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A review by seebrandyread
The Best American Short Stories 2004 by Katrina Kenison, Lorrie Moore
2.0
As I've worked my way through the Best American Short Stories series, I've noticed that the chosen editor colors my expectations and acceptance of the collection. If I like the author's work, I'm skeptical of the stories they've chosen and vice versa. I love Lorrie Moore's short stories, and I think she's an even more fitting editor because short stories are what she's mainly known for. I had very high expectations for this edition. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.
On the shelf, the 2004 edition is noticeably larger than the others, at least the other ones that I own. I think a part of me thought that meant more stories in the collection even though I know that only 20 stories are chosen each year. Hence my first disappointment: Almost all of these stories are very, very long. Some of my favorite stories are 20-30 pages long, but when I read BASS I want diversity, diversity in length, subject matter, voice, authorship, etc. I don't know if there are "official" rules for when a story goes from being a story to a novella, but there are a couple in this collection that toe the boundary.
Moore explains in her introduction that she went into the selection process blind, but she did come across stories she'd already read which leads me to suspect that she subscribes to the New Yorker since nearly half of the chosen stories we're first published there. I'm sorry, but you're more likely to remember a story if you've read it more than once.
I think the author pool is reasonably diverse, though seasoned veterans Alice Munro, Annie Proulx, and John Updike all make appearances. But for me, only 3 of the stories made an impression and only one of those for the writer's skill as opposed to the outlandishness of plot. Munro's "Runaway" appears here, the story that became the titular story of perhaps her most famous collection.
The most interesting lesson I took away from this collection is that the work an author loves and the work an author produces may be very different things. This isn't that shocking a concept, but I was still jarred by how different Moore's work is from the work she admires. I will try to go into future editions with fewer expectations of transference and more expectations of sharing in something.
On the shelf, the 2004 edition is noticeably larger than the others, at least the other ones that I own. I think a part of me thought that meant more stories in the collection even though I know that only 20 stories are chosen each year. Hence my first disappointment: Almost all of these stories are very, very long. Some of my favorite stories are 20-30 pages long, but when I read BASS I want diversity, diversity in length, subject matter, voice, authorship, etc. I don't know if there are "official" rules for when a story goes from being a story to a novella, but there are a couple in this collection that toe the boundary.
Moore explains in her introduction that she went into the selection process blind, but she did come across stories she'd already read which leads me to suspect that she subscribes to the New Yorker since nearly half of the chosen stories we're first published there. I'm sorry, but you're more likely to remember a story if you've read it more than once.
I think the author pool is reasonably diverse, though seasoned veterans Alice Munro, Annie Proulx, and John Updike all make appearances. But for me, only 3 of the stories made an impression and only one of those for the writer's skill as opposed to the outlandishness of plot. Munro's "Runaway" appears here, the story that became the titular story of perhaps her most famous collection.
The most interesting lesson I took away from this collection is that the work an author loves and the work an author produces may be very different things. This isn't that shocking a concept, but I was still jarred by how different Moore's work is from the work she admires. I will try to go into future editions with fewer expectations of transference and more expectations of sharing in something.