From 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
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
While some installments of this annual anthology could more accurately be titled The Best Short Stories Published by the New Yorker," many of this year's selections are culled from more obscure literary magazines, with a number of new voices standing alongside series regulars such as Joyce Carol Oates and Alice Adams. Among the more established writers, a standout is Jamaica Kincaid's "In Roseau," a tale of a girl who gets involved in an erotic triangle with a married couple. Two writers who have won critical acclaim without yet reaching the wide audience they deserve weigh in with very impressive pieces: Stuart Dybeck offers a surreal yet oddly coherent story of love, loss and Chinese food in "Paper Lantern"; while Melanie Rae Thon's "Xmas, Jamaica Plain" demonstrates her considerable gift for capturing a character's voice. Few of the new writers that Wideman includes hold their own against their better-known counterparts; an exception is Junot Diaz, whose "Ysrael" is a fierce and unblinking story of a disfigured boy who wears a mask and the other children determined to see beneath it. But other newer writers, such as Jason Brown and William Lychak, seem in their different ways to be prime examples of the sort of middle-of-the-road fiction produced by M.F.A. programs: dutifully well-crafted stories whose content is derivative and uninspired. Overall, this is an engaging collection, though one that provides scant evidence for the existence of a new generation of talented short story writers.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
