In celebration of his recent retirement, the following is an interview I did with Atlantic Monthly fiction editor, C. Michael Curtis
C Michael Curtis Interview
Chris McClelland: The Atlantic has been a bastion of fine fiction since forever, Twain, Crane, Norris, Hemingway, etc. When you first started editing in 1963, what was your vision for the fiction you published? Besides excellence of the work, what were other factors? How has that vision changed or grown over the years?
Michael Curtis: Like any editor of serious magazine fiction I look for distinctive use of language, memorable characters, a sense of place, and moral vision to name just a few of the identifiable virtues that make a story appealing. I also prefer the dynamic to the static, in story-telling, and usually look for a change of some sort, either in the circumstance of a major character, or in the reader’s understanding of what has transpired. Beyond that, my response is a mystery: some stories give me chills, a sense of completeness, a narrative of such originality and internal logic that I can’t escape a conviction that it deserves to be in print. Some don’t. Whether my “vision” has grown over the years remains to be seen. I started with what I think were good instincts, and, over the years, I’ve learned more and more about how fiction works—and doesn’t work, which stylistic approaches seem merely self-congratulatory, which are descriptive rather than analytical, which are self-defeating because they are circular or merely mundane.
Bear in mind that I’ve been reading fiction for a magazine that once published 24 or so stories a year, then 10 per year, then six or seven, and now as few as two. The number of stories submitted each year (once 12,000, now a trickle of some 6,000) obviously far exceeds our available space for fiction, and more than 100 of those are intelligently written and worth serious consideration for publication. Somewhere. So choosing what to publish, among worthy prospects, has become a process more arbitrary than we’d like.
Chris McClelland: The method of fiction offerings at The Atlantic has undergone some major changes in recent years, first with the introduction of the Summer Fiction Issue, then with its discontinuance. What is the state of fiction at The Atlantic today? Are there still opportunities for short fiction to be published in The Atlantic? Are there future plans to revive the fiction issue or provide readers with other sources of great Atlantic fiction?
Michael Curtis: The situation at the moment, where fiction is concerned: we are still reading fiction and hope to have room for stories in future issues. We might even revive the Fiction Issues, although that will depend upon economic matters over which I have no control. Importantly, the editors at The Atlantic have high regard for fiction as part of the editorial mix and hope better days are around the corner. In the meantime, all submissions are read, and we are building a small inventory with those days in prospect.
Chris McClelland: When you evaluate a piece of fiction, what makes it a rounded story, as opposed to a mere anecdote or sketch? How does character development play into this? Narrative voice?
Michael Curtis: We look for depth and complexity in Atlantic fiction. What we call a sketch or anecdote have neither, interesting though they may be.
Chris McClelland: You have experience teaching Ethics on the university level. How does this inform the kind of stories you tend to gravitate towards as an editor? Do questions of ethics or morality raised in a story innately make it more compelling?
Michael Curtis: I prefer stories that have moral weight, about characters faced with choices that test or refine their deepest convictions. Since questions of this sort occupy many of our waking hours, readers, I believe, tend to puzzle over such stories, and return to them.
Chris McClelland: I’ve once heard it said that a story needs an epiphany or character transformation of some kind. Do you agree? If not an epiphany, perhaps some kind of turning point?
Michael Curtis: Many stories work towards an “epiphany” or “transformation,” and that seems to me a sensible idea, since one of the things we find interesting about other people is the strength or flexibility of their convictions, and what leads to change. Whether a story “needs” such a thing is another matter. What a story “needs” to do is capture our attention, and it can do that in several ways. Sometimes a close and sustaining glimpse of characters locked in their milieu is rewarding, whether or not they find a way out. And so on.
Chris McClelland: Much of what makes the best stories seems to be a kind of ineffable magic that works through the words and the voice. As an editor, what helps you to identify that magic? When editing such a story, how do you approach the magic without altering the magical quality?
Michael Curtis: Perhaps “ineffable magic” is a good way to describe the quality that makes a story seize your attention and then live in memory. As editor I look for it in every story I read, and then try to preserve it in every story I edit. Part of that has to do with preserving whatever is distinctive in the voices of the story, and in the writer’s diction. I edit for the occasional clumsiness that one finds in most skilled writers’ work, for technical or descriptive error, unintended inconsistencies, and, very rarely, harmonic lapse. I try hard to honor what I take to be the writer’s intentions and mode of expression.
Chris McClelland: How does the element of compassion figure into your evaluation of a manuscript? Must a story elicit compassion of some kind in order to approach excellence?
Michael Curtis: Again, a story “must” do little more than be interesting and artful. I would call a story “artful” if it does one or more of a number of things: uses dialogue that captures a special vernacular, or manages to be oblique or opaque in unexpected ways; makes use of images with staying power or the capacity to induce an emotional response; makes use of juxtaposition both in language and event; follows a path of realism or suggests an alternative reality with symbolic or figurative depth; makes use of psychological complexity in exploring lives or representations that invite curiosity or wonder on the part of the reader; and no doubt other things. If it is compassionate, all the better. I admire “compassionate” stories, if they survive scrutiny on other grounds, but, some stories [“Hills Like White Elephants,” “Haircut,”for example] are notable for the harshness of their revelations. Some stories work best at exposing inadvertent cruelty, hopes unmet, virtue unrewarded. I wouldn’t reject such stories because they fail on the “good news” front.
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