The Best American Short Stories 2014
Some of my favorite writers were included. T.C. Boyle is included for his story "The Night of the Satellite," on what seems to be an innocent night for a couple out that turns into a possible relationship ender, and Karen Russell leaves the Florida swamp to write from the point of view of "Madame Bovary's Greyhound": "A dog's love is forever. We expect infidelity from one another; we marvel at this one's ability to hold that one's interest for fifty, sixty years; perhaps some of us feel a secret contempt for monogamy even as we extol it, wishing parole for its weary participants. But dogs do not receive our sympathy or our suspicion--from dogs we presume an eternal adoration."
Speaking of dogs, the venerable Joyce Carol Oates is represented by "Mastiff," in which a couple come across a very large dog on a hiking trail: "The woman stared at the animal, not twelve feet away, wheezing and panting. Its head was larger than hers, with a pronounced black muzzle, bulging glassy eyes. Its jaws were powerful and slack; its large, long tongue, as rosy-pink as a sexual organ, dripped slobber. The dog was pale-brindle-furred, with a deep chest, strong shoulders and legs, a taut tail. It must have weighed at least two hundred pounds. It's breathing was damply audible, unsettling."
Another veteran short story writer, Ann Beattie, appears with "Indian Uprising," about the relationship of a woman to her former professor. I was particularly struck by this passage, which is full of so many odd details that the writing jumps off the page: "Egil, back in college, had been the star student of our class: articulate; irreverent; devoted to books; interested in alcohol, bicycling, Italian cooking, UFOs and Apple stock. He'd been diagnosed bipolar after he dove off the Delaware Memorial Bridge and broke every rib, his nose, and one wrist, and said he was sorry he'd had the idea." This is about a character who doesn't even figure prominently in the story.
A couple of name writers have stories here that I didn't care for. I had no idea what was going on in Joshua Ferris' "The Breeze," and Nell Freudenberger mixes in a little magic realism in "Hover," in which a young mother literally hovers off the ground. I didn't think the mixture of styles worked.
From authors that are new to me, I particularly enjoyed "God," by Benjamin Nugent, which has nothing to do with theology but is instead a kind of winsome tale of frat brothers who nickname a girl "God" because she writes a poem about one of the brother's premature ejaculation. "Bedding her was, for a Delta Zeta Chi brother, what bedding Shania Twain would be for a Southerner of what bedding Natalie Portman would be for a Jewish person; he was belly to belly with the most major figure in the Delta Zeta Chi culture."
Another great story, although one that will completely depress you, especially if you work in an office, is O.A. Lindsey's "Evie M.": "Back to work. Somebody left the coffee machine on all night, so the break area smelled burnt, and the pot had a veneer of tar-stuff on the bottom. I picked it up and looked into it, considered scrubbing it, considered smashing it into the brush-steeled sink, my knuckles grinding the shards, but then put it back and trod down the long hall to another break area, where I poured a cup." Yeah, I've lived that.
I've narrowed my favorites down to three, each of which cover a lot of years and could easily be expanded to novels, and have a cinematic quality that I confess to favoring. One is "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners," by Laura Groff, which covers the life of a man born in the Florida swamp to a strange father who collects snakes. Two others are about music. David Gates' "A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" is set in the world of bluegrass musicians, and Brendan Matthews "This Is Not a Love Song" is told from the point of view of an acolyte of a punk rock singer.
The series editor, Heidi Pitlor, is to be congratulated on another fine edition.
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