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A review by seebrandyread
The Best American Short Stories 2001 by Katrina Kenison, Barbara Kingsolver
4.0
I don't think I've read a single short story by Barbara Kingsolver. I've read two of her novels, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I don't think she's ever published a collection of short fiction. I don't know if she's published any short fiction. You don't have to write short stories to be able to enjoy them or even to know whether or not they're any good, but there's still a little voice in the back of my mind that protests someone judging a genre they haven't practiced.
The Best American Short Stories goes through at least 2 or 3 culling processes. I'm not sure if individual publications send the stories they think are the best from their own log, but I know the series editor has to read from a vast pool and then the guest editor selects their top 20 from that pool. That doesn't even include the selection process of the original publications. This is a roundabout way of saying that the process isn't perfect (I bet stories were submitted to and rejected by many of the magazines that Kingsolver would have liked better than some of the stories she wound up with) but this is what's manageable.
The two things that set this edition apart the most for me was the length of the stories which, aside from a few much longer and one or two short-short stories, resided around 15 pages, and inclusion of work from a couple of magazines I didn't know about: Salmagundi and Descant. The first is still in existence, but the second one appears to be defunct. Even though I love this series, I'm always deeply aware of it's flaws, namely that the same publications show up time and time again, publications that are not so democratic in their process because many of them don't accept unsolicited work or strive for inclusion and diversity.
I enjoyed many of the stories from this edition and the journeys they took me on all over the world: an American-style fried chicken restaurant in China, a post-Chernobyl Ukraine, Iran during the revolution, Basque country. I also enjoyed the innovative style of Rick Moody's "Boys" and the heartbreaking fabulism in Elizabeth Graver's "The Mourning Door." There's even a posthumous story by Dorothy West, an underappreciated writer from the Harlem Renaissance that gives the collection its serendipitous conclusion.
I always try to review each of these after I read them of how well I think it did in terms of diversity of writers, subject matter, length, sources, etc. They usually do better than I think they're going to, but I still notice gaps, and I'm sure they're are gaps I'm failing to notice. I hope all of the editors are doing the same.
The Best American Short Stories goes through at least 2 or 3 culling processes. I'm not sure if individual publications send the stories they think are the best from their own log, but I know the series editor has to read from a vast pool and then the guest editor selects their top 20 from that pool. That doesn't even include the selection process of the original publications. This is a roundabout way of saying that the process isn't perfect (I bet stories were submitted to and rejected by many of the magazines that Kingsolver would have liked better than some of the stories she wound up with) but this is what's manageable.
The two things that set this edition apart the most for me was the length of the stories which, aside from a few much longer and one or two short-short stories, resided around 15 pages, and inclusion of work from a couple of magazines I didn't know about: Salmagundi and Descant. The first is still in existence, but the second one appears to be defunct. Even though I love this series, I'm always deeply aware of it's flaws, namely that the same publications show up time and time again, publications that are not so democratic in their process because many of them don't accept unsolicited work or strive for inclusion and diversity.
I enjoyed many of the stories from this edition and the journeys they took me on all over the world: an American-style fried chicken restaurant in China, a post-Chernobyl Ukraine, Iran during the revolution, Basque country. I also enjoyed the innovative style of Rick Moody's "Boys" and the heartbreaking fabulism in Elizabeth Graver's "The Mourning Door." There's even a posthumous story by Dorothy West, an underappreciated writer from the Harlem Renaissance that gives the collection its serendipitous conclusion.
I always try to review each of these after I read them of how well I think it did in terms of diversity of writers, subject matter, length, sources, etc. They usually do better than I think they're going to, but I still notice gaps, and I'm sure they're are gaps I'm failing to notice. I hope all of the editors are doing the same.