Review: Best American Short Stories 2019
The Best American Short Stories 2019 by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As a professional writer, I do my best to keep up with short stories in literary magazines and The New Yorker (which is impossible since it's almost weekly.) That said, I like to read the books in this series because these stories are considered the best of the best. Each volume has a guest editor who reviews stories chosen by the series editor. (No, the guest editor doesn't actually read *every* short story published in the U.S./Canadian market before making selections. You can read about this in the book, if you don't believe me.) Given all of this, my appraisal of this installment doesn't affect whether or not I will read or buy the next one, but if you have the option, I would pass, if I were you. Short a few highlights, this isn't a stellar collection.
This collection includes one story by Ursula K. Le Guin, who is no longer with us. I have mixed feelings about talking about dead authors because some people have a complex about that. You can criticize anyone as long as they're still around to have suicidal thoughts about it, but once they're dead, everything is sacred. I actually thought her story was decent, and completely confusing. It was also set in the mining country in Colorado, for the most part, and that was interesting and pedestrian at the same time because I live in Colorado. A lot of people in Colorado find the place infinitely fascinating when many other fascinating places exist. However, if you're writing about a mining accident, as she was, it does make sense, so I can't fault her on that. All I can say is, hey, try reading it and tell me just how entertaining you thought it was.
Julia Elliott's Hellion from The Georgia Review appears in here, and it is an excellent example of strong story, character, and voice. She also deftly makes the ordinary occurrences of every day life that so many of us take for granted extraordinary, and she does so without pretense. That story is truly something that belongs on anyone's list of Best American Short Stories.
The rest of the stories had some highs and lows for me. Mostly, I found some snippets of brilliant writing hidden within a lump of pretension and no plot. As a reader who never was interested in getting published, I would just stop reading and go about my life with most of those. The frustrating part is that I have to get work critiqued and take the feedback seriously, and I have to hear all the stupid theories people have about why something will never be published---yet, here we have plenty of examples of things that should not be published, and they're the best of the best.
In my opinion, a piece that is clearly set in the 90s should be historical, at this point. At least one story, but I believe it's actually two, is (are) clearly set in the 90s and the story isn't qualified in any way as historical. You may be thinking, "Oh you're just being petty now." People probably are just being petty picking at things like this, but I know that if I submitted a story that included references to The Wherehouse or a Walkman, I would get feedback along the lines of, "This is SO dated. Nobody is going to read this."
Maybe the reality is that if you're a writer, if whatever you're writing is what you believe to be your best work, ignore the silly things your critique partners say that bring you down. Trust your instincts on setting and style because someone out there will probably think it's amazing.
Of course, you may be wondering, why didn't I say those stories were amazing. Honestly, I didn't think they were that amazing, but not because of anything being dated. My issue is I can't even remember the titles or authors of those other stories because they didn't leave much of an impression on me beyond thinking, "Wow. Fellow critiques would have jumped all over me for this." If I'd actually enjoyed them, I would have remembered more than that. Lots of, "Yes, I'm a cool writer because I can write about attending a party where someone came home with me based on actual experience" posturing. Most of us can get drunk, take drugs, and get laid. If you can't, I'm sorry, but for the most part, it's not a challenge to do any of those things. Why am I supposed to think that's interesting? I get that Hemingway did it a lot, but he's dead. Jack Kerouac did too and he's also dead. Most people don't read either of them for fun, so maybe the public is trying to tell us something with that.
Anyway, as far as this book goes, some editions are great. This one is meh, much like the year it represents. Maybe it's a good commentary in that sense.
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