Melville House Books

Gail Hareven

Back in January an article entitled ‘New Yorker Fiction by the Numbers: The Many Stories by the Few’ reported on a certain Frank Kovarik’s six years of number crunching, and revealed some interesting facts about the breadth and depth of the esteemed magazine’s fiction selections:

• Just nine writers account for 73 (or 23%) of the 312 stories to appear over the last six years. Just 18 writers account for 118 (or 38%) of the stories.
• Of the 312 stories in the New Yorker from 2003 through 2008, 119 or 38.1% were penned by women.
• Americans make up the bulk of the contributors. 157 of the stories, or 50% (down from 52% after 2007), are American (and this leaves off several writers who could be conceivably classified as both American and a native of another country).

The article also listed the ‘superstar’ set—the writers who have appeared in the New Yorker at least five times over the last six years: Alice Munro (12); William Trevor (10); T. Coraghessan Boyle, Tessa Hadley (8); Louise Erdrich, John Updike, Roddy Doyle, Haruki Murakami (7); Thomas McGuane (6); Antonya Nelson, Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, Charles D’Ambrosio, Jonathan Lethem, Edward P. Jones, Jonathan Lethem, Roberto Bolaño, Lara Vapnyar (5).

But with the latest issue of the magazine comes a redemption of sorts: the short story, The Slows by Gail Hareven is (gasp) written by an Israeli woman, and (gasp) translated from the original Hebrew and (gasp) comes from a writer whose work was little know here until Melville House introduced her to a US audience with the publication in English of her novel, The Confessions of Noa Weber.

Bravo Deborah Treisman and, um, bravo Melville House for being quicker off the mark.