This Bizarre Country

Short Story Collections

by Patrick Rapa

Sometimes the trouble with books is that they require titles. Once you call your volume Best American Short Stories (Houghton Mifflin), you either have to admit the narrowness of your criteria or bend the rules a little. For this venerable series, that means accepting Canadians, and authors who've made the U.S. their home. Which means a guy like Salman Rushdie — editor of BASS 2008 — qualified for the series only once a fatwa drove him out of India. But that's OK, he's mostly a novelist anyway (as is 2007's editor, Stephen King, who is particularly American).

This year, Rushdie and series editor Heidi Pitlor have assembled an all-star team of modern short-story authors: Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Lethem, Steven Millhauser, etc. As always, there are a few vials of new blood, this time from relative rookies Karen Brown, Rebecca Makkai and Katie Chase, the last of whom makes the collection with her first published story. The reigning prime minister of the short story, arguably, is the graceful and prolific Alice Munro of Canada, who only doesn't make BASS when they're having an off year. Her 2008 entry, "Child's Play," first published in Harper's, is merely her latest masterpiece.

You won't find Munro in the brand-new Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction (Harper Perennial), probably because they're checking green cards. Edited by Joyce Carol Oates, this collection does not otherwise come off as jingoistic or textbookish. (For something slightly more collegiate, try the eerily similar, still-in-print Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, also edited by Oates.) The Ecco comp represents, simultaneously, some of the most established and exciting short fiction available in the U.S. today: Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Lorrie Moore, Chuck Pahlaniuk, Michael Chabon, Amy Hempel. Of course, it's not the job of a collection like this to be democratic or cunning, so there are no dark-horse selections, and it's no surprise Oates' own "Landfill" is on the contents page. She's the reigning president of the short story, after all. There's a reason anthology makers keep putting her name on their covers.

For those craving a good yarn only from the pro-America parts of America, there's New Stories from the South 2008 (Algonquin), although there's little more than geography to tie the collection together. Editor Z.Z. Packer gathers a roster of established talents often experimenting with ideas of Southern identity (among them: Kevin Brockmeier, David James Poissant, Stephanie Soileau, Charlie Smith). As always, Pinckney Benedict, the West Virginia-born dancing outlaw of the short story, kicks ass, this time with "The Bridge of Sighs," which originally appeared in Zoetrope All-Story.

Two other anthologies mine the outer limits of short fiction and come up with names you won't find in the above collections (yet). Best New American Voices 2009 (Harcourt/Harvest), edited by Mary Gaitskill, promises "fresh fiction from the top writing programs." It's a dubious claim, or perhaps a circuitous one, since the best programs are surely the ones producing the best writing. Regardless, this series is a proven source of good reads. More intriguing is the (hopefully first of many) Best of the Web 2008 (Dzanc), in which guest editor Steve Almond and series editor Nathan Leslie plunder the considerable online lit-zine booty. Yes, some poetry and creative nonfiction have slipped into the mix. No, there isn't any cheesy short fiction about the Web; if you're envisioning tales of Webcam vampires and sentient blogs, guess again. This is sharp, smart, funny fiction just as worthy of the words "best" and/or "American."

(pat@citypaper.net)