The New Yorker Moves Toward More Fiction

In a move that heralds a heightened interest in storytelling at the New Yorker, Bill Buford will join the weekly magazine as fiction and literary editor. Buford has championed new fiction and what he calls “literary journalism” as editor of Granta, the London-based quarterly.

Buford’s appointment, effective April 1, was announced Tuesday by New Yorker Editor Tina Brown.

It follows recent word that deputy editor Charles (Chip) McGrath will leave the magazine to become editor of the New York Times Book Review.

McGrath has edited fiction since fiction editor (and baseball bard) Roger Angell, 74, cut back to do more writing. The former senior literary editor, Daniel Menaker, recently left the magazine to edit books at Random House.

The Louisiana-born Buford, 40, has expanded Granta to a circulation of 100,000 and made the quarterly one of the more influential showcases for good writing during his 15 years as editor. Bylines have included Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera and Mikal Gilmore, brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore, whose striking proposal for “Shot in the Heart” was printed by Granta two years before the book reached stores.

As publisher of Granta Books, Buford also has brought out titles by such literary lights as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He is the author of “Among the Thugs,” a gripping account of his experiences among Britain’s violent soccer fans that was reissued by Vintage Books last year.

The New Yorker has run fewer fiction pieces in many issues since Brown became editor two years ago. In a prepared statement, she praised Buford’s “energy and taste” and said they were what the magazine needs as it continues to discover and develop writers of fiction.

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Cult Magazines: At the peak of popularity in the mid-1950s, Confidential was a colossal hit on newsstands, selling about 4 million copies a month by offering pieces such as “My Night With Elvis Presley” and “This Ordinary Joe Sure Made Time on That Couch With Marilyn Monroe.”

But judging from the evidence displayed in “The Illustrated Price Guide to Cult Magazines,” Confidential was only one of myriad scandal and exploitation mags that came and went during the postwar period.

Detective mags were big (True Detective, Daring Detective and Detective Cases). So were a surprising number of periodicals aimed at black readers, such as Hep, Sepia and Our Grapevine (“What Really Killed ‘Yardbird’ Charlie Parker?”).

“Copies of these magazines are now very hard to find, but I thought it was a good time to show how many there were during the years we associate with a kind of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ innocence,” said Alan Betrock, who assembled the 450 covers that make up this one-of-a-kind guide, published by his Shake Books in Brooklyn.

The guide indicates it’s a sleepy market for these collectibles--an attic full of cult mags probably would be worth far less than a collection of rare stamps or old comic books.

The Marilyn Monroe Story, a one-shot mini-mag that sold for 25 cents in 1955, is now worth up to $175--and that’s a fortune, seeing that few of these issues would command more than $50.

“The Illustrated Price Guide to Cult Magazines” is available in selected stores or by sending $16.95 to Shake Books, 449 12th St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215.