The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005

by Eggers, Dave

• ISBN13: 9780618570485
• ISBN10: 0618570489
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-05
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

The Best American SeriesFirst, Best, and Best-SellingThe Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by a leading writer in the field, making the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 includes Daniel Alarcn - Aimee Bender - Dan Chaon - Daniel Clowes - Tish Durkin - Stephen Elliott - Al Franken - Jhumpa Lahiri - Rattawut Lapcharoensap - Anders Nilsen - Georges Saunders - William T. Vollmann - and othersDave Eggers, editor, is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, and How We Are Hungry, and the editor of McSweeney's. He is the founder of 826 Valencia, a San Francisco writing lab for young people.Beck, guest introducer, whose single "Loser" was instantly labeled an anthem for the slacker generation, is also known for his Grammy Award-winning albums Odelay and Mutations.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Dave Eggers	xi
Introduction by Beck	xxx
Joe Sayers.
PASSING PERIODS	xii
FROM Passing Periods
Anders Nilsen.
THE MEDIOCRITY PRINCIPLE	xiii
FROM Blood Orange
Daniel Alarcón.
FLORIDA	1	(14)
FROM Swink
Jessica Anthony.
THE DEATH OF MUSTANGO SALVAJE	15	(24)
FROM McSweeney's
Aimee Bender.
TIGER MENDING	39	(9)
FROM BlackBook
Ryan Boudinot.
FREE BURGERS FOR LIFE	48	(20)
FROM Monkeybicycle
Dan Chaon.
FIVE FORGOTTEN INSTINCTS	68	(10)
FROM Other Voices
Amber Dermont.
LYNDON	78	(18)
FROM Zoetrope
Stephanie Dickinson.
A LYNCHING IN STEREOSCOPE	96	(16)
FROM African-American Review
Tish Durkin.
HEAVY METAL MERCENARY	112	(11)
FROM Rolling Stone
Stephen Elliott.
MY LITTLE BROTHER RUINED MY LIFE	123	(11)
FROM Maisonneuve
Al Franken.
TEARAWAY BURKAS AND TINPLATE MENORAHS	134	(14)
FROM Mother Jones
Jeff Gordinier.
THE LOST BOYS	148	(16)
FROM Details
Kate Krautkramer.
ROADKILL	164	(11)
FROM Creative Nonfiction
Jhumpa Lahiri.
HELL-HEAVEN	175	(21)
FROM The New Yorker
Rattawut Lapcharoensap.
AT THE CAFÉ LOVELY	196	(21)
FROM Zoetrope
Molly McNett.
CATALOGUE SALES	217	(20)
FROM New England Review
George Saunders.
BOHEMIANS	237	(10)
FROM The New Yorker
George Saunders.
MANIFESTO	247	(3)
FROM Slate
J. David Stevens.
THE JOKE	250	(7)
FROM Mid-American Review
Jonathan Tel.
THE MYTH OF THE FREQUENT FLIER	257	(6)
FROM Open City
Douglas Trevor.
GIRLS I KNOW	263	(18)
FROM Epoch
William T. Vollmann.
THEY CAME OUT LIKE ANTS!	281	(32)
FROM Harper's Magazine
Lauren Weedman.
DIARY OF A JOURNAL READER	313	(6)
FROM Swivel
Contributors' Notes	319	(7)
Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2004	326

Excerpts

INTRODUCTION Burly tomes bulge from shelves and barely know Im there. Someday I plan to read the classics. Someday I plan to traverse their pages and see for myself what raw weight they wield. Actually, I have read a handful of them - Dickens, Dostoevsky, Twain, Fitzgerald, Voltaire - but in a haphazard, zigzagging fashion. No chronology, historical context, or classroom guidance. I dropped out of school early and started work at a young age, but I spent a lot of time hanging around LACC, an inner-city community college a few miles from my mothers house. I made friends with some of the professors. One of them lived with the poet Wanda Coleman, and I was invited to hang out at their place behind the campus. I got to sit in and hear their discussions on writers and writing. That was where I first realized that there were myriad subtexts to a given piece of writing, and that writers seemed to be able to tap into the profundities of daily existence. I kind of knew these themes and patterns were always there in books and stories, but these people seemed to have some key, some tool to unlock the densest texts or find some illuminating insight into a mundane occurrence. It was mysterious to me how they pulled these observations out of their hats. Was it education, experience, divination - an innate sense of the world? I started picking up books from thrift stores and spent a lot of time hanging out at the library. The books I came upon were pretty random, a patchwork more than a definitive list. James Baldwin, H. G. Wellss history of the world, Sam Shepards plays. The library became my other home. I didnt have a bedroom in my moms house, so the library was one of the only places I could go and be alone. When that downtown library burned down, it was a big blow to me. I remember watching the five oclock news - big black plumes billowing out of the windows, and all those books burning. Later, I tried some of the smaller neighborhood libraries, but they were disappointing. A bunch of romance novels, ancient how-to intructionals, and some worn-out kids books.I made friends with this kid from Laos who worked in a cool little bookshop in the then-uncool East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Feliz. Books were not always available and became somewhat of a commodity, so Id go up there and wed hang around, talk about writers, and hed show me the new books theyd gotten in. He was into obscure stuff, like a German poet named Georg Trakl or St.- John Perse. Wed sit around on long summer afternoons reading magazines and bits from various books. In a way, it was kind of our own nonrequired reading. We were picking up various writings and mashing them up into some kind of piecemeal perspective. Not having any academic structure about us, everything we gravitated to probably had the weight of something discovered on ones own, like wed uncovered some secret thing nobody else knew. Which is kind of an adolescent thrill, or pomposity, bu

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Excerpted from The Best American Nonrequired Reading
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