Granta

There's this magazine Granta that we've started getting for free (along with Mother Jones, Wired, the ratings shlockfest that is U.S. News and World Report, and whatever else they offer us and Chris says yes to) by virtue of subscribing to salon. I don't know if you've ever heard of Granta before; I hadn't. It's a literary journal that's published quarterly, all bound up with nice paper like a book, each issue dedicated to a particular theme (the latest theme is how Americans perceive the rest of the world). In fact it looks just like a literary paperback except that in between some of the stories there are ads. There are a few longer essays or stories and many, many two or three pages pieces by a variety of writers, many of whom are pretty well-regarded. It's pretty interesting. I wouldn't pay to subscribe because it's pretty pricy, but it's a nice collection of stuff. It also makes me realize how unsatisfying it can be to give a good writer only two or three pages to say something when s/he's used to having unlimited room. Some of these people should go back and take an intro comp class where they have to write two page response papers every week. They're barely getting going by the time the piece is over.

I mean it about U.S. News, by the way, It's not a shlockfest like Time or Newsweek, either. More in the sense of being just a couple of steps away from arguing that Pat Buchanan or Alan Keyes would make a damn fine president. Kind of an odd partnership for salon.