FFM/S: SCRIBNER MAGAZINE, Winter 1996, edited by Nan Graham, Rosalind Lippel, Wendy Nicholson & Charles Scribner III; Amy Silverberg fiction at AmySilverberg.com

Scribner Magazine was a loss-leader that apparently produced only two expensively turned-out issues in 1996, a Spring-Summer issue as promised (on the back cover) to follow the Winter issue I have before me. On heavy slick paper, 80 pages plus covers (though only the outside of the cover stock features more than black and white), it is mostly an excuse to run excerpts from the Winter '96 releases from Scribner's book imprint, along with a reprint of an Edith Wharton story from the December, 1911 issue of Scribner's Magazine, a new interview with Alice Walker, and a mixture of bits and pieces, older and new, from the current staff and back issues of the magazine when it was still a magazine. (Since this was published, a ScribnerMagazine.com website was announced in 2014 and apparently has been discontinued, unless the site is simply down for some reason; last update I can find evidence of was in 2017.) Meant to be given away, this tall digest will set you back from $5-20 on at least one clangorous online site...the Spring/Summer issue seems harder to find, and runs about $5 more.

Scribner Magazine, Winter 1996. Edited by Nan Graham, Rosalind Lippel, Wendy Nicholson & Charles Scribner III; Marla Stutzman, Managing Editor.  Susan Moldow, publisher. 80 pp + covers; 6x9.25" heavy slick paper, gratis. 

fc * Maxfield Parrish * untitled * il Scribner's Magazine, Fall 1899 
ifc * Anon. * photograph of Charles Scribner's Sons building, ca. 1935
1 * Susan Moldow * Dear Readers * ed
2 * Anon. * Table of Contents * ms
3 * Leigh Haber * Interview with Alice Walker * iv (illustrated with photo of Walker by Jean Weisenger) 
9 * Edith Wharton * Xingu * nv Scribner’s Magazine Dec 1911 (illustrated with uncredited photo of Wharton)
16 * Harrison Fisher * A Bookstore Romance * il (1902 issue not otherwise specified)
25 * Pat Parker * A Small Contradiction * pm The Arc of Love: An Anthology of Lesbian Love Poetry edited by Claire Coss (Scribner 1996)
26 * Anne Truitt * Prospect: The Journal of an Artist * ex/memoir (Scribner 1996) (illustrated with a photo of Truitt by John Dolan)
28 * Lana Witt * Slow Dancing on Dinosaur Bones * ex (Scribner 1996)
34 * Judy Grahn * I Only Have One Reason for Living * pm The Arc of Love
35 * David Quammen * Letter * es (illustrated by Kris Ellingson; photo of Quamnen by Jim Evans)
40 * Anon. * Culture and Progress * br (The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin) Scribner's Monthly, 1876; illus Anon. from Scribner's, November 1871)
44 * A. M. Homes * The End of Alice * ex (Scribner 1996) (illus with photos by Marion Ettlinger and Anon.)
52 * Anon. * Topics of the Time: Living with Windows Open * column (Scribner's Monthly 1871)(Anon illutsration from Scribner's, July 1871)
53 * Naomi Raplansky * The Dangerous World * pm The Arc of Love
54 * Robert Cohen * The Here and Now: A Novel * ex (Scribner 1996) (illus. photo by Karl Baden)
61 * David Lehman * The Choice * pm (Valentine Place, Scribner 1996)
62 * Anon.* The Scribner Quiz * qz (Scribner's, December 1936) (ilus. Anon.)
64 * David Lehman * Dutch Interior * pm (Valentine Place)
65 * Helie Lee * Still Life with Rice * ex/biography (Scribner 1996) (illus. photos by Anon.)
73 * Frank Lentricchia * Johnny Critelli: A Novel * ex (Johnny Critelli and the Knifemen, Scribner 1996) (illus. photo by Jody McAuliffe)
77 * Charles Scribner III * Crying Wolfe * es (Thomas Wolfe and Maxwell Perkins) (illus. photo Anon.)
79 * Thomas Wolfe * Last Poem * manuscript (photographed)
80 * The Editors (1936) * The New Scribner's * ed (Scribner's, November 1936)
ibc * photograph of 1846 contract establishing Baker and Scribner, Publishers

As teasers go, this was a rather elaborate one, and with no little good reading (and not a little of that criminous, between the Holmes and Lentricchia excerpts). Perhaps unsurprising that such an expensive-seeming freebie barely saw another issue.

Amy Silverberg is a stand-up comedian and writer of fiction and criticism, based in L.A. and at last report about to pick up her PhD as well as teaching writing at USC.  Her story from Southern Review for Spring 2017,  "Suburbia!", has been picked up by this year's editor Roxane Gay for Best American Short Stories 2018. It's one of the few cited at her website that you can't read online, though you can read an SR interview with her.

She has a lean, sometimes analytical approach in her fiction that might remind you of, say, Patricia Abbott, and a similar love of the deadpan:

includes an Amy Silverberg story...

“I’ve never been very good at choosing men,” my mother had said recently, over the bland red-sauced pasta she made once a week, having decided I was old enough to have that kind of conversation. We kept the television on at a low roar in the background, accompanying us during our nightly routines.

“I’m not good at it, either,” I told her, because, though I had little evidence so far, I instinctively knew this was true.

“Oh, honey,” she said, “I’m sorry. That’s probably all my fault,” and I nodded, because it probably was.

As befits a comedian and Second City grad, her wit is usually obviously at play, and she does love the shortest forms as well as the mid-length...she's at work at a novel. Her jokes as a comedian are also rather well-written...even if she seems a bit too eager to bail on them at times in her delivery...

For more of today's books, or books proper, please see Patti Abbott's blog...as well as her books...

FFM: SILO, Fall 1963, edited by Lynne Coleman and Stephanie Spinner: Bob Dylan, Holland Taylor, William Marshall, Sandra Hochman, Gerard Malanga, et al.

SILO

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is an unusually-highly-prized/priced (for collectors) issue of this largely forgotten literary magazine; published beginning in 1942 at Bennington College, in 1963 as today a magnet for students from wealthy families who leaned into their talents (though then still a women-students-only institution), and a school willing to pay for "marquee" faculty. In 2016, perhaps the last annual issue, 73, was posted online as The Silo.

But this issue manages to gather a rather (eventually, at least) impressive set of students, faculty and a visiting folk singer who passed along the lyrics of a new song he was trying out at an on-campus concert. So...I'm not going to invest the fat little wad of money this issue is being offered for...but thought it worth citing in this context.

Update: I have been informed that Karen Jackel picked up a onetime Best Story from the College Literary Magazines award for this story, the contest judged by Leslie Fiedler...

No. 4 (presumably among 1963 issues; perhaps the title for this issue was for some reason Silo 4). Bennington, VT: Bennington College, Fall 1963. Size (h/w): 23 x 16.5 cm. 

Edited by Lynne Coleman and Stephanie Spinner. Contributions by Ellen Wilbur, Holland Taylor, Gerard Malanga, Sandra Hochman (later a notable film documentarian as well as poet, novelist and memoirist), William Meredith, Karen Jackel and Bob Dylan (insert of page reproducing a holograph of his first version of "The Times They Are A Changin"). 

Anne Waldman, later editor of Silo, was "Board member for poetry" at the time of this issue. "Cited for two first-place awards as the most outstanding college literary magazine in America." Artwork included (inserts) by Megan Parry Marash, Gitta Steiner (primarily a composer of music), Tonia Noell (as Tonia Noell-Roberts she had illustrations later in at least one chemistry text and a Carl Rogers book on psychology for lay readers).

I might yet review Jackel's novel, Living and Learning, which was published as a mass-market original contemporary-mimetic novel by Avon in 1972. Copies of this novel are a lot less expensive...it starts well, but becomes rather precious rather quickly...

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog...