Whew—two months and I’ve finally finished this anthology! Reviews below (note that most of these stories have individual Goodreads pages as well). But first, some overall commentary. This was a worthwhile endeavor: literary speed dating, featuring acclaimed authors and stories. I would have preferred an anthology that just aimed to represent the best stories of the century, not limited to those selected for Best American Short Stories in their year (sadly, I haven’t found any such anthology). This volume has the further limitation that a prior pair of editors took their own pass 15 years earlier, in the harder-to-find The Best American Short Stories of the Century, and this book’s editors decided on no overlap, so all the pre-2000 stories here are in theory second-best. In practice, some are fabulous, some decent, some duds. There’s a tilt toward more recent stories: though they span a full century, 21 of 40 represent the final 35 years (1980 onwards). Demographically, the tilt toward male authors remains consistent throughout, at 6 of every 10 stories, while the 10 authors of color are almost all clustered toward the end. The most surprising statistic to me is just how young these authors were, with most of the stories being published by people in their 30s and even 20s! In fact, only 5 stories were written by someone aged 50+. Sadly, most of the sections written by the editors feel bizarrely off-base and banal, though reading a bit about the history of the series was interesting; I could’ve used less imaginary short story writers on book tours and more explanation of why these stories were chosen, or deeper observations on the 2,000 stories featured over the century. There’s so much railing against the horrors of plot (even stuck into someone’s mini-bio) that I just wound up curious about what an overly plot-driven short story even looks like. Also noteworthy is BASS’s awkward relationship with genre: while a few stories here have speculative elements, there’s only one I’d call a genre story, which is almost worse than none. Unlike her predecessors, the current series editor seems open to sci-fi and fantasy, but without actually reading the associated magazines (she picks up the occasional story that makes it into someplace like the New Yorker), which seems to me an unhappy compromise. Either narrow your mission (and title) to realistic literary fiction, or actually read the places where great speculative stories are published so you can represent them properly. As is, we get bizarre choices like Ursula Le Guin having being published in BASS three times—but only for realistic stories few readers will even have heard of. Anyway, the stories: 1910s: “The Gay Old Dog” by Edna Ferber: This is a great time capsule story that puts me in mind of Edith Wharton: a Chicago family gradually losing its money, a brother who loses his opportunity to marry because he has to get his sisters settled first. I was entertained by the author’s holding forth on social issues of the day (“Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the living.”), and for every dated gendered assumption that made me roll my eyes (the career-oriented sister’s unattractiveness: why would a 30-something who works indoors have “leathery” skin?) there was another that charmed me (a young man’s God-given right to fancy waistcoats and colorful socks, and the assumption that he’ll love preening in the mirror). While the story is compelling, the ending likewise feels foreign today: 1920s: “Brothers” by Sherwood Anderson The 1920s must have been a rough decade for short stories if these are the best. Fortunately, they’re relatively short. All three feature first-person male narrators observing other men in their communities, all involving crime and some fairly obvious things the reader is meant to see through. The triptych improves slightly as it goes: I can’t fathom why “Brothers” is here and have nothing to say about it beyond that it’s a chiasmus. “My Old Man” is probably most notable for the story about the story, namely that its pity publication in BASS launched Hemingway’s career. “Haircut” gives us an entertainingly clueless narrator to see through but is otherwise a bit broad. 1930s:
“My Old Man” by Ernest Hemingway
“Haircut” by Ring Lardner
“Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald: More engaging reading than the 1920s set, but my sympathies didn’t go where the author intended. A tale of American expats in Europe, and a formerly alcoholic father trying to convince his deceased wife’s sister to return custody of his 9-year-old daughter. This guy is such a stereotype: uninvolved but plies the kid with gifts, has been sober for ten minutes and is outraged by his sister-in-law’s doubts, wants his kid back to satisfy his own emotional needs but doesn’t seem to have considered what being uprooted would mean for her. I sympathized with the “evil” sister-in-law, who struck me as someone with anxiety being expected to do something she’s not comfortable with.
“The Cracked Looking-Glass” by Katherine Anne Porter: The first story that made me want to seek out more from the author. This is the story of a marriage between Irish-American immigrants, a middle-aged woman and an elderly man, with vivid characters and a glimpse into lives that feel very real.
“That Will Be Fine” by William Faulkner: A throwback to the 1920s stories, narrated by a young boy observing his no-good uncle without understanding what he’s up to. I liked it a bit better than the 1920s stories, perhaps just because the more challenging prose made reading it feel like an accomplishment, but didn’t ultimately buy the child narrator’s cluelessness: at 7 he’s developmentally old enough to understand mysteries (Boxcar Children are aimed at ages 6-8 and were available when Faulkner was writing!) yet bizarrely overlooks obviously sinister behavior.
1940s:
“Those Are as Brothers” by Nancy Hale: Interesting mostly as a time capsule of how Americans in 1941 thought about the Holocaust. A woman who has escaped an abusive marriage feels kinship and empathy for a Jewish man who has escaped a concentration camp. Today’s readers would look askance at comparing one’s relationship, however awful, to a Nazi camp (some even complain about comparing other genocides and mass internments, thus ensuring that these atrocities will continue), but this was written before the Holocaust was enshrined as the worst thing to ever happen and the purpose of the comparison is increasing empathy for the refugees, which is interesting to see.
“The Whole World Knows” by Eudora Welty: The most challenging story so far. I have read it twice, I have sought out academic commentary, and I’m still not sure I fully get it, let alone catch all the literary allusions. A structurally complicated story about a young man separated from his wife, in which his fantasies blend into reality. I think in the end that I have no idea what the button sewing was about.
“The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever: The first perfect story. A New York couple acquires a radio that allows them to hear into the lives of their neighbors, with troubling results. I’m still trying to figure out why the ending happened:
1950s:
“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen: A hilariously stereotypical title for a 1950s story, but actually this one is heartbreaking. A mother looks back on her eldest daughter’s life, and how a lack of stability and emotional safety—mostly caused by their precarious economic situation—caused the daughter untold suffering with potential lifelong effects. Succinct, devastating and ahead of its time, and I’m still pondering the mother’s final conclusion:
“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin: A beautiful and powerful story about the relationship between two adult brothers—the older one stepping into the role of father before he really has the wisdom to do so—and the younger brother’s life-sustaining connection to music. I finished it feeling I’d read an entire novel about these people and I mean that as a compliment.
“The Conversion of the Jews” by Philip Roth: A boy with religious questions finds himself backed into extreme measures. I found this one weird, tasteless and rather poorly written.
1960s:
“Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor: This is a good story, in a technical sense, though everyone in it behaves terribly and the end is miserable. The first story that’s squarely about race relations (though implicit in “Sonny’s Blues”), this one could be read as racist, or as a clear-eyed deconstruction of white attitudes: the patronizingly racist mother, the angry son whose performative antiracism mostly seems to be a rebellion against her. I fail to see the Catholic angle, unless you are already inclined to interpret human failings as a need for grace.
“Pigeon Feathers” by John Updike: An adolescent boy confronts fear of death and questions about religion—a relatable phase and a well-written story, but one that didn’t do much for me. The boy ultimately reaches a narcissistic, if comforting, conclusion.
“Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” by Raymond Carver: An overlong story about a guy who finds out his wife cheated on him a couple years ago, and which then chronicles every blessed thing he does for the next 12 hours, mostly wandering about feeling sorry for himself. Please.
“By the River” by Joyce Carol Oates: Well, that’s certainly a Joyce Carol Oates story. Very Biblical, boring until it’s horrifying, though she does a good job of subtly building the tension such that I was expecting something like that.
1970s:
“The School” by Donald Barthelme: Surrealist flash fiction, with a life-affirming message in the midst of death. I didn’t have a strong reaction to it but am curious about what else this author wrote.
“The Conventional Wisdom” by Stanley Elkin: That was an unexpected twist. Bold and different.
1980s:
“Friends” by Grace Paley: A group of middle-aged women travel to visit a friend who is dying of cancer. I can see why this story isn’t a standout for most people, but it intrigued me with its textured portrayal of the women’s lives. And what exactly did classmates see wrong with the daughter who died young? This story also contains perhaps the saddest line in the anthology so far, when
“The Harmony of the World” by Charles Baxter: On the surface this is the story of a failed musician failing at love, and I’m wrestling to understand it beyond the surface level (not too surprising since music and music-focused stories are not my forte). Is the narrator, who does indeed seem very emotionally restrained until he reams out his girlfriend for her failures as a singer, actually fatally lacking in passion? Or perhaps his problem wasn’t with his playing, but that he didn’t care enough to work on it and instead quit at the first discouragement? He and the composer of the eponymous symphony both produce apparently passionless works before their hidden reservoirs of emotion emerge in destructive ways—what does it all mean?
“Lawns” by Mona Simpson: The standout of the 80s stories, this one turns out to be sickening in content but deals with an important topic in a nuanced and powerful way: Simpson’s introducing the character with her problematic behavior before revealing her trauma is artful and recreates the way one is likely to encounter sufferers in real life. I’m concerned for the character at the end:
“Communist” by Richard Ford: Another boy-shooting-birds story that impressed me even less than Updike’s, with more diffuse themes. Or maybe I just didn’t care enough to search for them.
“Helping” by Robert Stone: A long story about a day in the life of a troubled veteran turned social worker, who gets triggered by a client, throws away his sobriety and is an ass to everyone around him. Reasonably well-written but the protagonist reminds me a little too much of my own asshole neighbor, the mutual contempt in this marriage is exhausting and it all builds up to nothing much. Surely there must have been better Vietnam vet stories available.
“Displacement” by David Wong Louie: There are definitely better immigrant stories—this one is pretty weak—but I suppose there was less competition in the 80s.
1990s:
“Friend of My Youth” by Alice Munro: This one left me with a lot to think about. On the surface, it’s a story of a farm woman in rural Canada in the early 20th century, and the choices she makes under difficult circumstances. But it’s told third- and fourth-hand, by a narrator who never met the protagonist and for whom the story is bound up with her youthful resentment and adult guilt about her treatment of her sick mother. In the end, everyone’s interpretation of Flora mostly tells us about themselves: the mother is straightforward and affectionate and, as she gets ill, wishes she had a caretaker like that; the narrator resents expectations of self-sacrifice, and so wants to knock Flora off her pedestal. I saw Flora as a woman with limited choices making the best of a bad situation, which probably tells you something about me.
“The Girl on the Plane” by Mary Gaitskill: So timely that if not for the descriptions of plane travel, you could mistake it for a 2020s story. A man meets a woman who reminds him of a college friend, and finally is forced to acknowledge his own complicity in a sexual assault.
“Xuela” by Jamaica Kincaid: Impressive writing on a technical level, but in content, this struck me as the first chapter in a run-of-the-mill post-colonial Caribbean novel—one that neither feels complete on its own, nor made me want to read on (for those who do, see The Autobiography of My Mother).
“If You Sing Like That For Me” by Akhil Sharma: Meh.
“Fiesta, 1980” by Junot Diaz: A Dominican immigrant family attends an extended family party, but all is not well at home, as seen through the eyes of a boy in his early teens(?). A common subject but I liked the story and found it well-written, fresh and raw.
2000s:
“The Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri: A disappointment given the author’s literary stature. It feels like this story took the immigrant protagonist’s relationship with an elderly, ailing white landlady from “Displacement,” the Indian couple’s arranged marriage from “If You Sing,” which the groom has only entered to check off a life milestone, and made the whole thing saccharine instead of dismal, but with no greater depth. Clearly I have different taste in immigrant stories from the editors.
“Brownies” by ZZ Packer: I’d read this before and found it a little too on-the-nose, a story about a young girl learning that oppressed people too can hunger for and abuse power. This time I appreciated more the author’s keen eye for people, places and social dynamics. I also noticed the narrator’s passivity and near-absence from the story, and am on the fence about whether to read it as an observation of someone who can draw moral conclusions but not act on them, or simply unsatisfying.
“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie: I enjoyed this story a lot, and in fact read it twice—it’s heavy on dialogue that feels very real; it’s often funny, though always mixed with loss; and it has a satisfying ending. At the same time, I feel unqualified to review it. It’s the only Native American story in the book and hammers Indianness hard, which is also present in the whole structure of the story: a man who wants to acquire something but continuously resists accumulating money, instead immediately sharing everything he gains. But then this seems not only cultural, but also a result of the short-term thinking brought on by financial stress. There’s also a gaping, unnamed sense of loss throughout the story, and I’m told its level of despair is considered passé among Native American readers today.
“Old Boys, Old Girls” by Edward P. Jones: Oddly, I liked this one much better when I read it a few years ago in Jones’s collection. Out of that context, this level of violence and misery feels almost like trolling, like Jones pulled elements from over-the-top TV shows and is laughing at what white people will believe if written by someone with the right skin color. Of course, people in prison often do have over-the-top terrible lives, and it is well-written. But I was unsatisfied by the unanswered questions, particularly around the protagonist’s backstory (at first I assumed he ran away due to poverty or abuse at home, but by the end it appears not?). Of all Jones’s stories, this is definitely a choice.
Final 6 reviews in the comments due to length restrictions!
