The Best American Short Stories 2015

BOOK: The Best American Short Stories 2015
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Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Foreword

Introduction

Meghan Mayhew Bergman
,
The Siege at Whale Cay

Justin Bigos
,
Fingerprints

Kevin Canty
,
Happy Endings

Diane Cook
,
Moving On

Julia Elliott
,
Bride

Louise Erdrich
,
The Big Cat

Ben Fowlkes
,
You'll Apologize If You Have To

Arna Bontemps Hemenway
,
The Fugue

Denis Johnson
,
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden

Sarah Kokernot
,
M & L

Victor Lodato
,
Jack, July

Colum McCann
,
Sh'khol

Elizabeth McCracken
,
Thunderstruck

Thomas McGuane
,
Motherlode

Maile Meloy
,
Madame Lazarus

Shobha Rao
,
Kavitha and Mustafa

Joan Silber
,
About My Aunt

Aria Beth Sloss
,
North

Laura Lee Smith
,
Unsafe at Any Speed

Jess Walter
,
Mr. Voice

Contributors' Notes

Other Distinguished Stories of 2014

Editorial Addresses of American and Canadian Magazines Publishing Short Stories

Read More from The Best American Series®

About the Editors

Copyright © 2015 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright © 2015 by T. C. Boyle

 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

The Best American Series® and
The Best American Short Stories
® are registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

 

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York 10003.

 

www.hmhco.com

 

ISSN
0067-6233

ISBN
978-0-547-93940-7

ISBN
978-0-547-93941-4 (pbk.)

 

Cover design by Christopher Moisan

 

e
ISBN
978-0-547-93943-8
v1.1015

 

“The Siege at Whale Cay” by Megan Mayhew Bergman. First published in the
Kenyon Review
, vol. xxxvi, no: 4. Copyright © 2015 by Megan Mayhew Bergman. From
Almost Famous Women
by Megan Mayhew Bergman. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

“Fingerprints” by Justin Bigos. First published in
McSweeney's Quarterly
47. Copyright © 2014 by Justin Bigos. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Happy Endings” by Kevin Canty. First published in the
New Ohio Review
, #15. Copyright © 2014 by Kevin Canty. Reprinted by permission of Denise Shannon Literary Agency, Inc.

“Moving On” by Diane Cook. First published in
Tin House
, vol. 15, no. 3. From
Man v. Nature
(pp. 3–19) by Diane Cook. Copyright © 2014 by Diane Cook. Reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers.

“Bride” by Julia Elliott. First published in
Conjunctions
, 63. Copyright © 2014 by Julia Elliott. Reprinted by permission of Denise Shannon Literary Agency, Inc.

“The Big Cat” by Louise Erdrich. First published in
The New Yorker
, March 31, 2014. Copyright © 2015 by Louise Erdrich. Reprinted by permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC.

“You'll Apologize If You Have To” by Ben Fowlkes. First published in
Crazyhorse
, no. 85. Copyright © 2014 by Ben Fowlkes. Reprinted by permission of Ben Fowlkes.

“The Fugue” by Arna Bontemps Hemenway. First published in the
Alaska Quarterly Review
, vol. 31, nos 1 & 2. From
Elegy on Kinderklavier
. Copyright © 2014 by Arna Bontemps Hemenway. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Sarabande Books, www.sarabandebooks.org.

“The Largesse of the Sea Maiden” by Denis Johnson. First published in
The New Yorker
, March 3, 2014. Copyright © 2015 by Denis Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Aragi Inc.

“M & L” by Sarah Kokernot. First published in
West Branch
, no. 76. Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Kokernot. Reprinted by permission of Sarah Kokernot.

“Jack, July” by Victor Lodato. First published in
The New Yorker
, September 22, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Victor Lodato. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Sh'khol” by Colum McCann. First published by
Byliner
. Copyright © 2014 by Colum McCann. Reprinted by permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC.

“Thunderstruck” by Elizabeth McCracken. First published in
StoryQuarterly
, 46/47. From
Thunderstruck & Other Stories
by Elizabeth McCracken, compilation copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth McCracken. Used by permission of the Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

“Motherlode” by Thomas McGuane. First published in
The New Yorker
, September 8, 2014. From
Crow Fair: Stories
by Thomas McGuane, copyright © 2015 by Thomas McGuane. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third-party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission.

“Madame Lazarus” by Maile Meloy. First published in
The New Yorker
, June 23, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Maile Meloy. Reprinted by permission of Maile Meloy.

“Kavitha and Mustafa” by Shobha Rao. First published in
Nimrod
, vol. 58. From
An Unrestored Woman
, copyright © 2016 by Shobha Rao. Reprinted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved.

“About My Aunt” by Joan Silber. First published in
Tin House
, vol. 15, no. 4. Copyright © 2014 by Joan Silber. Reprinted by permission of Joan Silber.

“North” by Aria Beth Sloss. First published in
One Story
, no. 197. Copyright © 2014 by Aria Beth Sloss. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Unsafe at Any Speed” by Laura Lee Smith. First published in the
New England Review
, vol. 35, no. 1. Copyright © 2014 by Laura Lee Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Mr. Voice” by Jess Walter. First published in
Tin House
, vol. 16, no. 1. Copyright © 2014 by Jess Walter. Reprinted by permission of John Hawkins & Associates, Inc.

Foreword

T
HIS IS THE
hundredth volume of
The Best American Short Stories
. Over the past century, series editors have provided early support and exposure to such writers as Ring Lardner, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, Delmore Schwartz, Robert Coover, John Updike, Shirley Jackson, and Raymond Carver, among countless others. I am deeply honored to be the editor of this esteemed, long-lasting series and to have been for the past nine years. For more about the series, its history, and a sampling of the gems that have appeared in its pages, see
100 Years of The Best American Short Stories
, edited by Lorrie Moore, coedited by yours truly.

When I think back over some of the characters from this series that have stayed with me most, I think of Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum's Ms. Hempel, the bewildered and imperfect schoolteacher from “Yurt,” which appeared in the 2009 volume. I think of the lapsed recovering alcoholic therapist, Elliot, from Robert Stone's story “Helping,” featured in the 1988 volume, and in 1982, the narrator of Raymond Carver's “Cathedral,” whose discomfort with his blind guest is palpable. I think of all the tough-as-nails mothers: Mabel, in Bobby Ann Mason's “Shiloh”; the bigoted woman known only as Julian's mother in Flannery O'Connor's “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” I think of writers like Mary Gaitskill and Ann Beattie and Joyce Carol Oates and John Cheever and Ernest Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson, writers whose characters are complex, whose conflicts are often internal and unspoken, and whose decisions some people might deem “unlikable.”

Lately I've been mulling over the idea of likability of fictional characters. The topic received a burst of attention a couple of years ago, after the writer Claire Messud was asked about the protagonist of her novel
The Woman Upstairs
, “I wouldn't want to be friends with [her], would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.” Messud famously responded to the interviewer, “Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in
The Corrections?
Any of the characters in
Infinite Jest?
Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn't ‘Is this a potential friend for me?' but ‘Is this character alive?'” Messud's answer ignited both readers and writers, many glad for her illumination of a troubling but increasingly prominent trend in how readers talk about fiction.

Soon after,
The New Yorker
interviewed a group of fiction writers about the issue. Donald Antrim said, “Reading into persona is a waste of time and life; our empathy will not be engaged but our narcissism might, and our experience will likely come without deeper emotional and spiritual recognitions and awakenings. The author maneuvering for love is commonplace and ordinary, and the work of fiction that seductively asserts the brilliance or importance or easy affability of its creator is an insubstantial thing. I have no problem with liking a character. But if that's the reason I'm reading, I'll put the book down.” And Margaret Atwood answered, “I myself have been idiotically told that I write ‘awful' books because the people in them are unpleasant. Intelligent readers do not confuse the quality of a book with the moral rectitude of the characters. For those who want goodigoodiness, there are some Victorian good-girl religious novels that would suit them fine.”

And yet in the couple of years since then, I still somewhat regularly encounter reviews that attack a character's or even a writer's likability. To like a story or a novel is still, it seems, to like its characters. One female protagonist was just last week labeled a “morose, insufferable American narcissist” in a major Sunday book review. Another renowned book review laments that in a well-received debut novel, one character “isn't much of a heroine. She's annoying, self-centered and tragically naive.” The female narrator of one of my favorite novels of last year was called “irritatingly self-obsessed” by yet another major newspaper. Dip a toe into the reviews of fiction on GoodReads or Amazon, and you'll find the question of likability everywhere. I'd hazard a guess that more female characters written by female writers are deemed unlikable than male characters or really any characters written by men. Hopefully VIDA, the organization that studies women in the literary arts, and other similar groups will research this question.

In this year's volume of
The Best American Short Stories
, we are treated to characters like Kavitha, the emotionally numb wife who comes alive only in the face of violence, in Shobha Rao's gorgeous story, “Kavitha and Mustafa.” We meet a desperate absentee father in Justin Bigos's devastating “Fingerprints” and an emasculated man who sells dental equipment in the hilarious and profound “Unsafe at Any Speed,” by Laura Lee Smith. And Joe Carstairs, a ruthless champion speedboat racer and oil heiress in Megan Mayhew Bergman's unforgettable “The Siege at Whale Cay.” Here are living, breathing people who screw up terribly and want and need and think uneasy thoughts. Did I like these characters? I very much liked reading their stories, as did T. C. Boyle. I liked the honesty of the portrayals, and their poetry and humor and surprise. Would I want to be friends with these characters? Who cares? To me, that question is tantamount to asking someone at an art exhibit if she would like to be friends with the color green, or someone listening to music if he would care to befriend a drum.

BOOK: The Best American Short Stories 2015
2.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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