THE STORY OF STORY MAGAZINE

by Martha Foley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 1980

An unfinished memoir--and probably better for it--of a bittersweet literary life. In the 1920s, young newspaperwoman Martha Foley fell in love with sometime-short-story-writer Whit Burnett, took up peripatetic lodgings with him, and, in Vienna in 1931, persuaded him that they should start a magazine to publish only short stories--as an outlet for writers, like himself, cut off from one after another magazine-market. (She'd first had the idea when Mencken and Nathan left the fiction-oriented Smart Set to start the purposive, articles-heavy American Mercury; now, avant-gardist transition was giving up on fiction.) They had a pool of literary acquaintances; some European little-magazine experience; and in lieu of money to pay contributors, a bright idea of Martha's--each issue would be a sort of proof-book, offering articles for sale, all proceeds to the authors. And writers--both established names and newcomers--responded: Kay Boyle and Robert Musil appeared in the second issue, James T. Farrell made his debut in the third. But Whit, to Martha's dismay, was hardly writing any more. Keener on production, he left most of the manuscript-reading to her. And when a problem came up, he'd go fishing. In the telling Martha wavers between loyalty and rue; the one astringent comment--that she, like ""so many women in our society,"" had found a man ""inferior to her""--is Farrell's, quoted in a footnote. But at the time, one feels, she was as devoted to her infant magazine as to the man-child who had inspired it. Those brief Vienna years are crowded with personal reminiscences (malicious John Gunther, princely Bill Shirer, darling cook Rest) and with signs of what made Story special: stories were printed as submitted, without revisions; rejection slips were humanely worded. Then Martha and Whit lost their Vienna news-service post; transferred operations to unspoiled, impossible Majorca; and finally--via a providential legacy--made it back to New York and a lucrative publishing tie-up. Most of the rest of the story--the institutionalization of Story, Whit and Martha's break-up, her editorship (till her 1977 death) of the annual Best American Short Stories--is told in the moving, sometimes sardonic introduction and afterword by editor Neugeborn, who knew her in her last, lonely years. Here, happily, we have Martha in the ascendant--passionate about writers, straightforward about writing.

Pub Date: May 19, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION