VENICE OR LAS VEGAS

A welcome online fiction showcase has been launched by Harper Perennial, as reported by 3:AM. Curated by Cal Morgan, Fifty-Two Stories will publish new work every week this year by both established and emerging writers of the form.

The series got off to an auspicious start with its first offering. Simon Van Booy's 'The Missing Statues' has a classic storytelling set-up: two strangers meet and fall into conversation about events from another time and place that are somehow connected to the here and now. One of them tries to comfort the other, saying: “I simply want to know why a missing statue has reduced a young American businessman to tears.”

Like the statues of the title, everything in the story is at one remove from reality: the narrator speaks of Venice, but only as it is reimagined in Las Vegas. His tale involves a man who pretends to be an Italian gondolier, mimes the voice of Enrico Caruso and recognises his own daughter in a woman whose small child he befriends.

British-born Van Booy's writing is highly coloured and romantic, but manages to skirt sentimentality. There is real feeling behind these facades, these masks and wishful imaginings.

The story is taken from a forthcoming collection called Love Begins in Winter, which is published in the US in May, and in the UK in November. It should be worth investigating, as should the rest of Cal Morgan's choices for Fifty-Two Stories this year.

F SCOTT HOT IN HOLLYWOOD

The Roving Editor started life blogging about the links between literature and movies under the title The Word on Film. It seems appropriate to return to this relatively unexplored zone via Zoetrope All-Story, the literary magazine published by Francis Ford Coppola.

This time last year we knew of two forthcoming films based on F Scott Fitzgerald stories, The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttton and Pat Hobby. Here is screenwriter Eric Roth in the current issue of Zoetrope on adapting Benjamin Button. The magazine also carries the story itself, though it's not available to read online. It was originally published in the collection Tales of the Jazz Age.

Meanwhile the only update on Pat Hobby is that it is being lined up for production this year; the film company's synopsis reads: 'Fitzgerald’s beloved hack fights for a writer’s buck in the Hollywood studio system.'

The author himself was no stranger to penury, of course, but these days he'd have found it a lot less difficult to make a beautiful dollar in Tinseltown: as well as the aforementioned adaptations, there is also news of yet another remake of The Great Gatsby, this time by Baz Luhrmann. However Variety has this cautionary tale of the mixed artistic and box-office fortunes of F Scott on screen.

Francis Coppola should be watching all of this with especial interest: he wrote the screenplay for the faithful but unloved 1974 adaptation of Gatsby.

ONE TO WATCH IN 2009

Among a handful of literary names on the Observer's 'hotlist' for 2009 is the young New Zealander Eleanor Catton. From what I have seen of her work, the interest is entirely justified. 'The Outing' has the mingled humour and menace of a Hitchcock movie in miniature, while 'Necropolis' is a beautifully observed depiction of a dead-end job. It's no surprise to see that the author is a fan of Muriel Spark.

'The Outing' has apparently been reworked as a scene in Catton's debut novel The Rehearsal. According to the Observer this is due to be published by Granta in the UK in July, though this edition is not currently listed on Amazon, and the publisher does not appear to have a website at present. More details when we have them.

THE BEST STORY OF THE YEAR?

BookFox's choices for best short story collections of 2008 include a number of books that were featured on The Roving Editor. It is especially gratifying to see Glen Pourciau's Invite on the list, as this a strong debut from one of the most interesting new writers to emerge this year.

Donald Ray Pollock has attracted more coverage than Glen, but he deserves all the praise he has received. The challenge for him now will be to produce a worthy follow-up to Knockemstiff. Nam Le's debut collection, The Boat, and Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth are also excellent choices.

One story I managed to overlook on its appearance in the New Yorker in September was 'The Noble Truths of Suffering' by Aleksandar Hemon. Set in Sarajevo, this is a darkly funny exploration of the writing life which shows how creativity can find inspiration in the midst of death, destruction and domesticity. I am grateful to another of our featured authors, Joshua Ferris, who has named it as 'the best story of the year' in Granta's year-end round-up.

I would welcome nominations from readers of their favourite writers of short fiction in 2008, or for names we should be looking out for in 2009. Judging by the interest I have had in my post on Wells Tower, I fully expect him to feature prominently in next year's literary lists.

'DON'T WORRY ABOUT ME'

Amos Oz is an another of those eminent living writers whose work I have only just sampled for the first time.

'Waiting', in this week's New Yorker, is a profound and powerfully atmospheric tale. Set in an almost deserted Israeli village on a sleepy Friday afternoon, it reads like an existential ghost story. The ghost in question is Benny's Avni's wife Nava, who has disappeared leaving only a note that says, 'Don't worry about me.' (That's a hell of a note to leave. If Raymond Carver had written the story, that's probably what it would have been called.)

Benny, head of the District Council and pillar of the community, doesn't so much wait for Nava as embark on a journey in search of a woman he has never really known. All the while he is shadowed by a stray dog, which appears to be showing him the way:

'He asked himself, Would it not be better to go straight home? After all, she might have returned and was perhaps resting, puzzled by his absence, maybe even worried about him. But the thought of the empty house terrified him, and he went on, limping, following the dog, who never looked back, his muzzle lowered as if sniffing the way.'

I was reminded of the mundane, yet menacing terrain of John Cheever's 'The Swimmer'. In Oz's story, Benny's wanderings take him to a bomb shelter and the school where his wife teaches: 'The school’s metal gates were already locked for the Sabbath. Both the building and the playground were surrounded by an iron fence topped with barbed wire.'

I don't know if 'Waiting' is from a forthcoming collection, but there is at least one volume of Amos Oz's stories in print, which I look forward to investigating further.

LONDON CALLING

I've recently come across two excellent magazines offering online literary content. The Drawbridge has published work by the likes of Tobias Wolff, Siri Hustvedt, Irvine Welsh and DBC Pierre. The current issue features an excerpt from José Saramago's new novel, though, as with most of the articles, you'll have to purchase the print edition to read the full text.

I first came across Salena Godden's name in a mailing from Litro magazine. Her writing has also appeared in The Drawbridge, and you can read her entertaining story, 'The Walrus and the Diamond Ring' here. Like The Drawbridge, Litro is a London-based publication. It was 'founded in 2005 by Mike Fell to provide commuters and office workers with a short story every week. Mike came up with the idea of Litro after finishing Dubliners by James Joyce somewhere near Mornington Crescent.' An admirable enterprise. I was glad to discover interesting work by two new names, Carol Farrelly and Deborah Nash.

THE READING WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

The Roving Editor spends rather less time in New York than in North Yorkshire, so unfortunately I missed Deb Olin Unferth's event at the MercBar this week. If her readings are as entertaining as this YouTube clip suggests, it would have been well worth going along. Her phrasing and delivery of a story entitled 'Deb Olin Unferth' reminded me, weirdly, of Gil Scott Heron, though the content is uniquely (and literally) her own.

I heard of Deb Olin Unferth through Ron Hogan's always diverting blog, Beatrice, and discovered a few short pieces by her here, and here. The themes of theft and tourism seem to loom large in her work, and the sense of humour is bone-dry. I look forward to her debut novel, Vacation, though this doesn't appear to have been picked up by a UK publisher as yet.