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.
So…I suppose we should start the clock!
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