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The Best American Short Stories 1993
Short Stories by Andrea Lee, Thom Jones, John Updike, Mary Gordon, Joanna Scott, Diane Johnson, Antonya Nelson, Harlan Ellison, and Alice Munro.
Foreword --
Introduction / Louise Erdrich --
Playing with dynamite / John Updike --
The girl on the plane / Mary Gaitskill --
A real life / Alice Munro --
Silent passengers / Larry Woiwode --
Queen Wintergreen / Alice Fulton --
The man who rowed Christopher Columbus ashore / Harlan Ellison --
Poltergeists / Jane Shapiro --
Red moccasins / Susan Power --
I want to live! / Thom Jones --
Charlotte / Tony Early --
What the thunder said / Janet Peery --
Naked ladies / Antonya Nelson --
Man, woman and boy / Stephen Dixon --
Winter barley / Andrea Lee --
Concerning mold upon the skin, etc. / Joanna Scott --
Pray without ceasing / Wendell Berry --
Gold / Kim Edwards --
Great Barrier Reef / Diane Johnson --
Terrific mother / Lorrie Moore --
The important houses / Mary Gordon --
Contributor's notes --
100 other distinguished stories of 1992 --
Editorial addresses of American and Canadian magazines publishing short stories
Foreword --
Introduction / Louise Erdrich --
Playing with dynamite / John Updike --
The girl on the plane / Mary Gaitskill --
A real life / Alice Munro --
Silent passengers / Larry Woiwode --
Queen Wintergreen / Alice Fulton --
The man who rowed Christopher Columbus ashore / Harlan Ellison --
Poltergeists / Jane Shapiro --
Red moccasins / Susan Power --
I want to live! / Thom Jones --
Charlotte / Tony Early --
What the thunder said / Janet Peery --
Naked ladies / Antonya Nelson --
Man, woman and boy / Stephen Dixon --
Winter barley / Andrea Lee --
Concerning mold upon the skin, etc. / Joanna Scott --
Pray without ceasing / Wendell Berry --
Gold / Kim Edwards --
Great Barrier Reef / Diane Johnson --
Terrific mother / Lorrie Moore --
The important houses / Mary Gordon --
Contributor's notes --
100 other distinguished stories of 1992 --
Editorial addresses of American and Canadian magazines publishing short stories
395 pages, Paperback
First published November 22, 1993
9 people are currently reading
426 people want to read
About the author
Louise Erdrich
133 books12.8k followersKaren Louise Erdrich is a American author of novels, poetry, and children's books. Her father is German American and mother is half Ojibwe and half French American. She is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Chippewa). She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/louise-e...
From a book description:
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/louise-e...
From a book description:
Author Biography:
Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of contemporary Native American novelists. Born in 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota, she grew up mostly in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She worked at various jobs, such as hoeing sugar beets, farm work, waitressing, short order cooking, lifeguarding, and construction work, before becoming a writer. She attended the Johns Hopkins creative writing program and received fellowships at the McDowell Colony and the Yaddo Colony. After she was named writer-in-residence at Dartmouth, she married professor Michael Dorris and raised several children, some of them adopted. She and Michael became a picture-book husband-and-wife writing team, though they wrote only one truly collaborative novel, The Crown of Columbus (1991).
The Antelope Wife was published in 1998, not long after her separation from Michael and his subsequent suicide. Some reviewers believed they saw in The Antelope Wife the anguish Erdrich must have felt as her marriage crumbled, but she has stated that she is unconscious of having mirrored any real-life events.
She is the author of four previous bestselling andaward-winning novels, including Love Medicine; The Beet Queen; Tracks; and The Bingo Palace. She also has written two collections of poetry, Jacklight, and Baptism of Desire. Her fiction has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle (1984) and The Los Angeles Times (1985), and has been translated into fourteen languages.
Several of her short stories have been selected for O. Henry awards and for inclusion in the annual Best American Short Story anthologies. The Blue Jay's Dance, a memoir of motherhood, was her first nonfiction work, and her children's book, Grandmother's Pigeon, has been published by Hyperion Press. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.
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June 29, 2022
I recently came upon a copy of The Best American Short Stories 1993 edited by Louise Erdrich. One interesting aspect of the collection is that Erdich didn't arrange the stories by alphabetical order like usual. She starts the collection off with John Updike's "Playing With Dynamite"-noting that he usually comes last in these collections. I am a fan of Updike but haven't read anything by him in years and this story made little impression on me. Unlike the second story, Mary Gaitskill's "The Girl on the Plane," which feels more relevant today than in 1993. It is the story of a man who while talking with a woman who is a stranger admits to having raped a woman he loved as a young man-it is evocative of the messy sexuality of people while young and under the influence of alcohol in the age of the "Me, too!" movement. The author notes in the back gives the authors opportunities to comment on the stories (another feature I don't remember seeing in this collection before). There was something of negative reaction in which readers thought she was endorsing gang rape, to which she states: "Why would an adult look to me or any writer to tell him or her what to feel?" It was interesting to see that Alice Munro found inspiration from her lengthy short story "A Real Life" from her reading about Albanian Virgins in the early 20th century who were treated like males as long as they didn't have sex. I was intrigued by Harlan Ellison's short story, "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore," because some of my college friends were fans of Ellison, whose writing is usually characterized as Science Fiction a genre I haven't been fond of since adolescence. And it it felt very post modern in the narrative style that was playful and telling of Eilison's attitudes against things such as racism or fascism. I was also impressed with Thom Jones' story, "I Want To Live!", about a older woman dying of cancer that was based on Jones' experience with his mother-in-law. He even manages to bring Schopenhauer into the story-well-done. I also quite enjoyed Tony Earley's "Charlotte" a story about love, pro wrestling, and the Charlotte Hornets-very postmodern. Kim Edwards's story "Gold" was set in Malaysia, where she had lived briefly. And Diane Johnson's story "Great Barrier Reef" was based on an actual trip she took and gets at how traveling can be transformative: "Of course it wasn't the prize--only a little key chain, after all--that had cured me, but the process of the voyage, and the mysterious power of distant places to dissolve the problems the traveler has brought along." I was pleasantly surprised how funny and poignant Lorrie Moore's "Terrific Mother" was-one of my favorites in the collection. The fictional narrative of the author's father, Mary Gordon, was the subject of another standout, "The Important Houses." All in all this collection was somewhat uneven despite having a number of excellent stories-I did skip more than a few.
February 1, 2010
It may have just been the mood I was in, but I found myself almost 100% dialed in to every story in the volume. One comes to expect a certain high standard from the Best American series, but there is typically a spectrum of enjoyment to be found. A few really great stories, a few above average, a few 'meh'. Hardly ever a bad one. But whether it was my state-of-mind, or the possibilty that something was in the air in 1993, this is easily my favorite of the nine (or so) volumes I've read.
A review of the specific stories usually ends up organizing itself around which stories stood out versus which ones kind of blended into the background. As I read over the stories in the table-of-contents, however, I find myself vividly recalling each and every story. A quick run-down...
If I absolutely had to rate the stories, I oddly found myself placing the opening story, John Updike's Playing With Dynamite at the bottom of my list. I think it's brevity is the culprit, for though it is a beautifully written contemplation about a man's subtle transistion into old age, it is practically over before it begins.
Janet Peery's What The Thunder Said and Susan Power's Red Moccasins both portray head-strong female characters who suffer personal tragedies of sorts, and act out in satisfyingly defiant, but widely divergent ways. A Real Life by BASS regular, Alice Munro has a similar trajectory, but with a heroinne who is not the central protagonist, but the project of the actual narrator whose own hidden motives seem to drift back and forth between selfless altruism and a desire to experience a vicariously satisfying life.
Alice Fulton's Queen Wintergreen also deals with a strong female lead, but rather than defiance, she can only muster resigned acquiecense when confronted with the inevitable.
Winter Barley by Andrea Lee, resonated more strongly than it otherwise might have for being set in northern Scotland, where I visited last summer. The melancholic almost-love story rings familiar in spite of the circumstances of the unique couple involved.
Mary Gordon's The Important Houses carries with it a nostalgic vibe as its narrator describes his extended family by way of catalogue-like descriptions of the places he lived.
The Girl on the Plane by Mary Gaitskill, does a superb job of warming the reader to its initially gruff, unlikable protagonist. His deeds are unforgivable, but his desire and inability to repent are sympathetically tragic.
Gold by Kim Edwards brought back memories of one of my favorite novels from last year, "A House for Mr. Biswas", as it spotlighted a somewhat ridiculous man trying to accomplish something that seems so simple on the surface but ultimately comes to embody the seeming futility of fate.
Diane Johnson's Great Barrier Reef and Lorrie Moore's Terrific Mother are similar to the two above listed tales of strong women dealing with tragedy. The difference is these find their heroinnes confronting life with more modern, snarky takes on things. Johnson's lead sailing off to the great Down Under while she snipes at gaudy tourism, and Moore's familiar quick-witted character pushing back against tragedy with her usual brand of eye-rolling and dry humour, but under circumstances that carry more weight than her usual fare.
Two stories that greatly surprised me I wouldn't have been shocked to discover in a sci-fi anthology. Joanna Scott's Concerning Mold Upon The Skin, Etc. delves into the personal life of a scientist who history will mostly only recognize as a name in a textbook. And Harlan Ellison's The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore displays it's author's knack for writing frustratingly quirky riddles that he is able to solve just before the final paragraph is read. I don't know how many close-calls Ellison has written in his time, but this one satisfies in just the nick-of-time.
The longest piece in this volume is easily Wendell Berry's Pray Without Ceasing, which neatly embeds one story in another that ties two eras of history together in an interesting manner, and sadly fleshes out the family history behind an old newspaper clipping.
Two stories that struck particular chords with me were Larry Woiwode's Silent Passengers and Jane Shapiro's Poltergeists. Each dealt with a parent dealing with the particular difficulties of raising a child. Silent Passengers through the lens of a child with a brain injury on the glacial road to rehab and recovery; Poltergeists through the far more mundane, but no less frightening experience of seeing your teenage children begin making their first chaotic steps toward personal independence. As a teacher, I deal constantly with the torturous ordeals that well-intentioned teenagers invent and put themselves through, and I can only imagine experiencing these same scenarios as a parent would only amplify the anxiety.
Thom Jones' I Want To Live! is a heartbreaking and rather funny "Screw You!" to living and dying with cancer. Early manages to simultaneously claw at your emotions even while conjuring a protagonist whose moxy you can only laugh at.
Man, Woman, and Boy by Stephen Dixon is a fractured, almost stream-of-consciousness look at family life where the ideal nuclear family seems to crash haphazardly into all the complications and second-guessing that come with being a post-modern family. Dixon's narrative is choppy and doesn't always form a cohesive picture, but it's pitch-perfect tone ties it all together.
Antonya Nelson's Naked Ladies is a different sort of take on the modern family. Told from the point-of-view of a cynical older sister, the story revolves around her trying to piece together the jigsaw puzzle that is her parents' life and relationship. Centered around an Easter party at mother's employer's house, Nelson scatters several intriguing clues about what it all means, which could be fitted together into several possible pictures.
And finally, my favorite story of the anthology, Tony Early's Charlotte manages to wring a surprising amount of pathetic malaise from the downfall of a big small-town by way of its connection to professional wrestling. The parallel stories of the sad town of Charlotte and the melodramatic plot-lines from the local wrestling brand are at once absurd and moving. The juxtaposition of the drab and sleepy city with the colorful exhuberence of the wrestlers really left a strong impression.
Final Result: one of the best of the Best American series I've ever read.
A review of the specific stories usually ends up organizing itself around which stories stood out versus which ones kind of blended into the background. As I read over the stories in the table-of-contents, however, I find myself vividly recalling each and every story. A quick run-down...
If I absolutely had to rate the stories, I oddly found myself placing the opening story, John Updike's Playing With Dynamite at the bottom of my list. I think it's brevity is the culprit, for though it is a beautifully written contemplation about a man's subtle transistion into old age, it is practically over before it begins.
Janet Peery's What The Thunder Said and Susan Power's Red Moccasins both portray head-strong female characters who suffer personal tragedies of sorts, and act out in satisfyingly defiant, but widely divergent ways. A Real Life by BASS regular, Alice Munro has a similar trajectory, but with a heroinne who is not the central protagonist, but the project of the actual narrator whose own hidden motives seem to drift back and forth between selfless altruism and a desire to experience a vicariously satisfying life.
Alice Fulton's Queen Wintergreen also deals with a strong female lead, but rather than defiance, she can only muster resigned acquiecense when confronted with the inevitable.
Winter Barley by Andrea Lee, resonated more strongly than it otherwise might have for being set in northern Scotland, where I visited last summer. The melancholic almost-love story rings familiar in spite of the circumstances of the unique couple involved.
Mary Gordon's The Important Houses carries with it a nostalgic vibe as its narrator describes his extended family by way of catalogue-like descriptions of the places he lived.
The Girl on the Plane by Mary Gaitskill, does a superb job of warming the reader to its initially gruff, unlikable protagonist. His deeds are unforgivable, but his desire and inability to repent are sympathetically tragic.
Gold by Kim Edwards brought back memories of one of my favorite novels from last year, "A House for Mr. Biswas", as it spotlighted a somewhat ridiculous man trying to accomplish something that seems so simple on the surface but ultimately comes to embody the seeming futility of fate.
Diane Johnson's Great Barrier Reef and Lorrie Moore's Terrific Mother are similar to the two above listed tales of strong women dealing with tragedy. The difference is these find their heroinnes confronting life with more modern, snarky takes on things. Johnson's lead sailing off to the great Down Under while she snipes at gaudy tourism, and Moore's familiar quick-witted character pushing back against tragedy with her usual brand of eye-rolling and dry humour, but under circumstances that carry more weight than her usual fare.
Two stories that greatly surprised me I wouldn't have been shocked to discover in a sci-fi anthology. Joanna Scott's Concerning Mold Upon The Skin, Etc. delves into the personal life of a scientist who history will mostly only recognize as a name in a textbook. And Harlan Ellison's The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore displays it's author's knack for writing frustratingly quirky riddles that he is able to solve just before the final paragraph is read. I don't know how many close-calls Ellison has written in his time, but this one satisfies in just the nick-of-time.
The longest piece in this volume is easily Wendell Berry's Pray Without Ceasing, which neatly embeds one story in another that ties two eras of history together in an interesting manner, and sadly fleshes out the family history behind an old newspaper clipping.
Two stories that struck particular chords with me were Larry Woiwode's Silent Passengers and Jane Shapiro's Poltergeists. Each dealt with a parent dealing with the particular difficulties of raising a child. Silent Passengers through the lens of a child with a brain injury on the glacial road to rehab and recovery; Poltergeists through the far more mundane, but no less frightening experience of seeing your teenage children begin making their first chaotic steps toward personal independence. As a teacher, I deal constantly with the torturous ordeals that well-intentioned teenagers invent and put themselves through, and I can only imagine experiencing these same scenarios as a parent would only amplify the anxiety.
Thom Jones' I Want To Live! is a heartbreaking and rather funny "Screw You!" to living and dying with cancer. Early manages to simultaneously claw at your emotions even while conjuring a protagonist whose moxy you can only laugh at.
Man, Woman, and Boy by Stephen Dixon is a fractured, almost stream-of-consciousness look at family life where the ideal nuclear family seems to crash haphazardly into all the complications and second-guessing that come with being a post-modern family. Dixon's narrative is choppy and doesn't always form a cohesive picture, but it's pitch-perfect tone ties it all together.
Antonya Nelson's Naked Ladies is a different sort of take on the modern family. Told from the point-of-view of a cynical older sister, the story revolves around her trying to piece together the jigsaw puzzle that is her parents' life and relationship. Centered around an Easter party at mother's employer's house, Nelson scatters several intriguing clues about what it all means, which could be fitted together into several possible pictures.
And finally, my favorite story of the anthology, Tony Early's Charlotte manages to wring a surprising amount of pathetic malaise from the downfall of a big small-town by way of its connection to professional wrestling. The parallel stories of the sad town of Charlotte and the melodramatic plot-lines from the local wrestling brand are at once absurd and moving. The juxtaposition of the drab and sleepy city with the colorful exhuberence of the wrestlers really left a strong impression.
Final Result: one of the best of the Best American series I've ever read.
October 6, 2014
I came upon this 20-year-old collection in our library, thanks to an award my wife won back in college. I had perused it once before, back in those bygone days, and I discovered that the stories haven't necessarily held up against time's passing. Some are excellent, but a few feel like the unimportant complaints of privileged urban people. The collection contains enough weak stories to deserve a rating of three stars rather than my usual four for a Best American collection.
Updike's "Playing with Dynamite" is an excellent meditation upon aging and lust. Mary Gaitskill's "The Girl on the Plane" begins strongly and then falters in its key moments, sputtering out with a revelation that might have felt groundbreaking decades ago but now feels more motivated by politics than character. Alice Munro's "A Real Life" is a more focused version of the stories she continues writing today, zeroing in upon a shorter time in her characters' lives that is exactly the right, crucial time to drive a story.
Many stories investigate the challenges of dealing with illness or infirmity. Larry Woiwode's "Silent Passengers" heartbreakingly portrays the consequences of a child's brain injury, while Lorrie Moore's "Terrific Mother" ends up creating sympathy for a woman who accidentally kills her friends' baby. Alice Fulton's "Queen Wintergreen" challenges readers to understand feelings of uselessness at the end of life.
A different slice of life is depicted in Jane Shapiro's "Poltergeists," which follows a preoccupied mother struggling to understand the complicated lives of her almost-grown teenage son and daughter.
The collection's most experimental piece is Harlan Ellison's "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore," which proves to be an entertaining enough read that nonetheless feels incoherent. Susan Power's "Red Moccasins" uses magical realist elements to tell a compelling story of mourning and revenge. Stephen Dixon's experimental "Man, Woman, and Boy" is barely tolerable but probably pays off in the end.
Thom Jones renders real life as fantastical in the emotionally honest "I Want to Live!", a story that convincingly explores dying from the inside. Tony Earley delivers the collection's most haunting piece with "Charlotte," whose setting and story and first person narrator are so artfully intertwined that whenever one is threatened, the others are too. Janet Peery's "What the Thunder Said" includes imagery that is also haunting, and it powerfully conveys the story of young lust and how its consequences reverberate throughout whole lives. Another story that brings together lust and melancholy is Antonya Nelson's excellent "Naked Ladies." Andrea Lee's "Winter Barley" tells the story of two lovers who don't actually love each other and may not even like each other, but their need for each other becomes obvious. Joanna Scott's "Concerning Mold Upon the Skin, Etc." uses setting well to relate the tale of a man who loves ideas rather than people.
Wendell Berry's uber-folksy novella "Pray Without Ceasing" is worth a read, though its slow-moving wisdom feels anachronistic in a Best American Stories collection. Kim Edwards' "Gold" investigates the effects of money on the impoverished, taking its themes into religious faith. Diane Johnson's "Great Barrier Reef" delivers an intolerable narrator who realizes her own degenerate nature, though the insight fails to redeem her in my eyes.
Mary Gordon's "The Important Houses" is heartbreaking and true.
Updike's "Playing with Dynamite" is an excellent meditation upon aging and lust. Mary Gaitskill's "The Girl on the Plane" begins strongly and then falters in its key moments, sputtering out with a revelation that might have felt groundbreaking decades ago but now feels more motivated by politics than character. Alice Munro's "A Real Life" is a more focused version of the stories she continues writing today, zeroing in upon a shorter time in her characters' lives that is exactly the right, crucial time to drive a story.
Many stories investigate the challenges of dealing with illness or infirmity. Larry Woiwode's "Silent Passengers" heartbreakingly portrays the consequences of a child's brain injury, while Lorrie Moore's "Terrific Mother" ends up creating sympathy for a woman who accidentally kills her friends' baby. Alice Fulton's "Queen Wintergreen" challenges readers to understand feelings of uselessness at the end of life.
A different slice of life is depicted in Jane Shapiro's "Poltergeists," which follows a preoccupied mother struggling to understand the complicated lives of her almost-grown teenage son and daughter.
The collection's most experimental piece is Harlan Ellison's "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore," which proves to be an entertaining enough read that nonetheless feels incoherent. Susan Power's "Red Moccasins" uses magical realist elements to tell a compelling story of mourning and revenge. Stephen Dixon's experimental "Man, Woman, and Boy" is barely tolerable but probably pays off in the end.
Thom Jones renders real life as fantastical in the emotionally honest "I Want to Live!", a story that convincingly explores dying from the inside. Tony Earley delivers the collection's most haunting piece with "Charlotte," whose setting and story and first person narrator are so artfully intertwined that whenever one is threatened, the others are too. Janet Peery's "What the Thunder Said" includes imagery that is also haunting, and it powerfully conveys the story of young lust and how its consequences reverberate throughout whole lives. Another story that brings together lust and melancholy is Antonya Nelson's excellent "Naked Ladies." Andrea Lee's "Winter Barley" tells the story of two lovers who don't actually love each other and may not even like each other, but their need for each other becomes obvious. Joanna Scott's "Concerning Mold Upon the Skin, Etc." uses setting well to relate the tale of a man who loves ideas rather than people.
Wendell Berry's uber-folksy novella "Pray Without Ceasing" is worth a read, though its slow-moving wisdom feels anachronistic in a Best American Stories collection. Kim Edwards' "Gold" investigates the effects of money on the impoverished, taking its themes into religious faith. Diane Johnson's "Great Barrier Reef" delivers an intolerable narrator who realizes her own degenerate nature, though the insight fails to redeem her in my eyes.
Mary Gordon's "The Important Houses" is heartbreaking and true.
August 20, 2009
Some fabulous stories in this volume, though not really any discoveries. The ones that I loved the best, I'd already read, such as "Terrific Mother" by Lorrie Moore and "Charlotte" by Tony Earley.
Some of the other stories were not as entertaining. Updike's "Playing with Dynamite," which opens the anthology, was not just boring, but the self-indulgent character tells a self-indulgent story. For the life of me, I can't understand why a story as boring and pointless and boring as "Man, Woman and Boy" ever made the cut.
But that's just me--no one's asked me to edit one of these. Yet. I'm just saying--wouldn't it be revolutionary to ask someone who hasn't even published a book. Just saying.
Some of the other stories were not as entertaining. Updike's "Playing with Dynamite," which opens the anthology, was not just boring, but the self-indulgent character tells a self-indulgent story. For the life of me, I can't understand why a story as boring and pointless and boring as "Man, Woman and Boy" ever made the cut.
But that's just me--no one's asked me to edit one of these. Yet. I'm just saying--wouldn't it be revolutionary to ask someone who hasn't even published a book. Just saying.
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May 17, 2008The girl on the plane Mary Gaitskill
Silent passengers Larry Woiwode
The man who rowed Christopher Columbus ashore Harlan Ellison Poltergeists Jane Shapiro
Red moccasins Sn Power
I want to live! Thom Jones
Great Barrier Reef Diane Johnson
Terrific mother Lorrie Moore
Silent passengers Larry Woiwode
The man who rowed Christopher Columbus ashore Harlan Ellison Poltergeists Jane Shapiro
Red moccasins Sn Power
I want to live! Thom Jones
Great Barrier Reef Diane Johnson
Terrific mother Lorrie Moore
browsed
November 17, 2015Read only the first story, Playing with Dynamite, by John Updike. Guy's weird observations become reality as he revisits his past.
June 17, 2018
I've read a few of the Best American anthologies and thought this was one of the stronger editions. I think I was predisposed to like it because Louise Erdrich--one of my favorite writers--was the guest editor. Writers don't always make for good readers (or teachers, for that matter), but Erdrich did a great job selecting these stories. If I had to point to a couple themes, I might say "domestic life" and "travel." John Updike starts the anthology with his familiar tableau of domestic infidelity. There's also a typical (though not tedious) Alice Munro story in which she does her magic trick of encapsulating an entire life story into the space of a few pages. In "Poltergeists," Jane Shapiro does a great job capturing the worry and stress parents feel about their teenaged children. Stories by Andrea Lee, Kim Edwards, and Diane Johnson are set farther abroad. In Lee's "Winter Barley," the narrator takes up with an older man, wealthy and connected to nobility, in Scotland, while Edwards' story is set in Malaysia and Johnson's on a ship headed toward the Great Barrier Reef. The scope of Erdrich's choices expands not just geographically but also thematically and stylistically. There's a quirky story by Harlan Ellison, and while it wasn't my favorite in the collection, I admired the choice to include something by a sci-fi author. "Charlotte," by Tony Earley, is a great story about pro wrestling(!). And Joanna Scott's story focused (no pun intended) on the early development of the microscope. Among all these fine stories there were, in my opinion, a couple duds but also a few legitimate classics of the form. Wendell Berry's "Pray Without Ceasing" was honestly a slog for me to get through. He recounts a killing and its immediate aftermath from multiple points of view. The story seemed to drag on without much tension. And the final story, "The Important Houses" by Mary Gordon, was less a story than a description, ad nauseam, of the narrator's apartment and her grandmother's house. Both stories seemed lengthy and indulgent, especially in relation to a story like Mary Gaitskill's "The Girl on the Plane," which was quick and brutal in its intensity. The standouts in this anthology were by some of the usual suspects: Larry Woiwode, Thom Jones, and Lorrie Moore. Each of these centers around a traumatic event. Woiwode writes about a son's farming accident, Jones about a mother-in-law's terminal cancer, and Moore about the accidental death of a child. These are rare stories that grab the reader instantly and don't let go. It's difficult to write about such topics without becoming maudlin or sappy, but Woiwode, Jones, and Moore manage to do so, the latter two even managing to include some humor. This collection may be hard to obtain due to its age but is definitely worth picking up if you see it online or at a secondhand shop. If nothing else, find a copy of Thom Jones' "I Want to Live!" and read immediately.
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July 27, 2020Not surprising, really loved the Alice Munro story, the Harlan Ellison, the Mary Gordon. I really enjoyed the Wendell Berry, too. I must have read some of his stories before, but never thought about them. They like to read his poetry at church, I think that's where I heard him first though I had probably read his stories in anthologies before. This time, I looked at it closer and it spoke to me quietly.
May 29, 2017
A solid set with a higher-than-usual yield of memorable works. My favorites this time around:
* John Updike - "Playing with Dynamite"
* Mary Gaitskill - "The Girl on the Plane"
* Antonya Nelson - "Naked Ladies"
* Mary Gordon - "The Important Houses"
* Alice Munro - "A Real Life"
* Lorrie Moore - "Terrific Mother"
* Wendell Berry - "Pray Without Ceasing"
* Tony Earley - "Charlotte"
* John Updike - "Playing with Dynamite"
* Mary Gaitskill - "The Girl on the Plane"
* Antonya Nelson - "Naked Ladies"
* Mary Gordon - "The Important Houses"
* Alice Munro - "A Real Life"
* Lorrie Moore - "Terrific Mother"
* Wendell Berry - "Pray Without Ceasing"
* Tony Earley - "Charlotte"
September 8, 2020
I'm not a fan of short stories, but I picked up this book because Louise Erdrich, one of my favorite authors, was the editor. I enjoyed some of the stories, but not all. There were stories by recognized authors and others unknown, from familiar magazines, especially "The New Yorker" to ones I had never heard of.
February 5, 2021
My favorite story in this collection was “Pray Without Ceasing” by Wendell Berry. Others I found very enjoyable were: “Poltergeists” by Jane Shapiro; “Red Moccasins” by Susan Power; “I Want to Live!” by Thom Jones; “Charlotte” by Tony Earley; “Terrific Mother” by Lorrie Moore; and “The Important Houses” by Mary Gordon.
December 12, 2021
I enjoyed 95% of the stories, which I would call a success! "Terrific Mother" was one of my favorites.
August 2, 2024
Read for my Short Story Collection Book Bingo square.
A mixed bag, but some gems: I Want to Live!, Charlotte, Naked Ladies, and Terrific Mother.
A mixed bag, but some gems: I Want to Live!, Charlotte, Naked Ladies, and Terrific Mother.
June 9, 2025
Proxy for her New Yorker short story, ‘Love of My Days’ - discussed w Ann’s book club. Such sadness!
August 5, 2025
Not a dud in the bunch except one. Introduce to Wendell Berry, my favorite. Definitely keep this one!
July 10, 2020
I read this as part of my ongoing Best American Short Stories project. My goal is to eventually read every collection published since I was born, I was born in November 1992, so this is the earliest collection I'll read (I'm skipping 1992 since it features stories from 1991).
A few real winners here. But I didn't like Erdrich's decision to try and order the stories based on mood. I like the stability and constancy of the alphabetical order!
"The Girl on the Plane" by Mary Gaitskill
My favorite of the collection by far. Time has been very kind to this exquisite tale of a man who seeks forgiveness for what he knows is unforgivable. Available in the collection Because They Wanted To.
"Concerning Mold Upon the Skin, etc." by Joanna Scott
Tells the story of a real-life dutch lenscrafter who was crucial to the development of modern microscopes. A very dark and compelling story of fatherhood, science, and alienation. Available in Scott's collection of stories about the history of science, Various Antidotes: A Collection of Short Fiction.
Terrific Mother by Lorrie Moore
I was dreading this one since it's 35(!) pages, but it's funny and compelling, and very 90s in a wonderful and cringey way. It opens with an absolutely terrible event, and much of the story is very mean and acidic, but I found it pretty hopeful in the end. I'm on the Lorrie Moore train. This story is actually available to purchase in its own special volume from Faber and Faber, but you can also read it at the Paris Review (you have to subscribe, though).
A few real winners here. But I didn't like Erdrich's decision to try and order the stories based on mood. I like the stability and constancy of the alphabetical order!
"The Girl on the Plane" by Mary Gaitskill
My favorite of the collection by far. Time has been very kind to this exquisite tale of a man who seeks forgiveness for what he knows is unforgivable. Available in the collection Because They Wanted To.
"Concerning Mold Upon the Skin, etc." by Joanna Scott
Tells the story of a real-life dutch lenscrafter who was crucial to the development of modern microscopes. A very dark and compelling story of fatherhood, science, and alienation. Available in Scott's collection of stories about the history of science, Various Antidotes: A Collection of Short Fiction.
Terrific Mother by Lorrie Moore
I was dreading this one since it's 35(!) pages, but it's funny and compelling, and very 90s in a wonderful and cringey way. It opens with an absolutely terrible event, and much of the story is very mean and acidic, but I found it pretty hopeful in the end. I'm on the Lorrie Moore train. This story is actually available to purchase in its own special volume from Faber and Faber, but you can also read it at the Paris Review (you have to subscribe, though).
July 6, 2007
I really like this series. I don't like every story in every collection (or course), but i have read some really good fiction in this book and the others in this series.
December 8, 2017
Some great stories in this collection.
November 16, 2008
Every story in this book was wonderful.
April 8, 2017
A wonderful, though at times morose collection of stories that I really enjoyed. Having always loved Erdrich's work I was curious as to what sorts of works she would recommend and I was not disappointed. Lots of pieces about family and relationships and I particularly liked Wendell Berry's Pray Without Ceasing, John Updike's Playing with Dynamite and Silent Passengers by Larry Woiwode. I also really enjoyed The Man who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore by Harlan Ellison and each of these stories sent me scurrying off to Google and Goodreads to find more works by these authors.
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