Which might be good to read? It's a matter of taste, but the ones that make regular appearances in the "Best American Short Stories" series and the "Pushcart Prize" anthologies definitely make for a trusty beginning. That's why we recently linked to all the magazines that provided the short stories found in the new anthologies "The Best American Short Stories 2008" and "Pushcart Prize XXXIII."

Each book also includes a list of close-but-not-quite stories -- "100 Distinguished Stories" in Best American, "Special Mention." Below, we're linking to all of the magazines in these long lists, with the number of commendations (P designates "Pushcart," BA, "Best American").

It's necessary to note that this compiled list of runners-up, no matter how long, is not exhaustive. The anthologies have different selection methodologies and will, inevitably, leave out some wonderful work. Plus, this list focuses only on fiction, leaving out nonfiction/essay and poetry. Nevertheless, it indicates some magazines that might be worth your fiction dollars. In commendation order:

The New Yorker (BA-11)

The Southern Review (BA-5, P-2)

Tin House (BA-5, P-4)

Ploughshares (BA-4, P-3)

Virginia Quarterly Review (BA-4, P-3)

Antioch Review (BA-4, P-2)

Conjunctions (BA-3, P-3)

Epoch (BA-2, P-3)

Kenyon Review (BA-4, P-1)

McSweeney's (BA-3, P-2)

One Story (BA-2, P-3)

Paris Review (BA-4, P-1)

TriQuarterly (BA-1, P-4)

Zoetrope: All-Story (BA-3, P-2)

After the jump: dozens more magazines.

Caught between a sound bite and a hard place

L.A. media watchdog LA Observed reports of a kerfuffle in San Francisco over the book "No Time to Think: The Menace of Media Speed in the 24-Hour News Cycle." Co-authored by Charles S. Feldman and Howard Rosenberg, former TV critic at the L.A.Times, the book is a critique of our accelerated news cycle, particularly TV news.

The authors, who were scheduled to appear on KRON-TV in San Francisco, received a call from the show's host saying that the format had changed and their interview was off. But they noticed that the format wasn't changing, so they made inquiries; the station's news director sent an e-mail to their publicist:

The format hasn't changed. We still do guests. But I am not all that interested in a book that is going to be critical of what we do as a business. So I am going to pass on this one.

Which is certainly enough to get a couple of media watchdogs riled up. "Do you really think their trust in your station will crumble if they listen to some critical comments about the television news industry?" Rosenberg replied. The authors have managed to appear on KTLA and BBC4 without bringing either outlet to its knees.

KRON later made another interview offer, which the authors declined, saying, "We will pass."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Is it a library or is it a gallery?

The University of Virginia hosts a library -- or gallery -- called Artists' Books Online. It's a highly academic resource that includes "facsimiles, metadata, and criticism." It's also got a lot of pretty pictures.

Artists' books are, generally, books made by people in the world of visual arts who have taken the book/book-like object on as an art form. They gained enough traction so that "The Journal of Art Books," which undertook the "creative exploration of the intersections of book arts, artists' books, poetry, photography, experimental literature, and other book-related creative endeavors," was launched in 1994. The journal, published twice a year until 2003, and all its issues have found a home on the Artists' Books Online website. All these issues, along with a wide range of the works themselves, appear on the website.

It is not surprising that the crossed threads of visual arts and storytelling eventually got wrapped up on the Internet. What is surprising, perhaps, is the thoroughness with which the works are presented here. Cataloged and categorized, explained and explored, most of the works have been photographed from cover to cover, and can be perused through a flash interface. Visiting the site is like standing in a library, being able to pull any book off the shelf and flip through at will.

The project was headed up by Johanna Drucker, who was recently appointed the inaugural Bernard and Martin Breslauer Professor of Bibliography at UCLA's Department of Information Studies. She is the author of several books, including "SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in Speculative Computing" (2009), "Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity" (2005), both by the University of Chicago Press, and "The Surprise Party Or: on not going not ongoing," (1977) pictured above.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Artists' Books Online

Modernism for everyone (with an overstuffed wallet)

In Sunday's paper, Greg Goldin reviewed the new boxed magazine reissue "Arts & Architecture, 1945-54: The Complete Reprint." The magazine was "the most influential architecture magazine ever published," he writes, and "it convinced the world that Los Angeles was at the vanguard of reinventing the single family home." Some of those homes, such as John Lautner's Chemosphere (pictured) are showcased in the paper's photo essay of the all-time best homes in L.A.

But back to the reissue. "Arts & Architecture" was run by editor John Entenza, who had both a visionary aesthetic and a sense of purpose. The magazine commissioned the now-famous Case Study Houses -- from Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames and other noted architects -- that were meant to be models of affordable, beautiful efficiency. Goldin writes:   

As the country drifted into the deadening alikeness of the Truman-Eisenhower years, Entenza and his obscure magazine, with a circulation of no more than 10,000, fought to express the conviction that, for less than $10 per square foot, art and architecture could stir the soul.

The magazine attacked on two indivisible fronts, intellectual and aesthetic. Entenza's monthly "Notes in Passing" were not-so-quiet sermons against war and greed and blind obeisance to the powers that be.

The description of the reprint is tantalizing; Goldin makes clear that the magazines themselves are artifacts of engaging, enrapturing design. But the set lists for $700 retail (Amazon currently has it on sale for $441), meaning that its cost is far more than $10 per square foot. Just like the architecture it fostered, "Art & Architecture" is now anything but affordable. 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

The MLA meets, student athletes and a new recruiter

More than 10,000 literature scholars are in San Francisco for the 124th annual Modern Language Assn. (MLA) convention. Oddly timed to fall between Christmas and New Year's, the MLA is where most universities hold their in-person interviews for professors of literature. In, quite frequently, hotel suites. I've heard of hiring committees taking all the chairs, leaving the interviewee to perch on the bed. Awkward....

More discomfort in academia: the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has published an investigative report about the gap between the test scores of student athletes and their nonathlete counterparts. The study focused on 54 public universities with major sports programs:

Football and men’s basketball players on the nation’s big-time college teams averaged hundreds of points lower on their SATs than their classmates, and some of the gaps are so large they call into question the lengths to which schools will go to win....

Nationwide, football players average 220 points lower on the SAT than their classmates — and men’s basketball players average seven points less than football players.

Inside Higher Education points out that student athletes must devote many hours a day to practice, training, playing and travel. But does that put them at greater risk for academic failure, especially if they're less prepared than their classmates? It also asks some complicated questions:

Are colleges doing a disservice to athletes if they have markedly different admissions standards for them than for other students? Or, as many sports officials argue, should colleges be held accountable more for the ultimate academic performance of their athletes on the way out (e.g., do they graduate?) than for their credentials on the way in?

On a more optimistic note, Rueben Martinez, who won a 2004 MacArthur Foundation grant for his barbershop-turned-bookstore Libreria Martinez, is now working with Chapman University to bring more Latino students to college. Martinez himself never had the opportunity.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Swami Stream via Flickr

Where to find the best new short stories

Taken together, two anthologies -- "The Best American Short Stories 2008" and "Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses" -- provide a guide to the best work in contemporary short fiction. Because each provides both a set of top stories and an additional list of other distinguished stories, the combined list is quite lengthy. For sure, there are gaps -- online literary magazines, science fiction and mystery all seem to be underrepresented -- but the magazines that originally published these stories are nevertheless a wonderful source of excellent fiction.

Each anthology selects the best in the year's short fiction according to its own set of rules, which may be bent when necessary. The Pushcart Prizes, a hallmark of excellence, focus on small presses -- but "The Paris Review" sneaked onto its distinguished list. The Best American Short Stories -- which might be called "North American," because it includes Canada -- has a selection from Granta, based in Cambridge, England.

The anthologies, which come from a long tradition of standalone paper issues, don't make it easy to find the included work online. So I've made a list of the venues that published the original stories. After the jump, you'll find the fiction selections in each book (the Pushcart also includes nonfiction and poetry); the huge runners-up list will come in another post. When possible, links are provided to the selected stories; P designates a Pushcart selection and BA, Best American.

If you want to read top-notch short fiction, the magazines featured in these anthologies are some terrific, and reliable, places to start. And some surprises, including an Oscar-winning director and screenwriter trying his hand at short fiction.

Final thoughts on Benjamin Button

Thanks for joining us for our discussion of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It takes about an hour to read and can be found online here at Project Gutenberg (with the rest of "Tales of the Jazz Age") and here on its own. The film adaptation, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, opened Dec. 25. Our last thoughts:

John Fox, who, in addition to blogging at Bookfox, has a master In professional writing from USC and a master's in literary theory from NYU, says:

Even though the story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" didn't impress me, I'm glad to have read it. It gave me another reference point in interpreting Gatsby, and led me to other stories in "Tales from the Jazz Age" which are even better. Plus, now I can offer pretentious small-talk at parties about how the film actually came from a Fitzgerald story. In this town of L.A., where everyone assumes "screenwriter" when I say writer, I need all the literary plugs I can get.

Shaft, a blogger at Baby Got Books, adds:

I told myself (and you) that I wouldn't do this, but I can't help myself.  The world has been done a disservice that Hollywood has made a big-budget film "loosely based" on Fitzgerald's short story.  "The Confessions of Max Tivoli" is such a better use of a similar (but importantly different) premise, and now will be either unknown or thought of as a knock-off (which it isn't).

Amy Shearn earned her MFA at the University of Minnesota and wrote "How Far is the Ocean From Here." She blogs at Moonlight Ambulette and has a different take:

Thanks again for inviting me to take part!  It was fun. I can't wait to see the movie....

Thanks to all of them for taking part and to you for reading. Me, I'm going to see the movie too.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Paramount Pictures

How much do you have to like a protagonist like Button?

This week we are discussing "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It takes about an hour to read and can be found online here at Project Gutenberg (with the rest of "Tales of the Jazz Age") and here on its own. Our discussion turned from the story itself to the film adaptation, which opened Dec. 25. Amy Shearn says:

Carolyn, I think what you said is so interesting: "In film, you really need to like someone on screen, usually the protagonist." I've found again and again, in reading reviews and talking to people about my own novel, that many people read this way, too. Plenty of readers judge the merits of a work of fiction based on how much they like or dislike the characters -- as if the characters were people they might have to become intimately involved with. I've always found this way of reading to be a bit reductive. It's hardly the point, is it, whether you like a character or not? 

In fact, some of my favorite characters would be quite unlikable people in real life -- Humbert Humbert, Holden Caulfield. To me, a character has only to be compelling -- even better if he is baffling in some way. I read to be surprised and provoked, not to make friends. That said, I never felt that I got to know Benjamin Button all that well -- as others here have pointed out, it's not exactly that kind of story. You don't get to know the characters in a fable or fairy tale very well either. But if he's a bit of a jerk, well, for me it works in the story. I would probably be pretty cranky if I were in such a predicament too.

The more we discuss this, the more curious (ha!) I get about the movie. Do you think they made him into a lovable quirk-fest? I guess we'll find out soon enough....

-- Amy Shearn

Making Benjamin Button likable

This week we began a discussion of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It takes about an hour to read and can be found online here at Project Gutenberg (with the rest of "Tales of the Jazz Age") and here on its own. Our discussion turns from the story itself to the film adaptation, which opened Dec. 25. Carolyn Kellogg replies:

The way in which Button perceives his "old and unattractive wife" still sounds jerk-like to me, but maybe that's because I've been a thirtysomething woman whose eyes, apparently, grow to resemble cheap crockery.

But his jerkiness (or not) points to one of the elements of successful adaptations -- in film, you really need to like someone on screen, usually the protagonist. Which means that in adapting the story, the filmmakers needed to make Benjamin Button clearly sympathetic. He may behave like a jerk, but our sympathies have to be with him, and the best way to do that is to give him a deep true love, one whose loss he feels with all the tragedy that you see in the story, John.

As far as I'm concerned, film and literature are such different media that all adaptations are significant departures. How do you take a 400-page novel with internal narrations and complexities and turn it into a 120-page, double-spaced screenplay with enormous margins? You change it. A lot.

Adaptations must be acceptable in the eye of the beholder, and as Amy said, it depends on how much you have invested in the original work. I know I was aghast at the changes made to "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" -- one major character was folded into another, altering the dynamic of the book's central love triangle. But overall, I'm happy to see literary adaptations because they generally make for fairly smart films.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Brad Pitt in "Button." Credit: Paramount Pictures