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Dear Mr. Blue
The man of my dreams
Emboldened by his declaration of love, I asked him about "the future." I wasn't banking on his honest answer.
By Garrison Keillor
[02/22/00]

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"Circumcision" by David L. Gollaher
A physician argues the case against lopping it off.
By Greg Villepique
[02/22/00]

Spy vs. spy
Sadism and palace intrigue flavor the deliciously paranoid vision of Iain Banks.
By Polly Shulman
[02/18/00]

Reviews
"City of God" by E.L. Doctorow
Let there be enlightenment: harrowing stories of war and vengeance interleaved with a strange tale that starts with a stolen crucifix.
By Julia Gracen
[02/18/00]

Turning out the lights on the old New Yorker
Was it Utopia? Camelot? Paradise? Or does the possibility exist that, as fine as it once was, it was still just a magazine?
By Gavin McNett
[02/17/00]

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I had been tinkering for several months with a story about an amnesia victim. It was supposed to be the basis for a short film that I would never have the resources to make. I turned the piece into short fiction after learning of a noble-sounding Web venture operating under the auspices of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola's company, Zoetrope.

The site is meant to provide a workshop for aspiring fiction writers and to double as an online submissions venue for Zoetrope's literary review, All-Story (and its online counterpart, All-Story Extra), with the attendant possibility of a $1,000 option on film rights. Though I worried at first that participating would expose my work to the entire global population of plagiarists, it was all too appealing to pass up. I could skip the tedious technical formatting entailed in script writing, submit my short story electronically to All-Story and I'd be well on my way to becoming the next Mario Puzo. A few days in the workshop and I soon said "ciao" to all that.

Coppola's mission statement is posted in a letter on the All-Story Web site. He observes that aspiring "auteurs" are increasingly turning to screenwriting and laments that the script format is a poor relation to pure prose, as well as simply less enjoyable to read. Coppola's aim with the magazine is to celebrate and nurture literature as an aspiration in its own right. The workshop, like many small and independent presses, endeavors to create opportunities for new writers outside metropolitan areas and the mainstream publishing world.

As good as it sounds, one can't help asking if this high-minded experiment isn't the result of the impractical optimism, cavalier sense of enterprise and fervent ambition for which Coppola is famous. Those same traits are also features of Web ventures on the whole. Couple the high-profile, movie business associations of Zoetrope with the unbridled creative energies of several thousand aspiring authors vying for recognition, and you're left with an online battleground that can leave even those writers with the most formidable arsenal of adjectives limping away to express themselves through the quiet art of sculpture instead.

I joined the Zoetrope site in November 1998. To participate, writers must first critique five stories by other members. After painstakingly completing this requirement, I hit the submit button and watched my 5,000 words of nonlinear, unreliably narrated prose pop up on the screen to be absorbed by a handful of discerning fellow authors from around the world. A few days later, I logged on and peered at the little box of HTML text to read the first illuminating dissections of my work. Dec. 6, 1998, 8:54 p.m.: "I didn't get where this piece was going." Well, thank you, Lionel Trilling. Perhaps if you'd bothered to finish it ...

Horrified at the thought of my story dying in unclicked-upon obscurity, I scoured the site for kindred spirits with whom to trade reads. Books and magazines grew dusty by my bed as I logged on first thing in the morning and late at night to construct elaborate reviews in the hope that someone would throw me a reciprocal bone. It worked. Soon I was receiving insightful critiques peppered with double question marks, exclamation points and superlatives. I could finally get to sleep before 3 a.m.

It was starting -- the fiercely competitive spirit and phenomenal creative urgency of the world of the Zoetrope workshop. And it would all but consume me, if not for the saving presence of the off button and a little healthy perspective.

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