Best American Short Stories 2012

"If a critic suggests that this anthology reads as if it was assembled by a heterosexual Caucasian male born during the Kennedy administration, I would have to plead no contest and throw myself on the mercy of the court," writes guest editor Tom Perrotta in his introduction to this year's collection of Best American Short Stories. Perrotta, who has written some marvelous stories, has chosen several stories that hew close to his style--a kind of drolly humorous look at hapless suburbanish Americans.

This is the third year I've read this recurring series, and I found that while I didn't dislike any of the stories, as I have in past volumes, I wasn't over the moon about as many as I have, either. In baseball parlance, there were a lot singles and a few doubles of the wall, but no strikeouts, and maybe only one home run.

The best story in the collection, by far, is Nathan Englander's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank," a twist on the Raymond Carver story, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," except that it focuses on Jewishness. A secular Jewish couple has an Orthodox couple over for the afternoon, and the resulting tension is deftly sketched out. The story begins with: "They're in our house maybe ten minutes and already Mark's lecturing us on the Israeli occupation. Mark and Lauren live in Jerusalem, and people from there think it gives them the right."

Other strong stories are "The Last Speaker of the Language," by Carol Anshaw, a comic romp through the lives of the desperate and underemployed. "Then, while she is sitting on the toilet, she sinks into the special sorrow of peeing while your mother is out cold on the floor next to you." Mike McGinnis' "Navigators," about a son that bonds through his father through a video game, really hit me as especially sad--I almost teared up while reading it.

There are a couple of vaguely science fiction stories. Stephen Millhauser, who often writes stories that could be made into Twilight Zone episodes, without the ironic endings, writes "Miracle Polish," about a man who buys mirror polish from a mysterious man and then becomes obsessed with looking at his image in mirrors. Eric Puchner's "Beautiful Monsters" concerns a world where aging has been stopped, and people remain as children forever, except for a band of aging adults who live in the wilderness.

Other strong entries are "What's Important Is Feeling," by Adam Wilson, a kind of riff on Truffaut's Day for Night, except the film set is in Corpus Christi, Texas. "Anything Helps," by Jess Walter, is a fascinating look at a homeless man, Kate Walbert's "M&M World" is about a woman who takes her two young daughters to the title store in Times Square, and the second best story is Angela Pneuman's "Occupational Hazard," which concerns a man having to deal with his co-worker's sudden death.

As I said, I didn't dislike any of the stories but a couple didn't really grab me. Taiye Selasi's "The Sex Lives of African Girls" is very long and I found myself confused while reading it, and while I usually like the quirky work of George Saunders, I found "Tenth of December," about a man set to commit suicide forced to save a boy from an icy pond, overwhelmed by style.

Other notable stories are Julie Otsuka's story of a child dealing with a parent's dementia in "Diem Perdidi," told in the second person, Alice Munro's look at women college students in the 1950s with "Axis," and a story of a girl obsessed with insects in Edith Pearlman's "Honeydew." It's a diverse collection, even if it is from a heterosexual white male born during the Kennedy administration.