July 12, 2006
Toronto Life Axes Fiction Issue
We learnt from DB Scott's Canadian Magazines blog that after 10 years Toronto Life is pulling the plug on its Summer Fiction Issue. Scott, who gets his copy of Toronto Life even earlier than Torontoist does, quotes from TL editor John Macfarlane's editors column:
"I wish I could say that in publishing such stories we were creating an appetite for fiction. But, while I’m certain they found an appreciative audience, there’s no evidence it was growing. So with regret—it’s been a labour of love—we’ve decided to make this, the 10th summer fiction issue, our last."
This leaves very, very few mainstream magazines in Canada still publishing and paying well for fiction. We could lament the decline of fiction reading in contemporary society, or wax about the glory days when every magazine published and paid for short fiction but we won't.
Something else has us concerned. Over the years TO Life's Fiction Issue has published dozens of writers, not all of whom have been from Toronto, and many stories set outside of the city. Macfarlane feels this is one criticism of the issue, we actually feel that this is one of its strengths. It is pretty hard to defend the publication of a writer with no connection to Toronto in a magazine that calls itself Toronto Life but Toronto writers who decide to write about other parts of the world should be encouraged and many of our best writers actually do this. The cancellation of this issue will make it harder for these stories to gain an appreciative audience.
It also makes us look a little provincial. Torontonians aren't just from elsewhere, they also live, work and travel all over the world. We thought that Torontonians, or at least Toronto Life readers would be cosmopolitan enough to appreciate this fact.
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No, they did the right thing. Its a magazine about Toronto, not Mumbai or London or Paris. I can read about that stuff if I choose, but why waste pages about other cities when it could be abot us?
Maybe Toronto Life is taking a lesson from Spacing...
Do you really think a "fiction issue" in the middle of summer helps sell advertising?
Kind of stupid to pretend it's about anything more than that.
Spacing does have articles about other cities in it though. We have a whole section called "outer space" -- everything outside of Toronto. It's true though, most of the important and interesting things happen here.
Sure it's about advertising and it almost always comes down to that. But there's something to be said for having a larger editorial vision that includes great Canadian (or Toronto) fiction. The hard thing for Macfarlane and Co. to do would be to keep the fiction issue going and I'll give them kudos for holding out for this long.
As for reading about Paris, London or Mumbai.... if they're great stories by Torontonians about these places I'll read it. If it gives me an insight about how other Torontonians see these places that's valuable.
Frankly, I think the issue with Toronto life should be everything else about the magazine. Fiction is nice, but, yeah... doesn't exactly fit a mandate of "life in Toronto" (and The Walrus does a much better job anyways - and is likewise Torontonian).
I mean, have you read the thing lately? What was once a magazine about a vibrant, feisty city is now a magazine about a few select people who live in King West/Forest Hill and drive their SUV's cautiously around town from the Drake when they feel like slumming to Rain most other nights and send their kids to UCC and Havergal.
For a magazine called "Toronto Life" there's very, very, very little that's representative of my life, or that of anyone I know who lives in the city.
The little booklets they send out that list "the best... (whatever)" are all I bother reading anymore.
And don't get me started on "Fashion" magazine.
I mean, a shopping guide to Toronto I could use, but a lame. lame, lame pan-Canadian rip off of American Vogue - that I can't.
They pretty much both need to overthrow their editors.
That teen version of "Fashion" isn't so bad though.
I subscribed to Toronto Life for approximately ONE year when I was young and naive and thought it had something to offer me about the city that I was enjoying living in. I have to agree with the previous poster that Toronto Life is an elitist mag and perhaps its narrow audience limits the advertising revenue and readership for fiction.
wow... how unsurprising that lefty hipsters don't understand and hate something different from themselves. The basic economics of a city magazine being what they are, TL is what it is (and is way too lefty and hipsterish, thanks to the people that write for it, rather than those who read it). TOL and TONY are apparently what you want, cept that they don't have much magazine to them, nor do NOW or EYE (which are purely wrappers for concert ads and prostitution rings).
TL is great, and the fiction issue was by far the weakest element. If Toronto was producing something interesting in terms of culture, well we'll get hit over the head with it thanks to the media and the government promoting "Canadian" culture. The last thing anyone needs is another outlet for the pathetic scribblings of our wastrel "creative" types. The Walrus is bad enough.
I agree that Toronto Life offers very little for the average Torontonian. The elitist attitude has certainly turned me off over the years. BUT I loved
and always looked forward to the fiction issue. It is tough enough for our talented Canadian writers to find a place to express themselves, and now without the fiction issue, it will be that much more tougher. What does it matter if all the stories don't take place in Toronto? It would be a tad dull and repetitive if that were the case. Not to mention very limiting, creatively. Does the New Yorker insist only on writers writing about New York in their fiction issue? Of course not. Toronto writers are sophisticated and global in their approach to their ideas and writing, and that is one of the many reasons why I enjoyed that issue, and only that issue. There are those of us who appreciate new, exciting writing talent, and who want to be challenged intellectually, and don't consider these writers to be "wastrel creative types". I suppose I can look forward in the future to more covers with Ben Mulroney's smug pasty mug on the cover. Oh joy.;
How could you deride the Walrus and applaud Toronto Life in the same breath?
They're basically the same demographic.
And for the record, I think both magazines are unnecessarily elitist and liberal - and should broaden their scopes creatively as well as socially (!!!).
I mean, they're going to have to if they want to survive.
Print is not exactly a flourishing medium these days.
My point was that the Walrus' (literature and politics) mandate actually allows for fiction, where as Toronto Life's (life in Toronto) does not.
And the New Yorker is called the New Yorker, but is not actually about New York. It's closer in philosophy to Harpers or The Walrus.
Toronto Life more closely resembles New York Magazine (It's confusing, I know) which does not usually include much fiction at all.
And I'm not going to even go close to the issue of whether or not Toronto has been producing anything of creative worth recently, because if you think it hasn't you obviously are completely oblivious to the modern world around you.
BSS anyone?
I don't even like them and I know of their significance to the world music scene.
And the New York Times agrees with me.
So there.
(Sidenote: I've just started reading the Walrus and it's consistently awesome, hardly "pathetic scribblings of our wastrel "creative" types." It's my new favourite magazine. Why anyone would prefer Toronto Life to the Walrus is completely beyond me.)