The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007

by Eggers, Dave

• ISBN13: 9780618902811
• ISBN10: 0618902813
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-10
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

Summary

From "Q A" by Dave Eggers A group of senators and assemblypersons were pressing The Best American Nonrequired Reading on a number of questions relating to the collection, so we decided to kill that stone in the shape of an introduction in the shape of a Q A.Who are they, the Nonrequired committees members who decide on things in this collection?They are high school students from all over the San Francisco Bay Area.Are they touched by some kind of divine light?The question is a good one. There is rampant speculation on the subject.Are they all great-looking and charming and well dressed?Yes. All of them, and especially Felicia Wong, who can even make her own clothes.I have a question about the process by which the entries in this collection are chosen. Is it scientific?The process by which The Best American Nonrequired Reading is put together is not scientific. It is whatever one would consider the opposite of scientific.Creationist?Well, no, its not creationist either. The point is that we are probably a bit less top-to-bottom thorough than, say, the Army Corps of Engineers. Well, actually, scratch that. We are probably about exactly as thorough as the Army Corps of Engineers, in that we are intermittently thorough.What is your opinion and the committees opinion of the state of short stories and small magazines and other periodicals?This is a good time. It really is.More specifically?Not all of us Americans appreciate the fact that we have about 150 very good quarterlies in this country. Every state seems to have a very good quarterly, and about a hundred colleges have very good quarterlies from the Kenyon Review to the University of Illinoiss Ninth Letter. So by our estimate there are about 150 very good quarterlies in this country. Maybe more. Now, the thing we dont always appreciate here in America is that elsewhere in the world there are few to no quarterlies.How does it feel to select something for the collection that you found in an unlikely place?It feels so good. This year, for example, at the last moment we found Humpies by Mattox Roesch. It was published by Agni Online, and we all loved it, and here it is, ideally able to reach a new audience. We all took pleasure in finding that one; the mandate of the committee is to find the offbeat and the lesser-known and bring these pieces to our readers, most of whom have great skin and bad eyes.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
Q & A by Dave Eggers	p. xix
I Best American Names for Horses Expected to Have Undistinguished Careers	p. 3
from Yankee Pot Roast, written
Best American Beginnings of Ten Stories about Ponies
from Monkey Bicycle, written
Best American First Sentences of Novels Published in 2006	p. 6
Best American New Words of 2006	p. 8
from The Concise Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, new edition
Best American New Band Names	p. 11
Best American Six-Word Memoirs	p. 12
from
Best American Personals from Around the World	p. 14
from
Best American Article Titles from the Best American Trade Magazines	p. 17
Best American Creationist Explanations for the World's Natural Wonders	p. 21
from Answers in Genesis
Best American New Animal Plagues	p. 23
from Earthweek, written
Best American Failed Television Pilots	p. 25
from Channel	p. 101
Best American Names of Television Programs Taken to Their Logical Conclusions	p. 28
from Opium, written
Best American Police Blotter Items	p. 29
from Looptard II
Middle-American Gothic	p. 33
from Spin
A Happy Death	p. 41
from Fun
Ghost Children	p. 70
from Creative Nonfiction
Rock the Junta	p. 84
from Mother
American	p. 99
from New Orleans Review Edge Foundation
What Is Your Dangerous Idea?	p. 107
Selling the General	p. 131
from Five Chapters
Where I Slept	p. 153
from Tin House	p. Kevin A. Gon
Lotería	p. 162
from Indiana Review
How to Tell Stories to Children	p. 187
from Zoetrope: All-Story
Adina, Astrid, Chipewee, Jasmine	p. 204
from The New Yorker
All Aboard the Bloated Boat: Arguments in Favor of Barry Bonds	p. 227
from
Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice	p. 237
from Zoetrope: All-Story
Darfur Diaries	p. 259
The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground	p. 274
from The Virginia Quarterly Review
Stuyvesant High School Commencement Speech	p. 299
Humpies	p. 305
from Agni Online
So Long, Anyway	p. 317
from Epoch
Literature Unnatured	p. 330
from American Short Fiction Contributors' Notes	p. 341
The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee	p. 345
Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2006	p. 349
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction How I Trumped Rudolf Steiner and Overcame the Tribulations of Illiteracy, One Snickers Bar at a TimeThere are some things you tell no one, secrets packed and folded away in the far reaches of your mind admissions of mouth herpes, for example, or athletes foot, or a night spent in jail for drunk driving. These irreversible facts, like birth certificates and blood donor cards, we keep under cover in the fireproof safe-deposit box hidden in the closet, under the Ouija board and Christmas-tree stand and the packs of Nicorette gum. Im a glutton for exhibitionism, so Id like to reveal a dirty secret: I didnt learn to read until third grade. As an elementary school kid at the Detroit Waldorf School, I was encouraged to learn at my own pace. For the uninformed, let me tell you a little about Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf system. An Austrian philosopher, writer, and social theorist, Steiner developed an educational system that was holistic, noncompetitive, and emotionally balanced, emphasizing social health, artistic expression, and pluralism in the classroom. In practice, this meant there were no textbooks, workbooks, readers guides, or learning manuals only paint, clay, knitting needles, and sheeps wool. I dont recall a library or a science lab in our school. There were indoor planters, pieces of felt, animal costumes, and wax paper. The classrooms were decorated with satin drapes and paper lanterns. There were no parallel walls or right angles. Quiet nooks and secret hollows were constructed in the corners, quilted blankets and hand-woven shawls held up with rocking chairs and wood broomsticks. Every room was designed to imitate a tree house or a bear cave or an underground den where foxes slept through the winter, nuzzling their young. Learning was an amorphous metaphysical experience measured by the students creative whims beeswax one day, cotton string the next. There were no vocabulary exercises or math quizzes. The syllabus was hand drawn on the chalkboard, oil pastels in Renaissance colors simulating the seasons, sweeping rainbow illustrations of unicorns and magic owls and eavesdropping elves. The school did everything to blur all lines between fact and imagination, between art and science, between math and English, between student and teacher. For some, the disregard for standards was galvanizing. My peers took up the violin, spoke French, learned botany, identified plants and animals, mastered oil painting, weaving, and the classical guitar. But I was a slow learner, the youngest of five, easily distracted, unmotivated, listless, prone to daydreaming. I spent much of my time huddled by the radiator, keeping my beeswax warm, humming the theme to Star Search. The classrooms lack of parallel surfaces coddled me in a fluid womb of sleep and thumb-sucking. I had trouble finding the restroom, so I peed in the cot. I had trouble finger- knitting, so I balled up the yarn and used it for a pillow. I had trouble making fri

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