The Best American Short Stories 2011

What struck me in reading this anthology, edited by Geraldine Brooks, is how predictable I am. I bet if you know me, or have been reading this blog for long enough, you could go through this book and pick out which stories I was going to like best and which I would, given an Exacto knife, excise from the collection.

Take, for example, Allegra Goodman’s “La Vita Nuova,” a story of a very young woman, left by her fiance, caring for a small boy and finding a way back to herself through art-making. Obviously, I loved it.

Or “Dog Bites” by Ricardo Nuila and “To the Measures Fall” by Richard Powers, stories which feature diagrams and bolded, rhetorical questions respectively. I could have cared about each of these stories but their po-mo interventions yanked me right out of the mood.

I was happy to see again all the stories I’d seen before: Jennifer Egan’s brutally beautiful “Out of Body,” Claire Keegan’s “Foster” (I’ll take a sad, quiet little girl protagonist any day), and Nathan Englander’s structurally unusual “Free Fruit for Young Widows,” a story that easily could have gone wrong for me, but pulled though with enough heart to outweigh the philosophy. (Okay, so there was one surprise “like” in here.)

Megan Mayhew Bergman’s “Housewifely Arts” had a talking parrot at its center, which was a bit too twee, and Joyce Carol Oates’ “ID,” which, with its seedy Atlantic City premise, was way over-dramatic. I felt like I got it long before she was done hitting her notes. My friends write way better fiction than these two stories–”Best of” editors, take note!

Two stories that featured towns as their protagonist really worked for me: Caitlin Horrocks’s tale of a community that finds a way to skip bleak unproductive winters, “The Sleep,” and Steven Millhauser’s totally strange, haunting “Phantoms,” a story I wanted to turn fictional in order to visit in person.

I loved Elizabeth McCracken’s “Property,” one of those stories that you think is about one thing until you realize it’s about something else until you realize it’s about something else, and all of those things are so, so sad. George Saunders’s “Escape from Spiderhead” also veered this way and that, through weird sex and weirder prison experiments to unexpected redemption and grace.

My very favorite story in the anthology came courtesy of Bret Anthony Johnston. Here is the first line of “Soldier of Fortune”: “Her name was Holly Hensley, and except for two years when her father was transferred to a naval base in Florida, her family lived across the street from mine.” Now, this sentence may sound fairly to-the-point, there only to deliver background information. By the last page of the story, though, it becomes clear that while it may have been simple, that sentence was anything but direct. The protagonist of the story, a teenage boy, cares for Holly’s dog after a terrible accident befalls the baby of the family and the tender, restrained, realistic relationships that play out from there made this, for me, the obvious winner of the anthology. When I received a Kindle for Christmas, the first book I bought was Bret Anthony Johnston’s collection–watch out for a post on it soon!

Beaten, Seared, and Sauced by Jonathan Dixon

I should have known that I published my year-end post too early! I just finished another book during the final days of 2011, a Christmas gift my aunt and uncle picked off of my wish list: Beaten, Seared, and Sauced: On Becoming a Chef at the Culinary Institute of America by Jonathan Dixon. Jonathan is the husband of the excellent Nelly Reifler, which is how I knew of him and his book. I also saw an excerpt from the book performed at SWEET: Actors Reading Writers and knew I wanted to read it.

The excerpt found Jonathan, a student at the CIA, attending and participating in a chicken-slaughter. The actor performed the passage as poignant, but also funny, particularly a line about Jerry Garcia. It was terrific. Afterwards, when I briefly spoke to Jonathan about it, he said that he didn’t think the passage was funny at all! Reading it for myself, within the context of the rest of the book, I can see his point–it did come off as much more serious.

Most Memorable, 2011

I named this post MOST MEMORABLE rather than BEST OF or something like that because I not only feel eager to revisit some of my favorite reads of the year, but my least favorite as well–perhaps Christmas brings out my catty side. I thought I’d stick to two books per list, with some honorable mentions, and chose them by simply thinking back about which books really stuck out to me, leaving off the list books that I read this year but aren’t “of” this year, like, for example, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The lists basically amount to my favorite and least favorite, but keep me from having to decide if I really did like The Marriage Plot more than some of the other excellent books I’ve read this year!

MOST MEMORABLE (RIGHT REASONS)

1. IN ZANESVILLE by JO ANN BEARD. Of course. Have I mentioned a list of favorites, ever, that didn’t include a book by Ms. Beard? If you haven’t read this yet–especially if you’ve ever been a fourteen year old girl–you need to get on it.

2. THE MARRIAGE PLOT by JEFFREY EUGENIDES. Ok. So my friend/coworker asked me the other day, “Did he just use Madeline to write about the two men in the book?”  She leaned toward answering “yes,” and although she was emotionally engaged in the book, and like me, felt as if she were reading something frighteningly close to her college experience, she wasn’t totally thrilled by the idea that Eugenides might have used his female character as an excuse to write about the men. I absolutely see her point, especially given that the last paragraph of the book is given to Mitchell, not Madeline, which definitely tells you something about whose story you’ve been reading. But, my thought is that Eugenides’s process was somewhat exposed in this novel. To me, it seemed like Madeline was his way into this world, and she introduced him to these people; I did not feel as if she were “used.” I do think that she was not the most interesting person in this book, but being less extreme of a personality than Leonard or Mitchell, acting less radically, I was able to slip into the book beside her and experience it with her. I’d love to know what others think about this! And, love to think about this. Hence its place on the list.

Also: By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, Bright Before Us by Katie Arnold-Ratliff, Revolution by Deb Olin Unferth.

MOST MEMORABLE (WRONG REASONS)

1. GREAT HOUSE by NICOLE KRAUSS. This was possibly one of the worst books I’ve ever read. And I was so unsuspecting going into it. I still can’t believe that she got away with this one. Pretentious, boring, complicated, coincidental. Blech.

2. SKIPPY DIES by PAUL MITCHELL. I really didn’t like this book, but it was what it was–not to my taste. It didn’t OFFEND me in its badness, like GREAT HOUSE.

Here’s to reading in 2012!

The Novels of Tayari Jones

My lovely friend Kristen, in exchange for a typing favor I did her, sent me a package that included all three of Tayari Jones’s novels. I’ve been wanting to read her work for some time, since Kristen, her husband and I went to see her in conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was there to see the latter writer, but Ms. Jones was such a sparkly conversationalist and excellent storyteller that I was intrigued by her, too. And, of course, she came highly recommended by Kristen, and she once chose the story of another dear friend as winner in a big contest, so she’s long been on my good side.

I read the three novels in the order that Ms. Jones wrote them, starting with Leaving Atlanta, moving on to The Untelling, and yesterday, finishing up with Silver Sparrow. What a treat to read them in such quick, greedy succession.

Leaving Atlanta is the novel that made Tayari Jones famous. It is divided into three sections, each focused around a different fifth grade child in the same class. The setting is Atlanta, 1982, amidst a tragic, true-life episode, the Atlanta Child Murders in which twenty-nine African-American children were kidnapped and murdered. Chilling. The first section is Tasha’s, and is told in the third-person. Not knowing how the book was constructed while I read her section, I was fully invested in her character–not quite an outsider but not one of the most popular girls, not unkind, but not particularly kind, either. Her portrayal was fairly realistic, in this sense–she was right in the middle, not a very special child, but still, because of the careful attention paid to her, special to the reader. Tasha’s life is touched in a terrible way by the unknown murderer and, surprisingly, touched in a positive way, too. 

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

As I admitted in my Brooklyn Book Festival post, at some point in the last few years, I got snobby about Tom Perrotta. In my head, his work became a little too easy, too commercial, for my taste. This, even though I’ve really liked the books of his that I’ve read as I read them. I don’t really know what my problem was–the movies that have been made, his general success, misplaced snark–I don’t know. Luckily, I saw him read a snip from his newest novel, The Leftovers, heard him speak, got over myself and got the novel.

The Leftovers is the story of the aftermath of a nonreligious (or, as some factions see it, a religious) rapture. Rapture, I mean, capital R.

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

For two years in a row, I saw Sam Lipsyte read the same passage from his novel The Ask at the Brooklyn Book Festival. I forgave him for reading it twice only because it was an ideal snippet to read in a short time frame: funny, sad, smart. It made me want to read more. And so, when I finally received the book in the mail from my brother for my birthday, I was excited to get the long form, to find out how that snippet I knew so well fit in to the rest of the book.

I have to say that I was, sadly, a bit disappointed.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

One day during college, I ran into two friends who’d just emerged from the campus bookstore, giddy over the new copies of Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex they had clutched to their chests. Their enthusiasm was impressive, but pales in comparison to the fiasco my friend and I participated in a few weeks ago in advance of Mr. Eugenides reading at the Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene. My friend showed up at the bookstore the day before the reading and purchased three copies of the book. Each copy came with a little tag that read “group 1.” At the reading the next night, those brandishing books purchased at Greenlight, with the group 1 tag, would have the privilege of being first in line to have their books signed. Hardcore already, right? Well–the reading was at 7:30pm and was standing-room only. My friend showed up at 6pm, I did at 6:20. We positioned ourselves near the podium and kept getting scootched up until finally, when Mr. Eugenides took the mic, my face was about 12 inches from his. We were uncomfortably close to the man, and had been standing for hours, and were feeling awkward. Where does one look when in such close proximity to the reader? He was also wearing an almost identical version of the outfit he is wearing in the much-discussed yet still inexplicable Times Square billboard promoting his novel:

Oh boy, that didn’t help matters. But, we were indeed at the front of the line to get our books signed. And what did we do? We got them signed and bolted. No meaningful conversation. No “I’m a writer and you’ve inspired me!” No “You can make it out to…” It was a crazy amount of build-up for basically zero pay-off.

Until, of course, I read the book.

October’s a Wash

My first and probably only post this October is to tell you that I haven’t finished a book all month. Currently, I am just getting immersed in The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, and loving it, but prior to starting it a week or so ago, my reading list has skewed towards work-related texts. Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve been reading and what I’ve been reading about:

 

Interesting stuff. But I hope to return to more literary pursuits next month!

The Ice Storm by Rick Moody

I’ve rarely seen a movie made from a book and then read the book afterwards. But, in the case of The Ice Storm, I’ve seen bits and pieces of the movie (Elijah Wood!) about a million times. As far as I remember, I’ve never seen it straight through, but have always been excited to find it in progress as I’ve been clicking through the channels. The 70s aesthetics, the look of the ice storm itself, the abject sadness of it: entrancing.

And–I mostly liked the book, too! Thank goodness–it would have been so disappointing to have hated it. What I thought was most successful was how willing Rick Moody was to go to the ugly side.

Brooklyn Book Festival 2011

When my alarm went off at 9am Sunday, I wasn’t too psyched. I was sleepy after a late night, had a headache, my random foot injury hurt…but it was the BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL so I hauled down to Brooklyn Heights and settled into St. Francis McArdle Hall for the morning.

I had wanted to see Justin Torres and Tayari Jones speaking about writing childhood, but either I read the schedule wrong the other day or some events got changed around because their panel ended up happening at 10am, before I arrived. My back-up choice was not bad, though.

11am: The Good, the Bad, and the Family with Sergio Troncoso, Elizabeth Nunez and Tom Perrotta, moderated by Rob Spillman

These three writers read short selections that pertained to family from their most recent books. Both Troncoso and Nunez’s excerpts struck me as a touch didactic, but their pieces were out of context and they were charming when discussing the way they negotiated their family’s reactions to their work and how they mined their family’s experiences to create stories that, in the end, were fictional, and their own. I really liked Tom Perrotta’s reading. I hadn’t given a lot of thought to his new book because, although I’ve always enjoyed reading him, for some reason I’d gotten it into my head that he was too commercial for me anymore. Hearing him read a passage about a teenage girl in the aftermath of a non-religious rapture in which many people on earth disappeared, I realized that was dumb. The book sounds great. Rob Spillman asked the questions and time ran out before the conversation could be opened up to the audience, which made me very happy because Q&A’s make me cringe!