Elizabeth Strout (ed.): The Best American Short Stories, 2013

Cullen, that trivial little ninny, thought he was being clever leaving a bag of books at my place on his last day in Korea, instead of asking whether I wanted any of them.  And perhaps he was.  If he had asked whether I wanted to add a half dozen unread volumes to my stack, I would definitely have said no.  But here we are, him thumbing his repatriated nose, and me with several books that I would definitely not have chosen for myself.

I have read items in the "Best American"$ before, and am usually not disappointed.  I don't remember the quality being quite this good though.  Every story in this selection was well written and engaging in its own way.  But perhaps due to some disagreement between the editor and myself about the definition of a "story", I also don't remember quite so many of them feeling incomplete.  I'm sure it's my particular prejudice that assumes something must happen for the label of "story" to fit.  Many of the items in this volume, however, did not meet that criterion.  Rather than stories, they felt like vignettes, tableaux, mere descriptions.  I was left with the impression that they were (albeit well-chosen) excerpts from some larger story, or that the story had already happened, and the players were being wheeled out for me on an ekkyklema. 

For my money, the only real stories here were the ones were I was pressed into service alongside the characters, experiencing some process alongside them, as in Kirstin Valdez Quade's remarkable  "Nemecia", or Suzanne Rivecca's riveting and brutal "Philanthropy".  And the pinnacle for me, as it would be for most readers, was when the journey that I took with the characters coincided with some journey that I was also taking alone, in so-called "reality".  It is for this reason that Joan Wickersham's "The Tunnel, or the News from Spain" was my favorite.  I feel only too keenly the mix of resentment and affection that comes from a mother who needs too much, and becomes an emotional drain through no fault of her own.  It is an irresolvable dilemma that I would not have been able to express with such an honest and compassionate voice.