The Best American Short Stories 2001

by Kingsolver, Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780395926888
• ISBN10: 0395926882
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-10
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

This year's Best American Short Stories is edited by the critically acclaimed and best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver, whose latest book is Prodigal Summer. Kingsolver's selections for The Best American Short Stories 2001 showcase a wide variety of new voices and masters, such as Alice Munro, Rick Moody, Dorothy West, and John Updike. "Reading these stories was both a distraction from and an anchor to the complexities of my life - my pleasure, my companionship, my salvation. I hope they will be yours." - Barbara Kingsolver

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Introduction	xiii
Barbara Kingsolver
Servants of the Map	1	(43)
Andrea Barrett
from Salmagundi
The Fireman	44	(18)
Rick Bass
from The Kenyon Review
Think of England	62	(16)
Peter Ho Davies
from Ploughshares
Labors of the Heart	78	(17)
Claire Davis
from Ploughshares
The Mourning Door	95	(10)
Elizabeth Graver
from Ploughshares
After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town	105	(33)
Ha Jin
from TriQuarterly
Brothers and Sisters Around the World	138	(8)
Andrea Lee
from The New Yorker
Boys	146	(6)
Rick Moody
from Elle
Rug Weaver	152	(24)
Barbara Klein Moss
from The Georgia Review
Post and Beam	176	(25)
Alice Munro
from The New Yorker
The Raft	201	(4)
Peter Orner
from The Atlantic Monthly
Betty Hutton	205	(36)
Roy Parvin
from Five Points
Illumination	241	(15)
Nancy Reisman
from Tin House
The Secrets of Bats	256	(15)
Jess Row
from Ploughshares
Nobody Listens When I Talk	271	(4)
Annette Sanford
from Descant
My Mother's Garden	275	(21)
Katherine Shonk
from Tin House
What I Saw from Where I Stood	296	(15)
Marisa Silver
from The New Yorker
The Apple Tree	311	(15)
Trevanian
from The Antioch Review
Personal Archeology	326	(8)
John Updike
from The New Yorker
My Baby...	334	(11)
Dorothy West
from Connecticut Review
Contributors' Notes	345	(14)
100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2000	359	(4)
Editorial Addresses of American and Canadian Magazines Publishing Short Stories	363

Excerpts

ForewordIN THE 1942 VOLUME of The Best American Short Stories, the anthologys new annual editor, Martha Foley, attempted to define the form. "A good short story," she wrote, "is a story which is not too long and which gives the reader the feeling he has undergone a memorable experience." Over the past eleven years, during my own tenure as annual editor of this eighty-six-year-old series, Ive run across numerous other writers attempts to come up with some sort of standard by which to measure the short story. Few have managed to add much to Ms. Foleys democratic and rather obvious criteria. At symposiums and writers conferences, Ive learned to duck and weave around the inevitable question "What do you look for in a short story?" I wish I knew! Heart? Soul? Truth? Voice? Integrity of intention and skill in execution? The answer is all of the above, and none of the above. For I dont really "look" for anything; when a story works, I know it in my gut, not in my head, and only then - after laughing, after brushing away a tear, after taking a moment to catch my breath and return to the here and now - do I set about analyzing the successes and failures of a writers effort. It would certainly be nice to have a checklist, a foolproof grading system, a tally sheet of pluses and minuses. But reading is a subjective activity, even for those of us who are fortunate enough to read for a living. We editors may read more pages than the average American, and we may read faster, but when it comes right down to it, I believe we all read for the same reason: in order to test our own knowledge of life and to enlarge on it. Out of the three thousand or so short stories I read in any given year, I may file two hundred away. And I always marvel at how precious this stash of chosen fiction seems to me; these are the stories that, for one reason or another, exerted some kind of hold on the priorities of my heart. Even now, I have boxes of old stories, going back a decade and more, stacked up in the basement; Ive saved every file card Ive filled out since 1990 as well - a treasure trove of stories, a kings ransom of human wisdom caught and held on those hundreds of moldering pages. When it comes to cleaning closets, Im ruthless. But those stories... well, how could I throw them away? Who knows when a particular bit of fiction will prove useful? Someday, I think, someone will need that story about the emotional roller coaster of new motherhood; or this one, which reminds us what sixteen years old really feels like; or that one, which could help a friend prepare for death... Toward years end, I sift through the current piles and begin to ship batches of tales off to the guest editor, always wondering whether he or she will share my tastes and predilections and curious to know whether the narrative voice that whispered so urgently in my ear will speak with as much power to another. Truth be told, it is an anxious time. Just as, when I was a teenag

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Excerpted from The Best American Short Stories 2001
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