52 stories.

As I mentioned before, I recently popped in Skylight Books on Vermont, and was delighted to find these volumes of short stories by some of great masters with bangin' new covers. This always excites me, so I had to check out this site fiftytwostories.com. What I found was an "experiment in social engineering" by Harper Perennial that is now in its second year. The site features a short story by a modern author--usually it seems like one Harper is trying to promote--but they do encourage readers to send in their own stories, too. A collection of books featured not only the above titles, but volumes by new authors and even anthologies based on the works of two excellent bands, Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth and Please: Fiction Inspired by The Smiths.


I browsed the site, and it left me with some mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'm fascinated by social marketing and how it will develop in the coming decade. I actually think it's rather great that companies are interested in establishing relationships and dialogues with their clientele. And while this doesn't get me excited about conversing with the peeps at J. Crew or Forever 21, I love the implications it has in music and literature.


And ok, I can dig a short story a week. I certainly do in the New Yorker. But those on the site left me a little cold. While I understand the importance of a powerful first sentence, the ones currently featured seem mostly intent on shocking the reader. And that always bugs me. This week's entry, Adults at Home by Marcy Dermansky, begins "The afternoon my little sister won her first U.S. Open, I was having strenuous sex with David Solemn, I man I met earlier that morning at Dunkin' Donuts." When the words "Dunkin' Donuts" don't encourage you to read on, something's wrong.

And as much as I love Sonic Youth, I really, really don't want to read stories inspired by their music. That's just silly. But I can still appreciate HP's take on promoting new authors. Each of the classic volumes feature a modern work at the end. Still, I think I prefer to read books by dead people. All dressed up in new covers with hot graphic design.