The Best American Short Stories 2019 Paperback – October 1, 2019

The Best American Short Stories 2019Selected byAnthony Doerr with Heidi PitlorReviewed by C. J. Singh Wallia (Berkeley, CA)Brilliant Short Stories that Reflect some of the Problems Humanity Currently ConfrontsHeidi Pitlor is the current co-editor, since 2007, of "The Best American ShortStories" series, which have been published annually since 1915. She is also the co-editor, with Lorrie Moore, of "100 Years of the Best American Short Stories." (See my detailed review of this great book on amazon.com)In her Foreword, Pitlor writes, "The stories in this volume are bold, some aretransgressive, and all are relevant to this moment of time. . . But in this time of so much bad news about our climate, intolerance, corruption, and violence, I'm grateful for these stories" (page xi). This reviewer is certainly grateful for these 20 highly-engaging stories; so, will be many readers.Anthony Doerr's introduces the book by describing his earliest efforts as a child to become a writer; efforts engagingly described with humorous self-deprecating examples.Growing up, "A drip-drip of uncertainty sent me to the library, where I discovered a paperback titled 'Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular' which claimed to reveal 'the secrets of the craft.' Though the author, Rust Hills, sounded more like a South Dakota land feature than a short storyexpert, the jacket copy explained that Mr. Hills worked at 'Esquire ' and had discovered all sorts of famous writers, and so it was with a mix of excitement and terror that I toted the book to my attic bedroom" (page xiv).Doerr notes that many of the twenty excellent contemporary short stories that he and Pitlor selected flout Rust Hills' rules. For example, "Hills said a short story shouldn't mess with subplots, but from a certain angle, Nicole Kraussconstructs her gorgeous 'Seeing Ershadi' entirely around subplots -- three of her first five paragraphs are spent summarizing an Iranian film. Yet, her story utterly wrecked me" (page xviii). In the Contributors' Notes Section, Nicole Krauss describes in illuminating details the background of her writing this story (pp. 353-356). Contributors' Notes, a regular feature of the annual edition of "The Best American Short" series can serve to enhance readers' experiencing the stories. They certainly enhance mine.Another example from Doerr's selection: "Rust Hill suggested that a short story stick with a single point of view, but Deborah Eisenberg, in her dystopic paean to the imagination, 'The Third Tower' leaps into a doctor's mind in two of its thirteen sections. Without those leaps away from her protagonist's point of view, her story would collapse" (page xviii). Another apt example.Doerr cites many other short-stories in the book, selected by him and Pitlor, as flouting Rust Hills' rules; in particular, stories by Wendell Berry, Kathleen Alcott, Jenn Alandy Trahan, Julia Elliot, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Sigrid Nunez, JeffreyEugenides, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Jim Shepard (page xix)Next, Doerr, without naming specific rule-makers, writes, "Anyone who thinks short stories can't or shoudn't ask moral questions about our political moment should turn to Weike Wang's "Omasake," (page xix).I fully agree with Doerr on flouting this rule. (See my detailed review on amazon.com of John Truby's book "The Anatomy of Story," which emphasizes engaging in "moral argument" as an essential element in structuring fiction, beit a short-story, novel, stage play, or screenplay. This amazon review can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/review/R29NU7U6LAHGBV )Several other short stories in the selection that flout this rule on "moral questions about the political moment" include Maria Reva's "Letter of Apology," which "'presents a hilarious and heartrending glimpse of life under a regimewhere it is illegal to criticize or even joke about political leaders"; and Manuel Munoz's "moving 'Anyone Can Do It' about a woman whose husband has been rounded up by immigration police might be set in the 1980s but could not bemore timely" (page xix).Doerr in his highly-acclaimed novel "All the Light We Cannot See" flouts the suggestions of the widely adopted text-book in MFA programs, JanetBurroway's Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, tenth edition, (See my detailed amazon review at https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fiction-Tenth-Narrative-Publishing/dp/022661655X). Doerr chooses to use omniscient point of view instead of the third-person close point of view. His wonderful novel won the Pulitzer Prize. Great act of flouting back to the nineteenth-century realistic novel.Of the 20 stories selected by Doerr and Pitlor, I had already read the 4 publishedin "The New Yorker," the 3 in "Zoetrope:All-Story," the 2 in "Harper's," the 1 in "Granta," and the 1 in "ZYZZYVA." Reading the other 9 included in this anthology was an equally engaging experience for me.Here's the full list:Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. "The Era" from "Guernica"Kathleen Alcott. "Natural Light" from "Zoetrope:All-Story"Wendell Berry. "The Great Interruption" from "Threepenny Review"Jamel Brinkley. "No More Than a Bubble" from "LitMag"Deborah Eisenberg. "The Third Tower" from "Ploughshares"Julia Elliott. "Hellion" from "The Georgia Review"Jeffrey Eugenides. "Bronze" from "The New Yorker"Ella Martinsen Gorham. "Protozoa" from "New England Review"Nicole Krauss. "Seeing Ershadi" from "The New Yorker"Ursula K. Le Guin. "Pity and Shame" from "Tin House"Manuel Munõz. "Anyone Can Do It" from "ZYZZYVA"Sigrid Nunez. "The Plan" from "Lit Mag"Maria Reva. "Letter of Apology" from "Granta"Karen Russell. "Black Corfu" from "Zoetrope-All Story"Saïd Sayrafiezadeh "Audition" from "The New Yorker"Alexis Schaitkin "Natural Disasters" from "Ecotone"Jim Shepard. "Our Day of Grace" from "Zoetrope-All Story"Mona Simpson. "Wrong Object" from "Harper's"Jenn Alandy Trahan. "They Told Us Not to Say This" from "Harper'sWeike Wang. "Omakase" from "The New Yorker."Five-star book.

No collection can be perfect, even from one's favorite author, and this collection is from disparate authors. There are a few stories that will stick with me, and a few that display what I see as the worst in MFA trends (you never want a story with a beginning, middle and end; you must advance the boundaries of literature; don't bother much with proper grammar such as quotation marks; it's all about social justice issues and/or contemplating your navel; the more unhappy the writer seems the better). Sounds like I hate it, right? No - there's a healthy mix of styles and themes, and I accept that. And it's a more honest collection than some previous issues, which were overwhelmingly political. While it's true that the subject of art often is the misery of others, and including the miserableness of ourselves, it's implausible that the "best" of any one one year could all be polemical, and this collection avoids that pitfall. But I must express my alarm that The New Yorker has three selections here (one which was fine; one which I found to be amateurish and just poorly written, and as self-indulgent as they come; and one which I will briefly critique here, which I will crown as the worst of the best ... in recent years! I've never seen such self-indulgence, such self-centered writing, such disassociation from real people and real places and real problems as in the story by Nicole Krauss (apparently a celebrated author). I don't care about the narrator (hence, the author); she has no artistic voice at all - she might as well be complaining to a friend over a latte about her miserable, upper middle class, artsy life - oh, wait, the narrator basically does that - and I don't think the author has anything to teach me about life. The "mystere" in the story, and the understated Progressive politics, as if the author thinks being Progressive is dangerous in a Trumpian age, even in literature, which is the safest repository of Progressive thinking there is, perhaps besides art, when politics in literature today is only dangerous if you are truly independent, not conformist, as she is. Well, it's The Best American Short Stories! Somewhere John Gardner is crying. John Cheever and James Baldwin are crying, too. I guess the reader is just to accept that this is where "the short story is today," and apparently the Editors at The New Yorker and the series editor of "Best" want you to know that they know where "the short story is today." Nonetheless, congratulations of Anthony Doerr for at least trying to balance the "best" quite well, otherwise this collection would rate 2 or 3 stars only, as many reviewers have indicated.

This book doesn't need a review because it's impossible for it to be anything but spectacular given the collection of writers whose work is shown here.I Loved Anthony Doer's intro - I've gone in an out of this book discovering writers! It's fantastic in every way! I highly recommend especially if you are a short story reader!Some people say it's more difficult to write a short story than a novel - and I can understand how that might be true. To create a piece that resonates in only a few pages is truly a work of art and all of these writers are artists! Fantastic!

I enjoyed some of the stories and hated others. Some bored me and a few made no sense. Much of the writing was superb but some was quite uninteresting.

I have been reading these story collections for years, and the choice of editor is key. This year's collection, edited by Anthony Doerr, is my favorite by far. Almost every story is worthwhile, engaging and sometimes shattering in a simple way. If you enjoy short stories, this is a great choice.

Truly entertaining and such a wide variety of subjects and writing styles. I have enjoyed all of Mr. Robert's works and now have enjoyed his choices of that which he finds entertaining.

Tudo OK.

I buy this collection every year, and most years there are one or two stories that don’t grab me. This year was different: I liked every story in the collection.

überwiegend gut geschrieben aber eher deprimierend. Gibt es keine erbauende oder positive-stimmende Kurzgeschichten?

Bought for school

After reading 5-6 stories I wondered if these were the BEST that American authors could produce