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The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016
In a small but comfortable conference room, in a publishing house in San Francisco, a group of high school students met weekly over the past year to read literary magazines, chapbooks, graphic novels, and countless articles. They had some good times. There was a whiteboard in the conference room, and often cartoons were drawn on this whiteboard. The cartoons were of varying quality. By the end of the year, with the help of a similar committee of high school students in Ann Arbor, and their guest editor, Rachel Kushner, they selected the contents of this anthology. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 features stories about Bulgarian spaceships, psychedelic mushroom therapy, and a cyclorama in Iowa. If you don’t know what a cyclorama is, you aren’t alone. Read on to find out.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 includes N. R. KLEINFIELD, ANNA KOVATCHEVA, DAN HOY, ANTHONY MARRA, MICHAEL POLLAN, MARILYNNE ROBINSON, DANA SPIOTTA, ADRIAN TOMINE, INARA VERZEMNIEKS and others
Rachel Kushner, guest editor, is the author of The Flamethrowers, which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and one of the New York Times ’s top five novels of 2013. Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, a winner of the California Book Award, and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 includes N. R. KLEINFIELD, ANNA KOVATCHEVA, DAN HOY, ANTHONY MARRA, MICHAEL POLLAN, MARILYNNE ROBINSON, DANA SPIOTTA, ADRIAN TOMINE, INARA VERZEMNIEKS and others
Rachel Kushner, guest editor, is the author of The Flamethrowers, which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and one of the New York Times ’s top five novels of 2013. Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, a winner of the California Book Award, and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book.
432 pages, Paperback
First published October 4, 2016
82 people are currently reading
753 people want to read
About the author
Rachel Kushner
47 books2,686 followersRachel Kushner is the bestselling author of three novels: the Booker Prize- and NBCC Award–shortlisted The Mars Room; The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times top ten book of 2013; and Telex from Cuba, a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her novels are translated into 26 languages. She lives in Los Angeles and wants you to know that if you're reading this and curious about Rachel, whatever is unique and noteworthy in her biography that you might want to find out about is in her new book, The Hard Crowd, which will be published in April 2021. An excerpt of it appeared in the New Yorker here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20....
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
April 18, 2017
As usual, the Best American Nonrequired Reading - selected by a team of high school students - consists of really vivid short stories, nonfiction pieces, poems, and graphic novel excerpts. A few have some nuance; all are powered by bold emotions. There's a lot of death and misery in this collection, and rather less wonder, unexpected grace, or joy than I hoped for. The overall impression the collection leaves is that the world is a very hard place. Most of the poems made little sense to me, but they must have spoken to the editorial panel. Favorite selections for me included Mateo Hoke and Cate Malek, 'An Oral History of Abdelrahman Al-Ahmar', recollections shared by a Palestinian lawyer living in the West Bank; Marilynn Robinson, 'An Interview with President Obama', exploring the root causes of divisions in American society today, among other topics; Michael Pollan, 'The Trip Treatment', on a new era of research into the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelics; N. R. Kleinfield, 'The Lonely Death of George Bell', on the life and afterlife of a man who died alone in his apartment in Queens in the summer of 2014; and John Clegg and Robert Lucas, 'Brown v. Ferguson', on the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement amid protests following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. All of these are nonfiction, and several are deeply political in the best possible sense. I also thought Mark Hitz' brutal 'Shadehill', about a shooting accident, a particularly effective short story.
July 24, 2017
Compared to others, this volume certainly "feels" different than past years under Eggers. As always, there are many gems included but I found that the final selection, a powerful piece about Mike Brown and Ferguson, MO set a strong tone that eclipsed the rest of the book once I was finished. Perhaps it's inevitable and maybe even appropriate that the book ultimately reflects the social climate in the USA during 2016.
January 10, 2018
I love that this book is filled with selections made by high school students, and I love how eclectic those selections are. I didn't love - or even understand - every piece, but I appreciate how they were curated and found myself wanting to tell everyone about many of them. I am a big fan of the Best American Nonrequired Reading Series, but this collection stands out in particular as a political statement, which I think is a bold and brave move for high schoolers to make.
August 15, 2018
Have been a dedicated fan of BANR for years. Love the mix, love the process, but this collection didn't jazz me like others. However, the selection process & readers' preferences are subjective. Looking forward to next year.
sampled
March 20, 2018This was good, I'll get back to it, it just slipped underneath the avalanche of amazing books in the world. There's a great essay on how Teflon is in everything.
November 12, 2017
A required book for my creative writing class this semester. Good selections overall, though some of the poems escaped me.
The Grozny Tourist Bureau by Anthony Marra
"Yet in rare spells--like now, as I scour the mildew from her bathroom tiles--clarity surfaces through the murky soup of daily life, and I know that I've purposefully made myself into a crutch she cannot risk discarding. What I don't know is whether I've done so out of love or loneliness, or if in this upside-down world where roofs lie on streets, intentions have lost their moral weight altogether." pg. 13
Bandit by Molly Brodak
"I'd sit at the dinner table watching my parents' volley crescendo from pissy fork drops to plate slams to stomp-offs and squeal-aways, my sister biting into the cruel talk just to feel included, me just watching as if on the living-room side of a television screen: I could see them but they could definitely not see me. . . I could sleep, I could squirm, I could hum, dance or even talk, safe in their blind spot. I could write, I discovered, and no one heard me." pg. 297
"Very slowly, as he talked, I felt my belief, something I didn't really know was there until I felt it moving, turn away from him until it was gone, and I was alone, nodding and smiling. But what a marvel to watch him construct bullshit." pg. 297
"I tamped down my disgust with obliging laughs, since this show was for me. His gold chain and ring I did not recognize. I watched him carefully, waiting for a time when we'd say real things to each other." pg. 299
"And beyond that there are the odds the bookies are offering, which reflect what everyone else is predicting. Perfect for someone who thinks he's smarter than everyone else." pg. 302
"Outcomes get shaken out fast in gambling. In real life, big risks take years to reveal themselves, and the pressure of choosing a career, a partner, a home, a family, a whole identity might overwhelm an impatient man, one who values control, not fate. He will either want all the options out of a confused greed, hoarding overlapping partners, shallow hobbies, alternate selves; or he will refuse them all, risking nothing. And really, the first option is the same as the second. Keeping a few girlfriends or wives around effectively dismisses a true relationship with any one of them. Being a good, hardworking dad and a criminal at the same time is a way of choosing to be neither." pg. 302
"But the ones who get addicted, I think, are looking or certainty, not chance. Outcomes are certain, immediate and clear. In other words, there will be a result to any one bet, a point in time when the risk will be unequivocally resolved, and the skill and foresight of the gambler can be perfectly measured. A shot of adrenaline will issue into the bloodstream, win or lose. It's not messy, not indefinite or uncontrollable, like love, or people. Gambling absolves its players of uncertainty." pg. 302-303
"This is how life works: hurrying along through the tough moments, then the hurrying hardens and fossilizes, then that's the past, that hurrying." pg. 306
". . .or the ornately ruined Michigan Theater." pg. 314
". . .I could tell the floor had been swept occasionally. I walked like I was stepping on someone." pg. 315
Jelly and Jack by Dana Spiotta
"The ring of another person's phone sounded so hopeful at first, and then it grew lonelier. It lost possibility, until you could almost see the sound in an empty house." pg. 39
"'What you are doing works. You always get what you need in the end. Inspiration comes.'
'I really do that, don't I?' he said. 'Never thought of it like that before. But I wonder if I could be more deliberate about it? Know that I'm clearing out the cobwebs, so to speak. Going through the litany of the obvious. The first wave of crap. Maybe I could be more efficient about the process.'
'You could feel confident that, after you've rid yourself of it, the real work will start,' she said.
'I'd avoid the feeling of utter despair,' he said. 'Just by telling myself a different story about what I was doing.'
'If you can reassure yourself in the midst of it, it won't cost you so much,' she said. 'Because you need--you deserve--the feeling of competence. You know what you're doing, and your bad moments are just part of a process.'" pg. 47
"Things had gone on for months; things had gone as far as they could (nothing stays in one place, people always want more). . ." pg. 53
"She was like a character in a myth, doomed to wander between two places, belonging nowhere. That was the word, 'belong.' How much she would like to be with someone, and be long--not finite, not ending--with someone." pg. 54
"What do I look like? If you look, or if I look? It is different, right? There is no precision in my looking. It is all heat and blurred edges. Abstractions shaped by emotion--that is looking." pg. 55
"Still, his disappointment would come out of something human and inescapable: the failure of the actual to meet the contours of the imaginary. . . But there was no talking without imagining. And, when imagining preceded the actual, there was no escaping disappointment, was there?" pg. 56
"It never occurred to her to think this way. She would be so focused on him that her own feelings wouldn't matter. She would feel disappointed if he felt disappointed. She would hear it in his voice, and she would know that she was losing everything, all the perfect, exquisite moments that she had made with him." pg. 56
An Interview with President Obama by Marilynne Robinson
"The President: Are you somebody who worries about people not reading novels anymore? And do you think that has an impact on the culture? When I think about how I understand my role as a citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I've learned I think I've learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there's still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it's possible to connect with some[one] else even though they're very different from you." pg. 110
"The President: Today, my poor press team, they're tweeting every two minutes because some new thing has happened, which then puts a premium on the sensational and the most outrageous or a conflict as a way of getting attention and breaking through the noise--which then creates, I believe, a pessimism about the country because all those quiet, sturdy voices that we were talking about at the beginning, they're not heard. It's not interesting to hear a story about some good people in some quiet place that did something sensible and figured out how to get along." pg. 112
"The President: But doesn't part of that [pouring your life down the siphon of economic utility] depend on people having different definitions of success, and that we've narrowed what it means to be successful in a way that makes people very anxious? They don't feel affirmed if they're good at something that the society says isn't that important or doesn't reward." pg. 119
"The President: Yes, but that [microcosm of democracy] does require a presumption of goodness in other people.
Robinson: Absolutely.
The President: And that's not just what our democracy depends on, but I think that's what a good life depends on. Occasionally, you'll be disappointed, but more often than not, your faith will be confirmed.
Robinson: I believe that." pg.
Death-Qualified by Gary Indiana
"If the United States were at all interested in preventing terrorism, it would first have to acknowledge that the country belongs to the citizens its economic policies have impoverished, and get rid of emergency laws that violate their rights on the pretext of ensuring their safety. This would involve dismantling the surveillance state apparatus that inflates its criminally gigantic budgets with phony terrorism warnings and a veritable industry of theatrical FBI sting operations. And then the country would have to address the systemic social problems that have been allowed to metastasize ever since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. As everyday existence becomes more punitive for all but the monied few, more and more frustrated, volatile individuals will seek each other out online, aggravate whatever lethal fairy tale suits their pathology, and, ultimately, transfer their rage from the screen world to the real one." pg. 149
The Trip Treatment by Michael Pollan
"The authors determined the completeness of a mystical experience using two questionnaires, including the Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire, which is based in part on William James's writing in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.' The questionnaire measures feelings of unity, sacredness, ineffability, peace, and joy, as well as the impression of having transcended space and time and the 'noetic sense' that the experience has disclosed some objective truth about reality. A 'complete' mystical experience is one that exhibits all six characteristics. Griffiths believes that the long-term effectiveness of the drug is due to its ability to occasion such a transformative experience, but not by changing the brain's long-term chemistry, as a conventional psychiatric drug like Prozac does." pg. 158
"A follow-up study by Katherine MacLean, a psychologist in Griffiths's lab, found that the psilocybin experience also had a positive and lasting effect on the personality of most participants. This is a striking result, since the conventional wisdom in psychology holds that personality is usually fixed by age thirty and thereafter is unlikely to substantially change. But more than a year after the psilocybin sessions volunteers who had had the most complete mystical experiences showed significant increases in their 'openness,' one of the five domains that psychologists look at in assessing personality traits. (The others are conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.) Openness, which encompasses aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and tolerance of others' viewpoints, is a good predictor of creativity." pg. 158
"'We desperately need a new treatment approach for addiction,' Herbert Kleber told me. 'Done in the right hands--and I stress that, because the whole psychedelic area attracts people who often think that they know the truth before doing the science--this could be a very useful one.'" pg. 161
"'Ineffability' is a hallmark of the mystical experience. Many struggle to describe the bizarre events going on in their minds during a guided psychedelic journey without sounding like either a New Age guru or a lunatic. The available vocabulary isn't always up to the task of recounting an experience that seemingly can take someone out of body, across vast stretches of time and space, and include face-to-face encounters with divinities and demons and previews of their own death." pg. 163
"Guides are instructed to remind subjects that they'll never be left alone and not to worry about their bodies while journeying, since the guides will keep an eye on them. If you feel like you're 'dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, going crazy etc.--go ahead,' embrace it: 'Climb staircases, open doors, explore paths, fly over landscapes.' And if you confront anything frightening, 'look the monster in the eye and move towards it. . . . Dig in your heels; ask, 'What are you doing in my mind?' Or, 'What can I learn from you?' Look for the darkest corner in the basement, and shine your light there.' This training may help explain why the darker experiences that sometimes accompany the recreational use of psychedelics have not surfaced in the N.Y.U. and Hopkins trials." pg. 164
"Great secrets of the universe often become clear during the journey, such as 'We are all one' or 'Love is all that matters.' The usual ratio of wonder to banality in the adult mind is overturned, and such ideas acquire the force of revealed truth. The result is a kind of conversion experience, and the researchers believe that this is what is responsible for the therapeutic effect." pg. 166
"I was struck by how the descriptions of psychedelic journeys differed from the typical accounts of dreams. For one thing, most people's recall of their journey is not just vivid but comprehensive, the narratives they reconstruct seamless and fully accessible, even years later. They don't regard these narratives as 'just a dream,' the evanescent products of fantasy or wish fulfillment, but, rather, as genuine and sturdy experiences. This is the 'noetic' quality that students of mysticism often describe: the unmistakable sense that whatever has been learned or witnessed has the authority and the durability of objective truth. 'You don't get that on other drugs,' as Roland Griffiths points out; after the fact, we're fully aware of, and often embarrassed by, the inauthenticity of the drug experience." pg. 167
"The [default-mode] network comprises a critical and centrally situated hub of brain activity that links parts of the cerebral cortex to deeper, older structures in the brain, such as the limbic system and the hippocampus. The network, which consumes a significant portion of the brain's energy, appears to be most active when we are least engaged in attending to the world or to a task. It lights up when we are daydreaming, removed from sensory processing, and engaging in higher-level 'meta-cognitive' processes such as self-reflection, mental time travel, rumination, and 'theory of mind'--the ability to attribute mental states to others. . . It is thought to be the physical counterpart of the autobiographical self, or ego." pg. 170
"[In default-mode] Mental contents hidden from view (or suppressed) during normal waking consciousness come to the fore: emotions, memories, wishes and fears. Regions that don't ordinarily communicate directly with one another strike up conversations (neuroscientists sometimes call this 'crosstalk'), often with bizarre results. Carhart-Harris thinks that hallucinations occur when the visual-processing centers of the brain, left to their own devices, become more susceptible to the influence of our beliefs and emotions." pg. 171
"The pinnacle of human development is the achievement of the ego, which imposes order on the anarchy of a primitive mind buffeted by magical thinking." pg. 171
"In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley concluded from his psychedelic experience that the conscious mind is less a window on reality than a furious editor of it. The mind is a 'reducing valve,' he wrote, eliminating far more reality than it admits to our conscious awareness, lest we be overwhelmed. 'What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.'" pg. 172
"Nevertheless, Carhart-Harris believes that the psychedelic experience can help people by relaxing the grip of an overbearing ego and the rigid, habitual thinking it enforces. The human brain is perhaps the most complex system there is and the emergence of a conscious self is its highest achievement. By adulthood, the mind has become very good at observing and testing reality and developing confident predictions about it that optimize our investments of energy (mental and otherwise) and therefore our survival. Much of what we think of as perceptions of the world are really educated guesses based on past experience ('That fractal pattern of little green bits in my visual field must be a tree'), and this kind of conventional thinking serves us well." pg. 172
Shadehill by Mark Hitz
"My father would later tell me that he believed my sister and I had inherited my mother's infallible heart, her ability to understand the needs of suffering people which, he'd learned from her, is everyone, all the time." pg. 219
Dream House by Ariana Reines
"While my heart flared BIOS BIOS BIOS how could any woman bear
The rhythm--what it takes to sustain biological life.
I was naked except for culture like everybody else in my generation
I come from a broken home like they do and I hide it, acting serene
At the joystick in the command station of my so-called self
Except I try openly to hide only badly whatever it is I think is wild that I'm
Doing my best to reveal by not really hiding, though hiding." pg. 223
On This Side by Yuko Sakata
"The evening air outside the open window smelled vibrant, as though the intensity of the heat had been skimmed off its surface and all the living things underneath were finally allowed to breathe." pg. 254
The Lonely Death of George Bell by N.R. Kleinfield
"Like most New Yorkers, he lived in the corners, under the pale light of obscurity." pg. 273
Things I Know to Be True by Kendra Fortmeyer
This was a subtle, heartbreaking piece about a Vietnam war veteran and his life after war with PTSD.
"I have no books left. None: not any, not at all, not one. I read what is left: cereal boxes, warning labels, my life delineated into fat or iron, blindness or death. I try to read the shapes carved into the popcorn ceiling by the streetlights outside, and everything swims. My eyes feel like they are starving." pg. 340
"It takes a lot of time to have an adult son. There is so much more of me to take care of.
'How have you been?' she asks.
'Fine,' I say. This means small and slippery and falling through the cracks." pg. 341
"I am so grateful that I smile at every person on the bus. It is my thank-you to them for being alive on the day that I get my world back." pg. 342
"I try to do everything right. I wait until the sun goes down. I light the lights, I close the curtains, so that the echoes of me are not in the window." pg. 347
Algorithmic Problem Solving for Father-Daughter Relationships by Xuan Juliana Wang
"Wendy didn't call that night. She is still young, self-important, and takes her hurt feelings seriously. Even though she knows, at least should know, that I'd simply lost my temper. But even though I am asleep in bed, things will start happening. That's the phenomenon of problem solving; the mysterious wells of inspiration will often follow a period of incubation. Often the most difficult problems are solved only after one has formally given up on them. So while I sleep, my mind will be incubating. The subconscious part of my brain will continue working on a problem previously met without success. Even after I wake up, work my mindless eight-hour shift in the assembly line of a computer repair shop, then watch basketball with Charles and Ping, I'll be trying subconsciously to get to the mysterious inspiration to solve my yet unfathomable problem. Once I do, the solution will be forced into my conscious mind." pg. 360-361
"Now that I think about it, those years were like watching a sunrise. It was not at all like the pleasant vision I had in mind. It was too much to handle, the great sun peering out from the distance: warm and comforting for a moment, and then brilliant, too brilliant to bear. The soft halo of light quickly became a flare and it stung. And yet, by the time I learned to turn away, most of my life was over." pg. 362
"A problem solved algorithmically would be my temperamental attitude. I have since stymied the urge to physically threaten teenage boys being assholes in public, and I no longer pay for car damage due to routine road rage. It was logical reasoning." pg. 364
The Grozny Tourist Bureau by Anthony Marra
"Yet in rare spells--like now, as I scour the mildew from her bathroom tiles--clarity surfaces through the murky soup of daily life, and I know that I've purposefully made myself into a crutch she cannot risk discarding. What I don't know is whether I've done so out of love or loneliness, or if in this upside-down world where roofs lie on streets, intentions have lost their moral weight altogether." pg. 13
Bandit by Molly Brodak
"I'd sit at the dinner table watching my parents' volley crescendo from pissy fork drops to plate slams to stomp-offs and squeal-aways, my sister biting into the cruel talk just to feel included, me just watching as if on the living-room side of a television screen: I could see them but they could definitely not see me. . . I could sleep, I could squirm, I could hum, dance or even talk, safe in their blind spot. I could write, I discovered, and no one heard me." pg. 297
"Very slowly, as he talked, I felt my belief, something I didn't really know was there until I felt it moving, turn away from him until it was gone, and I was alone, nodding and smiling. But what a marvel to watch him construct bullshit." pg. 297
"I tamped down my disgust with obliging laughs, since this show was for me. His gold chain and ring I did not recognize. I watched him carefully, waiting for a time when we'd say real things to each other." pg. 299
"And beyond that there are the odds the bookies are offering, which reflect what everyone else is predicting. Perfect for someone who thinks he's smarter than everyone else." pg. 302
"Outcomes get shaken out fast in gambling. In real life, big risks take years to reveal themselves, and the pressure of choosing a career, a partner, a home, a family, a whole identity might overwhelm an impatient man, one who values control, not fate. He will either want all the options out of a confused greed, hoarding overlapping partners, shallow hobbies, alternate selves; or he will refuse them all, risking nothing. And really, the first option is the same as the second. Keeping a few girlfriends or wives around effectively dismisses a true relationship with any one of them. Being a good, hardworking dad and a criminal at the same time is a way of choosing to be neither." pg. 302
"But the ones who get addicted, I think, are looking or certainty, not chance. Outcomes are certain, immediate and clear. In other words, there will be a result to any one bet, a point in time when the risk will be unequivocally resolved, and the skill and foresight of the gambler can be perfectly measured. A shot of adrenaline will issue into the bloodstream, win or lose. It's not messy, not indefinite or uncontrollable, like love, or people. Gambling absolves its players of uncertainty." pg. 302-303
"This is how life works: hurrying along through the tough moments, then the hurrying hardens and fossilizes, then that's the past, that hurrying." pg. 306
". . .or the ornately ruined Michigan Theater." pg. 314
". . .I could tell the floor had been swept occasionally. I walked like I was stepping on someone." pg. 315
Jelly and Jack by Dana Spiotta
"The ring of another person's phone sounded so hopeful at first, and then it grew lonelier. It lost possibility, until you could almost see the sound in an empty house." pg. 39
"'What you are doing works. You always get what you need in the end. Inspiration comes.'
'I really do that, don't I?' he said. 'Never thought of it like that before. But I wonder if I could be more deliberate about it? Know that I'm clearing out the cobwebs, so to speak. Going through the litany of the obvious. The first wave of crap. Maybe I could be more efficient about the process.'
'You could feel confident that, after you've rid yourself of it, the real work will start,' she said.
'I'd avoid the feeling of utter despair,' he said. 'Just by telling myself a different story about what I was doing.'
'If you can reassure yourself in the midst of it, it won't cost you so much,' she said. 'Because you need--you deserve--the feeling of competence. You know what you're doing, and your bad moments are just part of a process.'" pg. 47
"Things had gone on for months; things had gone as far as they could (nothing stays in one place, people always want more). . ." pg. 53
"She was like a character in a myth, doomed to wander between two places, belonging nowhere. That was the word, 'belong.' How much she would like to be with someone, and be long--not finite, not ending--with someone." pg. 54
"What do I look like? If you look, or if I look? It is different, right? There is no precision in my looking. It is all heat and blurred edges. Abstractions shaped by emotion--that is looking." pg. 55
"Still, his disappointment would come out of something human and inescapable: the failure of the actual to meet the contours of the imaginary. . . But there was no talking without imagining. And, when imagining preceded the actual, there was no escaping disappointment, was there?" pg. 56
"It never occurred to her to think this way. She would be so focused on him that her own feelings wouldn't matter. She would feel disappointed if he felt disappointed. She would hear it in his voice, and she would know that she was losing everything, all the perfect, exquisite moments that she had made with him." pg. 56
An Interview with President Obama by Marilynne Robinson
"The President: Are you somebody who worries about people not reading novels anymore? And do you think that has an impact on the culture? When I think about how I understand my role as a citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I've learned I think I've learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there's still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it's possible to connect with some[one] else even though they're very different from you." pg. 110
"The President: Today, my poor press team, they're tweeting every two minutes because some new thing has happened, which then puts a premium on the sensational and the most outrageous or a conflict as a way of getting attention and breaking through the noise--which then creates, I believe, a pessimism about the country because all those quiet, sturdy voices that we were talking about at the beginning, they're not heard. It's not interesting to hear a story about some good people in some quiet place that did something sensible and figured out how to get along." pg. 112
"The President: But doesn't part of that [pouring your life down the siphon of economic utility] depend on people having different definitions of success, and that we've narrowed what it means to be successful in a way that makes people very anxious? They don't feel affirmed if they're good at something that the society says isn't that important or doesn't reward." pg. 119
"The President: Yes, but that [microcosm of democracy] does require a presumption of goodness in other people.
Robinson: Absolutely.
The President: And that's not just what our democracy depends on, but I think that's what a good life depends on. Occasionally, you'll be disappointed, but more often than not, your faith will be confirmed.
Robinson: I believe that." pg.
Death-Qualified by Gary Indiana
"If the United States were at all interested in preventing terrorism, it would first have to acknowledge that the country belongs to the citizens its economic policies have impoverished, and get rid of emergency laws that violate their rights on the pretext of ensuring their safety. This would involve dismantling the surveillance state apparatus that inflates its criminally gigantic budgets with phony terrorism warnings and a veritable industry of theatrical FBI sting operations. And then the country would have to address the systemic social problems that have been allowed to metastasize ever since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. As everyday existence becomes more punitive for all but the monied few, more and more frustrated, volatile individuals will seek each other out online, aggravate whatever lethal fairy tale suits their pathology, and, ultimately, transfer their rage from the screen world to the real one." pg. 149
The Trip Treatment by Michael Pollan
"The authors determined the completeness of a mystical experience using two questionnaires, including the Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire, which is based in part on William James's writing in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.' The questionnaire measures feelings of unity, sacredness, ineffability, peace, and joy, as well as the impression of having transcended space and time and the 'noetic sense' that the experience has disclosed some objective truth about reality. A 'complete' mystical experience is one that exhibits all six characteristics. Griffiths believes that the long-term effectiveness of the drug is due to its ability to occasion such a transformative experience, but not by changing the brain's long-term chemistry, as a conventional psychiatric drug like Prozac does." pg. 158
"A follow-up study by Katherine MacLean, a psychologist in Griffiths's lab, found that the psilocybin experience also had a positive and lasting effect on the personality of most participants. This is a striking result, since the conventional wisdom in psychology holds that personality is usually fixed by age thirty and thereafter is unlikely to substantially change. But more than a year after the psilocybin sessions volunteers who had had the most complete mystical experiences showed significant increases in their 'openness,' one of the five domains that psychologists look at in assessing personality traits. (The others are conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.) Openness, which encompasses aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and tolerance of others' viewpoints, is a good predictor of creativity." pg. 158
"'We desperately need a new treatment approach for addiction,' Herbert Kleber told me. 'Done in the right hands--and I stress that, because the whole psychedelic area attracts people who often think that they know the truth before doing the science--this could be a very useful one.'" pg. 161
"'Ineffability' is a hallmark of the mystical experience. Many struggle to describe the bizarre events going on in their minds during a guided psychedelic journey without sounding like either a New Age guru or a lunatic. The available vocabulary isn't always up to the task of recounting an experience that seemingly can take someone out of body, across vast stretches of time and space, and include face-to-face encounters with divinities and demons and previews of their own death." pg. 163
"Guides are instructed to remind subjects that they'll never be left alone and not to worry about their bodies while journeying, since the guides will keep an eye on them. If you feel like you're 'dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, going crazy etc.--go ahead,' embrace it: 'Climb staircases, open doors, explore paths, fly over landscapes.' And if you confront anything frightening, 'look the monster in the eye and move towards it. . . . Dig in your heels; ask, 'What are you doing in my mind?' Or, 'What can I learn from you?' Look for the darkest corner in the basement, and shine your light there.' This training may help explain why the darker experiences that sometimes accompany the recreational use of psychedelics have not surfaced in the N.Y.U. and Hopkins trials." pg. 164
"Great secrets of the universe often become clear during the journey, such as 'We are all one' or 'Love is all that matters.' The usual ratio of wonder to banality in the adult mind is overturned, and such ideas acquire the force of revealed truth. The result is a kind of conversion experience, and the researchers believe that this is what is responsible for the therapeutic effect." pg. 166
"I was struck by how the descriptions of psychedelic journeys differed from the typical accounts of dreams. For one thing, most people's recall of their journey is not just vivid but comprehensive, the narratives they reconstruct seamless and fully accessible, even years later. They don't regard these narratives as 'just a dream,' the evanescent products of fantasy or wish fulfillment, but, rather, as genuine and sturdy experiences. This is the 'noetic' quality that students of mysticism often describe: the unmistakable sense that whatever has been learned or witnessed has the authority and the durability of objective truth. 'You don't get that on other drugs,' as Roland Griffiths points out; after the fact, we're fully aware of, and often embarrassed by, the inauthenticity of the drug experience." pg. 167
"The [default-mode] network comprises a critical and centrally situated hub of brain activity that links parts of the cerebral cortex to deeper, older structures in the brain, such as the limbic system and the hippocampus. The network, which consumes a significant portion of the brain's energy, appears to be most active when we are least engaged in attending to the world or to a task. It lights up when we are daydreaming, removed from sensory processing, and engaging in higher-level 'meta-cognitive' processes such as self-reflection, mental time travel, rumination, and 'theory of mind'--the ability to attribute mental states to others. . . It is thought to be the physical counterpart of the autobiographical self, or ego." pg. 170
"[In default-mode] Mental contents hidden from view (or suppressed) during normal waking consciousness come to the fore: emotions, memories, wishes and fears. Regions that don't ordinarily communicate directly with one another strike up conversations (neuroscientists sometimes call this 'crosstalk'), often with bizarre results. Carhart-Harris thinks that hallucinations occur when the visual-processing centers of the brain, left to their own devices, become more susceptible to the influence of our beliefs and emotions." pg. 171
"The pinnacle of human development is the achievement of the ego, which imposes order on the anarchy of a primitive mind buffeted by magical thinking." pg. 171
"In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley concluded from his psychedelic experience that the conscious mind is less a window on reality than a furious editor of it. The mind is a 'reducing valve,' he wrote, eliminating far more reality than it admits to our conscious awareness, lest we be overwhelmed. 'What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.'" pg. 172
"Nevertheless, Carhart-Harris believes that the psychedelic experience can help people by relaxing the grip of an overbearing ego and the rigid, habitual thinking it enforces. The human brain is perhaps the most complex system there is and the emergence of a conscious self is its highest achievement. By adulthood, the mind has become very good at observing and testing reality and developing confident predictions about it that optimize our investments of energy (mental and otherwise) and therefore our survival. Much of what we think of as perceptions of the world are really educated guesses based on past experience ('That fractal pattern of little green bits in my visual field must be a tree'), and this kind of conventional thinking serves us well." pg. 172
Shadehill by Mark Hitz
"My father would later tell me that he believed my sister and I had inherited my mother's infallible heart, her ability to understand the needs of suffering people which, he'd learned from her, is everyone, all the time." pg. 219
Dream House by Ariana Reines
"While my heart flared BIOS BIOS BIOS how could any woman bear
The rhythm--what it takes to sustain biological life.
I was naked except for culture like everybody else in my generation
I come from a broken home like they do and I hide it, acting serene
At the joystick in the command station of my so-called self
Except I try openly to hide only badly whatever it is I think is wild that I'm
Doing my best to reveal by not really hiding, though hiding." pg. 223
On This Side by Yuko Sakata
"The evening air outside the open window smelled vibrant, as though the intensity of the heat had been skimmed off its surface and all the living things underneath were finally allowed to breathe." pg. 254
The Lonely Death of George Bell by N.R. Kleinfield
"Like most New Yorkers, he lived in the corners, under the pale light of obscurity." pg. 273
Things I Know to Be True by Kendra Fortmeyer
This was a subtle, heartbreaking piece about a Vietnam war veteran and his life after war with PTSD.
"I have no books left. None: not any, not at all, not one. I read what is left: cereal boxes, warning labels, my life delineated into fat or iron, blindness or death. I try to read the shapes carved into the popcorn ceiling by the streetlights outside, and everything swims. My eyes feel like they are starving." pg. 340
"It takes a lot of time to have an adult son. There is so much more of me to take care of.
'How have you been?' she asks.
'Fine,' I say. This means small and slippery and falling through the cracks." pg. 341
"I am so grateful that I smile at every person on the bus. It is my thank-you to them for being alive on the day that I get my world back." pg. 342
"I try to do everything right. I wait until the sun goes down. I light the lights, I close the curtains, so that the echoes of me are not in the window." pg. 347
Algorithmic Problem Solving for Father-Daughter Relationships by Xuan Juliana Wang
"Wendy didn't call that night. She is still young, self-important, and takes her hurt feelings seriously. Even though she knows, at least should know, that I'd simply lost my temper. But even though I am asleep in bed, things will start happening. That's the phenomenon of problem solving; the mysterious wells of inspiration will often follow a period of incubation. Often the most difficult problems are solved only after one has formally given up on them. So while I sleep, my mind will be incubating. The subconscious part of my brain will continue working on a problem previously met without success. Even after I wake up, work my mindless eight-hour shift in the assembly line of a computer repair shop, then watch basketball with Charles and Ping, I'll be trying subconsciously to get to the mysterious inspiration to solve my yet unfathomable problem. Once I do, the solution will be forced into my conscious mind." pg. 360-361
"Now that I think about it, those years were like watching a sunrise. It was not at all like the pleasant vision I had in mind. It was too much to handle, the great sun peering out from the distance: warm and comforting for a moment, and then brilliant, too brilliant to bear. The soft halo of light quickly became a flare and it stung. And yet, by the time I learned to turn away, most of my life was over." pg. 362
"A problem solved algorithmically would be my temperamental attitude. I have since stymied the urge to physically threaten teenage boys being assholes in public, and I no longer pay for car damage due to routine road rage. It was logical reasoning." pg. 364
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2018
The Best American Nonrequired Reading series is apparently selected to provide a representation of the year's reading. Fiction and nonfiction are both included, as well as some poetry, the nonfiction being on topical issues such as Brown vs. Ferguson, an interview with President Obama from The New York Review of Books, and a Michael Pollen article from The New YorkerZoetrope, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, and other literary journals. There are even a couple of graphic stories. I think this series is a great read as a selection of topical and fictional pieces from any particular year.
One of the most compelling stories, called "Things I Know to Be True," from One Story, starts like this:
One of the most compelling stories, called "Things I Know to Be True," from One Story, starts like this:
I am leaving the library when Miss Fowler stops me, peering through her glasses like the are windows in a house where she lives alone. She says, "Charlie, a patron saw you ripping up books."
"I didn't," I say. These words sound true, but Miss Fowler holds up the Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Bits of paper flutter from its edges like snow.
I know a man in that book. He was trapped underground, dying in the dark and the antiquated language. He coughed then. He rustles in the pocket of my windbreaker now.
From elsewhere, Miss Fowler says, "Give me the pages."
July 22, 2018
Another fantastic addition to the BANR pantheon! I'm late in getting to this and still have to finish the 2017 edition, but here are my favorites from 2016:
- The Grozny Tourist Bureau (Anthony Marra)
- The Gentlest Village (Jesse Ball)
- Death Qualified (Gary Indiana)
- The Miracle Years of Little Fork (Rebecca Makkai)
- Things I Know To Be True (Kendra Fortmeyer)
And, the one that sticks with me the most, The Lonely Death of George Bell (N.R. Kleinfield). Kleinfield manages to capture a sense of wonder while still maintaining a reverence for the dead in this moving tale of loneliness and loss and how people carve out lives for themselves with very little connection to other humans. The municipal logistics, the paradox of immense urban density and relational destitution, and the biography of a stranger all make this one of the most thought-provoking pieces of writing I've ever read.
- The Grozny Tourist Bureau (Anthony Marra)
- The Gentlest Village (Jesse Ball)
- Death Qualified (Gary Indiana)
- The Miracle Years of Little Fork (Rebecca Makkai)
- Things I Know To Be True (Kendra Fortmeyer)
And, the one that sticks with me the most, The Lonely Death of George Bell (N.R. Kleinfield). Kleinfield manages to capture a sense of wonder while still maintaining a reverence for the dead in this moving tale of loneliness and loss and how people carve out lives for themselves with very little connection to other humans. The municipal logistics, the paradox of immense urban density and relational destitution, and the biography of a stranger all make this one of the most thought-provoking pieces of writing I've ever read.
Read
November 30, 2016Highly recommended for people wanting to broaden their reading habits but think the Book Riot challenge might be too ambitious. I really like the BANR collections, as they make me a more interesting and intelligent and empathetic person. Favorites this year include Marilynne Robinson with Barack Obama, Michael Pollan, Anna Kovatcheva, Adrian Tomine (loved his in Best American Comics this year and loved it again here), Molly Brodak and Kendra Fortmeyer. -Sarah
October 29, 2017
i’d say about half the stuff included in here had me shook, then a fourth was interesting/amusing, and remaining fourth was just stuff i was trying to get through. i hasn’t read a collection of “best” anything before and not knowing what was next was exciting and in this case, rewarding! i love the concept of BANR and am really down to support any sort of high school writers/burgeoning editors. would recommend to everyone.
July 4, 2018
The poetry in this was superb! Da'shay Portis' Strong City really stood out to me. Anna Kovatchenka's Sudba 1, Rebecca Makkai's The Miracle Years of Little Fork, Gary Indiana's Death-Qualified all stood out to me as well. Inara Verzemnieks' Homer Dill's Undead had some beautiful parts but read a little too long for me. I love the nonrequired american series it always brings me new writers to look out for and it's a great commute read.
July 4, 2018
The poetry in this was superb! Da'shay Portis' Strong City really stood out to me. Anna Kovatchenka's Sudba 1, Rebecca Makkai's The Miracle Years of Little Fork, Gary Indiana's Death-Qualified all stood out to me as well. Inara Verzemnieks' Homer Dill's Undead had some beautiful parts but read a little too long for me. I love the nonrequired american series it always brings me new writers to look out for and it's a great commute read.
October 28, 2018
The book is comprised of short stories selected by a team of high school students. While I loved the idea of this book (the reason I bought it)...It became a job for me to finish. While there are a few wonderful gems in it, I found mostly unable to hold my attention, hence why it took me forever to finish it. What I learned from this book (sad but true): there are so many good books out there I will no longer spent time paining away at ones that are painful for me to get through.
November 9, 2018
This, the 2016 version of the long-running series selected by teens from the 826 National organization, is a particularly strong entry, with non-fiction being the strongest of a solid pack, including the story of what happens after a nearly anonymous man dies, a history of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the history of a nearly-forgotten bird cyclorama. The poetry was my only disappointment, with much of it reading as gibberish to me -- but your mileage may vary. Recommended.
October 22, 2016
I consistently enjoy this series for the breadth and variety of genres that are included (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, illustration, journalism, memoir). Among my favorites from the 2016 anthology: "An Oral History of Abdelrahman Al-Ahmar," "How I Became a Prison Gardener," "The Trip Treatment," and "The Grozny Tourist Bureau."
November 30, 2016
I love the variety of voices and topics in these BANR collections, and I love that exhilarated feeling I get from reading them all clumped together. When else do I have a book in my hands that has powerful short stories and harrowing true accounts and thought-provoking conversations and really good comics? Also the cat on the cover of this year's edition helps a lot.
November 29, 2017
This wasn't my favorite Nonrequired Reading collection, but it was still pretty good! Good enough that even though certain stories and essays were assigned from class, I went ahead and finished the entire thing because it had some well-crafted stories and essays! Plus, I was pretty close to reading it in entirety anyway.
April 5, 2018
Overall, I enjoyed this book. The only complaint or criticism I would have was that I was hoping the writing would come from more unknown literary avenues. Many were taken from well known journals like Salt Hill and The New Yorker. I was hoping to read a collection of something more obscure. The collection was lovely though and I would recommend it to anyone with a thirst for literary fiction.
January 8, 2017
this project gets better all the time. i love that Kushner admits to being mostly hands-off with the talented teenagers who curated this volume. really great stuff with more of a sci-fi nod than usual.
January 4, 2019
The first book I finished in 2017 was a book of short stories and articles from 2016, but I'm glad I did because it was a great collection. Interesting stories, both fiction and nonfiction, that really make you think.
February 2, 2017
This was really interesting. The entries were a little uneven--liked some, not so crazy about others. But I'm really impressed--this was done by high school kids. The only thing I'd like to see is maybe a paragraph from the kids on why they included the item.
March 20, 2017
I like that this collection of readings was curated by high schoolers and edited with a mostly hands-off approach. While the selections were uneven for me - some outstanding, some not so much - I thoroughly enjoyed the depth and breadth represented within these pages.
May 3, 2017
As usual, this is an excellent collection of essays, short stories, graphic stories and poetry. The contents are vetted by high school students and recent graduates. They do a good job. I didn't think that any of the pieces did not belong in the collection.
August 10, 2017
Not so much "nonrequired." It is greatly lacking in whimsy and the ephemeral. Indeed, it is remarkably grim and deeply serious. The pieces selected are of high quality but the overall tone is just shy of morbid.
September 21, 2017
The best thing I can say about this book is in the title--it's nonrequired reading. The worst I can say is that I spent 14.95 for it. I'm sure it's all SJW approved, but there's not an entertaining story in the lot, though "Grozny Tourist Bureau" was mildly interesting.
August 12, 2019
My favorite pieces from this collection:
+Sharon Lerner - The Teflon Toxin
+Jesse Ball - The Gentlest Village
+Anna Kovatcheva - Sudba I
+Inara Verzemnieks - Homer Dill's Undead
+Mark hitz - Shadehill
+Yuko Sakata - On This Side
+Dan Hoy - Five Poems
+Sharon Lerner - The Teflon Toxin
+Jesse Ball - The Gentlest Village
+Anna Kovatcheva - Sudba I
+Inara Verzemnieks - Homer Dill's Undead
+Mark hitz - Shadehill
+Yuko Sakata - On This Side
+Dan Hoy - Five Poems
November 25, 2016
Interesting collections of short stories including a couple of poems and comic books
December 22, 2016
Great collection of long reads. Loved the president's interview and the taxidermist story.
December 26, 2016
good variety, the lineup is thematic which is nice as it gradually became more despondent towards the end
January 3, 2017
Another outstanding collection, curated by high school students
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