Book Description
"While a single short story may have a difficult time raising enough noise on its own to be heard over the din of civilization, short stories in bulk can have the effect of swarming bees, blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you can think about," writes Ann Patchett in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2006.
This vibrant, varied sampler of the American literary scene revels in life's little absurdities, captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimately shares subtle insight and compassion. In "The View from Castle Rock," the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictional account of her Scottish ancestors' emigration to Canada in 1818. Nathan Englander's cast of young characters in "How We Avenged the Blums" confronts a bully dubbed "The Anti-Semite" to both comic and tragic ends. In "Refresh, Refresh," Benjamin Percy gives a forceful, heart-wrenching look at a young man's choices when his father -- along with most of the men in his small town -- is deployed to Iraq. Yiyun Li's "After a Life" reveals secrets, hidden shame, and cultural change in modern China. And in "Tatooizm," Kevin Moffett weaves a story full of humor and humanity about a young couple's relationship that has run its course.
Ann Patchett "brought unprecedented enthusiasm and judiciousness [to The Best American Short Stories 2006]," writes Katrina Kenison in her foreword, "and she is, surely, every story writer's ideal reader, eager to love, slow to fault, exquisitely attentive to the text and all that lies beneath it."
Customer Reviews:
Mostly a collection of boring, pointless stories........2007-08-07
My daughter was assigned this book over the summer for her IB English class so I read it along with her. I enjoyed reading the rest of her assigned books: "Pride & Predjudice," "Travels w/Charlie" and "Frankenstein," but have to say that BASS of 2006 was PAINFUL to get through. How this book got lumped in with actual literature I will never understand! These short story authors may know some of the mechanics of writing, but, with very few exceptions, don't have a compelling story to tell. There is nothing like an O. Henry or "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" among them - no plot twists, no surprises, nothing to make a story memorable. I don't blame Ms. Kenison for giving up! Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of "Welcome to the Monkey House" by Kurt Vonnegut. There you will find stories that amuse you and will be fondly remembered for many years to come.
If this is literature, give me pulp.......2007-04-21
I confess to giving up on this year's collection after reading about half of the stories, because, in fact, there wasn't a gripping tale in the bunch. Those I did read lacked dramatic tension, interesting characters and a distinctive author's voice. If these bloodless exercises are what high school and college students are introduced to as the "best," it is no surprise so many conclude that reading as a chore and not a pleasure.
Disapointing.......2007-04-12
These are suppose to be the best of the best and I was very disapointed. I was looking forward to ready something new and different but now I am turned off from short stories. The stories in general were depressing. Many didn't have a point or clear story. I only liked a couple of the story. I read this book as part of my book club and none of us were impressed.
They ain't what they used to be........2007-03-09
I guess I'm a throwback to the days when short stories were really stories: Hemingway, Anderson, Poe, London, even Stephen King. They had plots that moved, characters you loved or hated--page turners! Now, most SS seem to be emotional trips through someone's looking glass, vague attempts to reach into the reader's psyche for a response that we (I) have to work to deliver.
But it's probably me. I am well aware that some of these stories were originally published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares and The Paris Review, but most do not satisfy (me).
Modern short stories may be the height of literary excellence in 10,000 words; If these are "The Best American Short Stories," I think I'll go back to novels, where you can quite often find a work of fiction that is both elevating and hard to put down.
Perfect bedtime companion........2007-02-21
Love these type of anthologies. Some stories are excellent but some also,
are a bit lame. Still enjoyable just for the mix.
Amazon.com
At age 67, the perennially youthful John Updike may at last qualify as something of an elder statesman. But the Best American Short Stories annual--whose greatest hits package Updike has now assembled--is almost a generation older, having commenced publication in 1915. This staying power allows the hefty Best American Short Stories of the Century to perform double duty. It is, on the one hand, a priceless compendium of American manners and morals--a decade-by-decade survey of how we lived then, and how we live now. Yet Updike very consciously avoided the sociological angle in making his selection. "I tried not to select stories because they illustrated a theme or portion of the national experience," he writes in his introduction, "but because they struck me as lively, beautiful, believable, and, in the human news they brought, important." In this he succeeded: the 55 fictions that made the grade are most notable for their human (rather than merely historical) interest.
So who got in? There are a good number of cut-and-dried classics here, including Hemingway's "The Killers," Faulkner's "That Evening Sun Go Down," and Philip Roth's acidic spin on religious connivance, "Defender of the Faith." In other cases, major authors are represented by relatively minor works. Yet it's hard to quibble with the inclusion of Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, J.F. Powers, Eudora Welty--particularly when you take into account that their second-tier creations are fully the equal of anybody else's masterpieces. And the final third of the book really does constitute an honor roll of contemporary American fiction, with brilliant entries by Saul Bellow, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, John Cheever, and Vladimir Nabokov. (For the latter, Updike actually succumbed to his own idolatry and bent the rules for admission--but nobody who reads the hallucinatory "That in Aleppo Once..." will regret it.) It goes without saying that fiction fans will be complaining about the editor's sins of omission well into the next century. But no matter how you slice it, this remains an elegant and essential advertisement for the short form. --James Marcus
Book Description
Since the series' inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. Now THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY brings together the best -- fifty-six extraordinary stories that represent a century's worth of unsurpassed achievements in this quintessentially American literary genre. This expanded edition includes a new story from The Best American Short Stories 1999 to round out the century, as well as an index including every story published in the series. Of all the writers whose work has appeared in the series, only John Updike has been represented in each of the last five decades, from his first appearance, in 1959, to his most recent, in 1998. Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison to choose the finest stories from the years since 1915. The result is "extraordinary . . . A one-volume literary history of this country's immeasurable pains and near-infinite hopes" (Boston Globe).
Customer Reviews:
Not what I really wanted.......2007-10-10
Only unknown authors to me. I was expecting some works by Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry and/or Agatha Christie (maybe I ordered the wrong volume!). Also, some of the stories are quite dull and end as if the author didn't know how to end it! Quite disappointing!
A good effort.......2007-06-20
I read "The Best American Short Stories of the Century" to get a broad overview of the contemporary American short story genre. John Updike edited the collection. The introduction, written by Updike, is an interesting essay on the difficulties inherent in assembling any best-of collection. I suppose I would have liked to have read more of his thoughts on the form, its progress over the century and perhaps its place in contemporary fiction rather than his struggle in selecting pieces. But taken together with the forward, written by co-editor Katrina Kenison, the two essays offer an interesting look into the fickleness of publishing tastes and how those tastes can be influenced by only a few people. It makes the current consolidation of the publishing world seem slightly less troubling.
In any event, there are many people I would have included in the collection that are absent--John Edger Wideman comes quickly to mind, and Latino writers seem strikingly absent. And similarly, though I would not even pretend to know all that one needs to know to authoritatively assemble a collection with such a presumptuous title, I would nonetheless exclude more than one or two pieces that were included in the anthology. But as I reflect on the collection, it occurs to me that it was written more for the general reading public and less for a person interested in the diversity of the form and its practitioners. There are some great stories in the collection, however, I suspect that it more closely represents a particular writer's tastes than a true overview of the form.
The most interesting pieces for me were those written by writers who I associate with other genres. Robert Penn Warren's "Christmas Gift" is a beautifully raw and sensual story. And although it has been some years since I've read Warren's work, my vision of him was always that of a country gentlemen poet living the gentlemanly life in semi-rural Connecticut. The "Christmas Gift" rivals Faulkner or O'Connor in the evocation of the rough-knuckled rural life. The language of the piece and the structure of the lines felt fresh and new. The images were so unique and evocative that I must make a point not to mimic them in my own writing. The opening paragraph is wonderful, his attention to the details of the place and its people comes out with poetic precision that is at once authentic for the place and yet far, far above the circumstances of anybody involved. In this sense it brought to mind Steinbeck (another writer who didn't make the cut) yet his prose seemed even more carefully measured.
I have always admired E.B. White's essays and now, after having read the short story, "The Second Tree from the Corner," I have come to appreciate his abilities as a fiction writer. It has inspired me to track down some of his fiction--other than that written for children, though those stories are also good. "The Second Tree from the Corner" was somewhat unexpected. It's a decidedly non-country story--a far cry from many of the essays I have read. Its protagonist is a patient who is undergoing therapy--another surprise. However when I think about many of his essays, even the most well known essays written at the height of the war, essays that were intended to bring some measure of comfort to a society and culture that could not escape the general sense that they were indeed fighting for their very survival, I still find in these essays a certain sense of existential angst, of an uncertainty that seems thoroughly modern and non-sentimental.
When I hear people talk about White's well-known essay, "Once More to the Lake," it seems almost as though the last lines are forgotten. There is so much talk of lake weather, farm-girls, and berry pies that that final line seems to somehow not stick to memory. But what a line--the entire piece is informed by that last line. The last two paragraphs keep the essay from become a simple, shallow reflection on the American way of life. It was almost as though, despite the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Emperor, White could not help but feel almost desperately modern. When he wrote, "As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin felt the chill of death," he rescued the essay from the slash pile of Americana.
And just as he rescued "Once More to the Lake," he may have condemned "The Second Tree from the Corner." Though it is a good short story, it is not at all the warm and fuzzy piece that some may expect from White. And again, in the story White waits to put the last nail in the emotional structure of the piece, which could until the final line go in any one of a number of directions. The final direction of the piece is not nearly as comfortable as it perhaps could be. He closes: "He crossed the Madison, boarded the downtown bus, and rode all the way to Fifty-second Street before he had a thought that could rightly have been called bizarre."
We never discover the nature of his bizarre thoughts, we are left to fill them in with our own interpretation of the strange, never the less, the piece is far from conclusive or comforting.
Similarly, I was impressed with Elizabeth Bishop's "The Farmer's Children." Again I am familiar with her essays and of course her poetry, but I had never before read one of her short stories.
There were also stories by writers whom I have never before read, at least as far as I can remember. Susan Glaspell's 1917 story, "A Jury of her Peers," was impressively fresh and full of a very modern sense of feminism. Grace Stone Coates', "Wild Plums," was an emotionally complex story about class in the early years of the Great Depression.
I did not find what I wanted in the collection--that is, an overview of the contemporary American short story form. I suspect that there is no easy or fast way to come to such an understanding. Maybe that has something to do with the nature of the short story, like the personal essay it is a constantly shifting form, something that responds quickly to contemporary pressures, but also somehow stays true to its form as laid down by Chekhov (or in the case of the essay, Montaign).
I did find some things I did not expect in the collection. And thought I confess that I did not like some of the stories in the and found myself questioning why they were included at the expense of other writers, it was a worthwhile read.
Very Well Done.......2007-06-14
To reduce the boredom of exercise I decided to listen to audio books. Short stories work well as I'm inclined to keep moving until the end.
This audio CD collection is very good and really well done. Many of the stories are read by their authors. The sound is crisp and clean, and (with rare exception) the diction fluid and natural. The stories themselves are varied and high-quality.
One thing to note, though, is that the audio version does not contain all the stories from the print version. That may seem obvious, but if you are expecting to hear one or anther of the stories from the book, know that the CD set only includes 22 stories.
Grand American tales of the nineteen hundreds.......2007-03-24
The quintessential in the American short story is represented in this collection of fiction. I am reading these tales both for the pleasure they bring me and as a means of studying the craft of masters in a field I hope to enter. As part of my fiction class at the University of Iowa, I have read "Janus" and "Where are you going, Where have you been?" (Beattie and Oates).
These two tales explore the psyches of two women: one a successful married realtor obsessed who owns an artistic bowl that assumes a character of its own and, the other, a young girl who becomes a victim of her and others' obsession with her beauty.
Lesser-known authors are represented alongside the giants of American literature. Points of view representing various walks of life, ethnicities, languages and periods of time abound in the volume. For my own pleasure and out of curiosity, I have read "Zelig," a tale about a lonely man obsessed with saving his money, torn between his new home in America and his native Russian village (Rosenblatt).
Ann Beattie, Joyce Carol Oates and Benjamin Rosenblatt are authors whose works I have relished so far from the collection, and because the stories are so intricately woven, I find myself re-reading them, delaying the pleasure awaiting me in the remaining fifty plus tales.
NOT THE BEST.......2007-01-30
I AM A FAN OF BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES SERIES, BUT I DID NOT ENJOY THE STORIES CHOSEN HERE. I STARTED AT THE BEGINNING, TRIED THE END, FLIPPED THROUGH A FEW IN THE MIDDLE AND FOUND THEM DISAPPOINTING. THIS SERIES WOULD DO BETTER WITH MORE THAN ONE EDITOR TO MAKE THE FINAL CHOICES.
Book Description
A brilliant collection, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 highlights a bold mix of fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, television writing, and more alternative comics than ever. Compiled by Dave Eggers and students from his San Francisco writing center, contributors include Judy Budnitz, The Onion, The Daily Show, This American Life, and George Packer.
Customer Reviews:
Find new and interesting authors - expand your horizons.......2007-09-14
This is a great book for those who wish to be exposed to new contemporary authors. I especially enjoyed the story on Dubai by George Saunders, "The New Mecca". If you've never read about Dubai (or even if you have), it's a real treat to hear more about the Fantasyland of the Middle East...
Different brand of humor, but its the kind I like!.......2007-09-04
I first became a Dave Eggers fan after getting into McSweeney's thanks to an NPR review. I'm actually not retirement age, listening to NPR, but a 20 year old college student. This book is great because I can read it in short spurts, like before class starts, and not really lose the focus of an intense novel. Also, the stories in this edition are truly riveting- the tale of a "freedom fighter", a future "Body Works" corpse- and yet some just make your face light up- the best fake headlines, courtesy of The Onion, random first lines of books. Overall, this is random, but a great cross section of pop culture. Weird? yes. Nonrequired? It's so good, it should be required.
worst edition yet.......2007-08-24
I've been reading the Nonrequired Reading since its first volume, and it is usually one of my favorites of the series, but, much like this year's essay collection, this is the worst I've seen yet. I love Matt Groening, but his introduction just seemed pointless. Eggers has a new format, with his best new words, band names, fake headlines, etc. basically section one is a waste of trees. In fact, most in this volume is a waste of time and energy and ink. The only things worth reading are the Onion headlines, the excerpt from the military blog, Downey's Rolling Stone piece, "The Insurgent's Tale," which helps to humanize and somewhat better understand jihadist, Michael Lewis's "Wading Toward Home" a piece about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, Murakami's short story, Jeff Parker's short story, Rakoff's story of becoming a citizen, Joe Sacco's comic, Saunders fluff piece on Dubai, Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God, and finally, the masterful Kurt Vonnegut. But over half the book isn't worth reading. I hope next year's edition is back up to the standard Eggers set early in the series.
Some of it is more nonrequired than you may think.......2007-08-05
This is a good enough read mostly for the fact that you can skip whatever you don't care enough about and read only what peaks your interest. It's even better if you did like me and got it from the library.
The first section is good with all the Onion articles and Daily Show transcript. Then I also enjoyed Julia Sweeney's essay about letting go of God like he was almost an imaginary friend. Also, The Innocents and one or two of the other comics were good. False Cognate as well, was superbly done. And Kurt Vonnegut, c'mon, the man could find something interesting to say about parting your hair, let alone creative writing, which he did know quite a bit about. The best was the diagram of Kafka.
Too many of the stories unfortunately deal with Iraq and the Middle East in general, however, and this is the part I meant when you are able to skip over uninteresting parts. This is no doubtdue to the selection committee is mostly high school area kids from the Bay Area. You take that impressionable age group and you throw in a democratic selection process so everyone gets a say, you're going to wind up with a message along the lines of "Uh, this is like real important to us, man. Cuz". Yeah, you kiddies mean well, but teenagers, if you're going to attempt vague hippie-esque techniques, don't forget the dope, guns, and f'ing in the streets.
Good stuff.......2007-08-03
The collection of stories was surprisingly good. I'm not much for compilations like this, but I found myself truly enjoying this one.
Book Description
This year's collection is edited by the Pulitzer Prizewinning novelist and short story writer Michael Chabon. His eclectic selections include pieces from publications as diverse as Granta, Salon.com, Harvard Review, and The New Yorker. Another exciting installment of the always enticing, best-selling anthology.
Customer Reviews:
Rotten Selections for the Most Part.......2007-07-21
Chabon is much over-rated and he shows it with his taste for this selection. Always selected Alice Munro (yawn), the idiotic Cory Doctorow (must be a "friend" of Chabon), and several others ruins otherwise good choices of Perrotta, Lehane, McGuane, and Jones.
Redraw the Boundaries.......2007-04-12
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.
The Best American Short Stories 2005 (The Best American Series).......2007-03-09
Very entertaining. Wide range of subjects. An easy way to read many different authors.
As always, a pleasure from start to finish.......2007-01-10
It's hard NOT to love this series, and this provides another great opportunity to catch up and sample contemporary authors.
Great collection.......2007-01-02
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.
Book Description
Pulled once again from the hip to the mainstream, this collection of fiction, nonfiction, alternative comics, and "anything else that defies categorization" (USA Today) is as fresh and bold as ever. Compiled by Dave Eggers and students from his San Francisco writing center, it's a "bouillabaisse of nonrequired reading that should be required" (Publishers Weekly). Contributors include Jhumpa Lahiri, George Saunders, William Langewiesche, Stephen Elliott, and others.
Customer Reviews:
Best Non-required reading.......2006-11-03
The book arrived in a timely manner and was just as advertised. I also really enjoyed reading it.
A Delightful Series.......2006-01-05
I love most of the "Best American" series, but I eagerly look forward to the "Nonrequired Reading" title. This volume is one of the best, with wonderful, quirky, hard to find stories that range all over the place. Selected by high schoolers, it gives me hope for the future that this is what our youth find of interest.
the best.......2005-12-25
The fourth edition of David Eggers Best American Nonrequired Reading is an impressive collection of twenty four of the year's finest fiction, essays, and memoirs. Culled from a mountain of publications and assembled by a group of teenagers at Eggers' 826 Valencia; a non-profit writing lab, drop-in tutoring center and the Bay Area's only independent pirate supply shop, this collection is a refreshing approach to modern American literature.
Covering a huge spread of interests and emotions Best American has everything from William T. Vollmann's (The Came Out Like Ants!) search for subterranean Chinese casinos and opium dens hidden under the streets of Mexicali since the nineteenth century to the almost familiar lives of Douglas Trevor (Girls I Know) and Ryan Boudinot (Free Burgers For Life). Completely devoid of clichés and tired literary devices every page of the genre-less Best American will have you awaiting next year's collection.
Best Nonrequired Reading So Far.......2005-12-23
I'm a fan of short stories and essays in general because I tend to finish a good 60 to 70% of the ones I start. Contrast that to novels and non-fiction monographs, where, secondary to undertreated ADHD and a busy schedule, I probably complete less than 10% of books I start. That's okay, I like accumulating books with bookmarks a third of the way in. An unfinished book is like a totem, a sacred symbol of potential wisdom, something to anticipate. But still, there is something satisfying and confidence boosting about reading something completely in one sitting.
I like this series, the adolescents we are told do the selections must have a keen eye for talent. Unlike other reviewers, I was not bothered by some of the overlap, in particular multiple stories about sibling rivalry. It's a pretty big theme in the lives of most people with siblings, and its effects resonate in multiple realms of our relationships and interactions. Perhaps it's closer to the surface for the Bay area teenagers who made these selections. That's fine. Personally, I'm glad they didn't throw out any of these stories in the name of variety and balance. Oh, by the way, have you gotten into Sudoku yet? You really should.
I particularly enjoyed Molly McNett's work, I hope we'll hear more from her, as well as the contributions by Franken, Saunders, Vollmann, Dickinson, and Boudinot. Big fan, big fan. So far, 2005 is the best edition of this series.
Book Description
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 is a selection for young people of the best literature from mainstream and alternative American periodicals: from the New Yorker, Jane, Rolling Stone, Zyzzyva, Vibe, The Onion, Spin, Epoch, Time, Little Engines, Modern Humorist, Esquire, and more. Dave Eggers has chosen the highlights of 2001 for this genre-busting collection that includes new fiction, essays, satire, journalism -- and much more. From Eric Schlosser on french fries to Elizabeth McKenzie on awful family to Seaton Smith on how to "jive" with your teen, The Best American Nonrequried Reading 2002 is the first and the best.
Customer Reviews:
VERY pleasantly surprised.......2006-03-22
very funny, very interesting. appeals to all ages. I find it more interesting being in college than i would have in highschool. the whole series is perfect to take on the bus/train or to sit on the park or on the beach for a half hour reading a few chapeters.
Good, but much worse than the '03 edition.......2004-05-22
If you're trying to decide between this book and the '03 edition, get the '03. This one's good, but contains far too many magazine articles and not enough fiction. The stories it does feature are mostly very short and pack nowhere near the punch of the '03 selections.
Memories.......2004-04-22
The problem with some of these collections is that many of us who read magazines have already read those articles that appear in these end of year collections. The piece about Marilyn Manson was also in the Jonathan Lethem music collection too. It's good that Eggers has included some stuff for McSweeneys.net, comic books, and other non-mainstream sources. Those are usually the better ones anyway. I like Marc Bolan too.
Eclectic and Powerful Collection.......2004-03-13
Some highlights of this collection are:
Higher Education, the profile of Reese Perry, an African American high school basketball coach who shows up in an all-white midwest small town and, through his altruistic love, transforms them from prejudiced tribalists to open-minded cosmopolitans, a heart-breaking essay.
Bomb Scare, a graphic or comic book style story of a high school where all the kids and their parents lack a moral compass and surrender to nihilism, the inability to transcend their self-centeredness.
Why McDonald's French Fries Taste So Good, an excerpt from Fast Food Nation, which explains how the food industry uses sinister science to secretly make us addicted to the chemicals the food companies put in our food.
Stop That Girl, a short story about a ten-year-old girl whose mother marries a rich man and ends up in a False Eden where playing house leaves her feeling abandoned and unloved.
My Fake Job, an essay in which Rodney Rothman simply walks into a tech office and feigns being an employee, an act of charlatinism that isn't questioned by anyone at the office, casting light on how these fly-by-night business operations are so disjointed and full of isolated employees who suffer so much transience and alienation as the employers don't commit to them in the slightest.
Toil and Temptation, an essay about a Mexican immigrant who slowly gets caught up in consumerism and becomes more of a slave in America than he ever was in Mexico.
a great collection, check it out!.......2003-11-07
This was a fascinating collection. Most of the "Best American" collections are straight forward. You have a good idea of what you're going to get, and if you are widely read in those subjects (sports writing, science writing, short stories, etc), you may have come across most of those essays/stories. In this first collection of Non-required reading, you get the best stories and essays that would never be assigned in school and are from alternative magazines (rather than the large respected newspapers like the New York Times). The pieces collected very from short fiction, to political essays, to a graphic story (as in a story told in comic panels), to humor. It is a varied collection and most of the work is top-notch (I was less impressed with "Hubcap Diamondstar Halo").
Some highlights are "Speed Demons", "Journal of a new COBRA recruit" (yes, COBRA as in from G.I. Joe....this may be my favorite of the collection), "My Fake Job", "Fourth Angry Mouse", "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good", the two short pieces from the Onion, "Higher Education", and "Bomb Scare" (Bomb Scare is the graphic story). Just browsing through the table of contents, I was able to list 9 pieces that I would highlight and recommend. If there was nothing else in the collection, that would be enough to recommend it. But, there are other quality pieces in this collection. If you want to read short pieces (both fiction and nonfiction) that you might not ordinarily run across every day, this is the collection for you.
Book Description
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. Lending a fresh perspective to a perennial favorite, Walter Mosley has chosen unforgettable short stories by both renowned writers and exciting newcomers. The Best American Short Stories 2003 features poignant tales that explore the nuances of family life and love, birth and death. Here are stories that will, as Mosley writes in his introduction, "live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs." Dorothy Allison Edwidge Danticat E. L. Doctorow Louise Erdrich Adam Haslett ZZ Packer Mona Simpson Mary Yukari Waters
Customer Reviews:
Not that great..........2005-12-06
What has happened to literature? These stories are poorly written in my opinion. If these are the best, I'd hate to see the worst American short stories. Take "Moriya", a piece of trash written by Dean Paschal included in this collection for example. Hey Dean: just because no one has written a story about an adolescent "mecahnical minded" boy fantasizing, masturbating, and having sex with a doll doesn't make your story great literature. I've given up one American writing for the present...
A selection from MFA Land.......2005-01-31
Sigh. Not that most of these stories are actually bad but they do suffer from what an earlier reviewer called a "constricted cautiousness". Besides, maybe I've read too many of these types of pieces already but wow - are some of the themes here familiar. For example, being working-class in America (or a working class immigrant) really pounds rocks. And hey - there sure is a lot of quiet desperation in them there suburbs. Yawn yawn yawn.
Just very good literature.......2004-10-15
This delicious short stories collection has taken me a long time to read. Not because the stories were boring or bad but since every story was so condensed, rich and powerful I could not easily part from a certain state of mind and place and move on the next story.
I try to think what are the similar features of these 2003 stories and what can they say about our time...these are very different subjects, characters and places but maybe I could say that the stories discuss a self growth of some sort. Be it a teenager boy having his first sexual encounter with a demonically bewitching mechanically doll or a person reflecting how his life has developed from a certain event as a Chinese delivery boy in the streets of New York -- but off course I guess this is a too easy generalization that can be said of any story whatsoever.
"Why the sky turns red when the sun goes down" by Ryan Harty is a good example of the stories ability to emotionally stir you up and touch an issue very relevant for parents everywhere, maybe this is what made this story so special for me. The story starts out as a very ordinary family crisis tale. The father learns that something happened to his boy and goes out to fetch him. The turning point comes when the boy is seen lying down with his hand thrown a few yards away from his body. Slowly you realize that this is a mechanical child and prepare yourself for some science fiction descriptions, which do not arrive. Apart from the very central "mechanical boy" fact this is a very real story in all its levels, with nothing "modern" or alienated about it. By the end of the story I remained with the strong feeling that mechanical or not, the parents are facing the same questions parents everywhere are asking themselves and mainly "are we doing the right thing". How do we keep our children and families safe? What are the lies we tell our children and ourselves in order to keep us safe? "Why the sky turns red..." has the heavy atmosphere that is very characteristic of many of the other stories in this collection. Something hard and heavy is hanging above and the characters are having a hard time trying to push it away, like a certain pain that has become a part of your life. The story "The Bees" suffers (or rather enjoys?) the same heavy atmosphere, only here this is not something between husband and wife but between a man and himself. The man is in turmoil because of something in the past that clouds his present. When the punishment arrives, you accept it as the anticipation and tension has been built up all along.
I did not read the previous Best American Short stories but feel as if Walter Mosely has done an incredible job. Or maybe these fine authors have made his job easier. This is a masterpiece collection of stories.
"Ghost Knife", "Moriya", " Baby Wilson", "Devotion" and "Future Emergencies" are some of my favorite stories in this collection. Off course I can relate easily to stories which discuss women, parents or people who are in a position similar to mine, but the greatness of these stories is that you can feel the pain, helplessness and anger of people in totally different surroundings and situations, such as immigrants recalling something in their past or people from another culture all together (the stories "Night Talkers" or "Marie-Ange's Ginen" which are set in Haiti for example).
This is truly good literature and my only regret is that I cannot discuss these stories in a literature class so I can understand all the further layers.
Do not miss the last few pages of the book where every writer gives a few lines about his story and how it came through.
if you only read one story, read "The Bees".......2004-06-03
Having never read one of the "Best American Short Stories" collections, I have no way to judge this latest edition to past efforts. The only thing I can speak to is how I felt about the stories contained in this collection and how good I think they are. There are some very fine stories in this collection with one in particular that I just loved.
Louise Erdrich has long been my favorite novelist, but I was still nervous about what she would make from the short story format. "Shamengwa" is a moving story which revolves around a violin and the effect it has had, in various ways, on the lives of several members of a community. Anthony Doerr has one of the better stories in the collection, "The Shell Collector". With such a deceptively simple title, one would not expect such raw power and an interesting story about a man who lives alone but has gained worldwide attention because of the poison in one particular kind of shell. Another standout is Ryan Harty's "Why the Sky Turns Red when the Sun Goes Down", a story of a family with a robotic son (literally, the boy is a robot, or, perhaps an android). This is a touching story.
The best story in the collection, and then one that blew me away is Dan Chaon's "The Bees". This one was completely unexpected and shocking. While this one would probably fall into the category of "horror", don't let that mislead you. This one starts out easy, just identifying a man and his family and we start to learn about his past. He wasn't a good man during his first marriage and he deeply regrets it. But as the story continues and we get snippets of revelation, the tension grows and so does this air of creepiness that I got while I was reading it. The tension does not let up until the end of the story, but rather it keeps building because we don't quite know what is going on and this is not what you would assume a typical "horror" story would be. It is a psychological horror and it is just gripping.
This is a very fine collection, but "The Bees" was the one story that truly stood out for me and it continues to be memorable.
-Joe Sherry
disappointing.......2004-05-09
I so look forward to these annual volumes of BEST short stories. These collections normally have such a variety of subject and style. Not this volume. The subject of nearly every story was the alienation of immigrants in America. For the first time ever, I didn't finish reading the collection. I mean, I love popcorn, but want variety!
Amazon.com
Anthologies are tricky things for editors: to select a story for inclusion is to make oneself a target for readers who wonder hotly why X or Y or Z wasn't chosen. And to be so brash as to deem an anthology the best anything of the century practically invites scorn and condemnation. But with The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, Tony Hillerman, Edgar-winning author, and Otto Penzler, founder of the Mysterious Press, step boldly to the firing line with a salvo of 55 stories that are so devious and absorbing, challenging and rewarding that most readers will hold their fire.
The collection stretches from O. Henry's 1903 tale of a bank robber who abandons his trade ("A Retrieved Reformation") to Dennis Lehane's unsettling sketch of a post-Gothic southern town and its canine conundrum ("Running Out of Dog," 1999), and brings together authors who at first seem uneasy bedfellows. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway jostle for space with Donald Westlake and Stephen Greenleaf; Willa Cather and Flannery O'Conner stare combatively at Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton. But as one reads along, these potentially tense alliances relax: the boundaries between "modern" and "classic," "pulp" and "literature" evanesce, leaving instead a shimmering web of serendipitous affiliations: O. Henry and Stephen King nod amiably to one another, united by the skill of their devious narrative twists.
Hillerman and Penzler's selections reflect a century-long shift in mystery fiction from an emphasis on an exterior landscape--replete with the tangible artifacts of who, what, where, when, how, why--to a growing interest in the geography of interiority. This landscape thrives on the amorphousness of its own features. In Tom Franklin's "Poachers," for example, the puzzle hardly matters at all: real people, and their endlessly convoluted relationships, do. Three orphaned brothers who live as predators in the swamps of the Gulf Coast, the old widower who loves them, the sheriff who pities them all--who kills two of the boys and blinds a third? We never really know. In any case, Franklin's infinitely shaded nuances of silence and speech matter far more than the violence of the crime itself.
And for those readers who, when all is read and done, still insist that they could have done a much better job of judging, Penzler's disarming editorial shrug serves to remind that any anthology should be approached with equanimity, a touch of resignation, and not a little humor: "There are no scientific instruments that can tell a reader which of Harlan Ellison's two Edgar-winning short stories is better. It is a coin toss, and it can't be anything else. Let's just live with it." Happily, The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century is an extraordinarily rewarding companion. --Kelly Flynn
Book Description
In THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF THE CENTURY, best-selling author Tony Hillerman and mystery expert Otto Penzler present an unparalleled treasury of American suspense fiction that every fan will cherish. Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery's eminent history from the turn-of-the-century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammett and Chandler, to the mystery story's rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction. Penzler, the Best American Mystery Stories series editor, and Hillerman winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Esquire, Collier's and The New Yorker. Giants of the genre abound -- Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others -- but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top-notch writing of a hundred years' worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.
Customer Reviews:
A must buy for fans of the authors.......2006-03-13
Editors are always a little presumptuous when they use a title starting with "The Best..." The editor of this volume has selected 46 American authors from the 20th century, and included one story by each author. He has included some well known novelists like Faulkner, who were not known for writing short stories or mysteries; and excluded some well known mystery writers who are known for writing short stories, e.g., Marcia Muller, Lawrence Sanders, Michael Collins, etc.
Some of the stories are crime stories rather than mysteries, i.e., you know who pulled the trigger. It is a good collection of stories (in spite of omissions) starting with O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation," originally published in 1903, and ending with Dennis Lehane's "Running Out of Dog," originally published in 1999. In Between there are stories by Dashiell Hammett, Ring Lardner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner, Ellery Queen, John D. MacDonald, Ross MacDonald, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Sue Grafton, and many other writers. The short stories can be read in any order, starting with your favorite authors, and can be read at leisure. It includes stories like Cornell Woolrich's "Rear Window," later made into a motion picture.
Many of the authors included are best known as novelists. It is necessary to track down their short stories in order to have a complete collection of their work, and that can be difficult as many magazines have gone out of existance, and the stories may or may not be included in anthologies.
The collection is a bargain buy with 800 pages of stories. There are short biographical sketches of the authors at the end of the volume. Many of them died young. Jacques Futrelle went down with the Titanic, staying behind after helping women and children into the lifeboats.
Most modern authors do not write many short stories. As one author noted, it takes a significant amount of time and intellectual energy to write a good story, and there is very little financial return. Consequently, it is a rare find when you encounter a short story by an established author.
First Rate Anthology - Good Selections from Ten Decades.......2006-01-03
The Best American Mysteries Stories of the Century, compiled by Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler, is a remarkably good anthology. The editors imposed few rules on themselves, other than identifying the best stories. Some years are skipped while others have two or three offerings. They did limit their choices to only one story for a given author, perhaps unfairly penalizing exceptional writers like Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Harry Kemelman, Ellery Queen, John McDonald, and Ross McDonald.
In general (but with clear exceptions like A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell), the earlier stories are largely puzzle mysteries, ones that challenge the reader to outsmart the author, while the later stories offer more character development and psychological depth. Readers less familiar with puzzle mysteries may find the earlier stories a bit foreign, and might benefit by reading the stories in this collection in reverse chronological order, thereby, beginning with more familiar terrain.
My favorites span the 1930s thru the 1950s, a period in which American authors began that major transformation of the American mystery as best characterized by the writing of Raymond Chandler. With Chandler's guidance, the pulp mystery fiction of earlier decades metamorphosed successfully into what might be called formal literature, writing more concerned with character development and with social issues.
More recent decades include great stories like The Comforts of Home (Flannery O'Connor), The Possibility of Evil (Shirley Jackson), Do With Me What You Will (Joyce Carol Oates), The Parker Shotgun (Sue Grafton), and Poachers (Tom Franklin).
Fortunately for the avid reader of mystery stories, many authors successful in other genre have seemingly been unable to resist trying their hand at the mystery story. In this anthology we find, for example, O. Henry, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor.
Not all stories will likely appeal to all readers, but there is a treasure trove of gems in this collection. There are 10 stories dating from 1900-1928, 16 from 1933-1957, 9 from 1962-1978, and 11 from 1981-1990. This is an exceptional anthology.
This book is boring. .......2004-08-19
I am surprised to see this book got 5 stars from all reviews. I have bought this book for two years now and I must have attempted to read it at least 7 times. Maybe it's the very small prints, maybe the very first few stories are just plain slow and boring, I kept putting it down and started reading other books. I even tried to read from the middle of the book to see if other stories would interest me. They didn't.
This is not even a good between books book.
As good a collection of mystery stories as you'll get........2002-06-21
Regardless of whether you agree with the choices of all the stories selected within this book, it is a great representation of american mystery stories in the 20th century. The inclusion of some of the centuries most prolific mystery writers, (Chandler, Hammett, Cain, MacDonald (Ross & John D.)), famous novelists (Faulkner, Steinbeck, Buck), modern writers (Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, Sue Grafton, etc.), and countless others make this a fantastic collection. Only a "sour grapes" type of personality could not appreciate this book. I guarantee that this collection will have you wanting to read more from some of these authors, and probably expose you to authors you weren't aware of previously. With stories varying from 10 to 40 pages, you can choose how long you want to read. I am an avid mystery reader, and I while there are many great books and stories I have read, I feel this is the best purchase I have made for the assortment of authors, styles, and stories I have been exposed to.
Good Collection.......2002-04-07
Some stories you've read, some forgotten, some never heard of before, are the rewards in this fine anthology. Take the time to enjoy this one.
Amazon.com
When a great annual collection comes out, it's hard to know the reason why. Was there a bumper crop of high-quality stories, or was this year's guest editor especially gifted at winnowing out the good ones? Either way, the 2000 edition of The Best American Short Stories is a standout in a series that can be uneven. Its editor, E.L. Doctorow, seems to have a fondness for the "what if?" story, the kind of tale that posits an imagination-prodding question and then attempts to answer it. Nathan Englander's "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" asks: What if a WASPy financial analyst, riding in a cab one day, discovers to his surprise that he is irrevocably Jewish? In "The Ordinary Son," Ron Carlson asks: What if you are the only average person in a family of certifiable geniuses? And Allan Gurganus's "He's at the Office" asks: What if the quintessential postwar American working man were forced to retire? This last story is narrated by the man's grown son, who at the story's opening takes his dad for a walk. Though it's the present day, the father is still dressed in his full 1950s businessman regalia, including camel-hair overcoat and felt hat. The two walk by a teenager. "The boy smiled. 'Way bad look on you, guy.'"
My father, seeking interpretation, stared at me. I simply shook my head no. I could not explain Dad to himself in terms of tidal fashion trends. All I said was "I think he likes you."
The exchange typifies the writing showcased in this anthology: in these stories, again and again, we find a breakdown of human communication that is sprightly, humorous, and devastatingly complete. A few more of the terrific stories featured herein: Amy Bloom's "The Story," a goofy metafiction about a villainous divorcee; Geoffrey Becker's "Black Elvis," which tells of, well, a black Elvis; and Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Third and Final Continent," a story of an Indian man who moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like the collection itself, Lahiri's story amasses a lovely, funny mood as it goes along. --Claire Dederer
Book Description
Despite increasing competition, this annual collection remains the place to find the most compelling short fiction published in the U.S. and Canada" (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY). To usher in the new millennium, THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2000 brims with a rich variety of lyrical and wise stories about our country's past, present, and future. This year's editor, the best-selling author E. L. Doctorow, has chosen new works by Raymond Carver, Amy Bloom, Ha Jin, Walter Mosley, and Jhumpa Lahiri, among others.
The most popular compendium of its kind, THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES is the only volume that offers the finest short fiction each year,
chosen by a distinguished author.
Customer Reviews:
WONDERFUL.......2007-03-11
--my viewpoint: So many of these are great works--for both mind and the deep heart-of heart that H. Klemp writes about. Wideman is tuned in to the best of this form!
A banner year for the BASS anthology........2005-09-30
BASS has its ups and downs, since the senior editor shifts every year. Editor Doctorow offers a balanced and canny selection of stories published in 1999. Best news: the Bill Buford-inspired style of "dirty realism" (stories about the grungy underbelly of the world) are starting to fade. Still, these authors aren't all sweetness and light; witness Junot Diaz's "Nilda" (The New Yorker), whose bystander narrator can do nothing to help a woman whose life is spinning out of control. In fact, few stories here have characters living with much control--if the protagonist has any control, it's usually due to bullying (as with Amy Bloom's funny "The Story" [Story magazine, no longer published]). Percival Everett's "The Fix" (New York Stories) is a clever fantasy about a man who can make any broken thing work--a talent that backfires on him. Kathleen Hill's "The Anointed" (DoubleTake) offers a touching view of childhood. Annie Proulx's Wyoming story, "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water" (GQ), has one of the best last lines I've read in some time. Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Third and Final Continent" (The New Yorker) reminded me of Flannery O'Connor, with its grotesque characters at the edge of existence. Doctorow offers an erudite introduction; there's no question he's read a great deal and absorbed it all. Katrina Kenison is a heroine of American letters: she reads upwards of 3000 stories annually to cut the list to 120 for the guest editor. Getting the new BASS anthology is a highlight of my year; this series is a mirror for contemporary life (sometimes in a bathroom, sometimes in a funhouse).
poop in toilet.......2004-09-09
everybody does it. why do we all feel like we must share?
99 was a good year.......2002-03-02
Doctorow has excellent taste in short fiction. With only a few exceptions (Junot Diaz and Marilyn Krysl), the stories in this collection are excellent. Amy Bloom's story, "The Story", which i think is a great title, is an interesting story about writing, about the characters in the story, and it is a story about itself.Michael Byers has a great story about obsession and attraction rather than love (though he does go on a page or two too long). Ron Carlson has a wonderful story about about happiness and the ways you can get there. It is one of the best of these stories. There is a story from Raymond Carver, and it is as good as anything he has written. Kiana Davenport's story deals with abuse and family. Everett's "The Fix" is the best story in this anthology, which it's allusion to Christ, in a sort of Kafka-like way. Gautreaux's story about atonement is a winner as always. I remember reading Gurganus' story, "He's at the Office" when it was first published in the new yorker, and i remember thinking at the time that it had to be one of the better stories i'd read that year, so it was a pleasure to see doctorow select it. Aleksandar Hemon and Jhumpa Lahiri both have well told stories about being a foreigner in this country, though one has an uplifting feel and the other is more bleak, but both are a pleasure to read. Annie Proulx's "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water" is a story you should read. but don't let the title fool you, it doesn't fit the story. Sherwood's story about loss is weak and a better selection could have been made, but it wasn't dull like the two mentioned earlier. i could go on about the stories i haven't mentioned, but there is a space constraint. i've only read best american short stories 2000 and 2001, so i can't say if these selected are better or worse than what is normally picked, but i can say that there are 18 stories here that are fine examples of what a short story should be.
A Good Year.......2001-02-20
I disagree with many of the reviewers. This is an above average volume. With the exception of a couple of stories, I found the rest all highly readable and some of them truly outstanding. Ron Carlson, Allan Gurganus and Annie Prolux's pieces are gems. Carlson's The Ordinary Son reads like Salinger's the Glass Family, a surreal journey the keeps you turning pages. I was disappointed when it ended. He's At The Office is one of the best short stories I have read in a long time, absolutely engrossing from the begining to end and tragic without the slightest hint of sentimentality. Hard to do. Prolux piece is from her latest collection which has some great stories in it, but this one is a killer. The rest all fall slightly below these in my opinion but they are all good reads without a great deal of blather. Worth the price of admission.
Book Description
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. Dave Eggers, who edits The Best American Nonrequired Reading annually, has once again chosen the best and least-expected contemporary fiction, nonfiction, satire, investigative reporting, alternative comics, and more from publications large, small, and on-line -- Zoetrope, Tin House, the Atlantic Monthly, Bomb, SPX, the New York Times, Texas Monthly, GQ, Iowa Review, Esquire, and others. Read on for "some of the best literature you haven't been reading . . . and it's fantastic. All of it" (St. Petersburg Times).
Customer Reviews:
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004 (The Best American Series).......2007-07-17
A great read, with a heartfelt Introduction by Viggo Mortensen on the power and passion of the word! --Diana Divine, Los Angeles, CA
What Exactly Is "Nonrequired" Anyway?.......2005-08-26
Most of the copious volumes from the Best American series are formidable collections in categories that you can really sink your teeth into. You know what you're getting with the Best American writing about Travel, Science and Nature, Music, Mysteries, or even Recipes. But this "Nonrequired" series is either a vanity project for cooler-than-thou editor Dave Eggers, or a dead letter office for orphaned submissions and quirky leftovers. So what does "Nonrequired" really mean as a category? Is it supposed to mean writing from alternative publications or unorthodox sources? That's partially true here, but not entirely, because this volume has submissions from New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and Esquire. Is "Nonrequired" supposed to mean cutting-edge styles or offbeat subject matter? With a few noteworthy exceptions, this is not really the case either, because the vast majority of submissions here are completely typical short stories that are often perfectly competent (though sometimes not), but are not out of the ordinary in any literary sense. This is especially curious because there is already a Best American Short Stories collection. Is "Nonrequired" supposed to feature writers from alternative lifestyles, immigrant cultures, or disadvantaged social conditions? That is the case for some of the submissions here, but this also is not consistently the case.
Most awkwardly, this mostly fictional collection has two observational essays and four journalistic articles. Ironically, the four non-fiction articles are the best items here because they deal with interesting subjects, but their placement seems arbitrary and inconsistent. And finally, this book gets off to a horrendous start, with Eggers' so-very-not-funny foreword, and the stultifying introduction by Viggo Mortensen, who acts far better than he writes. So what's the point of having all these writings in this one volume, with the poorly defined category trying to group them together? Maybe it's so Eggers and his group of teen interns with big thoughts can feel like they've served the world, by compiling material that's apparently cool enough for us because it's cool enough for them. But one person's cool is another person's cold. And that's when you can even figure out what the category is supposed to mean [~doomsdayer520~]
Review for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004.......2005-07-29
I liked the foreward and the introduction the best. I was disappointed in some of the stories. I believe there were students on the selection panel for the stories, so I was surprised at the language/content in some of the selections.
Where are the truly overlooked gems?.......2005-06-28
Not here...
But, what do you expect from the man who only publishes his friends/lovers? Here, again, you'll find Eggers friends whose work he's published elsewhere, people Eggers knows at the Onion web site, etc. etc. This is a great idea for a Best American book, but sooner or later, McSweeney's is going to have to stop pretending to publish overlooked, outsider, experimental, or even good, work. Where can one really find that, I wonder...
Where are the truly overlooked gems?.......2005-06-28
Not here...
But, what do you expect from the man who only publishes his friends/lovers? Here, again, you'll find Eggers' friends whose work he's published elsewhere, people Eggers knows at the Onion web site, etc. etc. This is a great idea for a Best American book, but sooner or later, McSweeney's is going to have to stop pretending to publish overlooked, outsider, experimental, or even good, work. Where can one really find that, I wonder...
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Books Index
Books Home
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Contemporary
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The Best American Essays 2006 (Best American Essays)
The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 (The Best American Series)
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 (Prize Stories (O Henry Awards))
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 (The Best American Series)
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006 (The Best American Series)
