Customer Reviews

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007

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I've really enjoyed Best American Non-Required in the past and looked forward to this year's edition. The last few years the series has contained some of the best reading I've come across. But this year's edition is off. While the stories and articles in these books have always been chosen by high school students in Dave Egger's writing programme, the content has always been relevant for a general audience and chosen from a broad range of journals. But the 2007 edition is plainly something that would only appeal to high school students. It's full of banal lists, graphic comics, stories with lines like "The car gleamed throughout the day and into the night as we drank beer purchased from stores that let teenage drivers of gleaming cars buy beer. We drank more beer at each stop, in each new neighborhood:..." This isn't good writing. There are a few good stories in here, but even the stories I liked contained elements which clearly appeal to high school students. "How To Tell Stories to Children" is good, but its central character is coming of age and therefore relateable to the committe that chose it. It's a great story made less appealing by the stories it was collected with.

"What Is Your Dangerous Idea" was a great book, full of bite-sized, provocative essays. Unfortunately Best American Non-Required 2007 copied a dozen or more of these essays for it's pages, filling up about a fifth of the book. I'd like to make some comments about kids in high school padding assignments, but that seems mean. My point is, why buy a book full of another book? If "What is Your Dangerous Idea" was good enough to fill up a sizeable portion of Best American, why not just buy "What is Your Dangerous Idea"? The whole point of being an editor is that you choose the best. One essay from Dangerous would have been appropriate. Dave Eggers and his students need to realise their job is to edit, cull, cut down and give us the cream.

I don't know what happened this year but I am very disappointed. I read the biographies of the students chosen to pick stories this year and they all seem like the kind of kids trying to pad their college applications with lots of superachievements. Maybe these people aren't the best judges of good writing. Maybe too many cooks spoil the pot. Who knows? But whatever the case, Best American Non-Required Reading 2007 is definitely non-required for good reason.

P.S. I liked the introduction by Sufjan Stevens, but the "interview" with Dave Eggers was off-putting. Is anyone else growing tired of his sarcasm? It's so old. New act please.

I love anthologies for a couple of reasons: the stories or articles are easily read in a short sitting and no matter how it was edited I usually find a couple of pieces I like. Today I'm writing about one that sets a whole new standard. The Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2007, edited by Dave Eggers produced not just a couple of passable stories, but an entire volume of the most thought-provoking powerful writing I've ever encountered.

The premise is simple - San Francisco high school students scour through literary magazines, independent publications, and on-line journals for articles, stories, vignettes, and memoirs that they consider the best. They share their findings with each other and with their editor, Dave Eggers, until they've parsed it down to a few pieces to publish in this NonRequired Reading volume.

Who would've thought that high schools students would have the ability to spot stories to move me emotionally. Me, a jaded forty-one year old man who heaps cynicism on top of his morning cereal the way some spoon out blueberries, or sugar. But they did. Story after article after first-hand account all pulled emotions from me and sat stewing in my mind for days afterward. There wasn't a bad one in the bunch.

The first section is assorted lists and memes, which I consider filler. It was fun I suppose, but the heart of the book lies in Section Two.

The best of it all was from my all-time favorite essayist, Scott Carrier. He weaves an account of his time in Burma before the crackdown. When reading it I was struck by the obvious - how could we have been surprised?

After that brilliance the next story that caused me to ponder for days after reading was by Lee Klein. He put our entire society into perspective with the most amazing sports essay I can remember reading since Joyce Carol Oates wrote about Mike Tyson. His All Aboard the Bloated Boat: Arguments in Favor of Barry Bonds is required reading for anyone complaining about unfair competition in sports.

Another favorite was by Stephen Elliott who knows what it's like to be a thirteen year old boy, homeless, sleeping wherever misfortune allows, and by reading Where I Slept, I feel as if I have some understanding as well.

Others that stand out: Joshua Clark brings the reader into New Orleans first hand for the disaster. It's terrifying and mesmerizing simultaneously. James Ames, a reporter from Spin penned a piece about being out of place at GothicFest 2005. In it he comes to an understanding of a new culture and appreciates it for what it is, not for how it's similar to what he knows. Alison Bechdel's graphic comic tragedy is one of the finest pieces of writing I've seen in comic book form. Well-known writer, Jennifer Egan was included with a piece of short fiction, Selling the General, that satirizes our P.R. obsession and makes me want to pick up one of her books. Also, Miranda July weaves a story as well-crafted and surprising as any I've read this year in How to Tell Stories to Children. Finally Conan O'Brien's commencement speech to Stuyvesant High School is the best of its kind I ever heard.

Here is the table of contents from the Book's Second Section.

Jonathan Ames. Middle-American Gothic
Alison Bechdel. A Happy Death
D. Winston Brown. Ghost Children
Scott Carrier. Rock the Junta
Joshua Clark. American
Edge Foundation. What Is Your Dangerous Idea?
Jennifer Egan. Selling the General
Stephen Elliott. Where I Slept
Kevin A. González. Lotería
Miranda July. How to Tell Stories to Children
Matthew Klam. Adina, Astrid, Chipewee, Jasmine
Lee Klein. All Aboard the Bloated Boat: Arguments in Favor of Barry Bonds
Nam Le. Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice
Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain, and Adam Shapiro. Darfur Diaries
David J. Morris. The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground
Conan O'Brien. Stuyvesant High School Commencement Speech
Mattox Roesch. Humpies
Patrick Somerville. So Long, Anyway
Joy Williams. Literature Unnatured

- CV Rick, February 2008

Sufjan Stevens tells amusingly of his Rudolf Steiner childhood in the introduction. By third grade Stevens was attending public school and couldn't read. A teacher explained how we are surrounded by words.

Goth is dying, most bands are industrial, an informant tells Jonathan Ames in his piece entitled 'Middle-American Gothic'. The graphic story by Alison Bechdel concerning a father's intentional or accidental death is engrossing. D. Winston Brown, in 'Ghost Children', opines that time can transform violence.

Burma, the size of Texas, called Myanmar, is a place of absolute government control. Scott Carrier, 'Rock the Junta', claims he lied on his visa application to get into the country. Incipient consumerism, a condition he has encountered in other parts of the world, confronts him as he goes in quest of political truths. Foucault described the effects of surveillance. The Burmese poeple, it is asserted, suffer from surveillance.

In the main, women are empathizers and men are synthesizers, (from 'What is Your Dangerous Idea?'). Query--will human beings understand the universe, ever? Reasonably considered, scientific knowledge may be pursued only for its practical applications. In 1900 most inventions involved physical reality. In 2005 they revolve upon virtual entertainment. Today a technological elite owns the country's intellectual property.

Stephen Elliott, 'Where I Slept', had been a known drug user and eighth grade drinker. At least two characters in this collection wear sleeping masks. In 'How to Tell Stories to Children' two of the characters determine that they have forty minutes before the perishables perish and so they have time for tea.

Lee Klein, in 'All Aboard the Bloated Boat' compares Barry Bonds to Jimi Hendrix. Maybe Bonds in a scapegoat. An NGO, Darfur, a mission to make a record of the evolving crisis reveals that the emptiness of the region is disconcerting. Airplanes are referred to Antonovs, (Russian). The marauders are the Janjaweed.

The jarhead underground is a tale of Marines. In 2006 there are shifts in the action. In Iraq information is tribal. Control of Fallujah is turned over to an Iraqi brigade. Then the Marines are called upon to deal with the insurgents.

The collection is a joy. Basically it is a clutch of the products of youngish, cospmopolitan, emerging writers.

What a fun, engrossing, bizarre and eclectic read this is - it starts off with a funny introduction by Sufjan Stevens followed by poetry about Ed Asner, "Best American" selections (for example, "Best American Beginnings of Ten Stories About Ponies"), an excerpt from a graphic novel, short stories, essays, journalism pieces, book excerpts and even a high school commencement speech written by Conan O'Brien. The great thing about reading anthologies like this is coming across something written by a writer you would normally never read that absolutely blows you away - I achieved that a few times with this collection. The Big Suck by David J. Morris, Selling the General by Jennifer Egan and What is Your Dangerous Idea by the Edge Foundation along with several others are all required reading if you ask me. This is the first year I've read the Best American Nonrequired Reading, and I'm looking forward to making it a yearly reading tradition.

I got this book for the Conan Speech in it and found many more worthy works in it. The book is in great condition.

Tastes great! Less filling!

Ok. This is the first BANR I've actually read (2007 version), but I'm so glad I bought it. It's a popcorn read in that it's often lighthearted, somewhat irreverant, but it's so much fun. For those of you who want to be serious all of the time, or feel that every read must be "literary", buy it anyway.

I especially liked the Personal Ads (the British ones were the most inventive), the graphic novel that was anything but comic, and the memoirs in six words. I actually challenged my students to come up with memoirs of themselves in six words. Hmmmm, they tried. They're young and need to season a bit.

If you want to expand your reading horizon, entertain yourself, and even stand/sit in awe at the sheer brillance of many (unknown) writers, pick this book up.

Dave Eggers very openly describes the process by which he leads the team of Bay Area young adults in choosing the pieces included in the "Best American Nonrequired Reading" series, and sure enough, bios are provided of the selection committee, and they do indeed all hail from the Bay Area. Still, it was surprising to me just how San Francisco-centric and youth-centric this collection is. As one strays farther from those two epicenters, in space or time, one is less likely to find this collection appealing or satisfying.

San Francisco youth culture can be somewhat nihilistic, and a number of the selections embrace themes of death and failed institutions, and offer a pessimistic outlook on life. This viewpoint is explicitly described in the first long piece in the book, Jonathan Ames' "American Gothic", an article about goth culture, but it is prevalent in a good number of other selections. Scott Carrier's "Rock the Junta", an article about the most popular rock band in the authoritarian country of Myanmar, has the underlying assumption that rock and roll music can change the world and bring about revolution, a viewpoint that is more popular among youths than history professors. There is even an article about Barry Bonds, Lee Klein's "All Aboard the Bloated Boat", that favorably compares Bonds and other steroid-ingesting athletes to musicians like Jimi Hendrix who took drugs and then produced classics of rock music. This article didn't at all change my opinion of Bonds, but it did make it clear again why Bonds finished his career in front of adoring fans in the city of San Francisco, which is much more tolerant of drug experimentation than other major league baseball cities.

There are several very enjoyable pieces in this book, starting with Sufjan Stevens' introduction, in which he describes how he transitioned from being a non-reading third grader in a Waldorf school, with hippie-esque parents, to the harsh reality of a traditional American public school, where (thanks to a teacher and American pop culture) he was able to catch up in his reading in a hurry.

Other pieces I enjoyed include:

-- The Edge Foundation's "What is Your Dangerous Idea", which asked that question of some distinguished scientists, and then collected their responses; some of them are quite thoughtful and provocative.

-- Jennifer Egan's "Selling the General", which, although a bit fantastical, nevertheless makes some very telling observations about our celebrity-laden culture.

-- Conan O'Brien's "Stuyvesant High School Commencement Speech", which wraps some pretty common life advice in humor and poignancy, thus engaging and moving the listener/reader.

-- Mike Richardson-Bryan's "Best American Names of Horses Expected to Have Undistinguished Careers", which is the funniest (albeit shortest) piece in the book.

But all in all, this volume is likely to be most appreciated by younger readers, especially those who call the Bay Area home.

This is a collection of off-beat and overlooked pieces--short stories, essays and various articles--from a wide range of 2007 publications. A tad uneven, as this kind of collection is bound to be, it still has some great pieces. My favorite was Winston Brown's "Ghost Children," about African-American boys becoming men. It is non-fiction at its best--as entertaining and poignant as the best fiction, while also carrying the weight of truth. I also liked Kevin A. Gonzalez's "Loteria," and Conan O'Brien's commencement address to Stuyvesant High School. The excerpts from the book WHAT'S YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA? were good, and I put that book on my wish list because of it. A few selections of this anthology were a little too clever for their own good, but overall a pretty enjoyable read. The fact that reviewers are calling out different favorites should be seen as a strength of the book.

Good, good stuff thus far...we'll see about the "Best" when I finish. The scintillating wit of Mr. Stevens' intro is enough to convince me that it will live up to its title. Not one to normally use cyber lingo, I must confess that this book, within just the first 20 or so pages, provoked me to literally LOL. A lot.

Sufjan Stevens's introduction is pretty much amazing. My boyfriend recommends the Miranda July story "How to Tell Stories to Children," which he says is also amazing. Two amazing bits to this book, at least! That should be worth a browse in your local bookshop.