''Transatlantic Review'' was a literary journal founded in 1959 by Joseph F. McCrindle, who remained its editor until he closed the magazine in 1977. Published quarterly, at first in Rome and then in London and New York, TR was known for its eclectic mix of short stories and poetry—by both young, previously unpublished writers and prominent authors such as Samuel Beckett,

Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her ...

Grace Paley Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist. Paley wrote three critically acclaimed collections of short stories, which were compiled in the Pulitzer Prize and Nat ...

and John Updike—as well as drawings, essays, and interviews with writers and theater and film directors.

History

Reviving the title of the short-lived but influential ''

Transatlantic Review Transatlantic, Trans-Atlantic or TransAtlantic may refer to: Film * Transatlantic Pictures, a film production company from 1948 to 1950 * Transatlantic Enterprises, an American production company in the late 1970s * ''Transatlantic'' (1931 film ...

'' founded by Ford Madox Ford in 1924, McCrindle originally conceived of TR as a way to publish short stories that he had not been able to place as a literary agent. He was inspired in part by the semiannual journal ''

Botteghe Oscure ''Botteghe Oscure'' was a literary journal that was published and edited in Rome by Marguerite Caetani (Princess di Bassiano) from 1948 to 1960. History and profile ''Botteghe Oscure'' was established in 1948. The magazine was named after via d ...

'', which was based in Rome and published by

Marguerite Caetani Marguerite Gilbert Caetani, Princess of Bassiano, Duchess of Sermoneta (''née'' Chapin; 24 June 1880 – 17 December 1963), was an American-born publisher, journalist, art collector, and patron of the arts. She married an Italian aristocrat and b ...

Eugene Walter Eugene Ferdinand Walter, Jr. (November 30, 1921 – March 29, 1998) was an American screenwriter, poet, short-story author, actor, puppeteer, gourmet chef, cryptographer, translator, editor, costume designer and well-known raconteur. During his y ...

provided a connection between the two; after helping launch '' The Paris Review'', he edited Caetani's magazine and then became an associate editor of ''Transatlantic Review,'' remaining on its masthead from the third issue until the last. George Garrett was one of a group of initially credited editors, including William Goldman, and by issue 3 became the poetry editor, continuing alongside

B. S. Johnson Bryan Stanley William Johnson (5 February 1933 – 13 November 1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet and literary critic. He also produced television programmes and made films. Early life Johnson was born into a working-class family, ...

up until issue 39. Another significant contributing editor was the playwright, poet and actor Heathcote Williams.

was eventually the sole poetry editor and assembled the feature "New Transatlantic Poetry". He also proposed the annual Erotica competition, which was open to fiction, poetry and illustration. Prize-winners included

Paul Ableman Paul Victor Ableman (13 June 1927 – 25 October 2006) was an English playwright and novelist. He was the writer of much erotic fiction and novelisations, and a freelance writer who turned his hand to non-fiction. Life and career Ableman was born ...

Diana Athill Diana Athill (21 December 1917 – 23 January 2019) was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company Andre Deutsch Ltd. Early life ...

Gavin Ewart Gavin Buchanan Ewart FRSL (4 February 1916 – 23 October 1995) was a British poet who contributed to Geoffrey Grigson's ''New Verse'' at the age of seventeen. Life Ewart was born in London and educated at Wellington College, before entering ...

Giles Gordon Giles Alexander Esmé Gordon (23 May 1940 – 14 November 2003) was a Scottish literary agent and writer, based for most of his career in London. Early life and education The son of Esmé Gordon (1910–1993), an architect and Honorary Secre ...

D. M. Thomas Donald Michael Thomas (born 27 January 1935), is a British poet, translator, novelist, editor, biographer and playwright. His work has been translated into 30 languages. Working primarily as a poet throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Thomas's 1981 ...

Jerry Stahl Jerry Stahl (born September 28, 1953) is an American novelist and screenwriter. His works include the 1995 memoir of addiction ''Permanent Midnight''. A 1998 film adaptation followed with Ben Stiller in the lead role. Stahl has worked extensivel ...

, Jay Jeff Jones, Trevor Hoyle, Patrick Hughes and Steve Barthelme. Issue 52 (Autumn 1975), featured ''An Anthology of New American Poetry'', compiled by Gerard Malanga. It included work by

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generat ...

Louis Zukofsky Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...

George Oppen George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions o ...

, Jonathan Williams, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Harold Norse and Lou Reed. After a decade, McCrindle selected the magazine's best for his ''Stories from the Transatlantic Review'' (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970; Penguin, 1974), an anthology that included Paul Bowles,

Jerome Charyn Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an American writer. With nearly 50 published works over a 50-year span, Charyn has a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life, writing in multiple ge ...

Bruce Jay Friedman The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been ...

, Penelope Gilliatt, William Goldman and

Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Bla ...

. McCrindle collected the interviews in ''Behind the Scenes: Theater and Film Interviews from the Transatlantic Review'' (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971). The final issue was published June 1977. An announcement appeared in the penultimate issue of the magazine saying that the title would continue as an annual review but this idea was not pursued. After he folded the magazine, McCrindle continued to support new writing talent through the Henfield Foundation (later renamed the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation), awarding annual Henfield Prizes for the best short stories from writing programs throughout the United States. He died July 11, 2008, at his home in New York City.

Writers

Other well-known writers whose work appeared in Transatlantic Review include J. G. Ballard,

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry J ...

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire '' A Clockwork ...

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...

, William Faulkner, Robert Grossbach, Alan Lelchuk, Alan Sillitoe, Richard Yates, Harold Pinter and

William Trevor William Trevor Cox (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016), known by his pen name William Trevor, was an Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he is widely regarded as one of th ...

. Also notable are

's 1960 interview with

Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and es ...

and Giles Gordon's 1964 interview with

Joe Orton John Kingsley Orton (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967), known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his death in 1967, was short but highly influential. During this brie ...

, which appeared shortly before Orton was murdered. Over the years, the magazine published interviews with Edward Albee, Burgess (twice),

James T. Farrell James Thomas Farrell (February 27, 1904 – August 22, 1979) was an American novelist, short-story writer and poet. He is most remembered for the '' Studs Lonigan'' trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and a television series in 1979. ...

Federico Fellini Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most i ...

William Gaskill William "Bill" Gaskill (24 June 1930 – 4 February 2016) was a British theatre director who was "instrumental in creating a new sense of realism in the theatre". Described as "a champion of new writing", he was also noted for his productions of B ...

William Inge William Motter Inge (; May 3, 1913 – June 10, 1973) was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s he had a string of memorable Broad ...

and

Christopher Isherwood Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...

, Pinter and

Peter Yates Peter James Yates (24 July 1929 – 9 January 2011) was an English film director and producer. Biography Early life Yates was born in Aldershot, Hampshire. The son of an army officer, he attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from ...

. After TR was shut down in 1977, annual fiction prizes were given by the Henfield Foundation, later renamed the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation. In 2011, the McCrindle Foundation set up endowments to support fiction prizes at five graduate writing programs: Columbia University, University of Virginia, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, and University of California at Irvine.

Illustrators

The only issue of ''Transatlantic Review'' that did not contain an illustration was the debut issue. The second issue had only one, by Jean Cocteau, but illustration soon became a staple item, usually unrelated to the text but in some cases complementing short stories or articles. Contributors of illustration included

Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Unde ...

, Peter Farmer, Elaine de Kooning, Daniel Mroz,

Mervyn Peake Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the '' Gormenghast'' books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived ...

, Patrick Procktor,

Kaffe Fassett Frank Havrah "Kaffe" Fassett, MBE (born December 7, 1937) is an American-born, British-based artist who is best known for his colourful designs in the decorative arts—needlepoint, patchwork, knitting, painting and ceramics. While still a child ...

, Mike McGear, Heathcote Williams, John(H) Howard, Larry Rivers, Mabel Pakenham-Walsh and

Colin Spencer Colin Spencer (born 1933) is an English writer and artist who has produced a prolific body of work in a wide variety of media since his first published short stories and drawings appeared in ''The London Magazine'' and '' Encounter'' when he wa ...

Contents of ''Stories from the Transatlantic Review''

*"Introduction" • Joseph F. McCrindle *"Music to Lay Eggs By" • Thomas Bridges • 1968 *"Home Is" • Morris Lurie • 1968 *"The Road" • Alan Sillitoe • 1968 *"Summer Voices" • John Banville • 1968 *"Making Changes" • Leonard Michaels • 1969 *"My Sister and Me" • Asa Baber, Jr. • 1967 *"Before the Operation" • Paul Breslow • 1967 *"The Collector" • Austin C. Clarke • 1967 *"Sing, Shaindele, Sing" • Jerome Charyn • 1966 *"Black Barbecue" • Daniel Spicehandler • 1966 *"The Adult Education Class" rom ''Eating People Is Wrong''• Malcolm Bradbury • 1959 *"During the Jurassic" • John Updike • 1966 *"Acme Rooms and Sweet Marjorie Russell" • Hugh Allyn Hunt • 1966 *"The Zodiacs" • Jay Neugeboren • 1969 *"Dying" • Joyce Carol Oates • 1966 *"The Redhead" • Penelope Gilliatt • 1965 *"Girl in a White Dress" • Edward Franklin • 1964 *"Changed" • Norma Meacock • 1964 *"A Meeting in Middle Age" • William Trevor • 1964 *"The World’s Fastest Human" • Irvin Faust • 1964 *"The Siege" • Sol Yurick • 1963 *"The Enemy" • Bruce Jay Friedman • 1963 *"Simple Arithmetic" • Virginia Moriconi • 1963 *" The Hyena" • Paul Bowles • 1962 *"The Fair of San Gennaro" • John McPhee • 1961 *"Ismael" • Alfred Chester • 1961 *"Francois Yattend" • Jean-Claude Van Itallie • 1961 *"The Star Blanket" • Shirley Schoonover • 1961 *"A Game of Catch" • George Garrett • 1960 *"The Educated Girl" • V. S. Pritchett • 1960 *"Johnny Dio and the Sugar Plum Burglars" • Harry D. Miller • 1960 *"At Home with the Colonel" • Frank Tuohy • 1962 *"A Different Thing" • Walter Clemons • 1959 *"The Ice Cream Eat" • William Goldman • 1959 *"Biographical Notes"

References

External links