The Best American Short Stories anthology 1980

The BASS of 1980 arrived just after my birthday this year in a large box from Better World Books. (Hello Marketing Guy!)

BWB did a wonderful job of allowing me to complete my collection and I couldn’t speak higher of the service they provide. All these books deserve a home rather than ending up in a landfill or shredded and recycled.

Honestly, I have no clue what happens to the tons of books that are discarded yearly and not taken into care by companies like BWB.

I think I paid some thing like $3.00 for this volume, and I must say, it looks to be well worth the few bucks it cost.

The book is in great condition. It was a former library book complete with the plastic dustcover.

The plastic revealed that the book must have had a cup/mug/can of liquid placed upon it at one time due to the tell-tale liquid ghost ring the offending receptacle left behind.

If I were to guess, the container was a mug and the liquid was coffee...sweetened either with sugar or a flavored cream. Coffee without additives doesn’t usually leave a sticky brown ring. I’ll rule out a can of soda because of the size of the ring. I’ll also rule out hot chocolate because the shade of the ring was too dark.

Tea?...nope, again because the ring was just too dense and dark for even a black tea.

I removed the plastic and found the paper cover to be in wonderful shape.

Picture above.

The pages of the book are crisp, and the spine is still strong and hasn’t been cracked or broken.

Circulation history of the book.

I’m afraid that at least a portion of this book’s history will remain a mystery. I suspect that the original “date due” card was replaced in the 90’s by a Brodart “Sticky Note” type of date due card.

The earliest stamped date on this card reads Dec. 7, ’94 and the most recent stamp reads Dec. 12, 1998.

The most recent stamp certainly doesn’t reflect the last time this book was checked out. There is, above the circulation record pocket, a circulation barcode sticker with the sharpie marker obscuring the vertical stripes preventing any further lending.

The bullet hole that finished off the life of this book at the Somers Public Library.

Well, lucky for me, and I could only surmise, that it was some progressive thinking librarian, that decided to contact the good folks at Better World Books and allow them to take this bound collection of stories off their hands.

Let’s remain on the progressive librarian(s) at Somers Public library for a moment. As with the previous two volumes I have written about, I conducted some research on the former home of this book.

Poking around the net and landing on the homepage of the library yielded some surprises.

My earlier thought that the librarians at the Somers library might have a nice forward thinking mindset by their donation to BWB was confirmed by what I found on their homepage.

Right on the main page are links to Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Man, way to get out into the community!

Great job! And in providing those links, they extended their community 335.36 miles (as the crow flies).

Now, I know that most librarians are pretty progressive but I find it interesting that out of the five Southside cites that make up Hampton Roads, there is only one city library system that has a presence on any social networks.

Norfolk – Nope –Booooo!!!!

Portsmouth – Nope – Boooo!

Virginia Beach- Twitter and Facebook links take me to the city social network pages – Booooo!!!

Suffolk –Nope – Boooo!

And finally, Chesapeake – The library system in Chesapeake has 5 Myspace pages for branch libraries. –Good job!!

Sorry for that little tangent, but I have found that online social networks are pretty valuable, and I find it hard to understand how libraries, especially in the largest metro area of Virginia, could fall behind in this area.

Back to Somers Public. I took a look at their Flickr page. Good looking pictures. Nice folks, active community. When I accessed their twitter page it had been updated a mere 15 minutes prior to my visit! Their Facebook page was also pretty current with a post only 6 minutes prior to my visit.

I became a fan of their page and sent along a couple of photos of their old book. Their page has well over 100 fans and there seems to be a nice back-and-forth with participants in their social network.

Wrapping this post up, I think that the continued life of this book looks good. It will be with me a majority of my waking hours over the next couple of months.

It will ride in my backpack to and from work daily and I will find time to read it early mornings, during lunch and late into the evening.

I will, if necessary, take it with me on weekend trips to the mall where it will keep me company as my wife shops. (not a big fan of the shopping)

The book will do what it does best and that is to provide me with instructors. Stories that have been assembled and will give me insight to my life and the world while in my opinion, it will do this collectively better than any classroom instruction could.

You see, I am in the self reflection-education stage of my life. You have, I’m sure, noticed this but I thought it worth mention once again.

So, without more rambling sentences – let’s get reading BASS 1980.

The Best American Short Stories 1979 - Completed

The Last Page

I need to pat myself on the back. I’m showing some progress. It only took me 71 days to complete the BASS of 1979. That is a HUGE improvement over 1978 which took me 438 days (1 year 2 months 12 days).

At this rate, there is a chance that I could finish my quest sooner than anticipated. I need to be realistic though. Work, life and the fact that I am just generally not in the mood to read sometimes will hinder my progress.

We’ll see though. I just need to keep pushing forward.

A little review of the volume as a whole.

I think I came into this collection expecting the stories to reflect JCO’s writing. This was an obvious mistake that I realized I should have recognized earlier.

I did enjoy the collection. I have this feeling that I am a dated reader though. My tastes seem to lie in the present...or for stories that have been written within the last 19 years. I often refer to this period of time as my “awakening”. I entered college in 1990, and I became aware of literature. I became aware of it as something that I could enjoy engaging in – time spent with a book- rather than something that was being forced upon me. I also feel that the environment I was in may have forced me into retreating into worlds that contemporary literature provided. My mind was expanded during my years at Norwich, and after graduation, there was a brief period where I once again found solace within pages. I then took a break of several years and it wasn’t really until the “Sundays at the Laundromat” did I fall back in love with reading and more specifically with the short story.

I felt it necessary to include the brief rundown above to qualify in some way my feelings towards writing today versus the reading I am engaged in now. Is the stuff from the 70’s stale? I think there is some of that. I think that the scores I have applied to the stories reflect those that I feel are a bit more advanced than the others which seem to exist in their time.

There is an evolution is writing. I can see it. I can read it. I have never understood the labels that have been given to them, and I don’t know if they would even apply to the period that I am reading.

But once again, this is my page and my opinions. My readings, my thoughts, my lessons being learned.

I enjoyed this volume much more than the previous. I think that the speed in which I finished (not really that fast) indicates such.

So, finally I’ll say goodbye to the 70’s. Stepping into the 80’s and all the years and changes that happened in my life are sure to find spaces on these pages.

Something that Happened – Jayne Anne Phillips

Jayne Anne Phillips Born July 1952

With this selection, I feel that JCO has offered the reader a glimpse into the future of American literature. Phillips had not reached her 30^th birthday on publication of her short in BASS. Quite an honor.

The subject matter she touches on in her story, on refection, is a perfect slice of American society at the end of the 70’s. Divorce, generational gaps, feminism, health and mental issues, relationships between siblings and relationships between parents and their children...both appropriate and what is perceived by a character as inappropriate.

I reflected back once again to the late 1970s and my position in this world during that time. Once again, I think my family was lucky in some senses considering what some other families could have been going through behind the doors of their households. Sure we had divorce, but really, that was the worst thing that happened. There could have been a whole house of horrors that could have visited us.

Phillips is still writing – good books. Books that make lists – good lists. She teaches as well. And, she has found herself writing interesting pieces for interesting times, pieces that cause readers to question her motivation and direction...but, that is the duty of an artist and a writer. Isn’t it? I’m happy to have run into her so early in this journey, and I suspect that I will find her once again down the road in my reading.

Score – 8 out of 10.

The New Music – Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme - April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989

Pwthvwtzzzz....that is my attempt at placing into words/letters the sound that came out of my mouth after reading “The New Music”.

That was a rough one.

Admittedly, I entered into this story knowing a bit about Barthelme from what JCO wrote about him in a recent writing for a collection, on what and who influences writers. She spoke of her relationship professionally and socially. In short, I felt that she held him in pretty high regard. She also addresses him quite a bit in her Journal.

Perhaps I haven’t indulged in enough “experimental” writing.

I suppose I am too accustomed to a certain “type” of story that runs in these anthologies.

I think I expected more from JCO – I can’t hold anything against Barthelme, she chose the story.

Was this his best writing from that year or was there some pressure to include him?

I don’t know – I just feel let down by the selection. Bummer.

5 out of 10.