Cover, Fiction 1.1

Collage by Donald Barthelme.

This volume, available by special order, contains further graphic work by Barthelme.

Coming attractions:

Round table with Max Frisch, Cynthia Ozick, Harold Brodkey, Lore Segal and Angus Fletcher, November 1981, CCNY.

Fiction's covers and graphics, a history.

Editor's Statement

by Mark Mirsky

As the editor of Fiction, I have been frustrated by our inability to bring out more issues annually and devote a larger number of pages to all the fiction that is submitted to us or that we could publish...

by Veronica Gorodetskaya

Graf and my father met on the streets. They were both hustling jobs as hands on moving and delivery trucks. A fellow native of St. Petersburg, Graf became my father's best friend in New York. It was hard to...

by G.D. Peters

On a Tuesday night Mark Casey was opening at the Lone Star for Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John. How he got the gig I could not imagine, Casey was a virtual neophyte, and the Lone Star was...

by Mark Mirsky

There is no independent force of evil in the Hebrew Bible or the Thousand Nights and One scholars have pointed out. A djinn or genie taking on the identity of a court appointed tempter, the Satan of The Book of...

by Raymond Strom

On my twentieth birthday, my mother called me with news that she had bought a restaurant on the shore of Lake Superior. Against the advice of everyone I knew, I made plans to go to the grand opening in...

by Karen Baddeley

I was probably 8 years old and my family and I had just moved to Nebraska from Iowa. My mom was always really worried that I wouldn't make friends because I was so quiet and shy. So she decided...

by Engels Vargas

I knew I was wasting my time there, but decided to stay anyway. I still had money in my pockets. With a cool glass of whisky in my hands I watched myself reflected on the mirror behind the bartender....

by Mara Grayson

I probably shouldn't have touched the oil paint. I know I wasn't supposed to. Please understand that my transgression was not an attempt at defiance or destruction. I never wanted to harm the painting, but at thirteen years old,...

by Seth Cipriano

Last week I pissed off my girlfriend and went to look for a yellow dog because I had nothing better to do. At least I didn't plan to go looking for the dog, but it was better than punching...

by Delia Goglas

There's always a man. Always this man or a guy. He's always there somehow, waiting, willing to help you along it seems. I noticed after some time living in New York, almost two years, that I don't really have...

by Jessica Wider

Frances stood in her cramped and cluttered studio apartment looking through her sizeable wardrobe, which spilled out of the closet and onto the chair, couch and floor. She inspected each piece of clothing, first with her eyes, and then, if...

by Mark Mirsky

Last summer, one of the staunchest admirers of Fiction, Dorothea Straus, passed away. Several years before that, sensing how fragile she was in the wake of her distinguished husband, the publisher Roger Straus's death, I went out to their historic...

by Mark Mirsky

I hope in the future to write a number of pages about my friendship with Max Frisch and his wife Marianne (the latter remains the European Editor of Fiction). In previous issues of Fiction during the 1980's (Volumes 7.3, 8.1...

by Silvina Ocampo

Fiction 6.2 (1980) HER NAME WAS Coral Fernández; she always wore her hair over her left ear, leaving the right one uncovered. She was so pretty that at first I thought she was foolish. We met at a country luncheon...

by Patricia Schultheis

Fiction 54 (2008) WE CLEANED FOR our mothers. Off boats and kerchiefed, they stood at conveyor belts, boxing brassieres or culling cartridges, their hands growing cramped, their ankles swollen, until, shift over, they scarcely could climb onto buses and ride...

by Fiction

Dear Friends of Fiction, As many of you have noticed, we have moved to a new numbering system for our print issue. While we understand and regret the confusion this has caused, please be certain that we did not take...

by Mark Mirsky

Second fifteen titles from the Editor's list: Babel, Isaac - Collected Short Stories Bachman, Ingeborg - The Thirtieth Year Baldwin, James - Go Tell It On the Mountain Barth, John - End of the Road Barth, John- Lost in the...

by Julio Cortázar

Fiction 20.1 (2006) The plan becomes concrete IN THE AUTUMN of 1978, the basic idea of the expedition had been established, with the following rules of the game: 1. Complete the journey from Paris to Marseilles without once leaving the...

by Mark Mirsky

The first 15 titles from Editor Mark Jay Mirsky's Reading List: Aciman, Andre - Out of Egypt (Riverhead Books) Astrov, Margot - The Winged Serpent (American. Indian Prose and Poetry) Achebe, Chinua - No Longer at Ease Achebe, Chinua -...

by Max Frisch

This will be tiring for you, I know, and sometimes perhaps a little funny, because of my English pronunciation. So we can recuperate now and then, I will use quite a lot of quotes and the quotes you will hear...

by Mark Mirsky

In a complex (though damning) review of Peter Handke's "Crossing the Sierra Los Gredos," in the August 19, 2007 issue of the New York Times Sunday Book Review, one line caught my eye, and raised a vigorous "No, unfair!" The...

Cover, Fiction 1.1

Collage by Donald Barthelme.This volume, available by special order, contains further graphic work by Barthelme.

by Mark Mirsky

by Veronica Gorodetskaya

by G.D. Peters

by Mark Mirsky

by Raymond Strom

by Karen Baddeley

by Engels Vargas

by Mara Grayson

by Seth Cipriano

by Delia Goglas

by Jessica Wider

by Mark Mirsky

by Mark Mirsky

by Silvina Ocampo

by Patricia Schultheis

by Fiction

by Mark Mirsky

by Julio Cortázar

by Mark Mirsky

by Max Frisch

by Mark Mirsky

Collage by Donald Barthelme.

This volume, available by special order, contains further graphic work by Barthelme.