The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003

by Eggers, Dave

• ISBN13: 9780618246960
• ISBN10: 0618246967
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-10
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by an editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field, making the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. Dave Eggers, who will be editing The Best American Nonrequired Reading annually, has once again chosen the best and least-expected fiction, nonfiction, satire, investigative reporting, alternative comics, and more from publications large, small, and on-line -- The Onion, The New Yorker, Shout, Time, Zoetrope, Tin House, Nerve.com,and McSweeney's, to name just a few. Read on for "Some of the best literature you haven't been reading... And it's fantastic. All of it." (St. Petersburg Times).Lynda Barry Jonathan Safran Foer Lisa Gabriele Andrea Lee J. T. Leroy Nasdijj ZZ Packer David Sedaris

Author Biography

Dave Eggers is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and You Shall Know Our Velocity

Table of Contents

Foreword by Dave Eggers	xi
Introduction: Dead Men Talking by Zadie Smith	xxiv
Sherman Alexie.
WHAT SACAGAWEA MEANS TO ME	1	(4)
FROM Time
Lynda Barry.
COMMON SCENTS	5	(19)
FROM One! Hundred! Demons!
Ryan Boudinot.
THE LITTLEST HITLER	24	(9)
FROM Mississippi Review
Mark Bowden.
TALES OF THE TYRANT	33	(43)
FROM Atlantic Monthly
Michael Buckley.
THE METICULOUS GROVE OF BLACK AND GREEN	76	(21)
FROM Alaska Quarterly Review
Judy Budnitz.
VISITING HOURS	97	(19)
FROM Harper's Magazine
David Drury.
THINGS WE KNEW WHEN THE HOUSE CAUGHT FIRE	116	(19)
FROM Little Engines
Jonathan Safran Foer.
A PRIMER FOR THE PUNCTUATION OF HEART DISEASE	135	(8)
FROM The New Yorker
Lisa Gabriele.
THE GUIDE TO BEING A GROUPIE	143	(5)
FROM Nerve.com
Amanda Holzér.
LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES: A MIX TAPE	148	(2)
FROM Story Quarterly
Chuck Klosterman.
THE PRETENDERS	150	(9)
FROM New York Times Magazine
K. Kvashay-Boyle.
SAINT CHOLA	159	(15)
FROM McSweeney's
Dylan Landis.
RANA FEGRINA	174	(10)
FROM Tin House
Andrea Lee.
GOLDEN CHARIOT	184	(12)
FROM Zoetrope
J.T. Leroy.
STUFF	196	(6)
FROM 7 x 7
Douglas Light.
THREE DAYS. A MONTH. MORE.	202	(9)
FROM Alaska Quarterly Review
Nasdijj.
TOUCHING HIM	211	(11)
FROM Columbia Review
I'LL TRY ANYTHING WITH A DETACHED AIR OF SUPERIORITY	222	(2)
FROM The Onion
George Packer.
How SUSIE BAYER'S T-SHIRT ENDED UP ON YUSUF MAMA'S BACK	224	(13)
FROM New York Times Magazine
ZZ Packer.
THE ANT OF THE SELF	237	(21)
FROM The New Yorker
James Pinkerton.
HOW TO WRITE SUSPENSE	258	(5)
FROM Modern Humorist
David Sedaris.
ROOSTER AT THE HITCHIN' POST	263	(10)
FROM Esquire
Jason Stella.
ASTROTURF: HOW MANUFACTURED "GRASSROOTS" MOVEMENTS ARE SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY	273	(7)
FROM Shout
John Verbos.
LOST BOYS	280	(14)
FROM Pindeldyboz
Daniel Voll.
RIOT BABY (LIFE IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES)	294	(27)
FROM Esquire
Contributors' Notes	321	(7)
Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2002	328

Excerpts

Introduction Dead Men TalkingFor young readers and young writers, here are half a dozen commonplaces concerning the act of reading, required or otherwise:1. Dr. Johnson: "A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good." In principle I agree with this - but Im not quite this sort of reader. Not confident enough to be this reader. "Inclination" is all very well if you are born into taste or are in full possession of your own, but for those of us born into families who were not quite sure what was required and what was not - well, we fear our inclinations. For myself, I grew up believing in the Western literary canon in a depressing, absolutist way: I placed all my faith in its hierarchies, its innate quality and requiredness. The lower-middleclass, aspirational reader is a very strong part of me, and the only books I wanted to read as a teenager were those sanctified by my elders and betters. I was certainly curious about the nonrequired reading of the day (back then, in London, these were young, edgy men like Mr. Self and Mr. Kureishi and Mr. Amis), but I didnt dare read them until my required reading was done. I didnt realize then that required reading is never done. My adult reading has continued along this fiercely traditional and cautiously autodidactic path. To this day, if I am in a bookshop, browsing the new fiction, and Robert Musils A Man Without Qualities happens to catch my eye from across the room, I am shamed out of the store and must go home to try to read that monster again before I can allow myself to read new books by young people. Of course, the required nature of The Faerie Queene, books 3 through 10 of Paradise Lost, or the Phaedrus exists mostly in my head, a rigid idea planted by a very English education. An education of that kind has many advantages for the aspiring writer, but in my case it also played straight and true to the creeping conservatism in my soul. Requiredness lingers over me. When deciding which book of a significant author to read, I pick the one that appears on reading lists across the country. When flicking through a poetry anthology, I begin with the verse that got repeated in the.lm that took the Oscar. I met an Englishwoman recently, also lower middle class, who believed she was required to read a book by every single Nobel laureate, and when I asked her how that was working out for her, she told me it was the most bloody miserable reading experience shed ever had in her life. Then she smiled and explained that she had no intention of stopping. I am not that bad, but Im pretty bad. It is only recently, and in America, that the hold required reading has had on me has loosened a little. Tradition is a formative and immense part of a writers world, of the creation of the individual talent - but experiment is essential. I have been very slow to realize this. Reading this collection made me feel the literary equivalent of

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Excerpted from The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003
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