American, Abroad – Joyce Carol Oates

Sitting on this book again. 

Work and life continue to get in the way. How many times can I use that excuse? I can’t keep using those as excuses. 

I can’t wait to write the wrap-up of this volume to see how long it took me to finish this volume. 

It’s going to be redic.

I finished reading this story over a month ago and I’m finally getting around to writing about it.

When I read that JCO is included in a BASS volume I’m pretty excited to plow through the stories to reach and read it. This story was featured towards the end of the volume and I was similarily excited to read it…but unfortunately, it did not deliver what I expected.

Thinking of my expectations, and all the changes that I have experienced in my life over the lifespan of this project I wonder if my expectations have morphed as well.

Perhaps the “feelings” of expectations the correct atmosphere to be enveloped in before during and after this story because there is quite a bit of “expectation” in this story.

The expectation of physical violence, the expectation of a meeting – or a friendship…

Expectations are a very dangerous thing. 

Set them too high and you’ll find disappointment. Set them too low and perhaps, resentment, anger jealousy.

So…lesson from JCO – check your expectations.

Willing – Lorrie Moore

What I recognize and appreciate about Moore’s writing is that I find it very accessible. 

In a story that Moore calls a “stray” on her steps, she does a wonderful job of pulling me in and capturing my interest in a character that I normally wouldn’t find an attraction to.

I think that many can relate to this character as at some point in our life we have felt that we were once “something”, or “could have been something” but as our life moved forward things just didn’t pan out the way that they should’ve. Perhaps those instances are just phases which land us in uncomfortable situations – (not necessarily a Days Inn), but sometimes these things can sink you for awhile.

The story felt very early ‘90s...perhaps that aided in the appeal for me. 

Moore was in her early 30s when she wrote this story – a bit outside of the Generation X label but perhaps this gave her the skills to translate some of those all too familiar clichés used to describe the generation about to get tagged with this label.

But, as a story in a collection, wedged between other shorts, I didn’t feel “full” at the end of the story. 

I was given a taste, a few bites – but a few more would have filled me up and left me completely satisfied.

Moore is a short story powerhouse as we will discover.

This is the second appearance by Moore in The BASS, with her first being in 1990 –  with You’re Ugly Too. 

Moore appears 5 more times in The BASS – 1992, 1993, 1998, 1999 and 2013 with all the stories but one appearing in The New Yorker (outlier is The Paris Review).

Moore was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2004 and in 2015, and she served as the guest editor for a centennial anthology from the series, 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories.

Willing was published in the New Yorker in the May 14, 1990 issue. 

I was still in high school – about a month away from graduation - about to enter into a strange new world.