Silver Water – Amy Bloom

Silver Water first appeared in Story magazine. I once had a nice collection of Story magazines, and it pains me to write the word once in this sentence. 

I believe they were all “donated” to a local thrift store. I like to imagine that they were snatched up by another lover of the short story, but in reality, they probably sat on the shelf in the store and were dumped after not selling.

 I suppose they were only valuable to me, purchased from a used book store in downtown Norfolk in the mid 00’s with birthday money from my grandmother. I remember writing that down in the cover of one of the editions. 

They stood in formation on my bookshelf for several years, and I’d pull one out every so often, thumb through it, read a story and return it to its home.

Amy Bloom makes three appearances in The Best American anthology. Her first appearance was in 1991 with Love is Not a Pie. 

We will visit with Amy again in 2000. 

Love is Not a Pie is a beautiful story and compelled me to write one of my favorite posts that detailed a past spent with my father—the post that was made in April of 2017 – just a few short months before he died.

Silver Water tackles the too important issue of mental health and, more importantly, how a family copes with it when it strikes and completely cripples one of its members. I remember discussing schizophrenia with my father – he, of course, supervised a few of them over many years. I was baffled at how this disease could completely ravage a person – and their family.

Having a loved one suffer from such a debilitating mental illness is one of my greatest fears. Your mother, wife, son, or daughter could be completely “normal” one day…and then, the disease creeps in, grabs that portion of their brain, their soul – and takes them from you. It’s so heartbreaking. 

Once again, we are shown, life is suffering.

A Different Kind of Imperfection – Thomas Beller

"Nothing is bothering me. It’s just odd to be back. You know, like, when you go away and then you come back and it’s, like-"

A Different Kind of Imperfection was first published in The New Yorker, fittingly, is a New York story ( I wonder if there were short story writers that purposely wrote New York City stories in an attempt to get them in the New Yorker with the thought that they would actually get published there and then propelled into literary stardom…).

As I do with these stories, and especially with the stories published in the 90s, I travel back to those days and reflect on my life and draw parallels between the story and what I was going through then...and sometimes now. This one is very easy to do as it features a character that has returned home to NYC on a break from college. He lives with his single mother (father died when the boy was 10) and lazes about the house reading a book from his father’s collection, wondering what an underlined phrase means to the now deceased father, contemplating the lives of his younger parents and his father’s life as he learned that he had cancer and was dying.

I’m pretty sure I just summed up the story well enough - of course without getting too deep into the underlying meanings...etc. – it’s beautiful – several sentences are just straight-up art. 

Thomas Beller appears only once in the BASS anthology, but what an incredible writer he is - and incredibly faithful to NYC.

I have done this story a disservice though. This disservice is keeping with my track record on these stories, so it’s not entirely unfair to this story. 

I read this story earlier this year. Perhaps it was April…May or June. One should remember, though, what year it is…2020 in the year of the forever month of March. Having read the story so many months ago and now it is mid-September, yes, I re-read it…if you call speed reading it an actual read. 

I am once again playing catch-up with these stories. I’m about 5 stories into this anthology and have only posted about 2 before this one.

Life once again got in the way. I enjoyed the summer with the family without having a job. Summer began to fade, and I was fortunate enough to secure employment. School has started for the kids (virtual), and I am working from home too.

I am once again turning to this blog to provide some stability in what is a boat in churning seas. I am not threatened by the waters, I just need that stabilizing tool this blog provides.

This outlet, this blog has been here for me for the last 12 years, and I am happy to turn to it once again.

I remember returning home several times during university breaks. I had grown, and the distance between my mother and I had grown too. She so desperately wanted to know what was going on in my life, for me to open up, but that pleading, those requests shut me up tighter against her. I don’t suppose that many young men feel too inclined to open up fully to their mothers concerning their exploits when they are between 18 and 25. We were still boys though we like to believe we were men.

This story and the relationship the main character has with the memory of his father and his (living) mother allowed me to reexamine those trips home and my behavior back then. It’s sad to think about the way I acted – and I need to be realistic in thinking that my children could also not feel the need to share their lives with me no matter how much I wish them to.  

Lessons learned? Yes - once again, from the best teacher - these stories. 

Days of Heaven - Rick Bass

                                                

So happy to encounter Rick Bass along this journey once again. I was first introduced to him in 2012 with Cats And Students, Bubbles And Abysses. Looking back at that post, it seems that I enjoyed the story but had a bit of trouble fully understanding it. Meeting him again in 2017, through The Legend Of Pig-Eye was welcome and I really had a great time reading about the publication of the story and and thinking about the message. 

When I saw that Bass had a story in this collection, I was really looking forward to reading it - and more so after reading the first story in the collection that I wasn't especially fond of.

Days of Heaven is a beautiful story. Well, perhaps beautiful is the wrong word - but I can't seem to come up with another word right now that fits how I felt after reading it. 

I suppose what I enjoyed most about this story is that - well, it's a story. It didn't force me to seek something out within it (not that I don't mind the challenge). Bass simply, through his composition told a great story. 

A large part of what endears me to a story of course is how well I can relate to it - this seems obvious - right? 

I could see myself in another life, as a 20 something living as a caretaker in a cabin out west. I could see myself sharing the perspective of the main character, behaving like him and thinking of others, as he thinks of them. 

In the Contributor's Notes section at at the end of the collection, Bass writes quite a lot about the creation of this story and the multiple drafts and edits it went through with his editors (13, if I remember correctly).

In my spreadsheet of BASS authors, we will encounter Rick Bass again in 1996, 1999 and finally in 2001. 

I look forward to spending more time with him.

  

The Last Lovely City - Alice Adams

The last time we had the chance to spend some time with Alice Adams was a couple years ago when we were introduced to her as the editor for BASS 1991.  

I mentioned that she first appeared in The BASS in 1976 so I missed her by a couple of years as this project started with the 1978 collection. She is featured again with two stories after the guest editor spot in the BASS ’92 and ’96.

Adams appears first in the 1992 collection simply because of her last name. It seems that the editor and guest editor of these volumes have consistently agreed that the easiest way to order the stories is alphabetical by the authors last name - with the exception of BASS 1992 guest edited by John Gardner.

The Last Lovely City takes place along Stinson Beach California. With the incredible technology afforded to us in these times, I was able to visit the same beach town Alice did and decided to make as the setting for her story.

This story first appeared in The New Yorker in the March 11, 1991 issue. The U.S. had just finished active hostilities during Operation Desert Storm.

Personally, I felt that this story gave the anthology a bit of a rough takeoff. It's a story that still has the feel of the mid-1980s. I had to push myself through that time barrier to find a message that resonated with me - understanding that as with all of these stories, there is a very good chance that I would not find one.

And then, a simple paragraph tucked in towards the end made the connection.

"...the doctor finds that those giants from his dark and tangled past have quite suddenly receded: Delores and Tolliver have shrunk down to human size, the size of people accidentally encountered at a party. Such meeting can happen to anyone, easily, especially at a certain age."

I have reached the age - and have been the age to have the above happen on more than one occasion. The encounters cause quick butterflies to rise in your heart, quickening its beat and upon reflection hours later, perhaps at home after the meting, laying in bed reflecting, you realize how silly your mind was, building these people up from your past into "giants".

Time, once again has taught you a valuable lesson - a lesson that you will forget probably forget and replay several times more throughout your life.

Intermission

I'm pretty sure the algorithms synced across a few platforms to bring In the Land of Men to my attention - and just like that, I downloaded it last night, and I'm primed to start reading tonight. 

I'm excited about this book mainly because I think it'll offer some additional insight to the lit scene of the 90's. We've just breached the 90s in this BASS exploration project and BASS 1992 is the first time we encounter David Foster Wallace - a major part of Miller's book. Additionally, according to my spreadsheet, during her time at Esquire, Miller edited four authors that landed in The Best American Short Stories. 

I'll be sure to circle back around in a few days with my thoughts. 

The Best American Short Stories 1992 - Introduction

Start the clock. 

I'm notorious for taking years to read these anthologies. We are 15 books in to this series starting with 1978 back in 2008. 

Back when I started this project, I worked at a newspaper in Virginia. Two weeks ago, I voluntarily left the newspaper (my second home for 19 years). It was a difficult decision, but a move that was necessary. I'm sure in the years and posts to come, I will dive deeper into everything surrounding my departure. These stories have a way of prying out details over time - this is the purpose of this project - it's a bit of therapy. 

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.

So, here we are, finally reading the BASS 1992. I loved the 90s and the editor of this volume, in his introduction, touches on one of the reasons why I found that decade so special.

Robert Stone made his first appearance in The Best American Series back in 1998 which I read in 2012. I found his introduction to this volume a little rough - of course perhaps I am out of practice (reading that is). The following passage did catch me though.

"In their variety, these stories reflect what is probably the most significant development in late-twentieth-century American fiction, the renewal and revitalization of the realist mode, which has been taken up by a new generation of writers. This represents less a "triumph" of realism than the obviation of old arguments about the relationship between life and language. As of 1992, American writers seem ready to accept traditional forms without self-consciousness in dealing with the complexity of the world around them."

This final paragraph from the introduction nails it perfectly for me. It's why I found love for the short story in the early 90s.

During my time at Norwich University, I worked as a work study student in the library. I was assigned to the periodicals department where I received incoming magazines and journals. I cataloged the new arrivals and at times, when needed, I assisted in the weeding of older journals from the shelves. Because Norwich was associated with Vermont College at this time, we received copies of important literary journals. When I found a few minutes of down-time between my duties, I would flip through these journals, journals with odd sounding names, Black Warrior Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Missouri Review, Paris Review and the Virginia Quarterly Review just to name a few. I can't readily recall what story or what journal pulled me in, but I was hooked. It was in these journals that the stories I am now reading in the BASS are resurfacing. No doubt, I will run across one or several that seem all too familiar...the years softening my recollection of having actually reading it so many years ago.

Now, the publications and number of stories featured in BASS 1992.

Ploughshares - 1

Story - 3

New England Review - 1

The Atlantic Monthly - 1

Harper's Magazine - 1

The Southern Review - 1

Fiction International - 1

Black Warrior Review - 1

American Short Fiction - 1

The New Yorker - 9

So, as you can see, and it shouldn't come as a  surprise, stories from The New Yorker heavily outweigh the others.

Stone has this to say about the stories from that publication.

"The large number of New Yorker inclusions I think results from the fact that while The New Yorker is still able to attract first-rate submissions, the days are past when there was such a thing as a "New Yorker story." 

Well, lets see about that. I'm very excited to start this new journey - both in my life and with this volume. 

The 90s were my decade - I have faith that these stories will hold up.

Onward!

A Conclusion

I can’t count the number of times I’ve started this entry in my head. I finished the last story in this edition quite some time ago so why deviate from my normal behavior of waiting to post an entry?

I made the introductory post for this edition back on February 27, 2017. 

That was 2 years, 11 months and 3 days ago…or 1067 days.

This project suffered neglect due to my inability to remain focused on it and due to the many other wonderful titles, that surfaced and caught my attention. 

These occasional entries are good though to shame me into posting more. 

Maybe. 

So, what can I say about The Best American Short Stories 1991? 

An overview of this volume wouldn’t be fair. I have trouble recalling the good/bad/ugly of these stories. 

So – with that, let’s put this volume behind us. 

After all, I have started a new volume in life (more on that later) so it is only appropriate that I do with this project.