The Best American Short Stories 1986

by Raymond Carver (Editor)

Presents a collection of stories selected from magazines in the United States and Canada

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

325 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958. He saw this opportunity as a turning point.

Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing a life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes.

After the 'line of demarcation' in Carver's life - 2 June 1977, the day he stopped drinking - his stories become increasingly more redemptive and expansive. Alcohol had eventually shattered his health, his work and his family - his first marriage effectively ending in 1978. He finally married his long-term parter Tess Gallagher (they met ten years earlier at a writers' conference in Dallas) in Reno, Nevada, less than two months before he eventually lost his fight with cancer.

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book after listening to an old interview with Carver where he talked about the editorship of this book. The stories selected are very similar to Carver's own work, which is wonderful. I kept referring back to the introduction where he talked about his selection process. All of these stories were great - my favorites were:

Gryphon - Charles Baxter
Star Food - Ethan Canin
Doe Season - David Michael Kaplan
All My Relations - Christopher McIlroy
Invisible Life - Kent Nelson
Lawns - Mona Simpson
The Rich Brother - Tobias Wolff

[Adam Tramposh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything I could have hoped for in a commute reader. Entirely good, mostly excellent.

Standouts:
Star Food - Ethan Canin
Communist - Richard Ford
All My Relations - Christopher McIlroy

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been almost two weeks since I read The Best American Short Stories 1986, and not many have the stories stuck with me from memory, but I remember liking it fine. My favorite story in the collection was Mona Simpson's "Lawns," which is about a young college-aged woman coming to terms with her sexual abuse and its effects on her view of relationships. Ann Beattie's "Janus" is a good one, about a real estate agent who brings a bowl with her to put in every house as a selling point, but honestly I probably only recall this one because it was also anthologized in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Looking back over some of the other stories in the collection, now it occurs to me that Frank Conroy's "Gossip" was enjoyable; this one concerns how gossip, whether true or not, can spread among a work environment, in this academia, and ruin what ought to be positive relationships. "Bad Company" by Tess Gallagher involves a woman encountering her dad's old flame at his tombstone (do I have this story correctly characterized?). Two others I liked quite a bit were "Three Thousand Dollars" by David Lipsky (a boy steals three thousand dollars from his dad; won't tell his mom; the dad and mom are divorced) and Jessica Neely's "Skin Angels" (the mom leads a reckless, bohemian life, a big strain on the daughters, to say the least). And that's that there.

[Clay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty great collection of stories.

[Jakon Hays · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodbye to the Best American Stories 1986


Some numbers –


To read and report on these stories it took me 5 months and 1 day.


That also works out to:


22 weeks

Or

154 days

Or

110 weekdays.


While we are looking at numbers, I’ll dial it back a bit and see where we are with this little BASS project.


My first post dropped on:


May 29th 2008.


That was –


3 years 3 months and 4 days ago. I can’t even begin to tell you how my life has changed since then.


1191 days. Pffffffff….long sigh.


How many of these volumes have I read and reported on in 3 years, 3 months and 4 days?


Nine.


Some more numbers? Well, it looks like I spent about 4.3 months per volume. To be more exact, 132.33 days per volume.


I think it goes without saying that I need to speed things up.


Let me now discuss my thoughts on this volume.


The introduction can be found here:

http://yearsofbass.blogspot.com/2011/...


If you haven’t read the intro – please do, I’m actually proud of that post!


Here are a few words from that introduction.


I highlighted this from Carver’s intro:

“Stories from the New Yorker predominated, and that is as it should be. The New Yorker not only publishes good stories – on occasion wonderful stories – but, by virtue of the fact that they publish every week, fifty-two weeks a year, they bring out more fiction than any other magazine in the country.”

Well, I have discovered a new love for The New Yorker and that love has partially been the reason why I have failed to read stories from this volume. I’ve been too distracted by that magazine AND with working on a database that already existed AND attempting to buy, and eventually succeeding in buying a nice 3 volume set of collected short stories from that magazine.


There were 20 stories in this volume – 3 were from the New Yorker. See previous indexes from past BASS collections and you’ll see the NY’er dominating the collected stories!

Carver goes on to say

“One of the things I feel strongly about is that while short stories often tell us things we don’t know anything about – and this is good, of course – they should also, and maybe more importantly, tell us what everybody knows but what nobody is talking about. At least not publicly. Except for the short story writers.”

Yes – perfect. I’d say there were more than a couple of stories in this collection that did just that. They told us what everybody know but what nobody is /was talking about. The stories were wonderful – the majority of his selections.

Further-

“I deliberately tried to pick stories that rendered, in a more or less straightforward manner, what it’s like out there. I wanted the stories I selected to throw some light on what it is that makes us and keeps us, often against great odds, recognizably human.”

I mentioned in several of my posts the above quote. Carver succeeded.


So how do I feel about Carver’s collection?


Well, I feel that I did the volume a disservice. I took too long to read it and I didn’t fully commit my heart and mind to the project. I gave about 50%.

That, in short, is unsatisfactory.


Therefore, I do not feel I can faithfully pass judgment on this collection. The milk has been spilled, no need to cry. Let’s clean it up and pour another glass.

http://yearsofbass.blogspot.com/2011/...

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among the BASS collections I've read so far, this one stands out as the best, the most consistently brilliant, the most satisfying. Why? Well, Carver packed it with a bunch of greats, that's why. Beattie, Munro, Paley, Barthelme, Ford, Wolff, Conroy, Simpson, Canin -- this edition is filled with writers who were reputed or would go on to be reputed. As such, the collection has an unusual solidity. It feels like a supercharged version of the 1982 edition, really: it has the same general focus on capital-S Stories, but with a more engaging emotional tenor on the whole.

The most brilliant of the bunch to my mind (in alphabetical order):

Ann Beattie - Janus
James Lee Burke - The Convict
Ethan Canin - Star Food
Frank Conroy - Gossip
Richard Ford - Communist
Alice Munro - Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux
Grace Paley - Telling
Mona Simpson - Lawns

[Jan Priddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began reading the collection for the sake of Chandler’s introduction, which did not fail me. He describes how the stories were collected, bragging really, to assure the reader that he knows far better than anyone else whose stories matter and will persist, whose will not. And he is mostly correct. Several of the stories have a slow burn, easy to read, smooth without being flawless, until two-third through something entirely unanticipated, as in “Janus” which seems to be about the realtor’s staging of houses, and suddenly concerns infidelity to self and others.  Munro’s story and Mona Simpson’s also take late thunderous turns in intensity.  How easy would such stories be to place today, when we seem to want the clutch at the throat from the first line—demanding a poet’s intensity line to line?

[Zbob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good collection of short stories chosen by an excellent short story author. I believe that the short story is the premier format for writing. Although longer novels can give a much more detailed account, the brevity of a short story allows for the capture of a mood, a place, a character - essentially a more focused picture of what the author wants to convey. It forces the writer to be more concise and more selective with his words. I have also found that many good novels if broken into shorter components stand well by themselves.

[Tyler McGaughey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really solid collection, probably the best Best American anthology I've read. Not really a bad story in here, and quite a few excellent ones.

Highlights:
"Janus" by Ann Beattie
"The Convict" by James Lee Burke
"Today Will Be A Quiet Day" by Amy Hempel
"Sportsmen" by Thomas McGuane
"All My Relations" by Christopher McIlroy
"Telling" by Grace Paley
"The Rich Brother" by Tobias Wolff

[Tamra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites:
Gryphon - Charles Baxter
The Convict - James Lee Burke
Bad Company - Tess Gallagher
Three Thousand Dollars - David Lipsky
All My Relations - Christopher McIlroy
Telling - Grace Paley
The Rich Brother -Tobias Wolff

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The masters of the 80's at work. Tobias Wolff's "Rich brother", and Thomas McGuane's "sportsmen" were my favorites by far. Definitely going to be checking up on these two writers. Raymond Carver, a personal favorite as well, did a fantastic job of selecting the stories.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

stories chosen by Raymond Carver, enough said.

[Ann M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great stories here, somewhat understated, realistic and with fine detail. The editor's sensibility is like breath running through them.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this is what turned me on to Raymond Carver.
I thne read everything he wrote...
died way too soon.