The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore - Harlan Ellison

From the mind of man…human. 

Some of these stories hit harder than others…leaving a psychic mark that I’ll carry for years. Others pass away and fade, and I’m surprised to read what I wrote about them years later - really having no recollection of the story. 

I usually don’t tilt towards experimental writing in terms of structure; perhaps I think there is a layer of gimmick thrown in there by the author. And I don’t think there have been many non-traditional short stories contained in the BASS. 

I read this story twice (mostly because I finished this volume, BASS 1993, a couple of months ago, and now I have to refresh my memory when it comes time to write about the individual stories). Even though I have gradually started ingesting more sci-fi and speculative fiction into my reading diet - mostly over the past 5 years- incredibly, this was the first time I came across Harlan Ellison. The story didn’t really move me in any way the first time I read it, but it was after reading something else, perhaps a book review…or an interview with an author…I can’t really remember; it was then that I recalled Ellison’s name and decided to do a bit more research on him. I ended up purchasing “The Last Dangerous Visions” - an anthology edited by Ellison and spliced reading some of those stories into my normal reading pattern. 

After learning more about Ellison - he lived a life free of gimmick. He was genuine - perhaps to a fault. 

Last week, I sat in a car dealership’s service department during an oil change and discovered what an incredible story this really is. I’ve thought about this story quite a bit over the past few days…even mentioning it to my not-yet-teenaged son, who responded with a “huh…ok” after I kinda detailed the plot (honestly understandable - I would’ve responded the sme way at his age).

What I’ve been coming back to in my thoughts more and more these days after I finish these stories is that each of these sprung forth from the mind of a human. That squishy grey goo in our skulls. A human picked up a pen or pencil…maybe they sat down at a typewriter or word processor (1990s) or a computer, and the flashes of creativity were transferred into symbols that our brain could understand and ruminate over as we unloaded the dishwasher or lay in bed before drifting off to sleep. Ellison…a human created sentences out of words from thoughts that traveled through time and landed in my brain decades later.

This story and so many others that I encounter in this exercise have such power, and now that the written word has become what it is today, the value of the written word created by a human holds more value, in my opinion. 

Human creativity will beat the machines.

 

     

Queen Wintergreen - Alice Fulton

I’m not exactly sure how we ended up in their kitchen. Perhaps we were brought there, just a few doors down from my father’s apartment, by one of the twin sisters who happened to be watching my sister and me for the afternoon. 

Philadelphia summers are hot, but their kitchen was spotless and cool. I remember it feeling shiny. There was a porcelain plate with a picture of the Pope on it above the small table that was placed along a wall where we sat. I remember glancing at it several times during our visit. I don’t know how long we were there. But I do remember the voice of the twins’ mother. I had only heard a sound similar to it in movies or on television. I recognized English words, but he accent turned her sentences into a song made up of foreign-sounding syllables. I recall my father saying that their family was Irish…only Irish lived on that side of the street (Italians lived on the other side of the street). I noticed that the twins, when they spoke with their mother, their voice changed. It too took on the rhythm of a song. I remember how pretty I thought the twins were, and now, the songs that they “spoke” enhanced their beauty. 

Queen Wintergreen dredged up this memory…one that may have lasted only a few moments, from more than 40 years ago. Irish accents emerged from the pages. Sing-songy sentences uttered in an Irish-American kitchen decades ago found their way out of my memories and married themselves to Fulton’s story. 

Silent Passengers - Larry Woiwode

A portion of the final sentence in this story, placed there perfectly by Woiwode, wrapping up all the story’s words placed into a perfectly concise bullet shot directly into that spot in your mind holding memories, blasting it back into your active consciousness…directly connecting you with…” them”. 

“--- all of them suspended for a second against the horizon, silent in the wind.”

You’ve witnessed the scene - I’ve witnessed it -  “Them,” of course, in the sentence can be swapped out to fit your recalled scene, but for many of us, after reading this story, the “them” are our children. 

It took less than 5 minutes into reading this story for my mind to drift back to reading and rereading the David Foster Wallace story Incarnations of Burned Children. The story shook me, and I shared my feelings with a coworker during discussions of life as new parents, as well as our mutual admiration of DFW. 

This is another story where the point in life when you encounter it is so important. It does what great fiction does: offer an alternative perspective, placing you into the mind of another. But, as I’ve written about before, if I encountered this story at the age of 20, it perhaps might have impacted me differently. Even at the ages that my kids are at now, I know that if I come across this story again in a few years, my experiences would surely color its re-read. 

Once again, I’ll pull a quote from the author featured in the anthology’s Contributor’s Notes 

“I used to say (and so used to think, I would hope, that if fiction had a salubrious effect, that was secondary. Art, you know, art. But after living through many different sorts of responses over the years to my work, and especially to this particular story, I'm not so sure about that.

Isn't it important for fiction to bring about moments of stasis, of restoration — of healing, if you will? It was largely people who underwent some such experience who responded to "Silent Passengers" by writing to me.”

I was happy to encounter Larry Woiwode again. Incredibly, the last time I read him was 16 years ago. 

Change - read in February 2010

First Born - read in June 2010

Reviewing my writing from 16 years ago, how his stories impacted me at that point in my life…man, it’s staggering how much the world and (selfishly) my life have changed. 

I suppose that’s all a part of living, though. 

Larry Woiwode died in 2022. 

The picture of Woiwode at the top of this post is from 1976. I think he looks badass. 

A Real Life - Alice Munro

First published in The New Yorker, February 3, 1992

I read a very persuasive (obviously)  opinion piece this morning in The New York Times that brought me back to this page. In short, it helped me recognize or perhaps remember one of the reasons or benefits of this whole blog/exercise. I’ve been writing on other platforms recently about the importance of being a human, and human creativity and cultivating all things human as AI moves with greater intensity into our lives. As a quick aside, as I’m typing this out, Grammarly and Gemini are underlining in red, yellow, and dotted lines the mistakes in grammar I’m making and suggestions for improvement on my phrasing. I began this blog before these tools were available, and I’ll admit to using them as they became available, but I think I’ll refrain from their use as I can now see the value of my human errors in the final product…these entries.

Above, I used the word exercise to describe the reading and writing here. I believe I’ve used that word in the past, and after my reading this morning, I feel stronger about the use of this word in developing my humanness…and the value of this extends beyond the stories in BASS and the words I type here. I believe, I came to realize after several months of reading and writing here back in 2008 and 2009, that unconsciously, I started this blog for my benefit. That fits the pattern since I consider myself a selfish person…overcoming my selfishness is a lifelong struggle that I’m working on…and recognize. But, through this reading and writing, I see that I have, (when I actually read and write), broken down those weak muscles and made them stronger. And now, after this morning's reading, I can see the HUMAN necessity to read and write. And as I insert the above sentences before a major portion of this post (I originally began the post with the paragraph beginning “I really have no concrete recollection…” below), I am rereading some of my writing and seeing how circular some of my thoughts are, and I’m good with that because it’s me working through my thoughts. 

And how ironic, glancing up again at the title of the story that I am placing all these thoughts under. Perhaps it’s equally as interesting that this is happening with the association of one of, if not the most difficult authors, I encounter in the BASS. 

It’s a hard exercise session, and one filled with reflection and a chance to assess my shortcomings.              

I really have no concrete recollection of purposely skipping them over, and I now, with the realization that I have, feel somewhat ashamed. Wrote several times about my struggles with the writings of Munro, and even with this post, I am finding difficulty in getting the words onto the screen, as I finished the story several months ago…maybe even sometime in 2025, and this issue is a giant speed bump in my posting here. As I was searching for previous posts where I reviewed Munro’s stories, I discovered that I had outright skipped over writing about her last two stories.

Carried Away - 1992 

Friend of My Youth - 1991

Again, I have absolutely no recollection of making the conscious decision to omit these stories…and now, I feel the obligation to make things right by submitting thoughts about these two. 

Here are my entries on the others. 

Wigtime - 1990

Differently - 1990

Spelling - 1979

Wood - 1981

Monsieur Les Deux Chapeaux - 1986

Circle of Prayer - 1987

Meneseteung - 1989

While searching for my posts, I came across this comment on a Munro post where, unsurprisingly, I was writing about my struggles with her stories. 

 

“Maybe you just don't fully appreciate Alice Munro's writings---their beauty, grace, and subtlety. The strength of her stories lies in their quiet messages and nuanced meanings. She rarely makes her stories conspicuously understood on initial reading, and sometimes a second and much more careful reading is necessary to get down to what she intends primarily to convey in the scenes and situations she writes about.”

I appreciate the time the anonymous commenter took to send me this message; they are absolutely right, and I am actively working to improve my reading of these collected authors… including Munro. 

But as I work on this entry, which is taking longer than I hoped, I have found myself breaking an early practice of this journal. I don’t know/remember if I have ever set it into writing - the actual process of reading and writing here- but a basic idea of this practice was to read one story and write about it immediately after completion. This worked for several years, but I have found that I have moved away from this process and jumped ahead in my reading and left the writing behind. 

This seems to be a fundamental break in what I was hoping to accomplish with this exercise - but at the same time, I have noticed that the often written-about “state” of encountering a story at a certain time, then rereading it and interpreting it differently the second time due to changes in your life, is happening quite a bit.

The Girl on the Plane - Mary Gaitskill

 

I think I’m on my third version of this post, which, as one would expect, has taken on the flavor of the time in which it was written. It would be so much easier if I were able to write about the story immediately following reading it, and that is the goal, but we are where we are in this project, and I’ll be playing a little catch-up. As it stands now, I’m writing about the second story in the anthology and reading the twelfth. 

Write faster, man! 

Mary Gaitskill is one hell of a writer, and after reading about her, she’s one hell of a person, too. Fearless, bold, and looking over my shoulder, back at the early 90s, she fits perfectly into that new decade. I was going to opine on the story, “The Girl on the Plane”,  but there are so many others that have provided thoughts from every conceivable angle that I thought I’d focus more on a few words Mary wrote in the anthology's Contributors’ Notes - always a rich source, for additional insights into the author’s mind and story.

Just a brief brush against the story. I’m reading this story in 2026, and the world is a much different place than it was 34 years ago. The story today stirs different emotions in the reader than it did in 1992/1993; our collective tolerance of certain behaviors, perhaps, has gone through some societal psychotherapy, not to excuse the behavior, but perhaps it has uncovered and brought forth the raw, honest interior of humans.

“The Girl on the Plane” is a story about a conversation, the dynamics between men and women, and finally, perception from and of: the characters, the author, and the readers, illustrating that we need to own that perception and it’s our responsibility to consider the impact of our behaviors, which we seldom do.  

Here is a passage from the Contributors' Notes.  

“I don't see how people can be responsible for their behavior if they are not responsible for their own thoughts and feelings. In my opinion, most of us have not been taught how to be responsible for our thoughts and feelings. I see this strongly in the widespread tendency to read books and stories as if they exist to confirm how we are supposed to be, think, and feel. I'm not talking wacky political correctness, I'm talking main-stream. And not just written stories either; I was flabbergasted by the public debate over the film Thelma and Louise, in which grown people discussed a Hollywood movie as if its purpose was to instruct us on how to live our lives, condemning or praising it based on whether they thought the instructions were valid. (I would not be surprised if some of these same people also wrote essays bemoaning "victimism.") Ladies and gentlemen, please. Stop asking "What am I supposed to feel?" Why would an adult look to me or to any other writer to tell him or her what to feel? You're not supposed to feel anything. You feel what you feel.

Where you go with it is your responsibility. If a writer chooses to aggressively let you know what he or she feels, where you go with it is still your responsibility.”

I would love to see Gaitskills' notes or thoughts about this story before publication - just to see how the passage of time, post publication, influenced the above, if at all. 

Two portions that I’d like to highlight. 

“In my opinion, most of us have not been taught how to be responsible for our thoughts and feelings.”

And 

“You feel what you feel.

Where you go with it is your responsibility.” 

Wise words.

A Brief Intermission

It's easy to sidetrack me. Over the last few Christmases, I have asked for the latest volume of BASS. I can't help but dive into the introduction to see what the guest editor has to say about the state of the short story, their opinion on literature in general, and of course, "the times we live in…". The editor for The BASS 2025 is Celeste Ng. In her introduction, Celeste does a fine job of detailing her story selection process as well as listing a few details about each story. I decided to place this little intermission into this project, interrupting the reading of the 1993 volume, because Celeste does a fine job of reminding us about the importance of reading fiction (the importance of reading short stories will be in another Intermission, which will feature interview excerpts with the previous BASS series editor Heidi Pitlor).

 

Below you will find Celeste's thoughts about reading fiction as they were published in BASS 2025. The disinformation portion is quite important, but please pay attention to her thoughts on empathy and emotional truths. There's a lot of that missing in our time.        

 

 

Reading fiction matters immensely, especially right now.

 

This is surely not news to you, but we're living in an era of disinformation, in which knowingly false stories—or to put it more bluntly, lies—are purposefully deployed to manipulate others, usually for the benefit of a select few. 2024 is hardly the first year this has happened (and sadly, it surely won't be the last), but this past year we've seen incredibly clearly the real-world effects disinformation can have. I'm reluctant to repeat any of the complete falsehoods that have spread on social media and in the real world alike, often from people in positions of power, but I suspect I don't need to give you examples. If you lived through this year, and the past few years, you already know that the space between reality and fantasy has become increasingly blurred in many people's minds-and to many, the distinction may not even feel important anymore.

 

So why should we still read fiction in a time of lies? If "alternative facts" are running rampant, isn't the antidote (real) facts, rather than made-up stories? Aren't made-up stories part of how we got into this mess?

 

Facts and verifiable data are immensely important-and I'm deeply grateful to those who work to counter false claims with real information. But I'd also argue that that's only one front in the battle. Research shows, again and again, that a single personal story is more likely to change a person's mind than any amount of statistics.

 

Obviously, this doesn't mean that when you read a story, you'll suddenly find yourself in agreement with its characters or author-stories are not magic spells, and I'm not saying that just reading short stories will save the world, either. But stories build our empathy by asking us to imagine what it's like to be in someone else's position, thinking their thoughts and feeling their feelings. Unlike disinformation, a short story tells you up front that it is fiction, and when you know it's all just pretend, you're often more willing to play along: Okay, sure, I'll step into this world, it's just fifteen or twenty pages, and it's all pretend anyway... It's like taking a weekend trip to a place you've never been and aren't sure if you'll like, but hey—it's only a weekend, right?

 

At the end, though—assuming the story's done its job-this made-up story will have allowed you to access an emotional truth. Facts may tap politely at the prefrontal cortex, appealing to your rational brain, but fiction snakes its way into your limbic system and nests deep in your emotions. By skirting all the rational barriers we hunker behind, sometimes fiction can reach us in a more visceral way. And in doing so, short stories in particular can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values—then allowing us to bring ourselves into alignment with what we believe. In a time when our values are being tested daily, it's hard to think of anything more important.

 

The Struggle

 

Writing is hard. I'll write it again…writing is hard. Writing now is hard. Readers of this blog – and that is written with the assumption that I have "readers" are, at this point, probably pretty exhausted with reading about my struggles with maintaining a steady writing habit here. I believe I use these few lines about the pains as a sort of runway to get the post off the ground. It's a simple, clear runway that I can return to easily. There are other runways, but at this time, I'll use it until I get better at taking off from other runways.

Another runway I like to use is the mention of how happy I am to read (insert author's name here) again. In this case, we'll use Updike. I usually refer readers to the anthology spreadsheet linked on the side of this page to see how many times I have written about Updike or when we will encounter him again.

So, in this struggle of writing, I am exercising the ability to write and…think. At least, that's what I'm told is happening. And in exercising these two skills, I am supposed to get better at them. Rather than being told what to think, there is a bit of independent thought happening as I poke at the keys. My thoughts are supposed to develop, and the ability to convey those thoughts through writing is also supposed to improve.

At least, that's what everyone tells me… and I tell everyone else.

I guess we'll have to see about that. Perhaps all this will stave off the mental decline that awaits us as the years tick past. (This whole BASS exercise will be a great way to track my ups and downs of the reading/thinking/writing skill, I suppose). I do think this is an impressive collection for me to reflect upon someday, and perhaps this line of thought that I seem to be dwelling upon at this moment is appropriate when reflecting on Updike's story.

Encountering Updike at the beginning of BASS 1993 was a surprise as I glanced over the table of contents on the back cover. The stories are usually ordered alphabetically by the author's last name in the anthology. The last time this order was disrupted was by John Gardner in 1982.  

1993's editor, Louise Erdrich, explains in her introduction:

"I wanted to play with the order so that I could set off the strengths of each piece. The collection begins with the most evocative first paragraph, which I think belongs to John Updike's "Playing with Dynamite," an unostentatious, painful, faultless story about a crack in the ice, a marriage and a man's entry into the uneven, reality of old age."

Wow – "unostentatious, painful, faultless" – an impressive collection of three words, and then the placement of the story at the beginning of the anthology – quite the honor.

As I prepared this morning to sit and write about this story, I glanced at the first paragraph, fully prepared to skim it, and then skim the rest of the story to refresh my memory and then get into writing about it. After a quick skim and moving onto the second page, I realized that I hadn't read this story yet and that, luckily, I had some time to read it this morning before moving into the writing phase. The story quickly absorbed me as I found it relatable, and interestingly, when I came to the part of the story describing the destruction of the bird's nest, I realized that I had already encountered this story. I can only imagine reading it in an Updike collection several years ago, but it was interesting that this portion of the story triggered my memory. Surprisingly, it wasn't the mention of old age or sex that stuck with me; it was the birds. I'll have to unpack that over the next few days.

In any case, I was generally satisfied with this story, as it squared nicely with what I have come to enjoy about Updike's writing, what he submits to The New Yorker, and what they choose to publish.

In the Contributor's notes at the back of the volume, Updike writes that this particular story was written on request from the new editor of The New Yorker. He said it was a woman, so I can conclude it was Tina Brown.

Updike writes – "Flattered silly, I pawed through the slips of paper on which I jot down story ideas, often just the titles, and came upon this title. One thing led to another, as I sat at the word processor, most of them having to do with the sensations and hallucinations of late middle age. I have written about aging, doddery, nostalgic American men whose names begin with "F" before, and let loosely related incidents weave their way around a central theme, or bitter fact, before; but the recipe seemed to produce a warmer, richer dish than usual here — at least its presence in this collection encourages me to think so. Life is an adventure, all right, from beginning to end, but life after sixty is a part of the tale that perhaps is more eagerly told than heard. It is the young we love, in print as on the silver screen, as they play with the dynamite of mating. For some time, I have noticed, my heroes seem older than I feel to myself, as if, lacking sex appeal to make them dramatic, they are cozying up to death."

I chose to include this passage from the Notes section as it hit me harder than the story. The "hit" is the relatable message that is conveyed by Updike. Sure, it was there in the story, but to read the message without it being deciphered caused me to re-read and rub the thick pages of the anthology between my thumb and index finger a few more minutes before setting the book aside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best American Short Stories 1993 - Introduction and Contents

 

I rub my dry hands across the thick paper cover of this volume. Its bright yellow cover with orange, blue, and black writing stares back at me, laughing, daring me to ignore it over the next many days, weeks, months, and years that it might take me to finish.

I give this physical book a voice as my hand passes over it. The callouses on my palms act as phonograph needles scraping against the woven pattern of the cover. The pages blow air back at my face as my thumb runs down the side. I hear its voice. Perhaps it’s the collective voice of the authors, the stories, the characters all begging me to discover them again.

With physical objects like this book, I often wonder about the journey it has been on before it landed in my hands. What shelves did it grace? Where did it travel from? How long did it sit with other books in a box in my basement before being pulled for reading? Giving a bit of life to these books allows the development of a relationship with them. Could that be the reason why I spend so long carrying them around?

Over the last sixteen years of this project, various volumes of this collection have moved with me from home to work, room to room in a house, state to state, sheltered from the elements and exposed, and have been a burden physically and psychologically as they have accompanied me through some of the most important years of my life. Am I heaping too much weight on these books? Perhaps. However, their influence on me and the lessons they impart have been something that I value and cherish, and I will endeavor to continue to write about their influence.

BASS 1993

As Katrina Kenison writes in the Forward of this volume, as the BASS Series Editor, the stories for this collection’s anthology were originally published between January 1992 and January 1993. As I do when reading these books, I’ll often try to remember that year, psychically place myself back in that year, and approach the story with that mind. My present mind will creep into thoughts about the story, which is part of this exercise’s magic.

Louise Erdrich is the editor of this volume, and we’ve encountered her twice before. Her story “Scales” was selected for inclusion in the 1983 BASS collection, and her story “Snares” appeared in the 1988 volume.

We’ll get a chance to hear her voice again in the 2003, 2015, and 2016 BASS collections.

I’d like to highlight a point that Erdrich makes in her introduction.

“Usually these collections are structured alphabetically, according to author. I wanted to play with the order so that I could set off the strengths of each piece. The collection begins with the most evocative first paragraph which I think belongs to John Updike’s “Playing with Dynamite,” an unostentatious, painful, faultless story about a crack in the ice, a marriage, and a man’s entry into the uneven reality of old age. I’m also pleased that Mr. Updike should for once appear first since he is usually last by alphabet in this collection.”

At this moment of writing, I can’t recall any guest editor placing the stories in anything but alphabetical by the author's last name since John Gardener’s selections for the 1982 BASS.

I should note here that that collection was one of, if not my favorite, BASS.

 

Additionally, John Updike is a favorite of mine, and to have him kick off the volume, I feel, sets me up for success… perhaps Erdrich gives us a little treat by providing some rhythm to this collection – in what would usually just be a composition decided by our alphabet.

Erdrich does mention the “New Yorker” story “issues” with these collections, and I suppose at this point in my introduction, I should note that there are eight stories from The New Yorker, and coming in second would be two stories from Harper’s.

I can’t say that discovering where the story was originally published has had any sort of impact on my feelings about the story – but I will say that the availability of The New Yorker as a publication that prints great short fiction has kept the fire of interest in this art alive for me. I felt I should mention this as I have commented on it before, and Erdrich took the time to mention it.

Here are the contents as listed on the back cover of the volume and as they appear in this volume.

Playing With Dynamite - John Updike - The New Yorker

The Girl On The Plane - Mary Gaitskill - Mirabella

A Real Life - Alice Munro - The New Yorker

Silent Passengers - Larry Woiwode - The New Yorker

Queen Wintergreen - Alice Fulton - Triquarterly

The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore - Harlan Ellison - Omni

Poltergeists - Jane Shapiro - The New Yorker

Red Moccasins - Susan Power - Story

I Want To Live! - Thom Jones - Harper's

Charlotte - Tony Earley - Harper's

What The Thunder Said - Janet Peery - Black Warrior Review

Naked Ladies – Antonia Nelson - The New Yorker

Man, Woman And Boy - Stephen Dixon - Western Humanities Review

Winter Barley - Andrea Lee - The New Yorker

Concerning Mold Upon The Skin, Etc. - Joanna Scott - Antæus

Pray Without Ceasing - Wendell Berry - Southern Review

Gold - Kim Edwards - Antæus

Great Barrier Reef - Diane Johnson - The New Yorker

Terrific Mother - Lorrie Moore - The Paris Review

The Important Houses - Mary Gordon - The New Yorker

So…I suppose we should start the clock!

Stop the Clock

On February 20, 2020, I typed “Start the clock” when I introduced BASS 1992.

I also wrote this line: “I've written several times about the various stages of my life, and here we are at another. It'll be very interesting to see what develops”.

Here we are

4 years, 11 months, 4 days

Or

1800 days later, and I can finally close the cover on this volume, Finally.

There is simply too much to write about concerning developments in our lives over the past 1800 days, so I’ll just have to revisit this post someday and reflect on our lives from 2020 until 2025. I will say, though, that the highs (good things) vastly outweighed the lows (bad things) over the five years, and I consider us very fortunate in that sense.

Can’t say that I gave the volume a fair shake. I could have easily finished the volume in 20 days if I read and written about a story every day until completion. One month if I took the weekends off.  

No, I had to take 1800 days.

Running into some old friends – JCO, DFW, and Tobias Wolff was great. 

I’ll remember where I was in July 2024 when I read DFW. Where I was in January 2023 when I read JCO, the one story I read in 2022, Community Life by Lorrie Moore, Emergency by Denis Johnson in January 2021, and Days of Heaven by Rick Bass in June 2020 – when the world was very interesting.

So, onward with life and reading. 1993 awaits us. 

Firelight – Tobias Wolff

 

I haven’t started recommending authors yet to my oldest son, and I believe that I could be coming in late on this move…can’t recall if my father recommended books/authors to me when I was my son’s age, but I feel that if I’m going to start attempting to lay down some examples for him, now would be a great time. We are working at nurturing a book-reading habit in them, but now perhaps would be a good time to stoke his interest in reading by offering suggestions of writers that I think he might enjoy.

As I’ve written over the years, this series has opened my eyes, heart, and mind to authors I am sure I would have never come across on my own. Of course, I will offer my copies up to the boys to read in a couple of years, but now, perhaps I’ll just stick with authors that I think they might find enjoyable.

Tobias Wolff is, without question, a writer that I’d recommend to my sons. I’ve had the chance to comment on his stories a number of times on this platform, and I always find comfort in turning the page and seeing that his story is next up.

A 2004 interview with him in the Paris Review, which I wrote about here back in 2011, gave meaning to this BASS project, and I’ve returned to his thoughts about reading and writing over the years.

Looking over my spreadsheet, I see we won’t encounter Wolff again until the 1997 BASS. He’ll surface again in 2006 and then again in 2008. Given my reading habits, I’m not necessarily pleased with the space between his stories – but that’s on me.

A part of Wolff’s short stories that I always look forward to usually lands in the last few paragraphs of the last page, and in this story, “Firelight,” Wolff delivers again.

“I watch the fire, watch the changing light on the faces of my family. I try to feel at home. And I do, mostly. It is a sweet time. But in the very heart of it I catch myself bracing a little, as if in fear of being tricked. As if to really believe in it somehow make it vanish, like a voice waking me from sleep.”

I enjoyed this story as it provided me with an interesting look at a young man’s relationship with his mother. It allowed me to step into a fictional character and gain a different perspective on a mother/son relationship.

And that, right there, is why reading fiction and short stories is so important.

In his contributor’s notes at the back of this issue, Wolff states, “The origins of my stories are always hard for me to pin down because the act of writing them inevitably tangles history and imagination in a way impossible for me to untangle later on.”

With that statement, we can see that a bit of fact might always seep into fiction – perhaps just enough at the right time to give us (perceive) that perspective we would not be afforded if we did not read the story…and become that boy.

 

The Golden Darters - Elizabeth Winthrop

 

Before I dive into this wonderful little story, I’ll do what I always seem to do in these entries and wander down a path that has absolutely nothing to do with the intended (I don’t think I ever actually outright concretely stated) purpose of this multi-year long exercise in reading and writing.

I spend much too much time online – in front of a screen. Today, as I was writing a post to share on a particular social media platform, I noticed that in the space where I was to paste my written content, a prompt offered to assist me in writing the “content” with the help of AI. For some reason, today, that hit hard. I have been reading and listening to people who are smarter than me discuss how AI and generative AI can stunt/damage a human’s ability to write – and possibly, as a result, to think. I need to do more reading on this validity, but I am leaning toward understanding and believing that this is true. As I sit and write this, the ideas flow from my brain onto the screen in a Word document. I am also fully aware that these words will probably be sucked into a LLM for training purposes. Perhaps it’ll be used to develop a personalized AI assistant for me that will be marketed to me someday, and they will take this chunk of content and use it to “sell” it to me.

Perhaps I am lucky that I experienced the written word and the ability to write without the taint of AI invading my thoughts. Will my children, though? Will they have the opportunity to suffer over written sheets of paper, struggling for the right combination of words to effectively communicate their feelings, such as I am doing now? Or will they select from a library of prompts that will generate a set of sentences allowing the reader to attempt to understand what they are feeling?  The in-person meeting, free of digital devices, might one day…or perhaps, it’s even now, the only authentic form of transmitting thoughts and ideas to one another. It’s not hard to find reports of the damage that these digital words have inflicted on the humanness of humans.

Looking back on our lives, perhaps we can remember that coming-of-age moment or a rebellion against control.

Perhaps the moment or act was something subtle and peaceful beneath the surface of everyday life over an extended period.

Perhaps the moment or act came crashing all at once, forever altering our lives, violent, hurtful.

Perhaps we had more than one moment that occurred during different stages of our lives.

Perhaps that coming-of-age moment hit at 40…or 50…buying that shiny red Corvette or finally getting that tattoo.

These moments can be quite impactful not only for us but also for those that we surround ourselves with.

They can change how others view us, perhaps for a moment…or forever moving forward.

 These transformations, these moments, these acts of rebellion are special – they make us human; they allow us to evolve, grow, and mature.

They bring forth the crazy electrical connections inside our squishy grey brains struggling to help us function in this shared reality.  

 

 

 

Under the Roof – Kate Wheeler

 

It happens, of course – After realizing, through reading hundreds of these stories over the past sixteen years, that not every story will deliver…something…anything. It took some time to realize this – but then again, how would I have known?

I sat with his story for some time and contemplated its message, just as the monk in the story considered his position in the space he occupied. It concerns me to some extent that perhaps there is part of me that would have quickly picked up on the message at one time, but now, after having my brain soaked in the digital waters, I have forgotten how to breathe oxygen. I struggled with the length of the selection, something that may not have been an issue a few years ago, but then again, Wheeler confesses that she too felt that “I’d come to believe that it was too slow, too long and serious.”

The time stamp on this post accurately reflects when I gave the story its most serious consideration, and even though I did first read it several months ago, I took the time to skim it over once again…giving it a mild second chance.

I approached my considerations from a few angles – as an expat, someone who has always found Buddhism interesting, the male/female relationship, and family relations (extending into step-family members).

I finally had to resign from a post stating that “Under the Roof,” and I couldn’t find common ground.

Forever Overhead - David Foster Wallace

 

I remember February 20, 2020, picking up the BASS 1992 anthology, flipping it over to read the list of authors collected, and seeing DFW's name listed. As I slowly worked my way through this collection, each story arriving before me through a very interesting period of my family's life (nothing scandalous…just a move and the growth of children), each story, of course, was colored by what I was going through at that moment. It's taken me 1610 days to reach the story and finally write about it.

I was excited to read it but intimidated to write about it. 

I mean, it's DFW – so much has been written about this guy, and he continues to draw love and hate from the lit world. My encounters with him have been mostly positive. I bring him up in conversations at least a couple of times a year, and his famous commencement speech/book has caused me to become more empathetic in traffic and grocery lines.

This story hit at the right time. Getting here has been a long slog, but it aligned perfectly, as far as I can tell. The story was enjoyable, and some passages hit home. It's a fast read that pulls you in.

I've mentioned before that I find the contributor's notes of this anthology so rewarding, and this is another that I feel delivers.

As the months drifted past between my first thoughts about this story and my thoughts about commenting on his Contributor’s notes, I decided to place them below and leave them – without spoiling them with my amateur musings.

His reflections are fun and very different from most BASS anthologies' notes. If they weren’t…I suppose I’d have more to say about it.

I was happy to have this insight into the story and again grateful that these little windows into the writers exist.  

 

 

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE is the author of a novel, The Broom of the System; a story collection, Girl with Curious Hair; and, with Mark Costello, a book-length essay on race and music called Signifying Rappers. He lives in Boston and is at this very moment restructuring his whole c.v. around inclusion in this anthology.

 

• This is a bit embarrassing, and I'd rather not discuss it, but will, since certain authorities have been polite but firm about these little post-story discussions being strongly encouraged, and I'd probably submit with cheer to way more embarrassing requirements if it meant getting the old snout into the B.A.S.S. trough.

 

The embarrassing issue here is I'm not all that crazy about this story. It's one of very few autobiographically implicated things I've ever tried. I did, like probably lots of kids, have a high-dive trauma. My real trauma was much more plain-old-sphincter-loosening-fear-based than the existential conundra this story's kid encounters. I basically got to the top, with a long line of jaded souls behind me, and changed my mind about going off. It was excruciatingly shaming, but in no way deeply or exceptionally shaming. I think it wasn't the memory of the shame so much as current shame that allowed so pedestrian a shame still to haunt my esteem-centers, prompting me to make the story so heavy, meditative, image-laden, swinging for the fence on just about every pitch. The thing seems to me a performative index of every weakness I have as a writer and as a person. And God knows why I let my desire for an Alienated Narrative Persona lead me to use the second-person point of view; now I'm scared people will read this and think I'm just a McInerney imitator in a black turtleneck, a copy of Kierkegaard under my arm.

The thing went through dozens of drafts, the first of which still sits in the pages of my undergraduate "Stories That'll Prove I'm a Genius" notebook. I went to grad school in Tucson, which is where I guess the thing picked up its setting: you can't spit in Tucson without hitting a pool, though darn few are public like this one is public.

I completely deny ever once kissing any part of my sister's feet at any time whatsoever.

I'm noticing that, with respect to any piece of fiction, my dissatisfaction with the final draft is directly proportional to the excitement that precedes the first draft. I remember doing the tortured artist thing back in school, all ego and caffeine, and thinking I had a genuine Big Idea for this story here, and seeing it finished, Big, published, lauded as Important by bearded titans. This was before I even bothered to start to try writing the thing. I preconceived it as deeply moving and imposingly cerebral at the same time, at once tender-psyche'd and tough-minded, just the sort of thing Eminences would pluck out of the glabrous herd by choosing for a prestigious anthology. By the second draft, my head was more or less permanently attached to the wall I'd been pounding it on. In black-lit contrast to the timelessly Big thing I'd preconceived, the actual ink-on-paper story seemed pretentious and trendy and jejune and any number of bad things: it seemed like the product of a young writer who was ashamed of a personal trauma and who was straining with every fast-twitch fiber to make that trauma sound way deeper and prettier and Big than anything true could ever really be. And here I mean "true" both artistically and historically.

I don't know why I kept putting the thing through drafts. I kept getting late-night twinges of that original preconceptual excitement. I kept seeing the thing as maybe just one image or two epiphanies away from blossoming, from honoring its entelechy of Bigness. Six years and many other completed projects later, I sent this story out in the old brown envelope. I sent it out for the same reason most young writers I know send stuff out: to have an excuse to quit thinking about it. My surprise when Fiction International took the thing was nothing compared to my feelings about the august endorsement that occasions this wordy little confession. Do not get me wrong: qualms about the story's failure to be anything more than a lumpy ghost of what I remain convinced was its initial promise of Bigness have not inhibited me from calling pretty much everybody I know and casually working in the B.A.S.S.-selection news. I'm extremely and yet of course also humbly grateful and moved and etc. I'm just coming to realize that I have very little personal clue about whether the stuff I do is good or bad or successful or not successful* which like most bits of self-knowledge is both mortifying and kind of a relief. It makes me glad I have opinionated critical friends and politely firm editors, not necessarily in that order.

 *Is "successful" the same as "good," here? Does inclusion in B.A.S.S. render a story de facto "good" the way a human reverend's pronouncement effects a legally binding union?