Congrats to the Times magazine on the all-fiction Covid19 issue

Haven’t quite finished reading last week’s NYTimes Mag devoted to fiction about the Covid19 lock-down; the editors solicited short stories composed in the mode of Boccaccio’s Decameron, that is, to form a collection of stories that entertain and distract us during our enforced isolation. Usually, these ideas don’t come off so well in that most writers of literary fiction don’t take on-demand assignments; but this collection is better than I’d expected, in part because the editors did a great job in getting a diverse line-up of contributors, with particular attention to international literature – a great idea, in that this virus, as many have noted, knows no national boundaries. Sure, some of the stories rely too heavily on a tricky ending and some have no ending at all. But a few of them work well. The best I’ve read so far is Charles Yu’s Systems, a story or essay or poem perhaps that is made up entirely (or nearly so) or Internet search terms (e.g., Harry and meghan). Rachel Kushner’s The Girl with the Big Red Suitcase is fine as well, and much more traditional – in fact, of all these stories it hews closest to the “storytelling” frame of Boccaccio; it reads a little like a Conrad or James story, in which the narrator and the audience are established as part of the work – a fine piece, even if you may be able to see the ending before you get there. Margaret Atwood’s Impatient Griselda – in which the narrator/storyteller is a creature from another galaxy; sounds kind of trite, but Atwood does a great job creating a narrator who speaks English as if through a Google Translator app – very funny. I also liked Leila Slimani’s story, The Rock (translated from the French), a short and enigmatic piece about an author who gains some prominence when attacked for no apparent reason while delivering a speech. There’s one thing I didn’t like at all, however, and that’s the horrendous typeface that the Times used to give author’s name and title on each piece (as well as in the ToC and on the cover. Get this: The first rule of type design is, or should be, be legible.