CONTEST: I have two copies of Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead to give away. To enter, leave a comment with the name of your favorite rock writer or favorite profile of an artist, and let us know why. I’ll draw two names at random on July 8.

Before reading Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, my previous experience with Neil Strauss was limited. I knew that he had written for several publications, and that he had written books about Motley Crue, Jenna Jameson and pickup artists. His work for the former didn’t catch my eye in such a way that made me seek out his work the way I do that of folks like Greil Marcus or Ben Ratliff. And his work on the latter probably steered me the other direction. Strauss had cast his lot with those on the sleaze end of the spectrum, so I didn’t look to him for serious journalism.

The litany of names on the cover of his book made me curious enough to ask  the folks at !t Books for a review copy. When you’re promised interviews with R.E.M., Radiohead, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, etc., it’s clear you’ll probably find something of interest. What I did not expect to do was read this cover to cover, nor did I expect to take away true insights. I did both, and in doing so, quickly realized that this is the best book about music I have read in years.

Why? Well, as Strauss tells it, it is because he did this right, which means that before he had done it wrong. As he writes in the introduction, once the interview is done, the writer is pressed by deadlines, the stylistic constraints of the publication and the whims of the editors. The real person gets lost.

He went back to the 3,000 interviews he has conducted and “searched for the truth or essence behind each person, story or experience. Often it came from something I had previously ignored: An uncomfortable silent, a small misunderstanding or a scattered thought that had been compressed into a soundbite.”

That might sound strange; isn’t that what profile writers try to do the first time around? Yes, that’s the idea every writer subscribes to, but it doesn’t happen very often. As you’ll find while reading this book, these are the snippets that get left behind when the narrative is crafted, the rough edges. For the most part, these feel like the rare moments when these artists were real. An interview is a dance, with the subjects working hard to put forth the version of themselves they want people to see, and the writers working hard to penetrate that shell.

The fascinating thing is to see Strauss, who I associate with caddish behavior if for no other reason than the company he keeps, being a sympathetic ear. If these transcriptions are truly accurate, then he is among the most gifted interviewers I’ve read, able to show true empathy and understanding. His genuine interest and positively gentle approach (or so I assume; it’s hard to fully glean that from words on the page) cause these artists to let down their defenses are share genuine thoughts and feelings.

As if that wasn’t enough, Strauss also won me over with the book’s format. It seemed too clever by half at first blush, interview snippets broken up throughout the book, ostensibly grouped in thematic bunches. But it works. You’ll get two pages of an interview with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page where they discuss the co-opting of their sound by artists like Lenny Kravitz, followed immediately by two pages of Kravitz expressing disbelief that anyone could hear Led Zeppelin in his music. All of the material from one interview may be spread over half a dozen snippets peppered throughout this 500-page tome, but as you pick up the rhythm of Strauss’ organization, you’ll find yourself surfing through this effortlessly, marveling at the connections being made from one artist to the next.

Even the index is entertaining, as Strauss eschews the typical listing of famous names to instead include entries for “Best car wash in L.A.” and “Guys who say they are never going to date models or actresses but then end up engaged to one.”

At the outset I said I didn’t seek out Strauss’ work the way I did my favorite writers and critics. With Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, Strauss has vaulted to the top of that list. The interesting thing will be, now that he knows the right way to do things, will his profiles reflect it?

I’ve said it before and likely will again, but now is a great time to be a reader and writer of crime fiction. Seemingly every day a new short story appears somewhere online, and the sheer wealth of stories available means never being at a loss for something to read.

Taking nothing away from those web sites (or their tireless editors), sometimes you still want the traditional experience of reading words on paper. In the last year or so, new publications have emerged to scratch that itch. Needle, debuting earlier this year with a journal format, offers nothing but short fiction. Crime Factory, which began as an online, PDF or Kindle publication, launched a print-on-demand version with its most recent, fifth issue. It offers short fiction as well as an impressive array of non-fiction that often puts the fiction in a larger context thanks to some insightful analysis from the contributing writers.

With that big leap forward for Crime Factory, as well as word that the next issue will be the special stand-alone Kung-Fu Factory, I thought it was time to check in with Cameron Ashley, one of the editors, to find out what’s going on over there. Cam was gracious enough to pound this out seemingly minutes after touching down after a trip Stateside for NoirCon and other stops.

TIRBD: Now that you have five issues under your collective belt, how has Crimefactory evolved when compared with your initial intentions?

CA: Hmm. It pretty much is exactly what we intended. My internal editorial filter is to try and do what Dave Honeybone would like and what Dave Honeybone would have wanted to do if he had the freedom we do now. I guess the rapid growth has been the main unexpected thing and that has led us to go, “Fucking hell. People actually read it; we’d better do it properly.” Took us quite a time to find our feet and staying on top of fiction subs is a problem, but generally people have been pretty patient. And they really have to be, I’m sorry to say. We only have so much space per issue for fiction. Hopefully the content their stories eventually rubs shoulders with eases the pain of the lateness… um, so yeah, our intention was always to try and do what we thought was cool (fiction or non) in a lo-fi way that we can say is punk, but is actually there because we have no idea what we are doing. That was basically our philosophy: the sheen of great content hiding design and editorial ineptitude.

How much more work has it been than you anticipated?

Oh, I knew it was going to be a lot of work. Dave Honeybone told me, “It will take over your life.” It hasn’t got that bad yet, but yeah, the three of us work pretty hard and my own writing has suffered slightly as a result, but that’s cool, I just need to work harder. Honestly though, the people we surround ourselves with make the process pretty easy. Our “staffers” are awesome and guys like my mate Jimmy Callaway are always there to lend a hand. Having just come back from both Bouchercon and Noircon, I can assure you that the crime writing community is filled with some of the nicest, most helpful, ego-free people I have literally ever met. If we need help, all we need to do is ask. I am blown away by how cool everybody is. Getting back to the question, Liam basically taught himself In Design as we were working on the first issue, but I’m sure even he would say that the workload is not quite as bad as you may think. We love doing it too, which helps.

A lot of crime fiction magazines and web sites have come and gone over the years. Did you take any lessons from those? Why has your lasted and thrived where some others have not?
Well, it’s only been a year since the relaunch, so it would be a bit unfair of me to compare. As far as “lessons,” well not many! I suppose our initial PDF format came about due to my friends bitching at me that they hated reading my stories online as it strained their delicate eyes. My dear friend Marcia would actually try and copy and paste my stuff and print it out at work. That seemed to me to be a cool idea, straddling the bridge between e-zine and print and maintaining some kind of link to volume 1 of CF, which was exclusively print. If you could call it “thriving,” I guess it’s because Keith, Liam and I are enthusiastic bastards and we try and surround oursleves with other people of equal enthusiasm in the hopes that we will form some kind of perpetual motion idea machine. So far, so good. Also, we try to remove the possibility of boredom by enjoying the freedom of the format and by getting drunk and coming up with whacky shit like KUNG-FU FACTORY, which has turned out to be perhaps the most anticipated project we’ve done so far.

How does an issue come together? Is that process easier now that you have a track record, or is what must surely be a flood of submissions making it more difficult (it ultimately more rewarding)?

It really varies issue by issue. We occasionally bump things up or down either because we need to or because a piece is a better fit elsewhere. Fiction-wise it’s now pretty easy as we have a backlog of stories waiting and we can mix and match them to create (hopefully) a pretty diverse and interesting batch of stories each issue. Non-fiction has been a bit of a headache. It’s actually pretty mind-boggling the lack of good non-fiction we get. It’s actually weird. Nobody seems to want to write it. It’s something I’m unwilling to budge on either – I am not ruling out all-fiction issues occasionally – but CF was founded as a magazine. If you don’t want to read the articles and interviews and you want to write fiction, you’re doing yourself a disservice and I really do think a lot of story writers just want to see their name in print and don’t give a fuck about anything else, which demonstrates a lack of true authenticity in my book. Getting back onto the topic, Nerd of Noir is rock-solid and turns his shit in way ahead of deadlines, and the addition of Melbourne’s own Andrew Nette has been an utter blessing. These guys get it. And the non-fiction we’ve thus far run (and have coming up) I’m really happy with, so I should just stop whining.

You offered a printed version of the magazine as an option for the first time with this issue. Is that a change in philosophy, or did the stars finally align?

No philosophy change at all. We just realised that it was pretty easy to do (apart from the re-formatting headaches), so why not do it? We want to be able to pay contributors one day, so it’s also another revenue stream and, having seen Steve Weddle’s copy recently, it looks pretty cool. Further formatting tweaks await us, but basically it’s just a natural progression. My hope was always that people would print PDF issues off and read them at home (Adrian McKinty reads his in the bath which is perfect) and this is taking that to another level. Plus, people kept asking us and we saw that Steve and the NEEDLE crew were doing it, and rocking it, so why not? However you want to read it, we will try to accommodate you.

What will the future hold for Crimefactory?

Basically to continue to do the best job we can and put out as much cool, interesting stuff as possible and catch more mistakes. KUNG-FU FACTORY is coming up – which has exceeded my pretty high hopes for content – and CF #6 has some dynamite content lined up, so the immediate future looks pretty good. Plus, we have a new cover artist as of next issue which I’m really excited about (more on this later), so the mag will look better than ever, or perhaps just good depending on your point of view. The CF anthology from New Pulp Press is also on the horizon. We need to line-edit and then we’re good to go. It’s a crazy, crazy line-up and will be a helluva read. More themed issues like KFF if time permits and the implementation of a really cool true crime feature featuring rotating writers. I’m really excited about that as I fucking hate most true crime as it’s just exploitative trash, and I’ve wrestled with the possibilities of including it somehow in CF. The way we’re going to do it is perfect for us and some people I’ve worded up to write for it are just as excited.

Despite the conceit that suggests otherwise, lists in magazines are not meant to be definitive. No, they are meant to spark debate, and to goose sales. So it is with the New Yorker‘s new list of what it says are the 20 top fiction writers in the U.S. under the age of 40. One could assume that a publication as esteemed as the New Yorker would put forth its list with a sense of finality; argue all you want, but these are the best. Period.

Nope. The editors admit to the futility of the exercise in the introduction: “The habit of list-making can seem arbitrary or absurd, leaving the list-makers endlessly open to second-guessing (although to encourage such second-guessing is perhaps the best reason to make lists).”

The problem is that the New Yorker didn’t even do that right. Seeing the list, no one would necessarily argue against any of their picks. That’s the problem. They’re safe. Here they are:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32; Chris Adrian, 39; Daniel Alarcón, 33; David Bezmozgis, 37; Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38; Joshua Ferris, 35; Jonathan Safran Foer, 33; Nell Freudenberger, 35; Rivka Galchen, 34; Nicole Krauss, 35; Yiyun Li, 37; Dinaw Mengestu, 31; Philipp Meyer, 36; C. E. Morgan, 33; Téa Obreht, 24; Z Z Packer, 37; Karen Russell, 28; Salvatore Scibona, 35; Gary Shteyngart, 37; and Wells Tower, 37.

I’ve read some, have noble plans to read others. But even for those whose work I haven’t read (or even read about before now), seeing their bios and reading their excepts, I can’t make a compelling case for why they shouldn’t be there. And, if the New Yorker truly wanted to do a service with this list, there would be arguments galore.

Now, they defend themselves against such attacks by pointing out how edgy a similar 1999 list was. Hogwash. After admitting that Michael Chabon and David Foster Wallace already were stars, they suggest that they also “included writers whose breakthrough books were still ahead of them. Junot Díaz was the author of a popular story collection, “Drown,” but “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, was still eight years away. Jonathan Franzen had published two well-received novels, but “The Corrections,” his enormously successful National Book Award-winning work (which was excerpted in that issue), wasn’t published until 2001. Jhumpa Lahiri’s first book, the story collection “Interpreter of Maladies,” came out the same month as the fiction issue and went on to sell millions of copies worldwide.”

If The Corrections was excerpted, then it’s star was already on the rise, and Lahiri’s book, though it didn’t come out before the issue, was already tipped as a pick hit. Not exactly picking something out of the slush pile, here.

Now, it would be worse for the magazine to do just that, pick something from a complete unknown and herald it as the next big thing (It already did that with Freudenberger, who it conveniently includes on this list to perhaps bolster it’s “plucked from obscurity” practices back when she was made a star while sitting a couple of desks away from the fiction editor at… the New Yorker. But the magazine could have picked some under the radar people who don’t traffic in literary fiction. Where’s Duane Swierczynski? Or Joe Meno? Or Tao Lin? Each has shaken up fiction and storytelling in ways their peers on the list have not.

Don’t get me wrong; anything that raises the profile of young authors, and makes people think about/debate explore fiction should be praised. But the New Yorker had an opportunity to do something truly special here, and it squandered it with a predictable list that cements the status quo at a time when it ought to take pains to, in the very least nudge it just enough to induce mild discomfort.

For my look back on the 10th anniversary of the 1999 list, click here.

The headline up there comes with a caveat: I haven’t seen the physical product that resulted from the flurry of activity that resulted in 48 Hours magazine, but having monitored its progress over the two-day period this weekend and seeing thumbnails of the 60-page first issue (actually referred to as issue zero because of its beta-like status), I’m impressed. Impressed enough to shell out $10 for the pleasure of holding it in my hands.

Here’s how it worked: those behind 48 Hours announced a theme for the first issue on May 7. That theme was the rather appropriate “hustle.” writers, photographers and artists then had 28 hours to submit work, after which the editors and designers involved would use the remaining 20 hours to assemble selected pieces into a magazine.

Amazingly, given that things wrapped up on Sunday according to that schedule, the magazine went on sale today on Magcloud.com. According to the editors, they received 1,502 submissions, selecting work from 74 contributors to fill the 60 pages. The result looks well thought out, all the more so given the constraints under which they worked.

As interesting as this is as a singular experiment with technology-aided  flash publishing, the truly remarkable thing will be to see the projects that follow this example, inspired by what is possible when most of the barriers to entry are removed from the publishing world.

I haven’t looked at Spin magazine on a consistent basis for years, but there was a short time when it was the most-reliable voice on music in my life. Sometime between discovering Rolling Stone back in high school and discovering music ‘zines at the hip record store in college, Spin delivered what I couldn’t get anywhere else. Remember, kids, this was before blogs, Internet radio and e-mail, so short of talking with friends or watching Kurt Loder on MTV news, outlets like Spin were it when it came to learning about bands and records.

Spin has been on an inexorable slide toward irrelevance, but for a while, it was sort of the Pitchfork of its day. That’s why its 25th anniversary coverage is so illuminating. Looking only at its new list of the 125 best albums of the past 25 years, one sees how silly it is to offer qualitative judgments about fresh work.

Consider the album reviews found in the Dec. 1991 issue. The lead review goes to U2′s Achtung, Baby, arguably the biggest album released at that time. It was a somewhat middling review (in Spin’s then taxonomy, it was given a yellow light, defined as “whoa, slow down pal. This record is pretty good, but you can’t buy everything in the store. Can you?”) in which Jim Greer calls it “an ambitious failure and by almost any standard an excellent record.” In the same issue, Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque is given a green light (“Go directly to your record store. Buy this record. Kill if you must.”) in a review where Greer writes, “Bandwagonesque is a movable feast. Jump on it.” Nirvana’s Nevermind (wow, that was a stacked month) also is covered. It, too, earns a green light, the short review toward the end of that section calling it “a little bit punk, a little bit metal, a little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. What the hell more do you want?”

Fast forward 19 years, and the album that earned the yellow-light review, Achtung, Baby, is named the best of the past 25 years, while Nevermind comes in at #3.  Bandwagonesque, meanwhile, which Spin named the best album of 1991 (Nevermind was #3, behind R.E.M.’s Out of Time) is #111.

Somewhere in the cauldron of context, history and critical hindsight one can likely find the true value of any of these albums. In 1991, Nevermind was a shocking step forward for a decent grunge band, Bandwagonesque was a perhaps even more shocking step forward for a grungy pop band and Achtung, Baby was an interesting evolution for the biggest band in the world. Today, it’s impossible to hear Nevermind without all of its baggage getting in the way, Bandwagonesque is an early indication of future achievement that has too much filler and Achtung, Baby is the last great album from a still-entertaining but no-longer vital band.

Does all of this mean Spin got it wrong in 1991? Yeah, probably. Does that mean the new list is wrong, too? Sure, in spots. The Breeders’ Last Splash isn’t the 79th best album of the past 25 years (though “Cannonball” is probably one of the 125 best singles of that era), and it’s surprising that given the critical distance afforded this exercise that anyone would think otherwise. But that critical distance allows for a more clear-eyed view, and thus the analysis in general is more spot-on than the understandably over-exuberant reviews afforded the bright, shiny objects released in any given month.

Music and Spin are not the only relevant tags here, of course. Any criticism of something new almost without exception is going to be different (and usually, more shallow) than what comes after. Without context, without the ability to see how something stacks up when compared to its peers and the career of the artist in question — let alone how it weathers repeat listens/views/experiences — a review can only scratch the surface. That won’t keep me from reading reviews, or writing them. It just means that as time passes, the merit of anything and everything evolves.

UPDATE: The folks at Electric Literature sent me an extra copy of the first issue, and I’ll send it to a random commenter who leaves an answer this week to the following question: What is the most “dangerous” piece of fiction you’ve read and why? Respond by midnight CDT Aug. 2.

The debut of a literary journal — even in these depressed economic times — isn’t stop-the-presses news. In fact, the new Electric Literature would be unremarkable save for the quality of the stories in its debut, were it not for its mode of delivery.

The journal is available in four formats: traditional print paperback, Kindle, eBook and iPhone compatible. “We have adopted an environmentally conscious approach to publishing,” the editors write on the journal’s web site: “Ultimately, the content of a book is information, and the methods of distributing information have changed. Electronic publishing is the greenest option: it kills no trees, requires very little energy, never goes out of print, and can reach anyone on the planet.”

The paper versions are green as well; the publisher uses print-on-demand technology, which means you won’t see this on newsstands and then remaindered years later.

But lest you think the emphasis is on the “electric” rather than the “literature,” it opens with some heavy hitters, including Jim Shepard and Michael Cunningham. Shepard’s story would have fit nicely in his last collection, Like You’d Understand, Anyway. It’s historical fiction, of a sort, telling of a team of researchers in the Swiss Alps at the dawn of World War II. The other writers — T Cooper, Lydia Millet and Diana Wagman — were new to me, but their compelling stories made them worthy contributors to this first issue. My only complaint was that Cunningham’s contribution is a novel excerpt. I hate when the New Yorker wastes its one fiction slot with an excerpt, and it’s no better here. If I want to read the novel, I’ll read the novel. Reading a snippet satisfies no one.

That aside, the real interesting thing will be to see if the magazine develops an aesthetic or tone. It promises “reading that’s bad for you,” describing it thusly: “Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Ulysses, Madam Bovary… these books were banned because they could subvert society. How? Again, by revealing life’s possibilities, expanding consciousness, and exploding social norms. We want to re-introduce the idea that reading can be dangerous.”

The jury is still out on that, as there is nothing here that I haven’t seen elsewhere. The stories are good — edgy in spots — but it’s difficult to foresee anything coming within Electric Literature’s pages that would shock in the way the above-mentioned works did in their time. They will get quality work thanks to the promise of $1,000 per story, an almost unheard-of sum for a literary journal.

Still, for what it is — five stories over 100 very basically laid-out pages — it’s a very high-quality publication with a lot of promise. I can’t imagine reading this much prose on an iPhone, but for those seeking more substance than their various apps can provide, this certainly fits the bill. Me, I’ll spare my eyesight and stick with the paper copy.

The journal is embracing the possibilities of the web and electronic media. It released a trailer this week for Shepard’s story, “Your Fate Hurtles Down at You.” It was animated by Jonathan Ashley and scored by musician Nick DeWitt. Watch it below:

Once I got over the confusion over a book magazine that publishes only 10 times a year setting aside two of those to cover music and visual arts, I learned to love The Believer‘s annual music issue. Actually, it wasn’t hard. Much as the magazine’s usual content offers some of the best, most interesting coverage of books available, The Believer‘s music issue is one of the sharpest looks at the state of music that you’ll find.

The new issue is no exception. In fact, whether it’s a faulty memory on my part or an uncanny ability to target my tastes on their part, I can’t remember a more satisfying music issue.

The first thing to do when a Believer music issue arrives is to check out the included CD. This one, compiled by Daniel Handler (better known as Lemony Snicket), is a gem. The disc offers some incredible music that, unlike most included with magazines, features songs unavailable elsewhere because they were recorded specifically for this project. The Believer/Handler asked several songwriters to submit acoustic versions of new songs, and 14 did.

One note: If there is a target audience for this disc, I’m it. Which led me to look up Handler on Wikipedia and found what I was looking for: He’s three months younger than I am, which more importantly means that he graduated from college at the same time. No wonder this disc seems so good: These are artists that, by and large, were making a name for themselves when we were in high school, college and slightly beyond.

While I know my tastes have expanded since that time, it’s also safe to say that the artists I hold closest to my heart are those I discovered in the decade-long window between entering high school and settling fully into the working world. So, acts like Sam Phillips, Robert Scott (The Bats), Mike Scott (The Waterboys), Lloyd Cole, Dave Wakeling (The English Beat), Mark Robinson (Unrest) et al are right in that wheelhouse.

The Scott song, “A Wild Holy Band,” is magnificent. Despite it’s 10-minute run time, it held my interest from start to finish, a story song worthy of any next-Dylan tag Scott might have been saddled with at one time. The Dave Wakeling song makes me think it’s high time for an English Beat revival, while tracks from Stephen Duffy (The Lilac Time), Lisa Germano and Stuart Moxham (Young Marble Giants) make me think I ought to re-evaluate my ambivalence about their work.

Moving beyond the disc and into the issue’s pages, I’m again struck by the breadth of what is covered here. In the past, the magazine has been accused of pandering too much to the hipster demographic, but any nods to that corner are more than balanced this time out by pieces about the post-breakup Beatles, Lawrence Welk, jazz guitarist Pat Martino and a look at the costs associated with staging an opera. Sure, there is an interview with indie darling Phil Elverum of Microphones/Mt. Eerie and a Q&A with Thom Yorke, but if anything these are pieces that are likely to put the hipsters at ease with the rest of the content, not the other way around.

Arthur Phillips, who wrote the fantastic new novel The Song is You (which I’ll boldly say is the best novel ever written with music at its center), has an interesting (particularly given the success of his doing so in his novel) piece about the constant debate about whether one can accurately describe music with words in Dancing About Architecture.

Joe Hagan, whose article about reclusive singer-songwriter Bill Fox in the 2007 music issue was one of the best things The Believer has published, looks at singer-songwriter Benji Hughes, another performer who doesn’t seem to have found the best way to present his music — or the right partners to help him do so when he does.

All in all it’s a very solid issue of one of the best magazines out there, and one any music fan would do well to drop $10 to acquire.

Past Believer music issues:

2008
2007
2006
2005
2004

Ten years ago today, the June 21 & 28, 1999 issue of the New Yorker hit the mailbox (yes, we get it late out here in flyover country). It was the fiction issue, though this one came with a twist: It identified 20 writers who were dubbed “The Future of American Fiction.”

The list: Sherman Alexie, Donald Antrim, Ethan Canin, Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Tony Earley, Nathan Englander, Jeffrey Eugenidies, Jonathan Franzen, Allegra Goodman, A.M. Homes, Matthew Klam, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-Rae Lee, Rick Moody, Antonya Nelson, George Saunders, William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace.

With 10 years of hindsight, how did they do? Pretty well. There is one bona fied star in Chabon, several winners of prestigious prizes who also have bestsellers to their names (Eugenidies, Diaz and Lahiri) and plenty of critically acclaimed authors like Moody and Saunders. The late Wallace seems to deserve his own place as someone who, at one time or another, fit all three of those categories.

What is most striking, however, are the names that at one time seemed to guarantee excitement but which today sent me to Wikipedia to determine when their last publication occurred. Could Klam really not have published anything since 2000′s Sam the Cat? Whatever happened to Englander? Or Antrim?

My own biases/myopia/limited tastes play a part to be sure. I know Goodman is a big name, but have never read a word beyond the story included here. I’m completely unfamiliar with the work of Nelson or Danticat, but know each has legions of fans.

As with all such lists, the most interesting thing is to look at who made it and who didn’t. In the opening Talk of the Town essay in the issue, “Reading Ahead,” then Fiction Editor Bill Buford writes that the magazine “set out to answer the question, ‘Who are the 20 best young fiction writers in America today?’ Does best mean ‘most promising’ or ‘most accomplished’? We settled on a definition that includes both senses, and tried to accommodate the obvious names and the not-so-obvious.”

They did limit themselves by considering only American authors age 40 and under. Even at the outset there was hedging, or at least a healthy caveat that admits such lists are dubious exercises. Such a list in 1899, Buford writes, would not have included Willa Cather or Edith Warton or Theodore Dreiser or Jack London or… you get the point.

Anyone could make a compelling argument for or against nearly all of the picks on the list, though one omission did strike me as odd. Tellingly, there is an ad for Stewart O’Nan’s Prayers for the Dying on the bio page that lists the 20 who made the cut. O’Nan’s output since would certainly merit strong consideration, as would that of a couple dozen other authors who were not selected.

A close look at the list shows that the magazine wasn’t exactly taking chances with its choices. By 1999, Chabon had already published Wonder Boys and was at work on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Moody had penned three novels, incluing The Ice Storm and Purple America; and Vollmann had published nine works of fiction. Then again, Diaz had published just one story collection, and Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, had just been published.

There was precedent, too. Granta published its own list of the Best Young American Novelists in 1996, with six overlapping with the New Yorker list (Alexie, Canin, Danticat, Earley, Eugenidies and Franzen). Some obvious omissions from the New Yorker list, including O’Nan and Lorrie Moore, are present here.

Hindsight offers some comedy. Buford writes about the novel being “Oprahed,” something selectee Franzen would learn about firsthand more than a year later when his book, The Corrections was selected for the TV star’s vaunted book club. He expressed misgivings, she rescinded the invitation, and the book club’s relationship with modern literary fiction (and, it seems, the populace’s view of it) was never the same.

It was clearly a different time. The Talk of the Town piece that follows Buford’s looks at Karl Rove, already being called “Bush’s Brain,” and the machinations he had under way that seemed to point to a presidential bid by the then-Texas governor. The Internet was nowhere near the force it is now, (there are actual ads without URLs at the bottom) and publishers still paid large advances and sent their authors on long book tours.

A good story is a good story, regardless of the time or contest, and many here are are top notch, making the issue a very compelling read. The only vexing thing is that five authors’ stories are only teased, and appeared in each of the next five issues of the magazine. Actually, that’s not the only vexing thing. As is too often the case with the New Yorker, at least five of these so-called short stories are actually novel excepts (such as Chabon’s “The Hofzinser Club”) though not billed as such.

In the end, the issue provides an interesting lens through which to view the turn of the century literary fiction landscape, capturing, fairly effectively, the consensus critical picks for success. Not all of those selected would be included on a list that sought to gather the best writers of the past decade, but all 20 moved forward from this point with significant work. We can be disappointed that Franzen has yet to follow up his 2001 novel, or that Earley has managed just one post-Jim the Boy novel this decade, but prolific folks like Alexie and Chabon somewhat make up for it.

Summing up his Talk of the Town piece, Buford seems to foresee the divergent futures of the chosen ones. “What is the future of American fiction We can’t know. But the Polaroid of this generation, snapped as the century turns, offers a satisfying picture of a highly accomplished group of writers robustly taking on the stories of their Americanness.”

Below is a list of the included stories along with their eventual home under the author’s name. Those listed as “uncollected” may have appeared in anthologies, but have not been issued in a book by the author to the best of my knowledge.

“I Can Speak!TM” George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation
“Asset,” David Foster Wallace, uncollected
“The Toughest Indian in the World” by Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World
“Hawaiian Night,” Rick Moody, Demonology
“Raft in Water, Floating,” A.M. Homes, Things You Sho
uld Know
“The Local Production of Cinderella,” Allegra Goodman, uncollected
“The Saviors,” William T. Vollmann, part of the novel Europe Central
“Party of One,” Antonya Nelson, Nothing Right
“The Volunteers,” Chang-Rae Lee, uncollected
“The Hofzinser Club,” Michael Chabon, excerpt from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
“Vins Fins,” Ethan Canin, uncollected
“An Actor Prepares,” Donald Antrim, uncollected
“The Wide Sea,” Tony Early, excerpt from Jim the Boy
“The Oracular Vulva,” Jeffrey Eugenidies, excerpt from Middlesex
“OtraVida, OtraVez,” Junot Diaz, uncollected
“The Failure,” Jonathan Franzen, excerpt from The Corrections
“The Book of the Dead,” Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker
“The Third and Final Continent,” Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies
“Peep Show,” Nathan Englander, uncollected
“Issues I Dealt With in Therapy,” Matthew Klam, Sam the Cat