In 1979, a young American graduate decided to reinvent an old Cambridge University student magazine called The Granta (founded in 1889) which had introduced, among others, A A Milne (the writer of Winnie-the-Pooh) to the world, and who edited the magazine for a year.
Bill Buford and his friend Peter De Bolla called it simply Granta and welcomed new writing of all kinds – reportage, fiction, memoir, biography, photography, and, rarely, poetry. Not surprisingly, Granta‘s 100th issue has a bit of all this – but though there are four fantastic “new voices”, it’s the prominent authors, including Booker winners like Ian McEwan, who disappoint.
But first, a brief relook at the magazine, which gave us “new writing” of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Paul Theroux, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Kazuo Ishiguro to name just a handful.
In Granta 1, the two editors wrote that the magazine would be “devoted to the idea of the dialogue in prose about prose,” but thankfully, it’s been more of new prose, less of dialogue about the writing. Thus, Granta 3 (March 1980) carried extracts from the yet unpublished Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. Buford dedicated a whole issue to travel writing (Granta 10: one of the most popular, now in its fifth reprint) which included pieces by James Fenton, Jonathan Raban, Bruce Chatwin, Saul Bellow, Jan Morris among others. Granta 26 was dedicated to Chatwin’s memory and included four of his unpublished pieces. Through the years, there have been “theme-based” issues, like Mothers (Granta 88), Music (Granta 76); issues dedicated to cities and countries (India: the golden jubilee! – Granta 57; London: the lives of the city – Granta 65; Russia: the wild east – Granta 64; France: the outsider – Granta 59); and best of lists (Best of Young British Novelists – Granta 7, 43, 81). In March 2002, Granta reacted to 9/11 by commissioning 24 essays by writers around the world to write “What We Think of America”.
Unfortunately, the excitement is missing from Granta 100, guest edited by William Boyd. True, there’s a lovely poem by Harold Pinter, a beautiful piece by Nicholas Shakespeare (The White Hole of Bombay), delightful in-flight entertainment by Helen Simpson, wonderful new writing by Lucy Eyre and Tash Aw, the Serampur musings by Granta‘s just retired editor Ian Jack. But there’s little freshness in the writing of the stalwarts, Ian McEwan’s false libretto, Martin Amis’ post 9/11 angst and even Salman Rushdie on Heraclitus and more.
There’s another gimmick – a writer asks and answers a Question for Myself – this edition could have done without. Some of the answers are amazingly flippant. Consider this: Zadie Smith asks herself: “Zadie, what do all three of your books have in common?” Answer: “Well, at the end of all of them they celebrate ambivalence.” Hope Granta 101 is more adventurous.