Tugging the review copy of Granta 100 out of its jiffy bag, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I would write down the names of the writers whom I expected to find in it and award myself marks out of ten. Two minutes’ thought produced the following: Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Alan Hollinghurst, Hanif Kureishi, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jay McInerney, Jonathan Safran Foer and Zadie Smith. Two more minutes with the contents table, scrupulously ignoring Zadie Smith who doesn’t contribute a piece but takes part in one of the features, produced a score of six.
Successful literary magazines play to their strengths, of course: anyone who compiled an anthology of Cyril Connolly’s Horizon and left out Connolly, Waugh, Orwell and Angus Wilson would not be doing their job. On the other hand, there is a fine line between playing to your strengths and cliqueishness.
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