What can I say: I'm not an objective critic when it comes to Houghton Mifflin's Best American Short Stories series. I await each year's release like some people wait for the Super Bowl. I have a great deal of bookshelf space allotted to these brightly-colored volumes, each reflecting the (somewhat subjective) preferences of the revolving guest editors. The primary editorial selections are made by Katrina Kenison, who reads literally thousands of short stories each year in publications well-known and obscure; she then culls them down to 120 for the guest editor, who is usually a luminary of contemporary American literature. They, in turn, select what they believe to be the finest 20, with the remaining 100 referenced at the end.
What never fails to amaze me is the wide range of choices selected by the guest editor, who often chooses work very dissimilar to their own. These editors are nearly always generous with their praise and their range of choices. Sue Miller, the guest editor for 2002, is no exception. The stories comprising her volume vary from well-established story writers like Alice Munro and Richard Ford to less known writers like Meg Mullins and Karl Iagnemma. The stories are set from current day all the way back to the early 1900's, and take place all over the U.S. as well as Canada, Europe and post-World War II Japan.
The sheer enjoyment that comes from wallowing in these stories is not only of the high quality of each, but of the representation of the collective quality of today's writers. Imaginative, detailed, surprising, and always well written, these stories show that fiction in America is live and well.
As for personal favorites, I have several, but this is again an admittedly subjective list. Any time Alice Munro appears, she tops my list, and "Family Furnishings" was one of the best stories I read in The New Yorker last year. Michael Chabon's "Along the Frontage Road" and Richard Ford's "Puppy" both take seemingly innocent events and use them to inform and transform. Beth Lordan's "Digging," which is a twisty-turny tale of generations of Irish-Americans, uses a wonderful narrative technique that could have fallen apart in lesser hands. Melissa Hardy's "The Heifer," possibly my overall favorite, takes a decidedly saccharine-free view at pioneer life.
The bottom line is that readers can't go wrong when picking up a copy of Best American Short Stories. Unlike a novel, or a collection of stories by one author, there's little risk of not finding something worth reading in this collection.
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