Introduction
The short story is in need of a scandal.
The short story should proclaim itself to be based on actual
events and then, after a series of fiery public denials, it should hold a press
conference in Cannes and make a brave but faltering confession: None of it
actually happened. It was fiction all along. Yes, despite what's been said, it
has always been fiction and it is proud to be fiction. The short story should
consider staging its own kidnapping and then show up three weeks later in
The New Yorker claiming that some things happened that cannot be
discussed. Or perhaps the short story could seek out the celebrity
endorsement of someone we never expected, maybe Tiger Woods, who
could claim that he couldn't imagine going out to the ninth hole without a
story in his back pocket. They are just the right size for reading between
rounds of golf. It doesn't really matter what the short story chooses to do, but
it needs to do something. The story needs hype. It needs a publicist. Fast.
I can speak to the matter with great authority because I've been
reading a lot of short stories lately, and the very large majority of them have
been shockingly good. They are better than the novels I've been reading.
They are more daring, more artful, and more original. Yet while I know plenty
of people with whom I can discuss novels, there are only two people I know
with whom I can swoon over short stories: Katrina Kenison (more on her
later) and my friend Kevin Wilson, a young writer who reads literary
magazines the way other people read pulpy spy novels, the kind of friend you
can call in the middle of the night and ask, "Have you read the latest issue of
Tin House?" As valuable as these friendships have been to me, I am sorry to
say they are not enough. Since I have recently given my life over to short
stories I need to find a larger audience than two. I have the zeal of a religious
convert. I want to stand in the airport passing out copies of One Story and
The Agni Review. I want to talk to total strangers about plot and character
and language, about what makes that Maxine Swann story so moving and
the David Bezmozgis so surprising. How did that Kevin Moffett story manage
to lull me into such a trance? I'm more than willing to take the message to
the people, but the short story is going to have to work with me here. It needs
to be a little less demure.
The first thing the short story needs to think about is casting off
the role of The Novel's Little Sidekick, the practice run, the warm-up act. I
was extolling the virtues of a particularly dazzling short story to an editor
friend recently when she cut me off in mid-sentence, said she didn't want to
hear it. "I'll only fall in love," she said bitterly, "and then I won't be able to buy
the book, and if I do buy the book I won't be able to sell it." Short stories, it
seems, are a dead-end romance in publishing. In the rare instance when a
house finally does break down and buy a collection, the usual stipulation is
that it must be followed by a novel, a.k.a. something that might sell. But
must one think so far down the road as to how things will end? Love the short
story for what it is, a handful of pages in a magazine. The short story isn't
asking to be a collection, and it certainly isn't trying to pass itself off as a
potential novel. Who's to say the short story writer has a novel in him? Is a
sprinter accepted to the team on the condition that she will also run a
marathon? Certainly many people do both, and some people do both well,
but it always seems clear to me when a novelist has turned out a short story
or a short story writer has stretched a piece into a novel. There are a handful
of people who to my mind are equal in their talents, John Updike leading the
list, but then John Updike could probably win a hundred-meter race as
handily as he could run cross-country.
It was a genuine challenge to pick a mere twenty stories out of
the more than one hundred twenty I received. I would have been happier
turning in thirty or even forty, so many of them were excellent, and yet I know
I couldn't put my hands on the twenty Best American Novels for 2006. So
what accounts for so many successful stories? (Remembering, of course,
that this is not actually a volume of the best short stories in America. These
are just the stories that I like best, and I am full of prejudice and strong
opinions. The genius of this series, and certainly the reason for its longevity,
is that it relies on guest editors who arrive every year with all their own
baggage about what constitutes a wonderful story, and as soon as they feel
comfortable in their role as the arbiter of Best they are replaced by another
writer who is equally sure of his or her own taste. That's one thing you can
say for writers — we know what we like when it comes to writing.) It could be
that stories are easier to write than novels, but having taken a crack at both
myself I am doubtful of this. I think it is more the case that short stories are
expendable. Because they are smaller, the writer is simply more willing to
learn from her mistakes and throw the bad ones and the only pretty good
ones away. Knowing that something can be thrown away encourages more
risk taking, which in turn usually leads to better writing. It's a sad thing to
toss out a bad short story, but in the end it always comes as a relief. On the
other hand, it takes a real nobility to dump the bad novel. The novel
represents so much time that the writer often struggles valiantly to publish it
even when it would be in everyone's best interest to chalk it up to education
and walk away. I know a lot of people who published the first novel they ever
wrote. I can think of no one who published his first short story.
So why, if what I'm telling you is true, and let's assume for the
sake of this introduction that it is, aren't more people running out to buy their
copy of Harper's and turning directly from the index to the short story? Short
stories are less expensive, often better written, and make fewer demands on
our time. Why haven't we made a deeper commitment to them? I am afraid it
has something to do with the story's inability to cause a stir. As a novelist I
would say I read well over the average number of novels (whatever that is) per
year. It doesn't take much to get me to read something new. I'll pick up a
novel based on a compelling review, the recommendation of a friend, even a
particularly eye-catching cover. I troll the summer reading tables in
bookstores to fill in the holes in my education. I am forever picking up
something I've always meant to read (Zeno's Conscience is on the bedside
table now waiting for me to finish writing this, and there is still so much
Dickens). But everything I mean to read, and nearly everything I have read no
matter how obscure, has had some means of catching my attention. The
uncollected short story in its magazine or literary journal has nothing but the
author's name and possibly a catchy title to flag you down. Only in its largest
venues does a short story manage to score an illustration. It does not go out
and get you. It waits for you. It waits and waits and waits.
Unless of course you have the brilliant good fortune to be chosen
as the editor of The Best American Short Stories one year. Because while a
single short story may have a difficult time raising enough noise on its own to
be heard over the din of civilization, short stories in bulk can have the effect of
swarming bees, blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you
can think about. So even though it goes against my nature to point out the
ways in which I am luckier than you, I must say that in this case I am,
unless you too have short stories mailed to your home. And even if you did
have stories mailed to your home, you probably didn't get them from Katrina
Kenison, and that's where my real advantage comes in. These aren't just any
short stories I've been getting, the normal cross section of good and bad.
These stories have been intelligently and lovingly culled from the vast sea of
those that are published. Katrina does the part of this project that is work,
hacking her way through all that is boring and poorly written in order to send
me the gems. She reads everything so that I can read what is good, and I
read everything that is good in order to put together everything that I think is
best. Stories have been showing up on my doorstep in padded envelopes, a
steady stream of fiction that I piled in strategic locations near bedsides and
bathtubs and back doors. When you get enough short stories spread around
the house, they gather a force of momentum. The more stories I read, the
more I wanted to read stories, the more I recommended stories, the more the
stories created their own hype simply by being so vast and varied and good.
The stories offered me their companionship, each one a complete experience
in a limited amount of time. No matter where I went, I did not mind waiting,
seeing as how I was rich in stories. I went ahead and pulled into the
endlessly long line at the touchless car wash on Sunday morning, took a
story out of the glove compartment, and started reading. I was able to put
other work aside in order to read because for this period of time short stories
were my job. I did not have the smallest twinge of guilt about lying on the
sofa for days at a time reading. Could there be anything better than that? I
felt as if I had spent the year in one of those total-immersion language
camps, and in the end I emerged fluent in the language of short fiction.
Of course I was no beginner. While I can trace the short story
back to my earliest days as a reader, my true connection came when I was
twelve years old, the year I read Eudora Welty's "A Visit of Charity." There
had been other stories before this, stories I liked, "The Necklace" and "The
Gift of the Magi," the stock assignments that were the backbone of every
junior high English class, but "A Visit of Charity," even though it was a story
about a girl, seemed infinitely more grown-up to me. It didn't reward the
reader with a plot twist at the end or present a clear moral imperative. Even
more startling was the fact that this author, whose photograph and
biographical paragraph preceded the text, had only one date after her name,
1909, and then a dash, and then nothing. Again and again I returned to that
photograph to look at the long, gentle face of the author. She was both alive
and in a textbook, a coupling I had never seen before. As sure as I was by
the age of twelve that I wanted to be a writer, I was not at all sure that it was
the sort of thing the living did. The short fiction market was cornered by dead
people, and this Eudora Welty was, as far as I could tell, the first one to have
broken the trend. I decided at the start of seventh grade to cast my lot with
the living and chose Eudora Welty as my favorite writer, a decision that has
served me well ever since. Four years later I was sixteen when Miss Welty
came to Vanderbilt to give a reading, and I got there early and sat in the front
row holding my big, hardback Collected Short Stories of Eudora Welty, which
my mother had bought me for my birthday that year. It was the first reading I
had ever been to, and when it was over I had her sign my book. I held it open
to the wrong page, and she looked at me, and said, "No, no, dear. You
always want to sign on the title page." And she took the book from me and
did it right. For the sheer force of its heart-stopping, life-changing wonder, I
will put this experience up against that of anyone who ever saw the Beatles.
The short story has made some progress since the dark ages of
the middle seventies, and I do believe that the living are now taking up their
fair number of pages beside Hemingway and Faulkner. With Alice Munro
leading the way, a case could be made that we are living in the golden age of
the short story this very minute. A golden age there for the taking.
The impressions we pick up as children, when our minds are still
open to influence and as soft as damp sponges, are likely to stay with us the
longest. Ever since I saw that picture of Eudora Welty alive and well in my
seventh-grade reader, I haven't been able to shake the notion that short story
writers are famous people and that short stories are life-altering things. I
believe it is human nature to try and persuade others that our most
passionately held beliefs are true so that they too can know the joy of our
deepest convictions. I was standing in my kitchen fixing breakfast the
morning I heard on the radio that Eudora Welty had died. It was July 2001,
and I remember that the room was full of light. I called my good friend Barry
Moser, the illustrator who had worked with Miss Welty on that most
memorable edition of The Robber Bridegroom, and told him I was going to the
funeral. He said he would meet me there.
I spent that night in Meridian, Mississippi, with my mother-in-law,
and in the morning I made the short trip to Jackson. There was a rainstorm
on the way that made the last leg a harrowing drive, but just as I got to town
the weather cleared and cooled. I picked up Barry and his wife, Emily, and
the three of us went to the church together a full two hours before the service
was scheduled to begin. We went that early because we were certain it was
the only way we would ever get a seat. I expected people to be waiting in the
streets. I was ready to stand in the street myself, but we were the first ones
to arrive. And while the church was full, in the end there were still a few
empty seats around the edges. The coffin seemed tiny to me, but then Miss
Welty had been growing shorter over the years. There were plenty of stories
about her being barely able to see over the steering wheel of her car.
If you have ever been to Mississippi in July, you will know there is
no reprieve from the heat, and yet on this particular day the rain, which under
normal circumstances only makes the situation worse, had somehow made
it better. When we went to the graveside it was no more than seventy-five
degrees, and thus the closest thing to divine intervention I have ever
experienced. When the hero of my life was buried, I had a discreet cry
among friends standing in the cemetery. A woman approached me and
introduced herself as Mary Alice Welty White. I knew her, of course. My
beloved collected stories was dedicated to her and her sister, Elizabeth
Welty Thompson. I had seen her name every time I opened the book. Mary
Alice Welty White asked me my name. She asked me if I was a friend of her
aunt's, and I said I was not. I told her I was a great admirer and had come to
pay my respects. Then she asked me where I was from.
She took my arm. "There's someone I want you to meet."
We took small steps. The ground was soft, and we were both
wearing heels. She led me to the line of cars that had driven over to the
cemetery and to a group of teenaged boys who were leaning up against
those cars. Their ties were loose, and their jackets were off. They were ready
to get out of there.
She introduced me to one of the young men. He didn't seem as if
he would have been especially interested to meet anyone. "This is Ann
Patchett," Mary Alice Welty White told him. "She drove all the way from
Nashville to come to your aunt Dodo's funeral. She didn't even know her, and
she drove all this way. That's how important your aunt Dodo was."
The boy and I exchanged an awkward how-do-you-do and shook
hands. Mary Alice thanked me for coming.
Even at the funeral of the greatest short story writer of our time, a
member of her own family needed to be reminded of her standing. The short
story never was one for calling a lot of attention to itself, but in the face of so
much brilliance I think it's time we started paying our respects.
The Best American Short Stories is the short story Olympics. It is
the short story's moment in the sun. I am grateful to Houghton Mifflin and to
Katrina Kenison for making sure that at least once a year we put them front
and center where they belong. As for their arrangement in this volume, I am
partial to the democratization of the alphabet.
It seems to me the fairest way to line things up. However, this
year the alphabet put Ann Beattie at the front of the line, and while she
certainly deserves to be there as a writer, her story, which is not exactly a
story but maybe some sort of novella, performance piece, massive example
of creativity and nonconforming genius, seemed like the weight the book
needed at the back end. By reversing the alphabet, Paul Yoon's beautiful
story "Once the Shore," which is the first story he published and the
first story I picked for this collection, floated effortlessly up to the front. When
I was a girl in Catholic school, the nuns were forever doing that to us, getting
everyone in a line and then making us reverse our places so that the first
should be last and the last should be first. It seems like a good lesson for the
short story. Enough with the humility. Move to the front of the line.
Ann Patchett
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Introduction copyright ©
2006 by Ann Patchett. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
Continues...
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