Customer Reviews

The Best American Short Stories 2004

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The 2004 Best American Short Stories collection, edited by Lorrie Moore, is the fattest BASS anthology yet. With stories by Sherman Alexie, T.C. Boyle, Deborah Eisenberg, Paula Fox, Jill McCorkle, Alice Munro, Annie Proulx, John Edgar Wideman, and John Updike, among others, the collection features a wide range of writers, most well known. Many stories come from The New Yorker (eight), a couple from Harper's, but the rest were originally published in some of the country's best, relatively small literary journals: Tin House, Granta, The Missouri Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Zyzzyva.

Sherman Alexie's "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" follows a homeless Native American man living spreading good will and fortune among his destitute friends, none of whom have much hope except in the moment of a brief celebration. Deborah Eisenberg's "Some Other, Better Otto" traces the psychological crisis of a gay man whose relationship with his partner is the only functional one in an otherwise dysfunctional family. In "Runaway", Alice Munro portrays two lonely women as they try to find strength in lies and fantasy, even as a harsher reality awaits each. Mary Yukari Waters's "Mirror Studies" turns primate and nature studies inward, toward a man who faces his mortality.

In the past ten years or so, the BASS anthology has gotten more and more predictable, with a heavy emphasis toward the traditional, and while the trend is not broken by this volume, I was pleased to discover some messier stories - narratives such as Edward P. Jones's "A Rich Man" that are not tightly controlled and instead are allowed to breathe. Still, as long as Houghton Mifflin continues to choose New Yorker writers as editors, this is what readers will see in the series.

While different readers will appreciate different stories, most will find several that will stick with them. If you like cutting edge stories, I suggest getting the latest Pushcart Prize collection instead, a series that ignores the commercial publications in favor of the small literary press.

First, let me state that I always recommend both the "Best American" and "O. Henry" annual short story anthologies to anyone with a modicum of interest in present-day American literature. By reading these volumes, you get exposed to a wide variety of some (but by no means all) of the best stories by some of our best writers (or at least those writers who produce in the short story format). A well-written short story is an easily consumed treat that also teaches something new about the human condition. Given the time constraints of modern-day life, it's surprising that short stories are not more popular. But certainly these anthologies deserve a wide audience.

I will also warn that, since interpreting works of art is subjective, others will have different reactions to the stories in this volume. My interpretation of the choices that Lorrie Moore made in putting this volume together was that she erred on the side of including instantly recognizable (but therefore not terribly innovative) stories by well-known authors, as well as including lengthier selections. Although the selections are made blind, without knowledge of the author's name, the pieces by Edward P. Jones, Alice Munro, Annie Proulx, John Updike, Mary Yukari Waters and John Edgar Wideman are all very recognizable via their subject matter and writing styles. Length, meanwhile, negates two of the main attributes of a good short story: brevity and pithiness. E.B. White, who always advocated using as few words as possible to communicate an idea, would not be pleased with all of Moore's selections.

My favorite story in the 2004 volume is Thomas McGuane's "Gallatin Canyon", a true masterpiece of a short story written in the O. Henry style. Not a word is wasted, and every seemingly innocent or minor event quickly builds towards a life-or-death conclusion that exposes the nature of the main characters. It is a model for how to apply the classical short story form in the 21st century. The most innovative story is Stuart Dybek's "Breasts", which is truly (as Lorrie Moore so well characterizes) a Quentin Tarantino film transformed into short story format. However, like a Tarantino film, after all the violence has ended and the last joke has been played out, I find myself asking "yes, but what is the point?". Other notable stories, I felt, were T. Coraghessan Boyle's suspenseful modern day working-class romance "Tooth and Claw", and Edward P. Jones' "A Rich Man", which presents a view into the culture of inner-city Washington D.C. that has produced, among other things, the TV images of Mayor Marion Barry smoking a crack pipe.

My least favorite stories in this volume were Trudy Lewis's "Limestone Diner", which I felt was instantly forgettable, and, I'm sad to say, Annie Proulx's "What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?". Normally I really enjoy Ms. Proulx's work, but I felt that in this story she was just painting by the numbers, by invoking too many clichés: the Vietnam War as a conscious-raising event, the evil energy companies who are even more damaging to the environment than cattle-herding ranchers, and even a homosexual son who falls for the beefcake ranch hand.

All in all, the 2004 edition of the Best American Short Stories serves up a wide variety of different slices of present-day American life. While not the best volume in the series, it is well worth reading.

Lorrie Moore, renowned short story writer whose Birds of America is one of her best collections has edited and chosen twenty American short stories. The stories, as she confesses herself, tend to be longish, 20-30 pages for the most part. In the back of the book the writers give their accounting of the stories, explaining how the stories were set into motion and even touch on some important themes. Eight of the twenty stories, almost half, were chosen from The New Yorker. Its dominance as a source of "best" stories is somewhat disconcerting. Can one magazine really be that good? I don't know. I admire Lorrie Moore so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. In any event, the anthology's contents follow:

1. What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie
2. Tooth and Claw by T. Coraghessan Boyle
3. Written in Stone by Catherine Brady
4. Accomplice by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
5. Screen writer by Charles D'Ambrosio
6. Breasts by Stuart Dybek
7. Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg
8. Grace by Paula Fox
9. The Tutor by Nell Freudenberger
10. A Rich Man by Edward P. Jones
11. Limestone Diner by Trudy Lewis
12. Intervention by Jill McCorkle
13. Gallatin Canyon by Thomas McGuane
14. Runaway by Alice Munro
15. All Saints Day by Angela Pneuman
16. What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick? by Annie Proulx
17. Docent by R.T. Smith
18. The Walk with Elizanne by John Updike
19. Mirror Studies by Mary Yukari Waters
20. What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over by John Edgar Wideman

Highlight of the collection for me is "Runaway" by Alice Munro. It is a well developed profile of a bullying husband and his effete, sympathetic, girlish wife and the story is haunting in the way it renders a dysfunctional couple and the wife's decision to choose a familiar hell over the fear of the unknown. Her imprisonment is all too common and explores universal themes of the way people acclimate themselves to a quiet, seething domestic inferno. In many ways Munro's story reminds me of a John Cheever classic, "Just Tell Me Who It Was."

I never start at the beginning of a short story anthology because I don't want to submit to somebody else's idea of what is "first" among the "best". No, I like to begin on my own terms. This year my strategy was two-fold. First I would skip past anything that had been published in The New Yorker. From there I would try and identify something roughish and experimental. I chose "Docent" strictly because it had been published in The Missouri Review. Oh, did someone open a window? Now I remember what great writing is. I could not put the volume down and long before I finished reading R.T. Smith's brilliantly refreshing story, I knew I had already received my moneys worth.

When I had recovered my breath, I challenged Lorrie Moore in no small way. I mean to say I began at the beginning of the volume with Sherman Alexie's "What You Pawn I Will Redeem". (Published in The New Yorker - crow is good with ketchup.) After the first page I realized I should have started this anthology from the beginning. "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" is a devastatingly wonderful story. And had I read it first I STILL would have had "Docent" to look forward to.

I skimmed the table on contents - Annie Proulx and John Updike? What are these two lumbering giants doing in here? (I am a student of both authors.) Updike is probably in here because he's old and they're just doing him a favor. WRONG! "The Walk with Elizanne" is not only one of the finest Updike stories I've ever read; it is one of the best STORIES I have ever read! Let none of us question the Master's work. Updike hits one way out of the ballpark with this story. Thank you Sir.

As of yet I have not read much more but the news about this volume had to be told. If it only contained these three stories (and who knows what other gems sleep within?) it would have been well worth the asking price. Buy it, read it, put it in the pile you would save if your house were on fire.

Something that stands out to me about this edition, certainly this was no accident, is how each of the stories draws a picture of an American landscape. Notable in their attention to setting are "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" (Seattle from the point of view of a homeless man), "Grace" (anomie in New York City), "A Rich Man" (poverty in Washington, D.C.), "Limestone Diner" (small town Missouri), "Gallatin Canyon" and "What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?" (the New West), "Docent" (a DAR who gives tours at Washington and Lee University) and "All Saints Day" (evangelical eastern Kentucky). Not all of the stories take place in the USA, however. "Runaway" is set in rural Canada, and "The Tutor" describes the inner life of two young people in India living in a sort of self-imposed diaspora, one dreaming about his years at Harvard, the other of a hardly-remembered childhood in San Francisco.

I thought this was a great collection. Ironically, given the first of the reviews I read here, I thought "Some Other, Better Otto" was one of the best of all of them. It would have made the collection worth reading by itself.
I could have quibbled a little with the inclusion of the seemingly fairly-pointless "Docent" and the kind of boring and unoriginal Updike story, but I think Moore did an excellent job of selecting stories, and the entire collection is worth reading.

I pick up the Best American series every year, and I have seen over the years that the collection reflects its author. When I picked up 2000's edition, edited by E.L. Doctorow, one of my favorite short story authors, I found that I generally liked the stories in the collection. I am not as big of a Lorrie Moore fan, but I dislike only the content of her stories, not the way she tells them. As such, I didn't like some of the contents of this year's collection, but there is no question that the authors in that book deserve to be in it (with the exception of Deborah Eisenberg's "Some Other, Better Otto".) Boyle's "Chixiclub" would have been a better selection, but I loved D'Ambrosio's "Screenwriter", which I read for the second time this year. Anyone who wants to read what I think is a fairly glaring ommission should turn to page 444, and then look up Kevin Brockmeier's "A Brief History Of The Dead", my favorite short story of all time.

This again, is a very good collection, although quite different from the previous, if any generalization at all can be made about these collections who bring so many different stories.
In the current collection, we do not have such a large emphasis on the immigrant experience (although "tutor" takes place in India, with a lot of reference to the US and "written in stone" talks about a very turbulent past in Iran) or on different cultures. If I can generalize, this book seems to turn more into the old family values and their demise, or maybe their re-construction, in a different form (loosing your dog, but finding new meaning in "Grace" or a gay family in "some other better Otto").
The shattering of the American dream is expressed in such stories as "What kind of furniture would Jesus buy" that depicts the sort of problems farmers of the old American kind face nowadays. The story, although it does not deal directly with religion ends with some kind of reference to Jesus, as if an only hope amid all the confusion. I loved the story "Intervention" which tells the story of a retired coupled, bonded by a life together and by many problems they faced and overcame. Now they face the husband alcohol addiction and the younger generation effort to deal with this issue, an effort professionally termed "intervention". This intervention is experienced by the wife as a betrayal of her husband, she is unwilling to undergo. The story's beauty is in the tender, simple way it manages to describe the intimate relations of the husband and wife, private jokes, and tender moments and the largest sacrifice of all (life) the woman is ready to make.
My favorite is the story "Accomplice" which tells the story of Mrs. Hempel, a devoted teacher who tries to get closer to her students, based on her personal experience. This story is immensely full and works on many issues and layers. Mrs. Hempel as a teacher, as a daughter and a person who believes in the beauty and in the power of words. Words however are not always able to express what you really feel. All of Mrs. Hempel's roles in life come together to help her understand her students parents and their frustration with the assignment she gave her students. There were a lot of issues in this story I felt that as a mother I could very easily relate to.
I would like to mention that after reading each story I am always interested and surprised to read the "Contributor's Notes", a vital part of the "best" collections. These notes are always surprising to me as they turn my understanding of the story in a totally different direction. For example the author's notes about "runaway", a story I immensely enjoyed, which deals with the relationships between three people, deal with the landscape and the geographical scenery to which I paid no attention. From there the author continued the story.
Another example would be the notes of the lovely "Written in Stone", a sad and painful story, in which the author explains how she wanted to discuss two issues who must be read in light of each other. These notes helped me continue my thoughts and understanding of the story.
A wonderful story is "What you Pawn I will Redeem" by Sherman Alexie which deals with an Indian homeless experience and has some mystical parts in it (so I felt). In this case the reading of the author's comments added to the strong reading experience and made me want to read more from this great author. I cannot help but enjoy the fact that he seems to also be a very nice human being...

Lorrie Moore had the unenviable task of selecting twenty short stories to include in this collection. As an author and avid reader she undoubtedly enjoyed her assignment. This volume includes an eclectic variety of stories with different subjects, settings and emotional tones. The writing styles of the many authors is very striking which can be a two edged sword for the reader, and I might add, the reviewer. Initially, I was put off by the variety and differences, for me, it is much easier to read stories by one author whose writing style is familiar. However, as I continued reading, I began to enjoy the vast expanse of human experiences being described and the diverse life styles being revealed.

In the first story, "What You Pawn I Will Reveal", Sherman Storie describes the lifestyle of a homeless Indian in Spokane, Washington. The reader is exposed to the culture, the friendships, the rules of life, and the establishment which both supports and challenges the homeless. The story takes a unique turn when the protaganist discovers a pow-wow Indian dance regalia in the window of a pawnshop. His mission becomes to regain ownership of this family heirloom. The story is worth reading to discover how this street person manages to do exactly that ... Another fascinating story is "Screenwriter". The main character is a patient in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. He is a wealthy screen writer who has had suicidal ideation since the age of ten, and which continued into adulthood, despite his successful career. It is the reason he is hospitalized. The reader is exposed to the inner thinking of this mental patient as he attempts to develop a serious relationship with a female 'in mate' who is known as 'the ballerina'. The story is fascinating as the reader experiences first-hand the challenges of beating the odds of establishing meaningful 'human contact' in an environment which is set up to prevent *exactly* that sort of thing. As they say, "where there is a will, there is a way" ... one needs to read the story to find out what happens. Another highly engaging story is "All Saints Day." On Nov. 1st, the United Methodist Church is having a "costume party" of sorts where the children are to dress up as Biblical characters. During the same time, some children hear a story about a youngster, Ryan, who is believed to be possessed by a demon. Ryan's behavior has been deteriorating adn even doctors could not determine the cause. His parents, along with the help of the minister, made the decision to do an 'excorcism'. The author does a stupendous job of combining the two events in a fascinating, creative and hilarious manner. One needs to read the story to discover what Biblical character ends up 'curing' Ryan of his 'demon' when the adult interventions were essentially unsuccessful. There are many other stories with equally unusual and engaging subject matter ... some are funny, some are serious: about friendship, justice, individuality, marriage, and even risque adult content. All of the stories are recommended as worth reading. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

Although this book contains only fiction you can see how American society look like, that interests me as a foreigner myself. All aspects portray these day's Amaerica, including such as Immigrants from Middle East, Native Americans, Gay couples, Silver Ages and so on.

My favorites are "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" by Sherman Alexie and "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence" by John Edgar Wideman.
I bought the book because I read the first couple of pages of "What You Pawn I will Redeem" at the bookstore and that interests me. I'd never bought the Best American series before.

"What You Pawn.." contents some religious message, I caught something like God-is-behind-you feeling.
"What We Cannot..", I like the ending. And, to me, it was unique that a male character could talk that way.

The characters in "The Tutor" have similar sense of me, loosing their home country and struggle to find their identity.
"Some Other, Better Otto", even though I am not a gay, I understood unhappines of Otto and it touched my mind.

I could not help to feel disgust Mr. Perkins in "A Rich Man" then stop reading in the middle. Why the author create this kind man, I hardly understand. Suppose the author need to stand on the character's side even if the character is so terrible, but I cannot see any good or understandable view on him.

If you want to get to know American society, you may read Time or watch CNN, but try it too, you may enjoy more.