Story Sale

Until Adolf Hitler took it away from its owners last year because they were Jews, the Simon family's Frankfurter Zeitung was generally rated among the four or five greatest newspapers in the world. Fortnight later Kurt Max Oswald Simon, 52, an able publisher without a country or a publication, arrived in Mamaroneck, N. Y. to marry Mrs. Therese Heilner Prince, a well-to-do U. S. widow of 66. Last week, having thoroughly prospected the odd and unfamiliar U. S. publishing scene, dapper, chunky little Dr. Simon picked a magazine to publish. His choice was the literate, unprofitable monthly Story, which in four years has attained the reputation of being 'the most distinguished short story magazine in the world."

Story started as the private venture of two U. S. writers who were offended by the fact that no solvent publisher ran a magazine exclusively for "the best short stories." Bearded Whit Burnett and his pleasant, bespectacled wife, Martha Foley, were correspondents for the New York Sun in Vienna when they ran off 75 copies of Story's first issue on a rented mimeograph machine. The contents were by themselves and friends, including Kay Boyle and Oliver Gossman. This smudged, amateur attempt set off a literary explosion, is now worth $500 per copy as a curiosity. When they lost their jobs in Vienna, the Burnetts took their magazine to the Mediterranean island of Majorca. By 1933 Story had acquired such a patina of prestige that it attracted the attention of three smart literary middlemen of Manhattan, Publishers Bennett ("Beans") Cerf and Donald Klopfer of the Modern Library and Random House and Harry Scherman of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Transferred to the U. S., Story became their legal property, the Burnetts staying on as editors, working alternate weeks as usual. Under the Cerf management. Story grew to some 30,000 circulation but it got few advertisements, showed no profit. It attracted the manuscripts of many an ambitious U. S. writer, "discovered" William Saroyan, Tess Slesinger, Peter Neagoe, Dorothy McCleary. Surprising was the fact that the stories in Story were not better than they were. To describe them critics invented the phrase, "The Over-the-Edge-of-the-Table School," meaning that Story stones generally had the point of view of children peering up at an adult world with hurt. round eyes.

Middlemen Cerf, Klopfer and Scherman frequently profess their love of literature but they are no fools. They saw that Story was getting no nearer to standing on its own financial bottom. Last week, in announcing its sale to Dr. Simon, they declared: "Story has grown out of the class where it can any longer be treated as a part-time interest." Mildly Editor Whit Burnett mentioned that the old owners had not given him enough money to expand the way he wanted to.

Liberal, cultivated Dr. Simon last week promised Mr. Burnett better things: simultaneous publication of Story in the U. S., Canada and Great Britain, "expansion," an able young circulation manager.

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