Customer Reviews

The Best American Short Stories 2005 (Best American (TM))

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Of course no "best" list will ever have all or many of a reader's favorites as no editor can please everyone. But the Best American series continues to be consistent. My only complaint is the policy to exclude people of other nationalities whose stories are published in American magazines. Where the story is published, not the writer's nationality, should be the criteria. For example, my favorte short story writer, Haruki Murakami, who is frequently published in the New Yorker, is excluded. To add insult to injury, the policy is arbitrary so that Canadian writer Alice Munro (one of my favorites, no disrespect toward her) is included.

In any event, here are some highlights:

1. The Smile on Happy Chang's Face by Tom Perrotta. Vintage Perrotta fiction of adult children who are playing house while suffering from their infantile ways. The story could have been swiped from the pages of Perrotta's masterpiece novel The Little Children. Here a divorced husband who rejected his gay teenage son tries to resolve his family conflicts while umpiring Little Leage baseball games.

2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link. One of the most original young writers around, Link writes "ghost" stories full of domestic angst such as this one about a family moving into a strange house.

3. Silence by Alice Munro. A mother grieves the separation of her daughter who decides to flee from her parents' problems by joining a cult in the Canadian wilderness. The cult is headed by an elephantine half-witted, self-aggrandizing matriarch. You will despise this woman.

4. Death Defier by Tom Bissell, an American journalist covering the Middle-East conflict becomes more and more deranged leading to the story's climax. A great story about America's role in Afghanistan and Iraq and the complexities of being a journalist over there.

5. The Girls by Joy Williams. Perhaps inspired by Flannery O'Conner's Good Country People. Two thirty-something sisters, still living with their parents, seem like in part the reincarnation of O'Conner's Hulga. Like that grotesque, these sisters are full of intellectual pride while blind to their repulsive arrested development. They mentally torture their parents' houseguests.

6. Natasha by David Bezmozgis. Perhaps one of the best stories I've read in the last seven years. A Canadian boy hosts a Russian teenage girl and discovers that she made adult films to get by in the moral wasteland of modern Russia. This is one of the most devastating loss-of-innocence stories I've ever read.

Best American Short Stories (2005), ed. Michael Chabon (4/5)

My creative writing teacher once told me that a when a short story ends it should leave the reader with a tuning fork-like resonance. That is, it should continue ringing in your head long after you've put the story down. Michael Chabon has compiled a collection of short stories that accomplish exactly that. Long after you have finished the Best American Short Stories of 2005 I guarantee your mind will continually drift back to them. I think the reason for this resonance is because a well crafted short story is, to borrow an analogy from Hemingway, an iceberg. As a reader, we are only shown the small part of the iceberg that's visible above water, but there still remains the perplexing ninety-percent of the iceberg hiding underwater. The short story teases us with the visible ten percent while our mind continues trying to figure out the remaining ninety percent either consciously or unconsciously. To borrow another phrase from Hemingway (who in turn borrowed it from Gertrude Stein), a great short story is like a moveable feast.

It is to Michael Chabon's credit that he managed to pick out short stories that contain this resonance when his own short stories lack exactly that. I picked up Werewolves in Their Youth several years ago, and found myself disappointed. While his prose has no peers, I found Chabon's short stories suffered from an attempt to wrap up epic problems within twenty pages. From my experience, short stories solve nothing within the protagonists' lives. At most they merely suggest a future resolution. Perhaps the reason is that the short story is too small for Chabon's panorama epics to hold, and he really needs a novel to stretch out and contain his worlds. However, he recognizes a good short story when he sees it.

Let's start with two of my least favorites from the collection. First up is "Silence" by Alice Munro. Before I read this story I had heard plenty of praise about Munro and was exited to finally read something by her. Like every story in the collection the prose is well written, but there was just something missing-oh, yeah a believable protagonist in a believable situation.

The story begins as the main character, Juliet, goes to meet her daughter who recently returned from a European trip. She discovers her daughter has joined some kind of cult. What does Juliet do after discovering her daughter has abandoned her? What every mother would do, she continues to live her life, and we get to about her switches careers, her relationship with men, and every once in a while manages to find the time to think about her lost daughter.. Of course, losing a daughter seems secondary to just about everything else in her life. Like anyone, my mother has her faults, but I now find it comforting to know that at the very least she would freak out if I became some kind of weird recluse cult member. What's worse is that we never find out why Juliet's daughter left her. The question is brought up once or twice, and it's suggested that Juliet was not meeting her daughter's spiritual needs or that she let her daughter get too close to her and treated her like a friend instead of the vulnerable child she was, but ultimately we're given no definite answer. This is one of the worst cases of a writer creating a situation she has never encountered before. Sure, a really good writer can make a foreign situation seem real even though they have never truly lived through it. Usually they can find a comparable life experience and draw from that, but Munro does not manage that. Instead, the shortcomings of this story act like a black hole that sucks the rest of the narrative into it.

I didn't have as much of a problem Tom Bissell's "Death Defier," but I did feel it failed to live up to its potential. In the commentary section the author claims he came up with the idea for this short story after going to Afghanistan and observing other journalists who were unaffected by the death surrounding them. The location and scope of his story promises to bring up some interesting questions, but by the end of the story you quickly realize the author's content with breaking that promise.

The story involves two journalists, one American and one British, covering the American invasion of Afghanistan. The two of them decide to explore the country instead of staying holed up inside the fence of the American troops. The American seems absolutely callus to the events surrounding him. Is this a clever commentary on the effects of journalism or maybe some observations of an American outside of his boarders? No, it's actually a character study of some guy who became a free lance journalist after his dad died. That's right, he has become the "Death Defier!" I think I read a similar plot in a comic book, but the comic book was better written.

With these two exceptions the rest of the collection is an absolute joy. One of my favorites is "The Smile on Happy Chang's Face." This story involves a beer and sports kind of dad who must deal with having a homosexual son. He doesn't deal well, and when the story opens he is living alone after he's decked his son and his family naturally moved out. I loathe to reveal anymore, except that most of the tale concerns the protagonist acting as an umpire for a little league game. These things seem awfully disparate, but connect in some odd bit of logic. By the time I finished the story I was stretching my mind to reconcile the themes with what happened in the story. It took me some time, but it all sort of clicked together like an erector set. What is the meaning behind Happy Chang's smile?

My second favorite (I should say my current second favorite because it will almost certainly change) is Alix Ohlin's "Simple Exercises for the Beginning Student." Besides having a catchy title, there are some prose gems hidden in Ohlin's work. The story revolves around a misfit kid who begins piano lessons. The way this kid is described I imagine the smelly kid in the back of the classroom who the other misfits won't even hang out with. I mentioned earlier that I don't believe short stories should have easy solutions at the end. Well, this story one ups me, and the world seems to be in even more disarray by the end of the story. It all falls apart, like your big brother kicking over your Lincoln logs.

Several themes pop up a in The Best American Short Stories - cousins and piano lessons spring to mind - but the theme that seems most prevalent is immigrants and the diversity of America. This seems particularly relevant at this juncture in our history when streets are filling with immigrants protesting for their citizenship. Best American feels like a kaleidoscope of images representing a country that's a patchwork of immigrants. I doubt this was a conscious choice on the part of Chabon, but for me this reoccurrence only enhanced an already fine collection.

Some other stories that are still ringing in my head: Kelly Link's "Stone Animals" - a ghost story about a family that's falling apart, Joyce Carol Oates "The Cousins" - a series of letter correspondences between two lost second generation Jewish immigrants, and Thomas McGuane's "Old Friends" - a former best friend moves in with the yuppie protagonist who can't stand his former acquaintance.

As guest editor, Michael Chabon sets entertainment as the standard for good writing. Because for Chabon, entertainment is nothing less than human connection. If we derive pleasure from this connection, it is because through it we experience something real, visceral, and intellectual, albeit vicariously.

His mission, therefore, is to restore the fallen status of entertainment. To do this, he casts a wide net over water "serious" writers and readers often find too shallow. He trawls the waterways for writing that reeks of ghost stories, science fiction, detective novels, action movies, and folklore. Anything that leads to new and unusual forms. (Not surprising for the man who wrote The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.)

To avoid an exhaustive list, I'll contain myself to quick descriptions of seven stories inside.

"Until Gwen," by Denis Lehane, has the feel of a detective thriller, or film noir. It's a murder story told in the second person, with an accurate rendering of characters who have fallen so far, there's no bottom left to hit.

"Eight Pieces for the Left Hand," by J. Robert Lennon, is a series of eight folktale-like vignettes that have continuity in recurring themes.

"Death Defier," by Tom Bissell, is war story with an inescapable, catastrophic ending.

"Anda's Game," by Cory Doctorow, is almost sci-fi. It's the story of a child's online role-playing game with real-world consequences.

"The Secret Goldfish," by David Means, tells the story of the disintegration of a marriage from the perspective of the family goldfish.

"The Cousins," by Joyce Carol Oates, tells, in letter form, the story of two cousins separated by World War II and the Holocaust.

"Hart and Boot," by Tim Pratt, mythologizes the partly true, partly fictional lives of Wild West figures Pearl hart and John Boot.

Perhaps the best way to judge the quality of an anthology such as this is to measure how successful the guest editor has been in achieving the goals he or she set forth in their introduction. If that suits you, then this is a high-quality product.

This collection is great. I enjoyed every story to some degree, and a couple are fantastic. Tom Perrotta's (ELECTION) "The Smile On Happy Chang's Face" is absurd and hilarious. Thomas McGuane's "Old Friends," "Death Defier" by Tom Bissell, "Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones, "The Secret Goldfish" by David Means and "Natasha" by David Bezmozgis are all excellent reads. But my favorite two are Dennis Lehane's (MYSTIC RIVER) "Until Gwen" and J. Robert Lennon's "Eight Pieces for the Left Hand," an excerpt from his book 100 Pieces for the Left Hand, a series of short vignettes that somehow hold together as a novel. Overall, this entire collection feels more cohesive than most, at least in tone if not in theme. I look to these collections to find new authors to read, and I found several here.

In his introduction to the 2005 Best American Short Stories volume, guest editor Michael Chabon promises that he will choose stories that are first and foremost entertaining, as he believes that entertainment has gotten short shrift in elite literary circles. With a few exceptions, which may just represent stories that didn't appeal to me but may to others, Chabon delivers. Additionally, he is to be commended for choosing stories from a wider variety of genres than previous volumes, including science fiction, fantasy/horror, war journalism, and pure literary experimentation.

The collection leads off with a story that makes Chabon's point about a how a story can be both entertaining and thought provoking: Tom Perrotta's "The Smile on Happy Chang's Face". It not only has a gripping plot that causes the reader to push through to the ending, but it also has several meaningful ideas to communicate about personal relationships, sport, and fair play. In that sense, I feel it is an excellent short story in the O. Henry tradition.

My favorite story in the book is the story that might be classified as science fiction, Cory Doctorow's "Anda's Game", although the events it describes are not very removed in time from the Information Age of today. The message in the story is an obvious one about the parallels between an imaginary on-line world and the real world, and how the problems in each get transferred into the other. It also asks (and answers) the question of whether it is best to live in an on-line world, where one is apparently not bound by the limitations of the physical world. Anyone who enjoyed "The Matrix" films would likely enjoy this story.

Two other stories that I especially enjoyed were Tim Pratt's "Hart and Boot", which never explains the apparently impossible events in the story, and yet which produces some very memorable images; and Nathaniel Bellows' "First Four Measures" which, although a bit dry, does present a riveting yet disturbing look at inter-generational longing. The two major duds, in my opinion, were David Means' "The Secret Goldfish" (the symbolism was too obvious, the message was too common); and Joy Williams' "The Girls" (the title characters were too annoying and undifferentiated, either from each other or from a stereotype).

If you are looking for a wide variety of short story fiction, with an emphasis on entertainment, then this volume of the Best American Short Stories has much to recommend it. I can't guarantee you create the same best/worst list as I did, but you will have a lot of variety to choose from.

Michael Chabon's excellent introduction alone makes this book worth its price. Once again he basically asks, "What's wrong with actually ENJOYING a story?" As if the only stories worthwhile - those considered "literary fiction" - must be so abstract and esoteric that the only pleasure in reading them comes from a smug sense of accomplishment merely for getting through them.

However, this isn't Chabon's best of all time - they are the best of the year. I found the results a bit hit-and-miss, but fortunately there were more hits than misses.

That the latest Best American Short Stories collection boasts the Pulitzer-winning Michael Chabon's name on its cover will no doubt sell more copies than usual of this annual series. Chabon ("The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," "Wonder Boys")'s poetic prose and skillful storytelling will draw readers who might not normally pick up this 2005 short story collection.

Yet, those who have previously followed the series, might be disappointed with the choices Chabon, as guest editor, made in selecting stories for the prestigious collection. Chabon says outright in his introduction that he picked the stories that he found the most entertaining. What you have here is a set of short stories that are merely amusing. Great writing, yes, but lacking the poignancy and insight of the previous (2004) edition, edited by Lorrie Moore. The upside to Chabon's choice, however, is that among some literary heavyweights, he managed to pick works by less famous names than Moore did, giving exposure to lesser known writers.

The Best American Short Stories 2005 contains works originally published in periodicals in 2004. The writers are: Tom Perrotta, Dennis Lehane, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Thomas McGuane, J. Robert Lennon, Kelly Link, Nathaniel Bellows, Charles D'ambrosio, Alice Munro, Tom Bissell, Joy Williams, Cory Doctorow, Alix Ohlin, Edward P. Jones, David Means, Joyce Carol Oates, David Bezmozgis, Tim Pratt, Rishi Reddi, and George Saunders.

It's always a temptation to review a short story collection by summarizing lots of plots. Since temptation is one thing I can't resist here goes:

Jock father has gay son.
Grisly patricide.
Ex-wife meets the family.
Obnoxious WASP Yalie gets come-uppance.
Urban legends.
Haunted house.
Piano teacher is a perv.
Grifter girl needs love.
Cult captures daughter.
War reporters get in trouble..
Bloodless matricide.
Video game causes weight gain.
Kid cannot afford piano teacher.
Murderer's family and friends.
Goldfish outlasts a marriage.
Holocaust survivor's fake cousin.
Pedophilic sex fantasy.
Lady outlaw outsmarts the law.
Greenhorn adapts to America.
Fake holocaust survivor.

"American" is broadly interpreted. Apart from the Canadian presence, one story depends for its impact largely on the use of British slang, and another on Indian English - very effectively in both cases.
Science fiction is, as usual in this annual collection, under-represented. (Asimov's and Analog are not listed among the magazines surveyed). Doctorow's story is the closest to SF.
Parents and husbands come off badly. The stories mostly concern break-up of relationships. The compilers do not state that they have deliberately chosen estrangement as a theme but it is as if they wanted to reverse the fairytale ending. Two of the stories might have been better with a happy ending. Tom Bissell succumbs to a need to end with a bang. D'Ambrosio's "The Scheme of Things" flirts with a gooey sentimental happy ending, but then avoids it, in order, as I suspect, to preserve the kind of literary integrity that is marked by detached irony.

It's hard NOT to love this series, and this provides another great opportunity to catch up and sample contemporary authors.

A good collection of the sort of short fiction editors prefer at the publications that publish short fiction. The best of the lot from my point of view is "Death Defier" by Tom Bissell, the story of a war photograper in Afghanistan. Most of the others are about things that matter to women readers, which is no surprise since women make up the majority of today's readers, but the stories do reflect today's tastes and are good examples of what is being published as short fiction.